Two Weddings and a Conference: Part 1

Well, we didn't have a working camera most of this summer but we did get some pics of some of our happenings.

First my brother Jeremy's wedding to his long-time sweetheart Ashley (she waited for him while he was on his 2 yr mission in Chile and at BYU no less) took place towards the end of June at the Washington D.C. temple. We spent a little over a week in D.C. with family. It was a great trip.

The cute & happy couple

Jared got some great shots of the D.C. temple. It is so beautiful!

I think this is a great pic of my Mom & Dad 

My parents were sealed in the D.C. temple almost 29 years ago. I was just over 1 years old at that point and we have lots of cute pictures of the three of us from that time...

So, here is another pic of the three of us together years later at the D. C. temple.

We're still pretty dang cute.

We did lots of things like the Holocaust museum & monuments, took Aurora to her first movie- Cars 2 she loved it, went swimming a lot, family gatherings & dinners, lots of game playing etc... But I only got pics of the D.C. Zoo which is a great place. The zoo is free, you only pay for parking and you can get that free too if you can find any in surrounding neighborhoods but we were willing to pay the $5 it cost to take a Suburban full of people.

My brother Jeremy with our nephew Tyler...Aurora was in this pic like 2 seconds before it was taken.

Tyler and Aurora were best buds most of the stay.

The gang taking a lunch break.

The gorgeous girl texting next to me is my niece Lauren.

I don't see Tyler or Lauren often enough...it was so good to hang out for a week.

Aurora's favorite part was the monkeys especially the Orangutans that use the "O Line" which are these ropes/cables strung high above the ground from a tall tower to a tall tower all over the zoo.

Then we spent several days and the 4th of July weekend with my family attending the reception in my old hometown of Muncie, IN.

This pic is in here of my new sis-in-law Kayla and my brother Aaron (married in March...I need to upload some pics of that happy event too) because I caught on camera his reaction to her pinching him. :) Have I ever told you that I really like Kayla a lot?! :)
I am so blessed that my brothers all have good taste in women...I love all my sister-in-laws!!!

Loving, Happy Couple

Then in mid-August we headed out to Utah for about a week for Jared's brother's wedding...more on that the next post which will hopefully happen before the New Year.

Can You "Spot" the Birthday Girl?

Aurora's 2nd birthday party was "Spot" themed based off some of A's favorite books by Eric Hill.

 In one of the books, Spot goes to a costume party, so I put a large trunk of costumes out for ALL our party guests, adults included. 

Apparently upside down sunglasses are all the rage among the toddler crowd. 

Gpa Mac

 

Gma Mac

Uncle Aaron & Aunt Kayla

Aunt Jessie also attended the party but she's the one who took all these pics for us! Thanks! And also Momma A was visiting us for the week which was a great treat and blessing.

After trying on lots of costumes we had a parade with party blowers to show off our savvy costumes. This was A's favorite part.

I decorated for the party with "spots" by stringing up some pom-poms (super easy and very cute!) and a colorful spotted tablecloth.

We then read the lift the flap book Spot's Birthday Party with each child getting the

chance to lift 2 flaps.

In this book Spot plays Hide & Seek with his friends at his party...

(the official party guests: Addie, Lydia, Trenton, & Alyssa)

 ...so I hid paper puppets of some of the Spot characters around the house.

The kids had to find them, then color them and tape them to craft sticks.

Puppet coloring.

 Candle time!

Besides serving brownies (Aurora's not big on cake) all the kids were served ice cream in a dog shape cookie cutter and were given mini M&M's to decorate their dogs w/ spots. 

This is Aurora's twin...

whenever Alyssa is out with us, I get asked if they are twins by everyone! :)

Another family friend, Princess Emily.

Thanks everyone for coming! It was soooo much fun!

New Family Pics

Go to this photography website of my friend Hope to see a few of the new pics of our family especially the ones of our beautiful newly turned two year old!

Recap & St. Louis

It's May and I've only posted 3x's this year!

Well here is a recap (I'm getting really good at doing these.)

We still don't have a camera that I like which is part of the issue with not blogging. Also I'm still the seminary teacher and a mother which is really the issue with not blogging.

