New Hobbies

In this day and age a girl can learn anything she wants. Google and YouTube along with libraries give us a vast array of knowledge right at our fingertips (or a few blocks from our fingertips). Isn't that amazing! Lately, this is what I have been learning.



Years and years ago, my Aunt Kathleen taught me how to knit using capless pens. More recently, my old roommate reminded me of the knitting basics and at Thanksgiving my mom taught me a little crochet. I've been "hooked" ever since. Aaron and I read a lot in the evenings, and I can now knit or crochet instead of just sitting there. Look at us...we're pretty much ready for retirement.

Learning these crafty skills has been a rocky road. I have had some successes:


(Annie counts as a success, although she wasn't crocheted.)

And some failures.

The failures come when I get impatient or too ambitious...like trying to make "easy one-piece slippers for beginners." That was, apparently, too ambitious, as you can see on the left--the one that looks like it came out of a troll's nose. Even the hot pad turned out funky. It was a rectangle instead of a square and the corners curled up. So I still have a lot to learn. But I can learn. The resources are there. It's great!

Thanksgiving

We survived the Thanksgiving storm and lived to tell the tale. Aberdeen definitely got hit worse than Provo. We are glad to be back to balmy Utah and out of that icy, mind-numbingly frigid Idaho air. Although the weather was cold, our family was warm, and we were sad to leave them.

Annie got to spend some quality time with her cousins, Daphne and Klara. Unfortunately, I wasn't a very diligent photographer, and I forgot to get pictures of Klara. But here's Daphne and Annie sharing a seat:

Sharing slugs:


And sharing sickness. We think Annie now has what Daphne had all weekend--fever, cough, etc. The sickness is worth it, though, because Annie had such a grand time traipsing after the other little girls.

Of course the weather could not put a damper on the McCombs family pie festival. This picture might make you think we were cutting back this year...but there were 13 more pies in various locations around the house and yard. Yum. I was in charge of the pecan pie, and it was delicious, if I do say so myself. I'll have to make some more pecan pie because I bought a whole bottle of dark Karo syrup, and I don't know any other recipes that call for that:


Annie was a natural at pie festival and dug right in.



Other than eating we chatted, watched movies, crocheted, made super cute potholders, and had an all around great time with our awesome family.



Correction: Aaron didn't crochet. He played basketball and watched football.

North and South--It's not about the Civil War

Over the last two days I indulged and watched the movie North and South again. This was probably my 5th or 6th time seeing it. I just need to tell the world how great it is. First of all, as previously mentioned, this movie is not about the Civil War. The geographical regions referred to in the title are the turn-of-the-century industrial North of England and the agricultural South of England. The movie is based on a book by Elizabeth Gaskell. Here's the basic plot: Our main girl lives in Britain's southern countryside. Her father uproots her family to a northern industrial town. She hates everything about it, especially that exceptionally handsome man she meets. She finds out the man is actually a stellar fellow. After much turmoil, she changes her opinion about the North, marries man, lives in the North.

This may sound like another one of those I-hate-your-guts-let's-be-in-love period pieces, but it is actually a standout contribution to the BBC 18-19th century time period movie kingdom.

This movie is like Jane Austen for men. #1 male complaint about Jane Austen type movies:

The characters never DO anything!
They play cards, dance, and gossip. Boring!

To which the woman replies...that is true...but see how they looked at each other over the card table! See how he is watching her dance! Sigh.* Well, in this movie, we women don't have to make lame excuses like that. The characters are busy with their industry of making cotton. They work for a living! There's still lots of romance and meaningful glances, but for each dose of love in the movie, there is an equal dose of talk about free markets, labor unions, making a profit, class struggle, etc.

And through it all, the acting and screenwriting are fantastic. My favorite performance is by Brendan Coyle who plays the union leader Nicholas Higgins. I've seen him in a few other BBC productions, and he always does a fantastic job. The movie, even more than the book, makes us feel sympathetic towards many different people and groups of people in the different side plots. No part of the movie feels half-way developed, which is sometimes a hard trick to pull off with the book to movie gig. The screenplay was written by Sandy Welch who also wrote the outstanding television movie versions of Jane Eyre and Emma. She rocks. I'm no expert, but in my opinion, everything was done right with this movie. And I actually liked it better than the book.*

This is the Jane Austen* your man can stand.

*A note: For the purpose of this blog post, I made lots of generalizations about what men like and what women like. If your sensibilities were offended, please forgive me.
*A word of caution: The accents are pretty thick in this movie. Turn up the volume and don't watch it at a party, unless everyone at the party is willing to stop talking and listen carefully. Doesn't sound like much of a party.
*Another note: The book North and South is not written by Jane Austen.

