Last Friday Luci and I did make-overs. I fixed her hair kind of funky and she wanted me to fix my hair just like hers. It looked cute on her, but I just looked liked a polygamist. I had to cake the make-up on real heavy in order to make up for the drab hair-do. Luci of course had to have her make-up done too.

I meant to put these pictures up almost two weeks ago when we got our tree, so they are slightly outdated. We had fun picking out our tree this year because Luci was so excited about it. She had a blast decorating it too. This is the first Christmas that Luci seems to understand what is going on and she is loving it. I admit that I am loving it too. It is so fun to see her so happy and excited.

A few days after we decorated the tree I fell asleep on the floor watching TV with Luci. Not too long after I woke up to Luci trying to pierce my ear with the wire hook of one of the ornaments. That naughty girl!

Luci is going through a phase where she says exactly what is on her mind. Here are a few recent examples:

Last Thursday Luci had an accident and was complaining that her pee pee hurt. Just as we were finished changing her clothes, the missionaries arrived for dinner. Luci immediately went up to the one of the missionaries and informed her that she had a sore pee pee. The missionary just looked at her confused, and Luci continued to repeat herself even louder. Luckily Kirk was close by and ended the conversation by saying "but it's getting better."

On Saturday I was at Walmart with Luci, when an African American man walked by. Luci pointed right at him and loudly stated "That boy has black skin." Luckily he didn't seem upset about it but just awkwardly laughed as he walked off.

On Sunday Kirk was putting a tie on for church and Luci asked, "Is that the tie we gave you?". Kirk, thinking she was talking about the one we gave him for Father's day, said "No, but I'll go get that one." As he was walking back to our room Luci shouted, "No, it's under the tree." She then proceeded to get his wrapped tie and give it to him. So, Kirk got a Christmas present early.

I have found that Luci is not very shy, which is quite a contrast to me. She will talk to adults and tell them exactly what she wants or what is on her mind. About a month or two ago we went out to dinner as a family. The waitress asked Kirk and I what we would like to drink and we both replied that we'll just have a water. Immediately after Luci looked straight at the waitress and said, "and I'll just have a milk".

Luci is very smart and good with her letters. She has known how to spell her name for quite a while and is starting to write the letters. Because we spell her name with an i, it is often misspelled by others. In nursery on Sunday her teacher wrote her name on her picture spelling it with a y. Luci quickly informed her that she spells it with an i and the teacher made the change.

I love being a mom and watching Luci grow and learn new things everyday. Motherhood brings many joys and is well worth the hardships of it (she is asleep right now). I am so excited to have another baby! Our failed attempts to add to our family in the past have caused me to really appreciate the gift of procreation. I feel so blessed to have Luci and to have made it this far into my pregnancy. I look forward to meeting the next member of our family.

Thanksgiving and DC

We had a really nice Thanksgiving Break. Kirk had the week off, so we thought it would be a great time to head down to the Temple (The DC temple is our Temple). We left Monday morning and arrived in the afternoon. Luci did surprisingly well on the drive. She slept most of the way, but was up until midnight as a result. When we got there we headed down to the metro and road that to the Mall. There is so much to see in DC and a ton of museums that are all free. We decided to go to the Museum of Natural History. For those of you who have seen the second Night at the Museum, that's the one. Luci had a lot of fun running around and seeing the different displays they have. The place is huge, they everything from butterflies to rare gems and ocean life. After we got out it was raining and dark and rush hour. Riding the metro back was not as pleasant as riding it there. We were soaking wet and had to stand the whole way. The metro isn't as patient as Trax is. I went to get on and the doors slammed shut right on me. For those of you planning to ride it sometime in the future, just know that they don't reopen after they slam shut on you. So I had to push them open enough to squeeze my way back out. Uhg!
The next day we headed off to the Temple. The DC temple is big and beautiful. It reminds me a lot of the San Diego Temple because it just pops out in front of you as you are driving down the free way. We spent most of the day at the Temple. Kirk and I each took turns watching Luci while the other one went in. By the time we were both done, it took about five and a half hours. Luckily they have a really nice visitors center and Luci was really good. Our drive home was crazy. We had my Dad's GPS, and decided to have it lead us on the shortest distance home. It ended up taking us off the freeway and onto windy death roads. To add to the danger it was dark, raining, and extremely foggy. It took us five hours, but we finally made it home safely.

