Family Picture

Last week we took some family pictures so I could send out some sort of Christmas greeting. I know there are a lot of people who want a family picture, so a family picture works well for a Christmas card. We also took some pictures of Patrick. It was his five month birthday. Unfortunately, he was a little fussy that morning, so the pictures we got aren't nearly as cute as they could be, but we managed to get a nice picture. I couldn't upload the one with "Happy Holidays" on it, but you can still see the picture.

This is one of the goofy "out take" pictures we caught while taking pictures. Maybe he was yawning?

Christmas Enrichment Night

This week we had our Christmas Enrichment Night. We had a nice dinner, a small program with Christmas stories from Henry B. Eyring and James E. Faust, and yummy desert. Because Ruth is the Relief Society president, I get to help with the activities, and I really enjoy helping. We set up lots of beautiful decorations on Monday afternoon, and then Tuesday Ruth and I spent all day making rosemary bread (like the kind they serve at Macaroni Grill). Actually, Ruth did most of the baking. I helped a little. We make 6 batches, and the bread was so tasty!

We had a really good turn out at Enrichment (about 60 women) and the fun part was the gift swap. I really liked this idea. We each got a quart-sized jar and filled it with our favorite things and then we got someone else's in return. I filled mine with a small cross-stitch kit, some peanut M&Ms, and 5 of my favorite recipes. The jar I got had packets of tasty hot chocolate.

Our new ward has been very friendly, and I am meeting some very nice ladies. I have come to really appreciate how lucky we were to go to a married student ward at BYU-Idaho. That ward was just perfect for our situation in life, and we really miss everyone there, but Colorado is very nice. For example, we got 12 inches of snow on Sunday, and all of it was melted by Monday afternoon. How convenient! There are lots of other nice things about Colorado, too. I just really like that the snow doesn't stay forever.

New Address

I keep forgetting to post our new address. I'm hoping Christmas cards will be here soon! :) We are dirt poor, so you all will be getting Christmas cards by email; we hope you don't mind!

7524 Dawn Ct.
Littleton, CO 80125

Our cell phone numbers are the same, but if we don't anwer, you can call us at home at
303-948-2466.

We hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

Merry Christmas!

Decorating for Christmas

Today we started decorating for Christmas, which is a big deal at Mama Ruth's house. We aren't finished yet, so I will post pictures later, but Patrick is really enjoying the lights and decorations. He watches the lights and squeals with delight. He is big enough to look around and know that something is going on, but not big enough to be in the middle of everything, which is really nice! He also has a new trick this week. He will now stick his tongue if you stick out your tongue. I laughed and laughed when he started doing that. I have the happiest baby ever. He wakes up happy and giggling, and he just doesn't stop. Sure, he has fussy moments when he is tired or has gas, but he really smiles a lot, and that makes me so happy as his mom. Patrick seems to really enjoy life. He plays with his feet now, but he won't roll over yet because he doesn't like his stomach anymore. He used to love tummy time, but anymore it just makes him spit up and then he gets fussy. We practice rolling over, but his isn't interested yet. I'm not worried; I know he will figure it out when he is ready. He falls over on his side when he grabs his toes, so rolling over can't be too far away.

Tasty Apple Pie

As promised, here is the apple pie recipe I made for Thanksgiving.

1 recipe pie crust

1/2 cup butter
3 Tbl flour
1/4 cup water minus 1 Tbl
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbl vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
8 Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced

Melt the butter and stir in flour. Add the rest of the ingredients (minus apples) and simmer until slightly thickened (2-3 minutes). Toss apples with this mixture and fill your pie crust. Add your top and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes or until your apples are tender. I find that if you bake it at 350, you don't have to cover the pie with aluminum. The pie will turn out nice and golden brown. Let the pie cool for several hours so the glaze thickens. If you want to eat the pie warm, just put it in the oven on 250 or 300 for a few minutes.

