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.