Happy Birthday Mom!

Even though this is coming a day late, we want to give my mom a birthday shout out! It is wierd that she has birthdays every year, yet still looks the same!

Ouch.

Today was my great grandpa's funeral. The service was beautiful and it was great to hear all about his life. We all went to the cemetery for the grave dedication and everything else and of course, right before everything starts I completely bite the dust! I was wearing Carter at the time but he is completely fine. I on the other hand got a bashed up knee and now can't even walk on my ankle. Work should be interesting tomorrow. I'm just glad Carter is ok. Sadly we missed that part of the service and pretty much all of the luncheon.

More Christmas

I tried to get the boys to pose for a picture and this is what they gave me. Sorry Joy!

A good game of Scrabble with some abbreviations and made up words!


The guys played Hungry Hungry Hippos


Carter didn't open all of his presents on Christmas so the fun just keeps on going!

Why did I bother putting anything in the box?

"Oh snap!" Classic Carter.

Carter enjoying his new puppet

Now "Monkey puppet" has a friend! 2 are better than 1!

More "death spears"

Ella Minnow Pea

I just finished this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who likes words. It is very clever and interesting. It is about a girl named Ella Minnow Pea who lives on the island of Nollop (the man who created the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog") who tries to write letters to friends and family while all throughout the book losing the use of certain letters. Read it, it's good.

Now I start the Phantom Tollbooth.

All work and no play

Unfortunately not all of us had the day off work. Auntie Chelle wasn't able to come over for Christmas because she was working and even Carter had some work he had to finish up! Thank goodness he gets time and a half!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all! We started our celebration last night and continued today. Here are some highlights:

Carter's first present! The traditional Christmas eve jammies.

He's learning to open presents. He continually got better.

In his Christmas jammies under the tree.

Uncle Jeff and Auntie Rachelle came over for Christmas Eve dinner. I LOVE this picture except that Carter looks like their kid, but that's ok.

Those are definitely HIS slippers.

Auntie Chelle wins for the best wrapping job! She put fun things for Carter to play with on each present. It backfired slightly because he liked the packaging more than the present but Mommy liked the present so it was ok!

His new favorite toy! The bell attached to one of his presents.

Another good one...

Christmas morning started with Skype calls to My parents and Dave's parents. They had fun watching while Carter opened his presents. Our call to my family was cut short by this:

Dave got all 3 seasons of Arrested Development!

One of Carter's many presents was a 6 ft long stuffed "gator" which my Mom thought would be fun to wrestle with when Carter got older.

He decided to try it out all on his own!

That's almost a pin!

We've had a good Christmas so far and it's not even over! I think we are going to watch Horton Hears a Who which we got from Grandma and Papa Mann. Hope you all have a great Christmas!

It's that time again! UPDATED!

Yes, it's almost Christmas, but that is not what I am referring to. It's time for Dave's monthly update! First of all, I am finished with my first semester at the University of Utah. By the way, for all of my teachers at SRJC that said courses there were just as challenging as any other 4 year college, I say unto you YEAH RIGHT!!!! From dropping one of my classes, barely understanding the material from another, and working till all hours of the night to pull off an A in my design class, the JC was a cakewalk. Even with the high degree of difficulty, I still thoroughly enjoyed my maiden voyage at the U, especially my design workshop class. If this class is just the tip of the iceberg, aka the architecture program, I am super excited to start that journey. The final project, done in groups, was to choose a site on the campus and build a human scale structure that emphasized the feeling our group experienced on that site without taking away from that feeling. Our teacher said that this would be near impossible to successfully complete and we had only 3 weeks. Here are some pictures that show the project's progression:

This is the site we chose

(a small grouping of 5 trees that made a natural canopy)

This is me explaining my conceptual model that attempts

to portray the feelings our group experienced at our site.

My model had pictures of trees on the outside

and pictures of paned windows on the inside to try to convey

the feeling of being able to see out through the branches

but not being noticed from the outside.

My group built a series of wooden frames out of weathered 2x4's

to enhance the feeling of being walled in by the layered branches

yet still being able to see through them.

The effect was much cooler than what these pictures show.