Thanksgiving day was also very nice. A family from our ward invited us over to their house for dinner. They also had another family from our ward come who brought 2 friends, and the missionaries who brought two investigators. It turned out to be a good sized crowd. Luci only at a roll and then ran off to play. Not surprisingly, when the deserts were brought out, she sampled a slice of every pie!

There are so many nice people out here that have welcomed us into their homes and treated us like family. It has made living far away from family easier. (Don't worry family, we still love and miss you guys a ton!)


This is about the only picture we took on Thanksgiving. Well, Kirk did take one of me wearing a chef hat and cooking, but I didn't want to put that one on here :). These are all of the kids watching a movie after the dinner.

The DC Temple

At the museum we watched a short video on evolution (mainly because I needed to sit down really bad and that was the only spot). Luci had fun sitting by one of her "prehistoric ancestors".

On the Metro. Luci loved it!

Here is the most updated picture of my pregnancy, 23 weeks. Luci loves pretending that she has a baby in her belly and wanted hers in the picture too.

Saturday we spent the day in Pittsburgh. Our main intention in going there was to get new tires for Kirk's bike at the REI (his were stolen about 2 months ago). Since we had made the three hour trip, we wanted to make it worth the drive. So, after getting the tires we had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and then headed off to find the Children's Museum. Luckily we still have my Dad's GPS and it wasn't hard finding the general location. The hard part was finding parking and then figuring out how to get there from where we parked. We eventually had to ask someone how to get there.
The Children's Museum was a fun place with lots of little areas for Luci to play in. The ridiculous part was that they charged Kirk, Luci and I full price ($11 a person). To add to the excitement Luci pooped and we didn't have any spare diapers with us. Because the museum was going to close in a half hour we didn't want to waste any of our precious time and continued dragging her around, fumes and all. All in all in was fun, we just wished we had more than an hour to explore. It might have actually been worth the price.

A Giant Lite Bright!
Kirk was enjoying it more than Luci.

Mr. Roger's Neighborhood

Luci had no idea what everything was and didn't like this area as much.

Making Paper

Sand Art
Luci could do this for hours.

Every Halloween I try to make a fun Halloween themed dinner. It isn't usually much, you just need to use your imagination. This year we had monster fingers that could be dipped in blood (breadsticks with slivered almond fingernails and pizza sauce) headless hens (just that . . . obviously they have no head), mashed mummy brains (mashed potatoes) and the scariest of all (at least for Luci) a really healthy salad topped with heart halves (sliced tomatoes). It turned out fun, but I think it will probably be funner as our family grows and gets more excited about it. Luci actually thought I was serious about what I was serving and was a little scared to eat it. So I had to spoil the fun and tell her what they really were.




Luci had two Halloween costumes this year. On Thursday we went trick or treating at the mall and she was a garden fairy. I even made her a wand out of a wooden spoon, but she didn't want to carry it. On Saturday we were cleaning out her closet and found a Cinderella dress and she decided she wanted to be that for trick or treating. It's fun getting her all dressed up, but a lot of work.

It is, of course, tradition that we carve pumpkins for Halloween. I would probably feel like I missed out on the Halloween spirit if I didn't. However, I realized that I made a mistake by getting three pumpkins. I thought that it would be fun to let Luci have her own pumpkin. I guess I didn't take into consideration that I would be gutting and carving both hers and mine. I also made the mistake of using one of those paper stencils of a witch on Luci's pumpkin. It took me a half hour just to punch out the stencil and another ten minutes to trace it onto the pumpkin. Then, as I began to carve it, the marker started smearing everywhere. Apparently it was a washable marker . . . why would they include a washable marker in the kit if they knew that pumpkins are wet and gooey? (not to mention your hand rubs all over the pumpkin while you are carving) So, needless to say, I was free handing after the first minute. By the time I finished Luci's I did not feel like carving mine at all. But, since I had already spent five dollars on it, I figured I better not waste it. Hopefully I created a nice childhood memory for Luci, otherwise I am not sure it was worth it. Next year, I am not getting a pumpkin for me :)

So this picture might have just made it all worth it. I told Luci to make a witch face and this is what she did.



These are our finished pumpkins. It's not the greatest picture, so it's hard to see all the fine lines and details I carved in Luci's. Leave it to Kirk to have the most perfect looking pumpkin.

