Annie's first haircut

This is what we found yesterday after an extended silence from Annie:

Her beautiful hair! She was so proud of herself. In Idaho, she'd been cutting lots of printer paper with a very dull pair of scissors. I told her to wait to work on her hair cutting skills until her new baby brother arrives. She can practice on him. That's what I did with my brother Andrew. Annie's hair is currently a little lopsided while we decide if we should cut the rest or not. She's a real kid now.

Pre-Christmas Post

Before Christmas comes, I thought I should post a few Thanksgiving pics. It is my favorite holiday of the year, after all. We spent this year with the Dennis family. The food was amazing. Mom Dennis makes some killer stuffing. "Killer" in a good way.





Aaron's sister Angela also took a few family pics. Annie didn't cooperate very well, but we got a couple good shots.



And here's a couple pics I took of Annie when she was looking cute.

Oh Boy!

We had the big ultrasound yesterday. I was proud of my full bladder for making it through the whole process. We got to see our awesome baby who is healthy and happy. We're so grateful for that. And our baby is a little boy! The ultrasound machine estimated that he weighs 1 pound. It made me so happy to hear that he was in pound range instead of just ounce range...like he's a real person with healthy, important-to-survival fat on his bones. And now I can attribute one of the pounds I've gained directly to him. Here's Boy Dennis in all his 3D glory.
This picture gives the impression that baby's legs stop at the knee. It's not true. He definitely has feet. Rest assured.




Wahoo!

Annie's Mad Counting Skills

Sorry the video is sideways.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

It happened a little while ago, but this picture sums up how Annie felt about her birthday:

Annie's birthday this year included her two favorite things--ice cream cones and her neighbor/1st cousin once removed, Emma. Annie got to have a little party, and Emma even brought a present. It was a tutu made by Emma's oh-so-creative mother. For Annie, it was love at first sight. Emma also brought a card that had a message, transcribed by her mother. The message was "Go to a tent." She and Annie love to make tents when Emma comes over, so I think that message was kind of a summary of all the great times they've had together.
Aaron and I really splurged and found Annie a $1 princess backpack at DI. I think it was really a little blessing for Annie that I found it.

I would dare to say that the little ladies had a good time, even though Emma did say after eating the treats, "My stomach is dead."


Annie and I did practice blowing out imaginary candles before the big day, but, as the video shows, I just don't think she quite had the lung capacity to really do the job. We were glad to have an experienced 4 year old to help us out.


Happy Birthday to our wonderful, happy, adorable little munchkin!!

Halloween 2011

Halloween happened at the Dennis household this year. Annie was definitely more aware of the whole concept of Halloween. She didn't understand the glories of free candy last year, but let's reminisce about how cute she looked as a one year old in her little spider costume.


This year's costume was less creative but still quite adorable.


We hit up the ward trunk-or-treat, and Annie got way more candy than a two year old can responsibly consume. Good thing Aaron and I are here to help out. Annie got to cruise the cars with her friend and fellow princess, Emma.

Two days ago, Annie learned to say "trick or treat" from watching Dora. Thank you for parenting for me, Dora. That will come in handy next year. I'm glad she learned to say it in English.

The trunk-or-treat was on the Thursday before Halloween, so on Halloween itself we celebrated by carving a pumpkin. I had visions of Annie digging into the pumpkin and pulling out the guts and loving it. In reality, she thought it was icky, and Aaron and I did all the work.


But she did like the end result. We asked Annie if she wanted a sad face or a happy face on the pumpkin. She chose sad. She thought it was really cool to see the pumpkin on our step when we came home from somewhere. It was definitely worth the $1.80 I spent on it at Walmart.

Another Applesauce Birthday

Aaron is now a 30 year old man! Can you believe it! He is now a real adult, expected to act like one at all times. Actually, Aaron became a real adult a long time ago as evidenced by his willingness to spend his birthday weekend canning applesauce two years in a row.

Aaron worked hard this weekend. There were nine hours of cutting, cooking, mashing, and processing apples followed by 3 more hours of processing apples. This man has earned his 30 year old maturity.

I forgot to take my camera to Idaho, but the whole process looked something like this:
While the end result looked a lot like this:

With the combined forces of Mom and Dad and Liz, we made 104 beautiful quarts of applesauce and apple slices. Oh, the yumminess! I should also mention the efforts of my mother's 90 year old friend who sprayed the apple tree for worms. We were grateful for that, too!

