Alice and Grandpa December 11, 2009

Doing Alice's favorite thing: spitting.

Christmas Eve and Day

These pictures aren't the best quality, since we took them with the camcorder--our NEW Christmas camcorder, which takes better video than pictures. But we LOVE IT!

After all the new toys she got, all Alice really wanted to play with was the cord to Daddy's Playstation 2. Go figure. Oh, and Alice is wearing her special Christmas jammies that she found under the tree on Christmas Eve. PJ the Christmas Eve Elf as nice enough to leave new jammies for Alice, Mommy, and Daddy.



This is Christmas Eve. Grandma Lori and Grandpa Joe came over to give Alice many, many Christmas goodies. Alice got several new outfits, a couple toys, and these adorable Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls that Aunt Becky made. I know that they want Alice to play with them, but I'm putting them up on a shelf until she's old enough to understand the amount of time, effort, and love that went in to making those dolls and giving them to Alice. Thank you, Aunt Becky! We love you!

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

First up, December in pictures:
Alice seems to love the tree.
I turned around for two seconds, leaving my chocolate-covered raspberry sticks on the ground, half-way across the room from where Alice was playing. This is what I saw when I turned around. Thank goodness she still had her bib on from her snack-time. Alice crawls really quickly if food is involved.
Alice's first taste of graham crackers and her first attempt at a sippy. I think she liked it...

It's a little late, I know. I was so busy this year; I don't really know why. Life hasn't been any different than previous years, but it seemed like there wasn't time for neighbor gifts, family gifts, even Alice gifts, let alone doing anything else Christmas-y. I don't want to complain, because I really do enjoy my calling, but I have to be honest. I don't look forward to Christmas time because it means I have to put together a Christmas program for church. This means from about September to December, I have to beg and plead with people to show up to choir practice, beg them to keep coming, and promise the ones that don't know how to read music that they will be okay, which is usually true. But I don't know what happened this year. Everything seemed to creep up on me at once, and I wasn't ready. I yelled at the Bishop before sacrament meeting, and if you know me, you will know that when I say yell, I am not joking. I gave him the what-for when he really didn't deserve it. But the Christmas program came and went, and I could relax and enjoy at least 5 days of the Christmas season.

Alice has been growing in leaps and bounds. I have been running like a chicken with my head cut-off, so I really didn't notice until school got out, but here's a couple of highlights:

*Alice began crawling since December 8th, and is getting quite proficient. She ventured out onto the tile today, which, until now, has been no-man's land for some reason.

* Alice has her two top teeth coming through. I knew she had been teething for some time, but I didn't know how close she actually was because she won't let me look in her mouth. Ever. She won't even let me feel in there. Finally, I was able to force her lip up, and there they were, about ready to poke through. Poor thing. I've been giving her Motrin and Tylenol to keep her happy. Now that she knows what they are and how they make her feel better, she gets super excited when she sees the medicine bottles.

*The girl is getting a full head of hair. I can actually put little baby clips in it!

*Alice pulled herself up to standing for the first time on Christmas day. I can't believe it! I was really upset about it actually, and she got a very long and teacher-ish lecture about how she needs to slow down a be a baby for a little longer! She is only 7 months old, for heaven's sake!

Even though I find Alice much cuter and much, much more interesting, Joe and I have existed a little bit, this year, too:

Joe is still working at Automenders. It was slow-going there for a while, and things got tight for us. But, thanks to a few icy roads and some stellar morning-commute storms, we're back on top and able to pay off our debts! YAY!

I am still working at Lehi High as the head Sophomore teacher. Being head teacher sounds really important, but it's not really. Basically, all I have to do is make sure none of us are reading the same books with our classes as the other teachers. I also teach Creative Writing and English 11 Honors, both of which are daunting, but fun. Next school year, I finally get my dream schedule: 2 classes of English 10 Honors, 1 class of Creative Writing, and 3 classes of regular English 10. Finally! After six years of sticking with it, I get the 10 honors! Wahoo!

Our lives don't amount to much on paper, but we are so grateful for our lives and the way we live them. We are very happy with our little family, and will forever remember 2009 as the year that brought us our very first miracle: Alice.