Annie's 1st Birthday

Annie had a birthday! Shout Hooray! She turned one year old last week. She's practically a full-grown woman. The weekend before her birthday, we went up to Bountiful to have a birthday party with the nearest grandparents. In my opinion, Annie pretty much had the greatest birthday party a one year old could ever have.

To start off with, her totally cool mom and dad made her a butterfly cake (carrot flavored of course).

Aaron tried several times to convince me to make a rocket ship cake for Annie. He really wants Annie to one day get into a field like engineering, math, or computer science. I'm fine with that, when the time comes, but right now she is a one-year-old girl. So I tried in several different ways to convince Aaron the rocket ship at this age would be weird. The argument that finally won him over to my side was when I asked him if he would let me make a butterfly or flower or doll cake for a little one-year-old son of his. The answer to that was a definite no.

Annie liked the butterfly cake and ate it by the handful...just like she was supposed to.




At the dollar store, they only had sports-themed party hats, so I opted instead for the mini-tiaras. They were a hit.



Annie also did a great job opening her presents and playing with each one of them. She got awesome books and a pop-up toy from Grandma and Grandpa Dennis and Aaron and I gave her a doll stroller. We don't have a picture of her using it, but it is currently the love of her life.

For a one-year-old, birthdays don't get much better than this.

One year old is definitely a milestone. Annie has learned so many new tricks. She can't quite walk yet, but it seems to be fear more than lack of ability holding her back. She really walks well with the stroller, though. She says "woof, woof" when she sees dogs or pictures of dogs, but that also seems to be the sound she makes for other animals she recognizes like cats. We'll work on that. Annie also loves sugar. One day we gave her a dum-dum and it has been downhill from there. If she sees cookies, there is no distraction strong enough to make her forget about them. She's smart. She claps and waves and also does the sign for "more."
Annie weighs 19 1/2 lbs and is 30 inches long which I've discovered, while reading Lord of the Rings again, is about the size of your average hobbit. She's in the 30th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height. So she might not be hobbit-sized her whole life.
Annie is a wonderful baby/full-grown woman who makes us very happy. We're so blessed to have her and to see her learn and grow.

Dressing Up

At this time last year, I was pregnant with Annie and just about to pop. So last Halloween, I dressed Annie up as a basketball, and Aaron was the basketball player. This year was Annie's first Halloween outside the womb. I hit the internet looking for costume ideas and found an easy spider costume on a Martha Stewart website. I was the web, Annie was the spider, but we still needed an idea for Aaron, the man who hates to dress up. Finally, he supplied the perfect costume--Frodo. So now, Annie was Shelob, I was her lair, and Aaron was a hobbit trying to escape.



We got to wear these costumes to the singles' ward party. Our whole costume "theme" wasn't obvious to most people. I can't blame them. The bishop and first counselor's "theme" was fairly clear, however.


We've never celebrated Halloween so much--this year we had three Halloweeny activities. Aaron says it should count for the next ten years. I'll just bring out this picture next year, though, to remind him of how fun it all was.

Halloween Cookie Failure

My dear friend Amanda and I had a vision. We are both stay-at-home moms, and we were going to make Halloween cookies. They were going to be cute and fun and delicious. Our husbands and visiting teachees were going to rave about them. This was the result of our vision:



They looked really bad, but tasted okay for the first two days. I threw a bunch away. Amanda reported that she and her husband would say, "These cookies are gross" and then eat take a nibble. Maybe our cookie making can be redeemed at Christmas.

Welcome Home!

About a week ago, my baby brother Andrew got back from his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Lattter-day Saints to El Salvador. He looked great, lost weight, and was talking really fast. He flew to Idaho but had a layover in Salt Lake, so Abbie and I were able to see him. Abbie brought a candy bar poster and I brought cookies. The returned missionary didn't really eat them because he wasn't hungry, so the rest of us scarfed them down.

It was so great to see Andrew again, and it felt really natural to have him home. He had a great mission and was able to help a lot of people. I'm excited for him to begin the next stage of his life--going to school, getting married, being awesome, etc. Life just keeps getting better.

Aaron helped a lot with watching the kiddos while Abbie and I talked to Andrew. It was great. He rode the escalator up...then down...then up...then down. Annie also had a grand time with her cousins doing things like chasing the stroller.


We're glad to have you back, Andrew!

Toys!