For Aaron's actual birthday, we continued the food preparing madness by making Chinese food and a coconut cream cake. The Chinese food wasn't hard, just time consuming. The coconut cream cake, on the other hand, was a completely ill-fated endeavor. Let me tell you of my woes. I found a recipe for this cake on a food blog and decided it was perfect for Aaron, my all-things-coconut loving husband. I kept it a secret and secretly went to the store to purchase cream of coconut and coconut extract. I also bought some coconut, but that wasn't a secret.

The first sign that this cake tempted Fate was that I forgot several key ingredients here in Provo. I bought more at Walmart and then proceeded to lose those repurchased key ingredients somewhere in my mother's house. But it was okay...for the moment. I made the cake and put the batter into two 9 inch round pans--as directed.

About 25 minutes into the cooking process, my nose started to sense a strange burning smell. The cake had overflowed the pans. Disaster! My mom cheerfully said that the cake would be okay and that she knew it would not taste like smoke. Aaron and I left her to finish cooking the cakes while we headed to bed.

The next morning, I walked upstairs and found what looked to be a toasted coconut cream cake. My good mother had realized at 11:40, after sticking the cakes with a tooth pick twice, that someone (yours truly) had turned off the oven. So she reheated the oven and finished cooking the cakes.

My beautiful, creamy, layered cake turned into two, flat, slightly charred lumps with a little cream cheese spread over the top. They looked terrible, but I thought they tasted very yummy. Aaron said it was okay.

Thus ends the coconut cream cake saga. Happy Birthday, Aaron!

A Junior High View of History

I got a little job this year working as the English Dept. grader at a local junior high school. The joys of wading through paragraph length run-on sentences have only been overshadowed by the money I get paid to do so.

Recently, the students have written a few things to make me feel ancient of days.

One girl was writing about her superhero alter-ego who traveled back in time 15 whole years to find all the women wearing dresses and all the men using pocket watches. According to her, 1996 was pretty much pioneer time.

Another assignment was to make up a biography for the character of Walter Mitty from "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." One student's Walter Mitty was born in 1982 and had several married children. For that to be possible, this 29 year old man would have had children at 14 who then got married when they were 15...or something like that. In this kid's mind, 1982 was a LONG time ago.

Another Walter Mitty was born in 1984 and died at the ripe old age of 80.

The math and history teachers at this school might want to take a few points off these kids' grades.

I just can't take Annie seriously in these things.

Dennis Family Adventures

I feel like I need to start this post with "once upon a time" because the events in the post happened so long (a month) ago. So...once upon a time, we had a most excellent adventure with the Dennis clan. Aaron and I had gone camping with the singles' ward up the Nebo Loop. It was a gorgeous place, so we decided to go back and make it a one-day family vacation. Aaron was the big planner for this event, and I think it was quite successful.

Our first event was stopping by the amazing Spanish Fork city park in order to fly Alan's model airplane and play on their fancy toys. Behold the fanciness.

Big swings to accommodate any bum size.


And perpetual motion machines that make you want to vomit. These were like your own personal merry-go-round. One little twist of the head, and you're off. Not for the faint of heart.

Annie also enjoyed the splash pad for about 4 seconds.



Alan and co. did a manly job flying the plane with an adoring audience...



And we were off to our other adventures.

Last time through the Nebo Loop, I got terribly carsick. This time I wised up and drove the car myself. Something about being in control and knowing exactly where the car is going to go keeps me from feeling squeamish. Anywho, the drive was lovely. We first stopped at a little trail that ended at a waterfall.


We thought this picture of Alan and Russell was quite inspiring. Alan is in a cave of sin and darkness and Russell is an angel bringing him to the light. OR Russell is the enlightened philosopher leading the prisoner out of the cave of shadows and into the sunlight of reality. I can see lots of possible interpretations.


We picnicked in this ideal location.






Then we continued our drive. We stopped at several scenic locations and finally ended up at Devil's Kitchen.




We thought Devil's Kitchen was an appropriate spot to cook our s'mores. The men built a campfire in the designated area, using only flint and steel (and maybe a kleenex). I'd brought brownies for our lunch so we had brownie, marshmallow, and graham cracker s'mores. Who needs Hershey's?

It was a great one-day vacation.