Fun Times

Stuff that happened this week:

Trevor's parents and sister Taja came to town on Saturday for a surprise party for his mom's sister, Ruth.

We all went to our place after the party and watched a few hours of 24 (yup, still hooked) before going to bed.

Trev's parents left in the morning and Taja stayed because she just can't get enough of us. We all went on a walk on Sunday afternoon and Cassie made a new best friend.

Trevor had his last college class on Monday! (Can I get a *woot woot?*)

Cassie discovered a new favorite activity:


For Family Home Evening on Monday, we played the "couch-camera game." (Shout out to my freshman roomies!) This game is ridiculously fun and you must play it sometime. Let me 'splain. We each had an object to hide in a certain room of the apartment. For instance, I had an apple to hide in the kitchen and Trevor had a magnet to hide in the bathroom. Once we had hidden our objects, we met in the family room where we had the camera set up facing the couch. We set the camera to timer mode then hurried to find the object that someone else had hidden (I was looking for the magnet Trevor hid in the bathroom). Our goal was to find the object and get back onto the couch before the camera went off. Here's a sampling of pictures:

P.S. We keep Cassie's toys under the couch. On purpose. We are not slobs.

After eating giant hamburgers for lunch and pizza for dinner on Monday, Emily woke up feeling pretty yucky on Tuesday. Thank heavens Taja was here! She took care of Cassie all day.

Trevor's parents drove back into town on Tuesday evening for the championship game of Trevor's intramural basketball tournament, which, by the way, they won. That's right. Out of 164 teams. As Cassie would say, "Oh yeah, baby."

Finished season 2 of 24.

Emily got in touch with her crafty/artistic side and made invitations to a baby shower for her sister-in-law.

Emily's brother came home from an internship in Peru. A nicely timed internship, I might add: he is nicely browned from the southern-hemisphere summer, and is looking forward to the upcoming northern-hemisphere summer.

Trevor and Emily went on a date! They ate at Carrabba's, which they highly recommend. Especially the Rigatoni Martino. Mmmm.

Best Friends

Cassie has a best friend. She enjoys playing with pretty much anyone, but there's something special about this friendship. They get easily excited when they see each other and usually squeal, giggle, and scream each others' name. (Which can be kind of a problem in church. Someone in our ward is nodding and laughing right now.) They play really well together and request play-dates with each other. I'm really surprised that friendship can blossom at such a young age. They sincerely have a connection with each other. FYI, this is what best friendship looks like when you're 2:

Kids say the darndest things...

These stories seem a lot less funny now that I've written them out...maybe I need to work on my comedic writing style. Oh well. Mostly I just want you to know that we laugh at the things Cassie says on a daily basis. She's hilarious.

Cassie is in the habit of asking me to "kiss it better" when she gets hurt. The other day she accidentally sat down hard on the edge of her toy bin and started crying. She immediately cried, "Mommy kiss my bottom!" I wasn't too amused, but Trevor laughed really hard.

Cassie had a friend over a few days ago, and they got a little overexcited playing with Cassie's bedroom door. Her friend, Lily, accidentally hit Cassie's head while closing the door. As Cassie was calming down, she looked at me with a thoughtful face and said, "I neen a hit Wily now," as though getting even was certainly the most logical action. I quickly convinced her otherwise.

About once a month we volunteer at the Missionary Training Center. All the volunteers meet together before meeting with the missionaries. A few months ago, while we were meeting with the other volunteers, Cassie pointed to a teenage boy and yelled, "a baby!" Poor kid. I think she was confused about the meaning of that word for a while. About 2 minutes later during a quiet moment, she stuck her finger in her nose and announced, "a boogah!" I had unwittingly taught her that word a few days earlier, and I knew it would come back to haunt me...

Cassie also currently calls pine cones "ice keem cones" and rubber bands "ban-aids."

