I love Valentines Day

I know this is a little late, but I just have to say...I love Valentines Day! I haven't always loved the day (because when I was younger I just felt sorry for myself on that day if the guy I liked didn't suddenly realize that I was the girl of his dreams). But I've always, always loved the treats! Who doesn't love cinnamon hearts and cinnamon lips and juju hearts and big, soft, heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting and all kinds of chocolate? Who?? Ok, maybe my hips and thighs, but they're not technically a person so they don't count as a "who".
Anyway, I think I started to like the day and not just the treats one year in college when I broke up with a boyfriend like 2 days before Valentines so I wasn't really feelin' the love. My two roommates and I decided to watch the looooong version of Pride and Prejudice all night long, and invited some ice cream and chips and dip to join the party. When we finished the movie at 5am it was snowing outside, so we put on our shoes and went for a jog in the snow! It was so fun! After that my attitude sort of changed and I started to think of Valentines as a day about ALL the people we love and appreciate (like good friends) and not just a day that's only good if someone considers you the girl (or boy) of his (or her) dreams.
In accordance with that new perspective on Valentines day, Quinn and I have a tradition (though I confess we dropped the ball this year) of making or buying V-day treats, leaving them with hearts taped to the door, and doing knock-and-runs on Valentines to a few people who might need a little reminder that they are loved. We have had some serious adventures with that one!
Another great V-day memory for me is that Quinn and I spontaneously got engaged on Valentines Day (the decision to get engaged wasn't spontaneous, just the fact that it happened on Valentines day). Here is a picture of us on the Y Mountain in Provo right after getting engaged.

Here's the surprise at my carrel at the law school he left for me earlier that day.

Those are some great V-day memories.

This year I invited some of my beloved girlfriends over for a Valentines Day lunch a few days before V-day. I made red velvet cake balls and--my favorite--sugar cookies with pink frosting for dessert, complemented with lots of my favorite valentines candy. (I forgot to take a picture of the actual meal. Oh well, dessert is the most important anyway.:) )




It was so fun to get together!

On Valentines Day Quinn and Caitlyn and I went to a Lebanese restaurant and had an A-MAZING meal. It was even more pleasant for the fact that Caitlyn very happily sat on my lap the whole time and totally loved the food, too!
So Happy (late) Valentines Day everybody! Don't forget to share the love far and wide next year (and next year we won't drop the ball on that).

BST

It stands for Baby Signing Time. But in our house we refer to it as BST because if Caitlyn hears those three words together in the same sentence (and sometimes even if she hears any one of those words in a completely unrelated sentence), she starts signing "Baby Signing Time" like crazy, asking to watch one of the DVDs. We're glad she loves them but we try to keep her TV viewing time to one 30-minute DVD a day, so we have to be careful about when we mention it.
My mom and dad bought the DVDs as an early Christmas present last November when Caitlyn was about 15 months. After one week of watching the first DVD only once a day, she was doing all the signs. It was GREAT! She could tell us she was hungry or needed a drink, and could tell us she wanted milk, water, a cracker, a banana, or that she was happy, sad, hurt, or had gone potty. We were sold. Instead of crying and throwing tantrums because we can't understand what she wants, she can usually tell us exactly what she needs. So when she cries we just say, "Can you show me what you need?" And she'll stop crying and sign what she needs or how she is feeling so we can help her. Of course, sometimes she asks for something she can't have right then, and cries when she can't have it. And sometimes she's just downright grumpy or teething. So it doesn't eliminate ALL crying and trantrums, but a LOT. And a lot is a heck of a lot better than none!
I've been meaning to film her signing for a long, long time, so we finally did it and here she is. (She'd just woken up, so she's a little less energetic than usual.)


Other words she can sign include "more, finished, sleep, drink, eat, tree, leaf, sun, book, friend, phone, stop, go, wait, please, thank you, sorry" and a pretty good variety of other words. Hopefully she'll start talking sometime in the near future (more than yes, no, bye, and daddy), but for now we're LOVING the signs.

