We feel stupid. We feel really stupid.

On Saturday, Aaron and I were wandering around the house, looking for something to satisfy our sweet teeth. This happens on most nights. Suddenly, we spotted some coupons that were sticking to the fridge. The coupons were for Coldstone Creamery. "Come and get a Love It size ice cream--2 for $6" and "Come and get prepackaged quarts of ice cream--2 for $9," the coupons summoned us. Now both Aaron and I know that we could get a 5 quart container of Macey's (i.e. pretty good) ice cream for around $7, but we figured this must be an okay price for Coldstone's (i.e. exceedingly yummy) ice cream. Plus we had $12 left in our food budget so we said cha ching! (Chinese for Sweet!) and were on our way.
Once we got to Coldstone, our thriftily trained eyes spotted that the regular price for Love It size ice cream is $3.44. So our coupon saved us less than a dollar. But looking at the prepackaged quarts, we saw that they were regularly $6 per quart. So if we bought the quarts, we'd be "saving" $3 instead of $1...and getting more ice cream...and would still have $3 left in our food budget! As you can see, there was lots of good thinking happening. We had outsmarted corporate America once again. Don't try to pull that ice cream flavored wool over our tongues. Boo-yah! (Chinese for "Take that!"). The high school boy worker happily swiped our debit card, then we left.
Once outside, Aaron asked me, "Did you see how much a 1/2 gallon costs?" I responded, "I heard that worker tell the other girl they were $8.99." That's when Aaron did the math: 2 quarts equals 1/2 gallon. We'd paid $9 for 2 quarts. Regularly, a 1/2 gallon (aka 2 quarts) of ice cream is $8.99. With our coupon we'd paid 1 cent more for our ice cream than regular customers. We feel stupid. We feel really stupid.
Here's the load of ice cream that we got for 1 cent more than the regular price:


Here's us letting out our anger on our ice cream and capitalism:



Here's us being happy because the overpriced ice cream was really good:



There are two conclusions we could draw from this experience: 1)Brother Obama needs make laws against lame coupons and the making of ice cream that is too delicious for the human tongue to resist or 2)Beware all coupons!

Here is a pic of Annie with her Uncle Alan because she wasn't in any of the above photos and because she looks really cute. Could I really publish a post without Annie in it?

An interesting take on the world...

Aaron and I listened to this interview with Mark Steyn who is a conservative commentator and writer. We thought he made a lot of interesting points. The interview has 5 segments. The shortest segment is about 8 minutes; the longest is about 27 minutes. It seems long, but it is worth looking at. Hence, I am putting the link on our blog. I couldn't get it to be a hyperlink, so you'll just have to copy and paste the address into your browser.
http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/92335469.html

6 months

Annie recently turned 6 months old. That's half a year, people! We think she is a pretty amazing little baby. We went to the doctor yesterday. I really like our pediatrician. She always tells me how pretty and content Annie is. Of course I have to agree with her. Annie has a very winning way of catching your eye and then giving you a big smile. She is sweetness itself.
Annie weighed in at 16 lbs. 8 1/2 oz. and is 26 3/4 inches long. The doctor had me fill out a little form answering "Yes," "Sometimes," or "Not Yet" on various baby skills that Annie should be learning. Two of the questions were "Does your baby make high-pitched squeals?" and "When playing with sounds, does your baby make grunting, growling, or other deep-toned sounds?" I answered with a resounding yes to both of these. Who knew that her screeching and grunting were development milestones? I just thought it was kind of weird/cute. It so interesting that things like grunting, playing with toes, reaching for a toy, and noticing yourself in a mirror are all signs of good development, and that typical babies do these things. Babies and their brains are amazing.
We have also started feeding Annie some "solid" foods which are actually just various mashed up and liquified fruits and vegetables. So far, her favorite seems to be pears. Here was our first attempt at feeding:



Annie doesn't mind the taste of things, but if it is chunky at all she will actually, physically shudder. One day I was letting her gnaw on a biggish carrot stick. She would put it in her mouth but wasn't too sure if she liked it. Then she started the shuddering routine. Then I caught her just looking intently at the carrot followed by a shudder. It was bad.
Annie gets so curious about her world lately. When we are eating dinner, we'll lay her on the floor or her bouncy chair. That's when she starts grunting and screeching to get our attention. So we pick her up and let her look at the things on the table:





Everything goes in her mouth (and we don't usually let her chew on pots, even though she would if we let her).

This Mother's Day was my first so I said, "Shoot, dang! Annie and I are going to match." So I wore my green skirt and she wore her green dress. We got some cute pictures together.




We are so grateful for our funny, cute, sweet, gentle, content little Annie. She is a huge blessing in our lives. We can't believe we got so lucky to have her.