Past Present Future

All right, so I'm a lazy blogger. No guarantees about the frequency of future posts. But for now, here's what we've done, what we're doing, and what we're going to do soon:

Past

• We were sick for the entire month of February. Yuck. So glad it's over.
• Just got new carpet! Even though it's basically the same flat stuff, it's cleeeeeeean!
• Emily sang with Deseret Chamber Singers (check out the videos if you want to know what we sound like) in their first recording session. We're recording a CD of the music of David Zabriskie of Savior of the World fame. So cool. (Three links in one bullet! Yowza.)
  

Present

• Trev is playing a lot of basketball- intramurals and a Stake tourney
• Reading some good books: Three Cups of Tea by Mortenson and Relin, and Fire by Kristin Cashore.
• Enjoying sunny weather/wondering where winter went. We haven't any any snow stick since January! Weird. I never thought I'd say that I miss the snow.
• Watching season 1 of 24. I can't imagine waiting a week between episodes.

Future

• Graduation! Sometime this summer when Trev finishes his thesis.
• Moving! Hopefully to a place with a bathroom counter, a dishwasher, and walls made of sheetrock.
• A job! (fingers crossed)

Our incredible (well, sort of) January

A few things about our January:

Everyone in our family is healthy right now! (Knock on wood.) I don't mind the cold weather so much, but I really hate all the sickness that floats around in the winter months. We feel like we've had our fair share this winter. On to happier and more incredible things:

My husband is a superhero and snapped his toothbrush in half while brushing his teeth. You have to be careful with that superhuman strength, you know? You forget how powerful you are and pretty soon toothbrushes are crumbling in your hands.

(This moment was not recreated- actual photo immediately following the incident)

Cassie loves (loves!) having friends over to play. We've had a lot of playdates in the last few weeks- I think everyone is getting antsy stuck all alone in their own homes. I hear more squealing and giggling in an hour of playing with friends than a week of being with mom and dad. Not only that, but I get a lot more done around the house when she has friends over. That's right, I like babysitting other people's children and would like it if you sent your kids to my place. Just give me a call first, okay?

We went to the BYU-Utah basketball game last night (Gooooooooo Cougars! We won.) with two of Trevor's brothers and their families. Here's the gang ready to go.
Aunt Maggie keeping the kiddos happy
Celebrating Rialey's birthday in style
And that's about it for January.

Catch up

Oh, boy. It's been too long since I posted any news on this blog, and now it's a huge, intimidating project. You remember how it felt when you put off that end-of-semester research paper, and the closer the deadline came, the less you wanted to write it because you knew it would be a ton of work, but the longer you waited the more work it would be? Yeah, it's time for me to bite the bullet and catch up. Prepare yourself for the condensed version of the last three months.

October: Cassie had fun playing in the fall leaves, dressed up as a fairy princess/butterfly for Halloween (just like every other 2-5 year old girl out there), and went trick-or-treating for the first time.
November: Cassie made cheesy faces for the camera and I forgot to take the camera to Oakley for Thanksgiving. Fortunately, Trev's mom took plenty of pictures and will make us a CD (or already has? better look)

December: Christmas! Cassie loved all the Christmas decorations and got excited every time she saw Santa. We put up our first Christmas tree! It felt so Christmas-y leaving on only the white lights on the tree and drinking hot chocolate at night. Cassie loved looking at her reflection in the shiny ornaments, and was pretty good about leaving them on the tree.
Trevor's brother Rialey got married! It was a great day, and so fun to be with the whole family. Cassie loved playing with her cousins and dancing with with Kim's (Rialey's wife) niece.


Trevor and our niece Eliza fell asleep cuddling on the couch. Cute!

We celebrated an early Christmas with Trev's family and Christmas day with mine. Lots of fun for everyone.









We visited with a few friends while they were in town- the Robinsons and the Crocketts. Cassie has very cute potential future boyfriends. :)










We hosted my brother Robert a few times while he finished up business before leaving for an internship in Lima, Peru. Cassie loved playing with uncle "ahpaht."