Once upon a time, there was a poor little girl named Annie who only had lame toys. She was bored with them, but, being a thrifty child,she sent her mom to scope out the toy section at the Provo D.I. Pickings were sparse, so Annie bravely continued playing with the plastic spoon and empty parmesan cheese container.

Then one day, Annie went on an adventure to visit her auntie in the big city with a salt lake. There, after a lovely tea party, Mom and Annie went to the D.I. and found a plethora of wonderful toys. Oh it was a magical day. Annie got lots of new toys all for $8.00. What a deal!


Yes, it's true. The Sugarhouse D.I. is the place for toys...and death-defying elevator experiences. The D.I. is built in what seems to have been an old bank. It has 3 levels. Cousin Heather bought a red and yellow car for Emma (another great deal) so we needed to use the elevator. In order to do so, we had to go into a dark corner of the store where a man with one arm and a hunchback summoned the elevator down, escorted us into the metal box, and then proceeded to pull on a chain (using his only arm) which took the elevator from floor to floor.


Okay, so it wasn't that bad, but it was the ghetto of elevators. The moral of the story is that if you are looking for a unique D.I. experience, try the SLC.

P.S. Annie's toys are a hit.

Final Summer Hurrah

A little while ago we went on a camping trip with the McCombs family. I haven't posted about the trip yet because I lost our camera right after the trip. But the lost has been found. Here are the details.

Abbie/James & Co., Phil/Kelsey & Co., Aaron/Maren & Co., Ma & Pa, and Benson and Seth all made the trek to a camping spot just outside of Malad. Our sites had lots of trees and a creek running by. The water was nice except for the parents who had to keep their kids out of it. But we even caught and ate a few fish from the creek. How authentic.

Since we're family, we must think alike because, while camping, four ladies stepped out of their tents in purple--which also happens to be Grandma McCombs's favorite color.



As one of our fireside camping events, some of us took 10 minutes or so to teach each other about a topic. I taught about cattle, Abbie taught about her crazy high-intensity exercise, my Dad taught us a boy scout skit, etc. The highlight of the camping trip, however, (besides the fried chicken my Mom made) was when my mom (an elementary music teacher) handed out recorders and taught us a song that we then played along with a CD. First we all had to listen carefully to instructions:

James was a bad boy, playing when our recorders were supposed to be at rest.

After learning the notes, we added the actions which included waving our recorders in a circle above our heads. Aaron was pretty good at this part.


We eventually got so good at our song that we were able to dance around the campfire while playing it.

Unless there was a kid in your lap. I'm sure the neighbors loved all of it. As I said, it was the highlight of the trip.

The lowlight of the trip was Aaron shining a flashlight down into the porta-potty. Worst day of my life.

P-Town...who took over my city?

Almost overnight, Provo became a new town. The sidewalks, streets, and stores are swarming with students. I can feel the excitement in the air, but it is tinged with some frustration. Especially when someone parks right in the center of a spot that normally would hold two vehicles. I've been a Provo-ite for about 5 years now. I should be used to this. But for some reason, I never felt this drastic change at the beginning of the semester so keenly in the past. One reason might be that we lived further from campus before; there were more married students who stuck around during the summer. But I think I am also noticing more this year because now I am an outsider looking in on the campus rush. I am no longer a student. My BYU net ID no longer works. And I am a little sad.

BYU has been a huge part of my life for the last few years. Each new school year brought stress, pressure, busyness, but also excitement and learning. With fall coming on, it has hit me that that part of my life is over. Wow. I can hardly believe it.

College is behind me, and now I have some great things to look forward to. (Hooray for being at home with Annie!) And I'm very glad about having certain parts of my BYU experience far behind me. But the waves of nostalgia have been flooding over me this week, so I thought I would take a moment and reflect.

Here's me and a BFF during our freshman year.



Good times, but life has definitely gotten better since then. Goodbye to BYU. Hello to the rest of my life.

St. George Adventure

Two Saturdays ago Aaron, Annie, and I took a little holiday down in St. George with the McCombs parental units. Cousin Nick was getting married. He found a wonderful, beautiful girl, and they were so in love! It was a happy day. It was also very hot, which made us glad to return to our more northerly P-town.

Annie was a champ as usual. She is easy to take places. And she's really cute.




And here's the Jan and Ramon clan.



And the brothers:



After the wedding and reception, we stayed overnight in a fancy hotel in St. George. Seriously, this place was a step-up for the McCombs clan. Thanks Mom and Dad! However, Annie still couldn't get a normal sized bath tub. But fun can come in small packages.

A grand time was had by all.