In the final presentation, we presented in front of the class, our teacher, the TA and 3 other professors in the architecture program. It was a little intense. Our group got an A and I got an A for my part in the group and the paper I wrote at the end. This is what my teacher had to say:

"Fun with teammates! Your maturity was evident here again in this last assignment. You showed up fully and were a driving force in the group. Your 3D conceptual piece was neatly done (much appreciated) and your final paper showed a very good integration of the principles presented as well as the process we engaged in over the whole semester. And your paper is well written, which I also very much appreciate."

Needless to say, my confidence was very much boosted.

In other news, with the wintry weather we have been experiencing in Utah, there has been something that Brook had never seen in real life: Icicles. Due to us living on the top floor, we have icicles above our back patio that Brook has enjoyed watching grow and shrink according to the temperature. She was worried that they were dangerous, but I told her not to worry as I had no near death experiences with icicles when I lived in Ohio. To reassure her, I googled "death by icicle" and was surprised to find that there were instances of icy death, with one article referring to icicles as "cataclysmic death spears". Most of these accidents were either in Russia or by skyscrapers, so we are in the clear, but still cautious.



Recently, we have been reading some "Christmasy" books to Carter at bedtime. One of them is the book Carter's great-grandma gave him for Christmas last year (before he was born), "The Life of Our Lord" by Charles Dickens. In addition, we have also been reading a book titled "Santa's Twin" by Dean Koontz. Yes, that is the same author that writes suspense, mystery, and horror novels, of which I am a big fan. In his book "Mr. Murder", the main character is an author who is pursued by his doppelganger. To comfort his two daughters, he comes up with a story about Santa being captured by his evil twin, who poses as Santa in order to ruin Christmas. The twin is eventually taken over by two sisters that have the same names as the daughters in the novel. Dean Koontz decided to actually write the story of Santa's twin, and there you have it.


Other than that, its just been life as usual. Carter is growing like crazy and will probably be crawling before the end of the year. Brook likes her job and is making new friends, just like I told her she would. I am having fun being out of school and watching Carter while Brook is at work. Hopefully I will find a job in the next couple weeks so we can be a little less stressed. I would like to wish all our devoted readers a wonderful holiday season and may all your christmas's be white (like ours will most likely be).

Grandpa Sabine

I found out today that my Great Grandpa past away last night. He was just 95 days shy of his 100th birthday. I am so grateful that the Lord brought us out here so we were able to see him and he was able to see his first and only (so far) great great grandchild. He had an amazing life and we will miss him so much.

Carter meeting his great great grandpa

5 generations

I am sad about the circumstances but happy that I will be seeing my Mom and my Grandma this holiday season.

Packing on the pounds!

I had a conversation with Stacey about how Carter just seems bigger all the sudden and with all the new stuff he is starting to do he almost seems like a different kid. We weighed him today and he gained 11oz in less than a week!!!! He is almost back on the the chart. Dave is doing a good job of keeping up the difficult feeding schedule I developed for him and it is doing a body good! We are stoked! Over 15lbs! He's a good little eater!

Tummy time!

Carter is trying to be a big boy and all of the sudden LOVES tummy time! We just can keep him on his back anymore!

Watching Scarlett

Playing in his crib

Not wanting mommy to put his jammies on

Today was CRAZY! They let us out of work at 3:00pm because the snow was so bad but of course I didn't have a brush/scraper thingy so 3 of the girls from work de-snowed my car for me (glad I brought cookies today). I was so scared to drive home but I made it and it ended up taking me an hour and a half! About a minute after I walked through the door I got a call from Courtney, the girl I'm now going to be carpooling with, asking if I made it home alright. I thought that was very thoughtful. We will be staying indoors tomorrow and we will definitely be getting one of those brush/scraper thingys. At least I know I can now drive in the snow and that I average about 4mph!

It's a small world after all!

I was training with one of the girls in my department this morning and she told that she not only lives in Murray, but she also works at the nursing home where my Great grandpa is living. She said she even loves looking at all his pictures! I told her to look closer at some of them next time!

We just decided to carpool so she's picking me up Monday morning! Hooray!

Sitting

Carter is doing better at sitting! He started by holding my hand and pushing and pulling to keep his balance and then he did it all by himself!

Look at that belly!!!

He realized it was more fun to play with his toys while sitting.