Thanksgiving

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. Reed's parents were in Virginia with his sister Stacy, but his other sister Amy and her husband Marco came to the house and we made a very nice dinner. Reed made a roast turkey and a smoked turkey, and both were juicy and yummy. Amy invited a friend from work and some friends from their ward, so we had a nice big gathering. Most of our guests spoke Spanish though, so there were a lot of jokes we didn't get, but we still have a great time. I was in charge of jello salads and and apple pie and cherry pie. I think I will have to share the recipe I found for apple pie because it was super tasty! I will probably do that tomorrow.

We hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well.

Silly Baby

Patrick is becoming a lot of fun. He is easy to laugh and giggle (sometimes hysterically). He has really enjoyed eating cereal, and one night he was being super silly, so I took some pictures. These three are of his giggles. You will have to insert your own sound since I don't have a video camera yet.

This is the face I usually get when he is eating. He loves the cereal. I have started adding juice, which makes it even tastier, and he gets watered-down juice in his sippy cup, which he could drink all day.

These last two are trying to capture how excited Patrick gets in his bouncer chair (thanks Grandma!). He can now get the chair to bounce so hard and fast that I think he is going to hit the floor backwards.

A Day at the Zoo

We spent Tuesday at the Denver zoo . My sister-in-law Amy got us a zoo pass for Christmas, and Tuesday was a beautiful day (78 degrees, can you believe it!) so we took Patrick for his first visit to the zoo. Denver has a very nice zoo. It is large, but not so big that your feet ache when you are done. When we first got to the zoo, I had to feed Patrick, and while we were sitting on a bench we could hear the lion roaring really loudly, but we couldn't see him because of a sign in the way. But when we got done, he was still sitting on his rock, roaring away. You can kinda see him in this picture behind me.

This is a great bored picture. It doesn't look like it in this picture, but Patrick really did enjoy the zoo. He liked having lots of things to look around at, even though he isn't big enough to know what animals are. He also enjoyed the sunshine and being outside.

Another cool thing about this zoo is that they have several peacocks that just roam around the zoo. I don't know if other zoos do that, but it is fun to have a peacock cross in front of you while you are walking. Rumor has it that you can pick up tons of peacock feathers if you show up early in the morning.

A lot of animals were out and friendly today. We got to see the gorillas and orangutans up close and personal.The orangutans were putting on a rather intimate show, if you catch my drift. The gorilla was sitting right next to the glass and staring Reed down. We decided not to take a picture of him because he already looked angry. Some kids came over and were really excited to see him, but he stood up, stared at us, and then ran across the room, hitting the glass as he went. It was a little startling, but fun! We didn't get to see the polar bears this time, but here is a picture of Reed standing next to a polar bear to see how he measures up. Last time we were here, we watched the polar bears play for like 30 minutes. Maybe we will see them next time. We also got to see the seals eat dinner and hear the sea lions barking really loudly. The sea lions wanted someone's attention, and they sure got it. We saw the giraffes, and they had a baby giraffe who also wanted to do nothing but stare Reed down, which Reed thought was a little creepy. Sorry, the picture is really dark because we were inside, but he kept staring at us for like 15 minutes until we left.

The zoo was a lot of fun, and weather permitting, we are planning on going with Amy on Thanksgiving day. Amy really likes to go to the zoo on holidays because it's practically empty and you don't have to deal with the crowds. What a great idea!

Eating Rice Cereal

Tonight Patrick had his first experience with "solid" food. I got him some rice cereal today and decided to try some tonight before bedtime. He hasn't really shown too much interest in food yet, but he has been waking up a lot at night, so I thought this might help him sleep through the night more consistently. I don't have any pictures, but he didn't really make any funny faces. He loved the cereal. I thought it might be difficult because he was acting tired, but once I gave him the first spoonful, he couldn't get enough. He ate about two tablespoons of cereal, and he probably would have eaten more, but I decided it would be best to start slowly. I made it really runny so it would be easy to swallow, and Patrick really seems to enjoy eating. I'm excited to give him some more tomorrow!