Ce....le-brate good times, COME AWN!!

We've been doing some celebrating around here. So I made this Banana Split Ice Cream Cake (all of which Quinn could eat except for the Oreo crust at the bottom) in honor of our many reasons to celebrate. Ok, on the Pioneer Woman website it actually looked like this:

Pretty darn festive (and pretty darn appetizing) right? The two pictures look a little different, but I'm sure it's just the photography. :) And anyway, it sure tasted great!
Here are some reasons we've been celebrating.
Quinn FINALLY got his grades back from last semester and did AWESOME. Nothing like good grades to make the whole world look brighter. Now we're moving into the job searching phase and I know there are good things in store for my Main Man.
I attended a Hypnobirthing Practitioner Certification course (Quinn watched Caitlyn all four days, bless his heart) and I am now a Hypnobirthing Practitioner. People, I know the name sounds weird, but it is the most amazing program and I am in love with it and I am totally celebrating the fact that I can now officially teach it to other couples. If you've always thought giving birth has to be painful and traumatic unless you're numb from the waste down, give me a call sometime, I would LOVE to chat. :) I still daydream about how peaceful and amazing Caitlyn's birth was, and I am joyfully looking forward to giving birth to our growing baby boy. Here are the inspiring women who were in the class with me.

We're celebrating Caitlyn 'cause we think she's just so darn cute. Plus she's actually started growing some hair, so her baby mullet is filling in a bit. That's a long-awaited cause for celebration! Also, she just teethed four molars -- one on each side, top and bottom, which seems like it would be incredibly painful and would explain a bit of recent grumpiness.

We all have a thousand reasons to celebrate everyday if you think about it! So it's nice every once in a while to do something specific in acknowledgment of how tremendously blessed we all are, even in spite of the trials and challenges that are just a part of life.

Our little mama

Caitlyn has become a sweet little mama. She treats her stuffed animals like her babies, making little beds for them to take naps in, letting me know when one of them gets hurt, putting her hats on them so they're not cold, taking them for walks in her stroller...you name it. Last Saturday she decided that Pooh bear really needed a diaper.

After sitting with him for a while on her favorite perch (our fireplace hearth), she decided his diaper needed to be changed. So she had Quinn help her get the wipes and wiped his bottom and everything!
Pooh bear is lucky. This is Baby.

Baby didn't fare as well as Pooh. Caitlyn is in the process of potty training (and doing pretty well, bless her heart!) and decided a while back that Baby needed to sit on the potty while Mommy wasn't looking. Unfortunately she sat Baby IN the potty instead of ON the potty. So in the same traumatic day, Baby spent some time in the toilet and in the washing machine.

We love our little mama!

Christmas Simplicity

Since we're on the opposite side of the country from most of our family members, this was our first year spending Christmas as just the three of us. For a couple of weeks I racked my brains trying to think of things we could do to make it special and memorable because I was worried that it would be kind of lonely. Finally a few days before Christmas I told Quinn that I'm lame and couldn't think of any really amazing things to do. All my ideas conflicted with the limits (attention span and other) of a family with a one-year-old. Quinn asked me why I thought I needed to have some amazing and elaborate plan. And...I really didn't know why, I just did! He said, "Well I think we're going to have a great Christmas just because we're together. We don't have to do anything spectacular." So I decided to relax. And you know what? We had a great Christmas just being together! We didn't do anything spectacular, but there was something to say for the peaceful simplicity of it all.

On Christmas Eve day we made chocolate chip cookies (and ate half of them, but we don't need to talk about that). That evening we drove around and delivered them to people in our ward who were alone or had other hardships to bear this Christmas. The last place we went was an older single lady in our ward who has been taking care of her very elderly and very ill mother. When she opened the door she was on the phone and when she got off the phone she told me her mother was dying and she had called the hospital for some morphine to ease her mother's pain as she passed. I asked her if she would like Quinn to come in and give her or her mother a blessing (he was out in the car because Caitlyn had fallen asleep). She gratefully accepted, so Quinn went in and helped her son give priesthood blessings of comfort. We felt like the Lord had been mindful of this family's need on Christmas Eve and had sent us there at that specific time that evening to provide any comfort we could. We were so happy to have been there.