A Couch: The Inside Story

The other adventure with moving to our new apartment was getting (or not getting) our furniture down the stairs. The stairs have two 90 degree angles through which to maneuver. We owned a three cushion sofa which did not fit down the stairs and is now in the shed. Luckily, some neighbors were getting rid of furniture on the day we were moving, so we took their smaller three-cushion sofa and their loveseat. Only the loveseat made it down the stairwell, so we had an extra sofa laying around.
Flashback to Christmas 2008--I made Aaron a Love Sack/bean bag thing, and bought some stuffing for it online. That memory foam stuffing cost $50 and only filled up 1/5 of the bag. So ever since then we have been on the hunt for old (but clean enough looking) couches on the curb from which we could salvage couch cushions and stuffing to put into our Love Sack/bean bag.

So now we had a couch at our disposal. There was no room for it in the shed, and we didn't really feel like keeping it around anyway. We were determined to take apart the couch.


We learned a lot about the meaning of life from doing so. Remember how you get mad when you lose a writing utensil. You check the couch 50 million times, but can't find it. Well, we are here to report that the writing utensil is in the couch. We found 5 colored pencils and 15-20 pens and pencils. Other treasures untold included a TV remote control, a lovely religious bookmark, toenail clippers, dental floss, and playing cards. We got more than we bargained for! Our friend once cleaned his couch and found scriptures and a rolling pin. Lucky!



Interestingly, the couch probably had less than 40 nails and screws holding it together. The rest of the couch had been stapled together. The staples ranged from tiny, paper-looking staples, to gigantic "staples" that were really just U-shaped nails. There were also a ton of cool springs that Aaron is saving just in case he says to himself one day, "I need some large, metal springs for this project."

Aaron and I were able to salvage a lot of great stuffing for our bean bag. I'll include a picture once it is done. If you are ever looking for a stress-reliever or a great FHE activity, consider the wondrous adventures in taking apart a couch.

Movin' Out

The day after graduation, we moved into Grandma's house. We are now living in the basement apartment. Cousin Heather and Jason and little Emma are living upstairs. We are very glad to be here. We have more living space and storage space, a second bedroom, and a washer and dryer. The doorways are a little low, however, and Aaron has hit his head a few times (like 12 times). As you can imagine, this is a bit frustrating for him. But he seems to be getting accustomed to ducking through doorways. We have affectionately named our new place "the hobbit hole," which makes Aaron Gandalf the Grey.
Really, though, we like our new place. So many wonderful people have lived here. My own Mom lived here with her little baby. My Aunt Charlotte lived here with 3 kids! I love thinking about how Grandma Sandberg planned out this little apartment and thought of happy young couples living in it.
I also love having Annie in another bedroom. She sleeps so much better when we aren't around to wake her up. She has been sleeping through the night very well, occasionally waking up, but I just put her binky back in and she goes to sleep. What a good baby!

Graduation

So graduation! There is always the question of whether or not to "walk." Should I spend all that time and money to dress up in a silly robe and wait for seven geological ages to have somebody read my name? I made my decision about walking about a year ago when I realized that I believe in the anthropological value of ceremonies. You hear about societies where a boy has to spend a night in the woods alone, and if he survives then he is a man. I don't really feel more like an adult just by putting on a silly cap and gown, but I'm glad I did it. Participating in the event of graduation made our achievement slightly more memorable.
Aaron and I both graduated this April, Aaron with a master's and me with my bachelor's. Aaron has less belief in the anthropological value of ceremonies than I do, so he watched Annie for commencement, then we both walked in the convocation while our parents were here. Cousin Brandon was also graduating with a double major and came to hear the commencement speech. Go us! And did you know that gold tassels mean Bachelor of Science and white tassels mean Bachelor of Arts? You did? That's because you already graduated from college.


William graduated too. It was a party.


Annie was a perfect doll for our parents during convocation. She slept for an hour and a half and looked around the rest of the time. The grandmas thought we were crazy giving a 5 1/2 month old baby without a bottle or any other form of food to somebody other than her own mother for several hours. I told the grandmas confidently, "oh, she won't get hungry." Lo and behold, she didn't get hungry. She didn't fuss at all. Either I really know my baby, she's very obedient, or we got lucky. Looking back I can see it was a stupid thing to do, but then again Annie is pretty much the nicest baby on the planet. In this picture she doesn't look very happy, but she definitely believes in the anthropological value of ceremonies.


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Both of our parents were able to come to our convocation. They're such nice people, and we were so grateful for their help in moving to a new apartment the the next day. We couldn't have done it without them.


A question--should the hair go in front of or behind the ears when wearing a graduation hat? I saw many girls with their hair covering their ears. Others attempted to do this but ended up looking like elves. Elf rule #1: make sure your ears are always sticking out from between the folds of your silky hair.

The girls at graduation were a little less shiny than this, but you get the idea. I just put my hair behind my ears, but it felt a little funny.

We all went to Olive Garden afterward. Yum! I like that place. I went crazy and had something with steak in it instead of my usual chicken. Annie slept most of the time at the restaurant in one of those handy carseat holder things that restaurants have. So family friendly!