Praise to Another Man

Farewell, our beloved prophet...

We will miss you for your love for each of us,

for your stalwart example and testimony of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ,

and for your wonderful wit and humor.

We are so glad you're with your sweetheart Marjorie again, but you will be greatly missed.

WE LOVE YOU!

My New Hobby

I've wanted to take a cake decorating class for years now, and decided that since we're moving soon and who knows how close we'll live to a Michael's in California (you can't beat my 3 minute drive here!) and before life gets crazier with another baby, I'd better do it now. It made it even more fun that I'm taking the class with 4 other girls from the MBA program! We've completed the first course which is 4 weeks long and are all signing up for the 2nd course for the next 4 weeks. It's lots of fun and I'm so glad I'm doing it!

(Annie Ostler and anyone else out there who are professional cake decorators, please don't look at my cakes, at least not closely. I already know I'm not good, but I'm having fun and I think I'll be able to make some cute birthday cakes for my kids which is the whole reason why I'm doing this class! I hope the next 4 weeks will help me just get better since I'm pretty hopeless right now! :D)

With Isadora and Kimber on the first night of class.

My first completed cake. (Disclaimer: the frosting looks nasty b/c I ran out of powdered sugar and had to improvise, so I know it doesn't look like the "Wilton icing".)Here's our instructor, Anita. She's very fun and very good.
My clown cake after the 3rd class. (The flag and other things look dumb, but I was just playing around by then, trying to use up icing.)
After the last class with all the MBASA girls and our certificates: Kimber, Isadora, Melissa, me, and Julia.

My Wilton roses that I despise doing. I think I'll just stick with sweet peas and drop flowers. :)

The completed last cake with my shell border.

Random

We have a little Pendleton-people-who-live-in or-are-just-happening-to-visit-Utah-at-the-time reunion at my parent's house every year. (For those of you who don't know Becky, this is where she grew up in Oregon.) This one will probably be our last, so it was very fun to see everyone, especially since we're moving and will likely not get to see a lot of these people for a while. So for all you Pendletonians who read my blog, here's a quick glance at who came and how many kids there are now! Crazy!

I can't believe I'm actually going to admit this, but until this week, I'd never before read Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" in its entirety. I had read parts, but as I sat down to read it all (which really doesn't take too long) I realized that the BBC's 6-hour version really is the book almost verbatim, so I felt like I was simply watching that. So if you're not a reader, know that you can almost have the same experience with the wonderful Mr. Darcy through the movie, though I still loved the book because there were some differences, and I especially loved that it showed every once in a while Mr. Darcy's falling for Elizabeth from his perspective and not just hers. It was very fun and sucked me in just like a good romance should. I had a hard time not talking like them after each time I'd put the book down. (And here's some fun trivia. Did you know that Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth actually dated for a while after P&P? Just learned that on imdb.)

We find out 3 weeks from today what we're having, so we're going to post a poll on the sidebar for people to guess the gender of our baby. I know, it's pretty cliche, but I thought it would be fun to see what people guess and how close they are. So go cast your vote!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Joseph has had this entire week off school so we've tried to go do at least one fun thing with him every day. Today we took Sophie to the Bean Museum on BYU campus to see all the amazing animals there. We'll get to the zoo eventually, but for now, we had to settle for stuffed animals. But I think Sophie preferred it that way since there was no way they could move and scare her. As it was, she rarely let us put her down for fear that one of the large caribou or the liger might just be able to grab her after all. (By the way, Joseph's jr. high mascot were the ligers, so he has a particular bond with Shasta the Liger at the museum.) Here are some pictures from our little outing.

She wasn't so sure about this big guy.

But if her daddy was holding her, then it was okay.

Sophie loved turning on the lights on all the displays.

This peacock was amazing.

This is a butterfly made up of hundreds of little butterflies and it was incredible.

Snowfall

Sophie loves to watch the snow as if falls outside. We've had ample opportunities for that lately! We're looking forward to the time when we can go outside and play while not freezing off our heinies in the process, but the snow does make everything pretty! (at least for the first couple of days.)

