Meacham Visit

This weekend the Meacham's came to visit so that Ryan could interview at UNMC. It was great that Max came along to play with Helen. He even taught her how to grow a tooth; he was already an expert after two successful eruptions.

I have to admit most of Helen's "milestones" have been approximated to the closest month in her baby book. But we were able to pinpoint the appearance of her front left tooth to between 10:15 and 11:17 am on Friday, January 16th. I know that she didn't have one before she went down for her nap and it was definitely there when she woke up.

Sarah taught us a new recipe for Ryan's sizzler pan. Now we can have brownies and sk'ookies every other night.

We went to the Omaha Zoo on Saturday. Helen made some friends while we were there.

Christmas Banner

On this day, January 14th 2009, I completed my very own Christmas Banner. My mom made one of these when we were little kids. I have fond memories of shaking hers so that the bells would jingle while we sang Christmas carols, that is until I got in trouble for making too much noise. Now that I get to be a homemaker, I had time to make one of my own, similar, but not identical, to my mom's and sisters'. Here is a close-up of Ryan's favorite square.

We are all ready for next year's festivities. I haven't decided when I am going to pack it away yet, it might make it until Valentine's Day. I certainly don't have a Valentine's Day Banner to replace, but I do have enough felt left over to make a banner for all major holidays.

New project

This week we started a new adventure together. We are reupholstering our couches. Ryan was very reluctant about tackling such and ambitious project. But I told him that all the successful couples I knew did projects together and then suggested some different options that I knew he would never agree to (quilting, cake decorating and preserving jellies) and all of a sudden reupholstering wasn't so bad. One of the first things that we had to decide on was the color. I thought that one of these colors would be a lot of fun.

But Ryan was more interested in one of these colors. We compromised and are getting one of the colors in Ryan's batch, "new mocha," but I can make the pillows as wild as I want. Not a bad arrangement.

The first rule of thumb when starting a project is to get lots of help.

This is particularly important because it appears that the people who did the original job were paid by the staple. Our love seat is now in about 20 pieces and 1000 staples all over the basement. This is going to be a good time.

Mom's Cheese Sausage Soup

4 medium potatoes
1/2 stick butter
1 onion
3-4 carrots
3-4 stalks celery
1 lb. sausage, cooked and drained
1 lb. Velveeta
3 cups milk
salt & pepper

Combine first 5 ingredients. Cover with waters and cook; do not drain. Add sausage, cheese, milk and seasonings. Heat, but do not boil.

(I would probably saute the onions, carrots and celery in the butter. Then add the potatoes and water.)

Christmas Cautions

Christmas can be a dangerous time. The number injuries from bad combinations of water, electric lights, and dry Christmas trees goes through the roof. We've avoided those perils so far, but below we have a couple of pictures of Helen caught in risky behaviors.

In case any of you are worried about Helen eating the infamous poisonous poinsettia - According to the Madison Poison Control Center, a 50-pound child would need to ingest 500-600 poinsettia leaves to suffer ill effects of any significance. Another risk at Christmastime is food poisoning. Luckily for us, we caught ours before we ate it. Unfortunately, it had already stunk up our refrigerator. Good thing the temperature dropped outside so that we could just transfer everything to the porch.

Mom, Dad and Hannah made it to our house safely, albeit a little cold. They were wide awake when Helen woke up in the middle of the night. I wonder if they noticed that I wasn't really awake when talking to them. They have since moved on to Iowa for a couple of days.

Happy Birthday to Ryan!

For Ryan's birthday I made him a delicious chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese frosting and covered with some chocolate ganache.  He has been trying to let me eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

The story of Ryan's birthday dates back to last year when Ryan got a shredder for his birthday.  All last year he campaigned for a shredder and even enlisted the help of my brother Craig to talk about the merits of his "roommates shredder." Whether or not Craig actually had a roommate with a shredder has yet to be proved. Anyway, I gave in and got him a shredder for his birthday.  

But, three months ago this shredder became disgruntled with it's normal diet of addresses and went after my curtain.  The picture was not included because of its' graphic nature.  Once again we were left without a shredder and our risk for paper cuts on our hands increased exponentially as we began manually tearing up our addresses.  Thus the search began for a new shredder for Ryan's birthday.  Please note that I found something that won't eat the curtains on its' own.

In fact, this shredder is silent and does a much better cross-cut.  

First Meal

On Saturday Helen had her first experience with semi-solid foods. It was hard to tell if Helen or Ryan was more excited.