I love teaching seminary. I truly think it's the main reason why I was able to stave off the Seasonal Affect Depression this year. It's fabulous to have the Spirit in my home every morning Mon-Fri.

The car seat woes from the previous post were resolved about a week or two later (which I knew in my head would happen sooner or later like all stages but it was still really hard). 

What helped push the transition faster and more smoothly was help from my most trusted mother's aide: books.

I've been testing out audio books with Aurora off and on over the last 6 months and she just grasped the

concept that the cd is telling her stories from some of her favorite books. 

So now when we go anywhere it's "Do you want to listen to Monkeys (5 Little Monkeys Jumping On the Bed) or to Cows (Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type)?" And she chooses one and happily gets into the car and her car seat. 

Her favorite right now is Audrey Wood's (my all time fave children's author) King Bidgood is in the Bathtub. The sound recording is quite fabulous and it's like listening to a musical. I highly recommend it! 

Jared and I took a short vacation together to St. Louis. He had a meeting there on a Thursday and it coincided with the schools' spring breaks around here. So I didn't have to teach and my Mom and Dad watched Aurora for us, it was perfect.

So despite the quite warm weather the previous week we had snow on our "spring break" vacation.

Quite a bit of snow.

Of course, we saw the Arch.

But by the time we bought our tickets to go up this is what it looked like...

(Note: If you ever visit St. Louis buy your tickets for the arch beforehand...we tried too but instead had to buy them the day of and you have to wait several hours before you can go up)

This was some of our views from the top...

Not great, but still fun.

 

This is the door to the elevator to ride up and down to the Arch.

It's so small, I thought it could easily be a hobbit's door.

 (Remember that I am hobbit size when you're looking at the size of the door in this pic.)

This is one of my fave pics from the trip.

We are in the waiting area at the Arch about to board the elevators and go up.

I was going to type out the whole "witch" scene from Monty Python but decided against it in favor of just publishing the clip itself.  You're welcome and enjoy! :) 

Peasant 1: If she weighed the same as a duck... she's made of wood
Sir Bedevere: And therefore...

Peasant 2: ...A witch!

(I guess Jared is the "duck" and I'm the "witch")

We also took a ride on the ferry boats. I enjoyed the names of the boats.

Ours was called the Becky Thatcher and the other boat was the Tom Sawyer.

We had dinner at a local pizza place: Imo's Pizza.

I didn't have high expectations but it was truly great pizza!

We went to the St. Louis temple that night.

The next day we went to the Science Museum (no pics really to speak of)

and my favorite place: The Butterfly Garden.

It happened to be Blue Morpho month and so the most gorgeous and huge blue butterflies were everywhere along with all kinds of other butterflies. 

Okay, enough pics of just butterflies...here is one of us.

The garden is inside and feels like a tropical rainforest which is good compared to outside...

That night for dinner we went to the Melting Pot (a fondue restaurant)

We have never been there before but we had heard good things about it.

Even though my expectations were relatively high...I was still pleasantly surprised how good it was.

We did the 3 course meal! It was so much food but soooo good!

Jared wanted me to take a pic of the meat plate...he was so excited about it. :) 

After a fabulous weekend, we drove home through the snow to our much missed beautiful daughter.
(Thanks Mom & Dad!)

This is what she got out of the deal: 

Coming soon to a blog post near you:

Aurora's 2nd Birthday!

Okay, so I'm back

I've been waiting for something to inspire me out of my blogging depression and self-pity party and this pic did the trick.

I took this pic with my phone because I still don't have a proper camera yet.

Isn't she just darling?!

I love my little sunshine even on days when she is feeling a little overcast and rainy.

The Rainy Moments:

Right now, the rainy moments are when she throws a fit (the screaming, arched back, kicking legs kind) almost every time I try to put her in the car seat.

So in response we have become hermits who never leave the house.

No, not really but I seriously consider whatever it is taking us out today if it is worth it.