When we got home we made my mom's Clam Chowder and ate it with homemade Lion House rolls I'd made earlier that day. Then we dimmed the lights and told Caitlyn the story of the Savior's birth using the PlaySkool Nativity set Grandma Disparte gave her. She was more interested in chucking the characters around the room, but hey, it's always been a tradition in my family to act out the nativity on Christmas Eve, so it was a start, right? Then we sat on the couch with Caitlyn snuggled up between us and watched some of the church's YouTube Christmas messages on lds.org, which really invited the Spirit. We put Cait to bed, wrapped and assembled her presents, and then crashed. (It was a too many chocolate chip cookies kind of crash.)

Christmas morning we got up and made breakfast burritos and had sparkling apple cider (yeah, I wasn't really sure if you're supposed to drink it for breakfast, but we figured it was Christmas so we could do whatever we wanted!).


Then we turned on our Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir DVD that Caitlyn loves to dance along with and clap for after every song. It set such a nice Christmas atmosphere. After a few minutes, we unveiled the rocking horse Grandma Disparte had sent and sat her on it. At first she wasn't sure what to think and kept shaking her head when I tried to help her bounce or rock. But after about 45 seconds it was love.


Now she does the sign for horse about once every half hour and runs over to play on it or pet it for a while. She also unwrapped an adorable outfit and gingerbread house from Nana and Papa and the Baby Signing Time DVDs from Grandpa and Grandma Sitthichai that I had wrapped up (even though we've had them for several weeks as an early Christmas present). After reading the last chapter of our Christmas book, we took a family nap. Aaah, that was nice.

A family in our ward had invited us and a couple of other families to join them for Christmas dinner, which I thought was a GREAT idea and was totally excited about. Unfortunately, their kids got sick so they had to cancel so that everyone else didn't get sick. So we decided to drive around downtown D.C. which I always love doing, and then drove to the Washington, D.C. Temple to see the lights and walk around the visitors center. It was beautiful!



They had displays of nativities and tree ornaments gifted from dozens of countries, including Thailand, which was cool:


On the way home we stopped for Chinese food which, while not the most traditional Christmas dinner, was delicious!

So Quinn's philosophy proved to be a good one. Detailed and well-executed plans are very good. But sometimes, it's also good to just relax and enjoy simple, spontaneous things with the people you love. And along the way, we ended up doing things that will probably become Christmas traditions for our family.

If any one has any ideas for other simple (or even not-so-simple) Christmas activities/traditions that work with small children, I would LOVE to hear them!

I am glad for many things

I love holidays. I love Thanksgiving. I feel like I have a lot to be thankful for. An endless list, really. I could write that list here, but I won't since it wouldn't end and I would never be able to publish the post. Instead I'll just name a few.

I'm thankful for the little person named Caitlyn who brings a kind of joy into my life that is different than any joy I have ever felt before. I can't even describe it. I'm thankful for her big tight hugs and the funny things she does, like copying me one day when I had my chin resting in my hand, or putting on my headbands and running hats.




I'm thankful for her bright, inquisitive little mind, how she loves to find any place to sit down with a book.


I'm thankful for this guy.

The most golden-hearted guy I know, and still the man of my dreams. I love him so, so, so much.

I'm also thankful for this guy, the best daddy any little girl ever adored.

Oh yeah, that's the same guy! Wow, I really lucked out!

And I'm thankful for my family and beloved friends. (If you're not on here it's because I don't have a picture of you on my computer.)








Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving! We miss those of you we're far away from.

Bummer

No winner here, people! And no toyota jump. I would have just deleted the last post, but I love my friend Jane and didn't want to delete her comment. So, I decided to just do a new post and say, "Waaaaaa! I didn't win!" The end.