Kirk's Haunted House



My Haunted House


Luci's Haunted House




For a festive family activity we made edible haunted houses. I decided that this is a lot less stressful than making gingerbread houses . . . . they can be jagged and ugly and still look like haunted houses. Plus, we used good frosting and yummy candy, making them truly edible. When we finished we took a picture then ate them all up.

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It snowed last week and Luci got so excited she put on her new hat and gloves right away. I guess all of the excitement wore her out because she fell asleep before we could make it outside. The next day we made it outside and she had a blast playing in the snow and helping me make a snowman. She was insistent that the snowman have a scarf, and I have to admit it was the finishing touch. After we came back inside I was opening up the blinds and looked out just in time to see a little boy still our stick arms and replacing them with twigs. I was frustrated at first, then realized it was kind of funny. At least he replaced the arms. Later that day I saw the snowman he had made around the corner and realized it was a good thing he stole our arms. If it's not too mean to say, it needed all of the help it could get.

Some of my family has been asking me to post pictures of what it looks like out here, and I am finally doing it! These pictures were taken at the park behind our house about two weeks ago. In the background you can some of the mountains (which seem more like hills to me after living in Utah). The trees here are so tall that most of the time you can't see the mountains. It's beautiful and green and mostly cloudy! I have found that you have to give up the constant blue skies in order to have the green grass and trees. It's a toss up, but I do have to say that I get a little gloomy when its cloudy and rainy for a whole week.

We found out last week that we are most likely having a girl (75% chance that it is). I was kind of disappointed that they couldn't tell me in 100% terminology. The technician did say that she has only been wrong once in ten years though. So I am going with it and saying that it is a girl.

She was in a really weird position during the ultrasound with her body completely folded in half and her feet above her head. In the bottom picture you can see that better.

Saturday during the Priesthood session of conference me and Luci had a party. She informed me that she wanted to make cookies for our party, so that's what we did. What a mess, but we had fun!

So I was eating animal crackers with Luci the other day when I pulled out this cracker! I never knew that animal crackers could be R-rated. In the future I will have to 'edit' her crackers before I give them to her :) .

Last week we went on a tour of an apple farm with other kids Luci's age. We rode on a wagon pulled by a tractor to see the apple trees. Then we came back to the factory and went inside the giant frigde where they store apples. It smelled so good, like a bath and body works scent. We then got to see how they wash and sort apples. At the end of the tour Luci filled a bag up with apples to keep and got her own little bottle of cider. It was a lot of fun!

I had Kirk take a picture of my belly so you all can see how big it has gotten. I would have taken a profile shot because you can really see how much it has grown, but you can also see how much my butt has grown too, so I opted not to.

I bought Kirk a lego model set of the building Falling Waters for his birthday. Luci was so excited that her daddy got legos and played right by his side until he was done. You can see her making her own replica of what her dad is doing.

I bought Luci a pair of fashionable cowboy boots at kid to kid, and I wish they were my size. She doesn't like to wear them a whole ton, but I love it when she does!

So I took a picture of my ultrasound picture and it didn't turn out well. So you can try to look through the blurriness of my camera picture in addition to the usual blurriness of the ultrasound picture and try to see the baby. This ultrasound was done when I was 14 weeks along.
I will have another ultrasound on the 8th, to find out what I am having!

So I showed Kirk this blog the other day and the first thing he said was "that's way too girly!" I didn't think he would care what it looked like because I highly doubt he will ever add anything to it. But, since it is a family blog, I am going to change the background to a less girly one (as soon as I figure out how). However, since he is outnumbered, and in order to correctly represent our family it will still be mostly girlish.

Our dumpster at this apartment complex is forever away. As a result, our garbages pile up until I finally load them in the stroller or car and take them over. Well, today our house reeked liked pee, thanks to the nightmare of potty training, and I threw all of our garbages out on our deck.
Soon after, Luci brought me a freshly peed diaper that she had taken off. I told her to go stick it out on the deck with the garbages so I didn't have to touch or smell it. Next thing I know she is throwing it off the deck and it lands our neighbors patio below (It wasn't wrapped up in a ball but still wide open). Our neighbors are frequently out on their porch smoking but thankfully weren't out there at the time, otherwise they would have had an open diaper land right on their head. I tried to get mad at Luci for throwing it over the edge, but it was so funny I just laughed instead.

I decided today to try and figure out this blog stuff. I feel like I'm 85 with how little I know about how to blog.

This is my blog that I never update. Hopefully I will get better at that now that I am done with my internship.