The other day we were getting back in the car from a needed grocery store run and she was screaming and kicking etc... I pulled out one of my sometimes successful parenting tools (nothing is surefire with a toddler). It is to show empathy and understanding to the child and since the child is a toddler, this tool pretty much sounds like this (in a loudish voice with feeling but not yelling) "NO, NO, NO CAR SEAT! AURORA NO CAR SEAT!" Also, as toddler's are physical beings for added understanding and empathy I pound on the car seat a couple times. (This particular tool of the many I try in the daily car seat episodes is from Dr. Sears' book The Happiest Toddler on the Block) Well, after repeating this a few times not only did it not have any effect on her (at least in the moment...I know years down the road she will say to me "Gee, Mom you're swell. Thanks for understanding that I hated that darn car seat."), it dawned on me what this might look like to someone who couldn't fully see or understand what was going on inside the car. 

A small child is screaming like a banshee and I'm pounding on the car seat.

"No officer, I wasn't hitting or intimidating my child. No, I wasn't even hitting the car seat out of frustration...at least not this time. Yes, I know the store's security camera caught bits of it on tape but I was actually trying to show my child that I understood her feelings. That understanding strengthens attachment which influences biological systems to slow down and become calm." 

Then I envisioned the officer giving me a look and saying: 

"Uh-huh. Okay, why don't we just step over to my car here and you can wear these pretty shiny bracelets on both hands behind your back while we head downtown."

So, I gave up on empathy for the moment and instead used bribery by giving her a piece of chocolate.

This calms her long enough to put her arms through the seat belt restraints but I finish the buckling while she begins screaming and kicking again.

Sigh.

The Sunny Moments:

-When I can see her laughter break through on her face like a beam of light before the bubbling sound escapes from her mouth.

-When she spontaneously cries out with joy "Momma!" and hugs me.  

-When she sings along with the Primary songs cd that we use as her bedtime music.

-When she receives anything from me or gives anything to me even trash or a partially chewed piece of food, she always says "thank-you-welcome."

-When she spells or reads.

Yes, that's right my not even two year old daughter recognizes about 20 words whether it is written or spelled aloud. She adds a word or two a week to her repertoire. Her favorite words to spell herself are: Aurora, cat, home, Momma, and Daddy. She's also very fond of the words: fish, dog, sun, ball, star. She also knows: book, tree, stop, pig, bed, out, and a few more that I'm not remembering right now. This week she has added the word 'jump' to her list. It's so much fun for the three of us- being the bookworms and word lovers that we are.

Just so you know, I don't believe her to be a genius.

I wouldn't want to box her in and label her with that so early in life even if she was.

 I believe her to be very interested and talented with letters, words, and reading for now (and maybe writing in the future). It also helps that she is still in the small window of time where language acquisitition is quicker and easier.

Just so you know, I am bragging though :)

Anyways, so now your caught up on some of our doings, well at least Aurora's doings.

Even though it's rainy and dreay here I'm wishing you all a little sunshine to remind you of the hope of spring!

Technical Difficulties

We appreciate your patience as we work out our technical difficulties.
Now if I could just get my hands on some of that patience.

I know I promised I would post Christmas pics by Valentines and would of accomplished my goal by that deadline if it hadn't been for several technical difficulties. First, we upgraded our computer from XP to Windows7. Before doing so we backed up everything onto the hard drive, at least we thought we did. Now I can't find our Christmas pics anywhere. Of course we just cancelled our subscription to Mozy (an online back-up system) because we just got this new hard drive. It appears that over a 100 pics and videos from Christmas are gone.

I rallied myself after several days of mourning to post more recent pics of our comings and goings but that was when we discovered our internet was down for a couple of days.

Then I went to take pictures and discovered our almost 2 year old camera was not working. The estimate to fix it is almost as much as we paid for the camera new. Sigh.

We borrowed Jared's work camera since he's not out working in the "field" at the moment but so far all the pictures are blurry...I don't know what the issue is. Also when I recorded some videos, (like the last swim lesson for the Daddy & Me program that Aurora and Jared participated in) apparently the mute button was on and the videos don't have any sound.

So, all in all I'm quite dishearten and don't have a desire to blog much at the moment with everything conspiring against me to do so. I might post some pics from Valentine's Day that I took with the work camera but maybe not since they're not very good.

What is kind of funny is that we had technical issues and difficulties about this time last year. Sigh. Well, maybe not that funny.

I know I'll recover soon and be back to blogging because Aurora is growing so fast and I have lots of things I want to document, remember and share about this time period. Until then, wishing you better luck with your technical appendages in life.