Where to Start . . .

So we would like to say that we haven't posted in forever because we were busy... but that is far from true. We just had dial-up internet and it takes too long to load anything. Long live DSL!!! Now that we have spent the morning installing DSL we have brought ourselves out of the 90's and we can now communicate in a digital world again.

Halloween

Halloween was a busy day for us. We had a doctor's appointment for Patrick in the morning. We wanted to do his four-month check-up before we moved so we didn't forget, and so it would be covered by insurance. He got some more shots, and he was so good! He only cried for a few minutes. After his appointment we went to Idaho Falls to pick up Reed's last check and visit with my family one last time. All of our big stuff had already been packed into the ABF truck the day before, but we still had to pack the car and clean the apartment, so we were in for a late night.

Even though we had a lot to finish, we decided to go to the ward Halloween party so we could say goodbye to our bishop and friends. Patrick has an adorable cowboy outfit that his Aunt Stacy sent us, so he was a cowboy and Reed and I were his posse. We just went to the dollar store to find things to embellish our costumes. When we got to the party, he was pretty happy, but soon...

he was the pouting sheriff.
Here is a picture of us with our best friends. Jordan is Arthur Dent from the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bethany is a polar bear (and a cute one too), and Coralie is a horse (which we thought was fun since Patrick was a cowboy). Coralie just really wants to play with Patrick's toy gun.

See?

There were tons of games at the party, including a "pie" eating contest. Our friends Jordan and Marc played. They had to eat the pie tin full of whipped cream and find the piece bubble gum and blow a bubble. Here are their lovely pictures.

Marc's costume was great. Their son, Cooper, was a hotdog, so he was dressed as a hot dot vendor. His shirt says, "This is ketchup not blood."

After the party, we went home and packed, and cleaned, and packed, and cleaned . . . After several hours our apartment was empty and we were finally ready to go to bed. Patrick fell asleep at like 9:30, which was really nice so could finish cleaning, and we took a picture of him asleep on his changing pad, alone in an empty apartment.

Colorado

Our friends were nice enough to let us sleep on their floor Friday night so we could just get up and go Saturday morning. We got about 4 hours of sleep, and we got up and left Rexburg around 5:45. We made really good time traveling. Patrick was a perfect baby. He sleep the whole time, and just woke up when we stopped to feed him. He only started fussing the last 15 minutes of the trip. Our car worked perfectly, we got good gas mileage, and gas prices were low. In other words, we couldn't have asked for a better drive. The sun was setting over the Rockies as we drove in to Colorado, and the beautiful sunset was a fabulous way to welcome us to Colorado.

Reed's family was terribly exicted to see us and kept calling us every 15 minutes to see where we were. We have a bedroom and bathroom in the basement, and Patrick sleeps in the family room down the hall. We picked furniture on Thursday, and nothing was in pieces. The worst was the crib. We spent so many hours painting it, and then we didn't think to wrap it up for the trip. That was not our smartest move. But, oh well. We worked on the puzzle that is crib for several hours until Reed miraculously found the instructions. So, 6 months after picking up the crib, it is finally painted and assembles. Here are the promised pictures. The crib has two mobiles on it because the one on the right is from his pack and play, but it doesn't break down so it can be packed with the crib, so we just put it on this crib. He loves the mobile. He stares at it all the time. We have washclothes under one leg because on the the wheel broke off in transit. Reed is going to see if he can fix it.

This final picture is just a cute picture we took yesterday. My mother-in-law is making hats and muffs for her granddaughters, and she put one on Patrick. Needless to say, this is one cute kid.

So we are all settled in. Reed is looking for a job, and I take care of Patrick and help Ruth with her many projects. She has me cutting out fabric, sewing, and running all sorts of errands with her. But we are happy. We don't feel like we live in Colorado yet, but that probably won't sink in until we move in to our own place. We miss our friends and family terribly, but Colorado is nice and we know we will like it here.