A Very Big Cat

We went to meet Cosmo at a thing for the MBASA. I thought since Sophie did a good job with Santa Claus that she'd be fine with Cosmo. Not so. We took my friend Danielle's little girl Alexis with us and as soon as she saw him she started screaming and wouldn't go anywhere near him, so I think that made Sophie afraid, too. Or maybe she would've been scared anyway. We tried to tell them that he's just a really big kitty cat and is so soft and nice, but they wouldn't have any of that. In order to get a picture with him I had to hold both girls and then he had to be far away until they almost took the picture, at which point Cosmo would sprint up behind us and we'd all be in it together. Poor Cosmo, he must get tired of putting up with screaming kids who are scared of him, but he was a good sport. As soon as he left, the girls were happy as can be and ran around the gym playing with the balls and balloons. I just hope Sophie gets over this fear of big creatures before we take her to Disneyland this summer!

Fieldtrip

Sophie and I went with some friends and their babies to the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. It was neat and Sophie loooved all the fish, especially the little sharks and the rays in the tide pool where she could splash her hands in the water. But just in case you're wondering if you should make the trip, know that we all agreed that it was way overpriced for what you get ($8) and your kids might have as much fun looking at the fish in the tank at the doctor's office or at grandma's house. But we still had a great time and got some fun pictures.

In front of the jellyfish (which we learned do not have brains :D)

Sophie could stare at the fish for hours, she loved seeing all their colors and varieties.

Watching the sharks eat their lunch in their tank.

Sophie's favorite part was the tide pool and she splashed in the water there for a long time. She kept saying "wawa" to get me to go back to it.

Erin and Bryson, Jolie and Jack, me and Sophie, and Alison and Jack

2nd Christmas (better than 2nd Breakfast)

My brother Jonny is home from his mission to Nashville, so we finally got to celebrate Christmas with the Lamb's. It was kind of fun having Christmas on December 25th and then again on January 4th! It stretched it out and I wasn't so sad on the 26th like I usually am after the big day is over. We sang songs, read Christmas stories, acted out the nativity, and opened presents. We got totally spoiled, again, especially Sophie.

The returned missionary with his mission map from mom.

Christmas "morning"

Sophie was the angel in our pageant.

Who knew angels need pillows, too?

Cute Austin

The whole fam together again after 4 years with someone always on a mission.
Sophie loooooves her baby!

Spoiled little girl even has a princess cell phone that rings and makes noises!
The overalls twins.

15 Months Update

Sophie had her 15 month doctor's appointment today, and it went well. She's finally over the 20 lb. mark and is now 30 inches long, so she's got a small body but a large head! (Her head is 90th percentile.) Since they always ask about how many words they know, I was curious and thought I'd make a list to see how many Sophie really does know. Some of these she can say perfectly, but most of the time they're just variations of the word.

Words and Phrases She Says:

mama, hot, water (wawa)
dadda, dog, flower
grandpa (bapa), duck, honey
grandma (ma), uh oh, hi
thank you, b-bye, milk
pillow (pilllllll), more, sock
balloon (ballllll), turtle, touchdown!
bottle (bollllll), banana, happy
ball (ba), baby, ready
where is it?, cheese, down
there it (he/she) is!, whee!
there, yuck, no, all gone
family's names

Animal Sounds She Knows:

dog, cat, horse
pig, owl, elephant
bear, lion, duck
cow, chicken, sheep/lamb
snake, monkey, fish
bird, giraffe

SuperGirl's Cape

Sophie has discovered the joys of hooded towels. I pulled her out of the bath, wrapped the towel around her head and body, and she promptly wriggled out of my arms and took off running with the towel streaming behind her naked little body. She realized it was too big for her to run around in without tripping over the bottom, so she grabbed the sides and streaked around the house like SuperGirl in her cape.

The other funny thing about this is that this is the towel my little sister Julie used to use, and because she had no hair for a really long time, she used to put this on her head and pretend that she had long, rainbow-colored hair. I don't know when Sophie will figure out that it can be used for other things, but for now, she sure loves her "cape".