January: Cassie loves watching videos of Elmo online and was pretty thrilled about her new hat and mittens.

Books 2009

When I went on a TV fast in June of last year, I started reading more. I read a lot of good books from June to December, and most of what I read came from recommendations from friends' blogs, so I thought I would pass on my own recommendations. I didn't hate any of the books I read, so I included them all here with some short reviews. Please excuse any crazy formatting- sometimes I just can't get Blogger to work with me. Happy reading!


Joel Ben Izzy, The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness: Biography, lots of fun stories, but not super memorable.

Hester Brown, The Little Lady Agency: I know a lot of people love these books, but I wasn't crazy about it. I just didn't identify with the main character.

Kristin Cashore, Graceling: I really liked this one. Medieval fantasy-type book. Compelling and creative, and likeable/admirable characters.

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games; Catching Fire: This series is awesome. Amazing plot, hard to put down. A little violent, but not hard to read- might be hard to watch if it was a movie.

Paulo Cohelo, The Alchemist: Interesting parable, lots of symbolism. Lots to think about, one I will re-read.

Sarah Dessen, Keeping the Moon; Dreamland; Lock and Key; The Truth About Forever; That Summer; Just Listen; Along for the Ride; Someone Like You: I really like Sarah Dessen's writing because the main character always learns something about herself and/or grows in some way, and she always involves family and not just friends, like most YA novelists. Not entirely clean- all of her books have a little language, and Just Listen and Dreamland deal with some rough issues, but they all have good morals. My favorites were The Truth About Forever and Lock and Key.

Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters; North and South: Great Jane Austen/Bronte Sisters-style writer. Be warned: she died while writing Wives and Daughters so it is unfinished. I liked North and South best, but maybe it's because I was mad about the lack of ending to Wives and Daughters (it would have been nice to know ahead of time). Hefty books, a little long, but great stories.

Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: Non-fiction, lots of interesting statistics about successful people.

Anna Godbersen, The Luxe; Envy; Rumors; Splendor: These four make up a series. Hard to put down, but actually rather depressing sometimes. None of the characters are very good, so harder to sympathize with, but very compelling story. Technically the books are clean since the author never describes in detail when the characters do something unsavory (which is rather often).

Shannon Hale, Austenland; Book of a Thousand Days: I love Shannon Hale. These are two of my favorites.

Eva Ibbotson, A Countess Below Stairs; A Company of Swans; A Song for Summer: Great writing. I truly love her style: in addition to creative plots, the way she writes is so tangible and witty. I especially loved A Countess Below Stairs.


Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon: A classic. Very thought-provoking. For mature readers- some adult moments.

Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic: Cute story, frustrating main character. Not totally clean.

Gail Carson Levine, Fairest: Very creative take on Snow White.

Stephenie Meyer, The Host: Way better than Twilight. Better writing, I think, and super-interesting plot.

Janette Rallison, All’s Fair in Love, War, and High School; Revenge of the Cheerleaders; My Fair Godmother; Dakota’s Revenge; Fame, Glory, and Other Things on my To-Do List; How to Take the Ex out of Ex-boyfriend; It’s a Mall World After All: Cute and totally clean YA novels. Not thought-provoking, but fun reads. My Fair Godmother was my favorite: Rallison takes a break from teen high-school drama and mixes in some fairy-tales.

Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Great historical fiction, well written, one of my favorite books overall.

Sherri L. Smith, Lucy the Giant; Sparrow: Pretty good coming-of-age novels. Lucy the Giant had a much more interesting plot.

Sherwood Smith, Crown Duel/Court Duel: These are published separately and together. So good. The first book is more action-packed and the second has more intrigue and social tension. I loved the story.

Cynthia Voigt, Izzy, Willy Nilly: Interesting to think about although not an attention-grabber.

Sara Zarr, Sweethearts; Story of a Girl: Pretty good YA novels that go deeper than silly romances. Both books deal with some rough material.