lucky girl

On Tuesday, I called Jill to see if we could come over and bring her gifts, finally. Instead, she offered to come to my house, and she brought lunch!

This Pizza Factory alfredo/tomato/ham pizza was delish.

Exchanging gifts with Jill is always one of my favorite parts of Christmas.

She thinks she's not very good at receiving gifts/reacting, but I disagree. I love to give her gifts because she is always so appreciative. She didn't even mind that I gave her a trash can for Christmas! (it just seemed like she really needed a new one)

She also told me that the gifts I've given her have lasting value, which made me get a little teary. That's one of the best compliments I've ever received.

She gave me a headlamp, which has life-changing possibilities, and a gift certificate for a pedicure -- woohoo! But best of all...

an offer to take Eva for one Wednesday out of every month, for the whole day! I honestly cannot think of a better gift. I'd call it Glorious Wednesdays if it didn't take away from the alliterative value.

In fact, I almost think it's too generous. As Jessie said, "and this is Eva we're talking about." So, we'll give it a try, but I've given her an escape clause if it proves to be too much.

I don't know how I got to be such a lucky girl! Thanks for everything, Jill.

New Year's Eve

My last day of 2008 was very enjoyable.

I took some photos, worked on my recipe blog, and made my new blog banner.

I got a gift for Lucas to take to a birthday party and dropped him off.

I returned something that I bought for a gift and ended up not needing.

I met Jill for a movie! You should know that I never go to matinées. Jill and I usually go to the movies together on her birthday and on my birthday, so this felt like a very special occasion. We saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and ate a lot of popcorn and peanut m&ms. (Neither of us had had breakfast or lunch, so Jill said it was a good thing she had brought along the meal-replacement candy!) The movie was very enjoyable, and just fascinating, but ended up being more sad than either one of us had bargained for.

It was a good thing that some employees came in to clean the theater, effectively kicking us out, or sobbing may have ensued. (teary-eyed self-portrait)

While I was gone, Marc put away almost all of the Christmas decorations! Double bonus!!


I made fondue, because it just seemed celebratory (we missed you, Timm & Jess). Cheese with parboiled potatoes, lightly steamed cauliflower, baby carrots, apple slices, and hunks of hearty bread.

Also chocolate, with bananas, apples, clementines, marshmallows, pretzels, and cubes of pound cake. It felt like a feast indeed.

Eva cracked us up by trying to remember what fondue was called, notably calling it "pond stew" on several occasions. She didn't actually eat any of the fondue, but she did enjoy stabbing the other things with her fondue fork and eating them that way. She also tried Meier's Cold Duck (I have decided once and for all that I cannot drink Martinelli's--I just do NOT like it, but Lucas was happy to consume what we received as gifts).

After Eva went to bed, Marc, Max, Lucas and I opened our new Ticket to Ride Europe and played an inaugural game (thumbs up). It's fun now that the boys are old enough to play games that we can enjoy as well. They went to bed after we rang in the new year and Lucas didn't get up this morning until almost 11:00!

In all, a thoroughly enjoyable New Year's Eve.

the best Christmas gift!

My love language is acts of service. With that knowledge, my dad gave me the best Christmas present a person could give!

I had asked if he would put in new baseboards in our little entryway. He agreed, and kept adding more and more things to the project.

All of my pictures of him in action came out blurry, but I have to include the documentation anyway.

He spent hours pulling carpet staples and carpet fibers out of the wood on the edges of our stairs, hurting his back in the process. (I spent hours on this project shortly after our new carpet was installed -- over a year ago! -- and then haven't gotten back to it since. Not a fun project.)

He put in new trim on the stairs to make the sides match each other.

He filled in the big gashes and all the little holes.

It is truly remarkable what a difference a baseboard and some paint can make.

He pulled off the plastic sheeting we had on our too-old-to-be-up-to-code railing, now that we don't have babies who might fall through. I was completely amazed at the difference that this made -- night and day!

Of course, he took time out to fix the pipe that broke in the kitchen on Christmas Eve. Whew!

He hung our new kitchen light fixtures! (no more bare bulb!!)

He hung the draperies that finally arrived! (part of last year's Christmas gift)


He cut shelves for our year-long bookcase project, ready to paint -- hallelujah!

He and Mom decided we should paint the ugly old railing black. Again, night and day. (why didn't I ever think of that?)


Now I have to paint the front door. And that makes me want to paint the interior doors. And the kitchen cabinets. And.... one thing always leads to another in home improvements.

Thank you, Dad!!! I couldn't be more thrilled.

spt -- holiday love

This new little advent I decided to make this year ended up taking more time than I expected.



For some reason, even the filling and hanging seemed like a bigger task than I had anticipated. It's a good thing I love making things. And that I love advent calendars. And that I love my kids and they love advent calendars.

field trip

Yesterday I went on a field trip with Lucas's class.

He informed me that I hadn't chaperoned a field trip since he was in kindergarten! (when I was pregnant with Eva) Since he's now in fourth grade, I agreed that it was definitely time to volunteer. Fortunately my support team stepped in to help: Heidi took Eva in the morning and dropped her off at preschool and Jill picked her up, fed her lunch, and played with her until I returned at 2:30.

We left the school at 9:15.

I had forgotten how truly chaotic it is to ride a school bus filled with excited kids!

First we went to downtown Provo for GIS Day. (I'd never heard of it, either.) It stands for Geographic Information Systems, and we learned about aerial photography, computerized mapping, and local GIS applications.

This was definitely the highlight of GIS Day. This guy was very entertaining, and told us all about a program he wrote to keep track of all the city-owned trees for the city forester. (Who knew that could be so interesting?)

After the classes, they served cake adorned with the GIS logo.

Then we went outside to eat lunch. Lucas, of course, wanted to bring a sack lunch from home, as opposed to a sack lunch provided by the school. Otherwise he would have had to eat a lunchmeat sandwich! The horrors.

This enormous tree has several supports for its lateral branches! Have you ever seen anything like that?

This was a happy sight. Although I don't care for milk, I love chocolate milk, especially pre-packaged chocolate milk.

Next, we headed to one of BYU's smaller museums. (This was my group of kids. On the whole, they were very well-behaved.)

Many of the objects in one of their current displays came from Chihuahua and were donated by Shirley Taylor Robinson. My dad grew up in Chihuahua and my maiden name is Taylor, so my curiosity was piqued. Dad? Any relation?

Our last stop was the Earth Science Museum. In my opinion, the best part is being able to look through the large windows into the lab where the paleontologists are working on new finds.


So here's what I learned:

- GIS day exists.
- Aerial photography cameras cost anywhere from $.5 million to over $1 million.
- Film canisters for film aerial photography cameras are about a foot tall and are very heavy.
- Kids really enjoy looking up their homes and/or school on Google maps.
- 33 satellites orbit the earth in order to provide data for GPS systems.
- GPS was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense and is now used worldwide.
- How triangulation works.
- Orem City has a forester.
- He tracks the damage done to city trees by vandalism or natural causes and also their replacement value.
- Fourth grade girls scream a lot.
- Some fourth graders are very anti-BYU.
- Kachinas are dolls made by Pueblo Indians to represent the spirits.
- How archeologists use artifacts to extrapolate information about past civilizations.
- How to tell if a dinosaur was an herbivore or carnivore (its teeth).
- Lucas's teacher is very ambitious and has more energy than I (3 field trips in one!).
- I'm glad I don't have to do that every day.

- Going with this guy was well worth it. He sat with me on the bus and everywhere we went. I think he was really happy to have me along. I love you, buddy.