Helen didn't know what was coming, but she was more than happy to help put the spoon into her mouth, as it is one of her favorite things to do. Ryan decided that she was not helping very much so he gave Helen her own spoon to play with. This only complicated the situation.

Somehow a little bit of rice cereal still made it in her mouth despite the amount you see on her face. Surely you can also see by her expression that it was not nearly as sweet, warm and delicious as what she's used to.

Thanksgiving

Matt, Emily, Zach, Quinn and Chloe came to visit us for Thanksgiving weekend. It started off with a bang. Quinn threw the full trash can down our carpeted stairs - sorry, I forgot to get footage. Later that evening we tried to make turkey-lurkeys. Zach & Quinn acted like they were going to help us by unwrapping the Rolos, but between unwrapping and handing them to us, most made detours into their little mouths. Sometimes Quinn didn't wait for unwrapping. Thanksgiving was a big success, as we only spent 1.5 hours on preparation (with the exception of the turkey, but it basically makes itself). On Friday we went to the zoo. Emily's favorite animal was the basilisk, Ryan liked the bayou, Quinn liked the fake lizard, I liked the white tiger, Zach liked the giraffe (which we didn't see, but that's okay) and the lion cub liked Zach. The lion cub ran after Zach from behind the glass wall when Zach started running with the stroller.

Early Thanksgiving

In mid-November we had a wonderful trip to Utah and squeezed in as many visits around the valley as we could. We started with the Grandparents Johnson, and you can see here that Helen was a very happy traveler. We came with lots of family history questions and we left with answers, pictures, and all sorts of great stories.

At my Dad's we had a delicious early Thanksgiving dinner, complete with a pumpkin story presented by Jubal, Natalie and Cyrus (click on the pictures here to see more). Here you see the table were all the fun was - no adults allowed.

Here we are with Brice and Craig for dinner at my favorite restaurant, Burger Supreme. I discovered the delicious Western Burger here during my BYU years and have not yet found it's equal.

Natalie let us stay at her house and get her boys all wound up for a few days. Here's Cyrus caught in the act of stealing Michelle's slippers, a favorite pastime.

We were lucky that Mom and Nate's trip to Utah lined up with ours. Over at Natalie's we celebrated Nate's 12th birthday and saw Regan ordain him a Deacon.

Gingerbread Around the World

Every year in our stake each family is asked to donate a gingerbread house. The theme this year is Gingerbread Around the World. Ryan and I quickly decided that the Taj Mahal was beyond our capabilities so we drew upon our international pictures; and what do I have tons and tons of pictures of? Fruit stands. Ryan was in charge of drafting the design, I made the gingerbread (the first time ever), Ryan put the walls together, I made about a bazillion stars, Ryan put the roof on and I made some sweet bananas and sign. Here is the final result, click on the picture to see the process.

Here is the gingerbread house that I made and we decorated at our Relief Society Enrichment Meeting. We called it Christmas in Pompeii.

Happy Halloween

Helen was a kitty this year complete with kitties on her socks. We were unsuccessful at getting a picture of her socks, you will just have to trust me. We only had three knocks at our door which means I will be saving all the spooky pencils, bugs, erasers and bubbles for next year. At this rate we have enough for the next 10 years. Hopefully they stay good as long as our powdered milk food storage.

Six under six

This week Helen and I went to Amber's house in Tennessee to help with her new baby. I hope that was the closest I get to having twins. It seemed like Levi and Helen took cues from one another to cry, nurse and fill their pants. They became good friends over the week. Below you can see that they were looking at an art book and this is their fine interpretation of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.

Below are the pink ladies (Ella-marie & Helen) with the hats that Amber helped me make, or nearly completely made-- if we are being totally honest. I wanted to try and make them myself because I felt that I might have the same problem with sewing that I do with steering the canoe: I just never got the practice I needed and have yet to reach my potential. But I am sure glad that Amber stepped in, otherwise neither would have gotten done and I would have just wrapped the fleece around Helen's head like a turban and called it good.

Corbin celebrated his 6th birthday and requested sand cups for dessert. For those of you who are worried about the effect on tooth enamel, it's not really sand. It's pudding, vanilla wafers and Nemo gummies. In our other pictures (seen by clicking on any you see here) you'll see the good help that Hunter was unwrapping and analyzing Corbin's presents.

Here we are singing together. We're really good at holding out those fermatas for a loooong time. I hear the house is quieter now that Helen & I have left. I turn up the radio really loud now that we are home so that I don't feel so lonely.