Video Snippets for the Grandparents

Creed has The Croup AGAIN! so the blizzard outside isn't the only thing keeping us penned in. The good news in that he seems to be taking it pretty well (our doctor said, "Only Creed would be smiling and laughing while he has the croup!") so we took the opportunity to catch some video of Creed's life these days.

First, he would rather walk than crawl everywhere, which has been pretty exciting.

And Second, he loves to be read to. He spends a good portion of the day crawling over to us with his favorite books so here's a sideways clip of me reading to him (Larry didn't know that you can't hold our little point and shoot camera sideways when you are recording).

Baby Shower Name Game

For those of you who need an answer key.Listed from left to right, top to bottom:

• Alexander from Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
• Big Anthony and Strega Nona from the Strega Nona series by Tomie dePaola
• Doctor De Soto by William Steig
• Max From Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• Angelina Ballerina from the series by Katherine Holabird
• Imogene from Imogene's Antlers by David Small
• Ella from the Ella the Elegant Elephant Series by Carmela Di'Amico
• Lyle from the Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile series by Bernard Waber
• Toot and Puddle from the series by Holly Hobbie
• Babar from the series by Jean Brunhoff
• Madeline from the series by Ludwig Bemelmans
• David from the series by David Shannon
• Leonardo from Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems
• George and Martha from the series by James Marshall
• Lilly from Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
• Rolie Polie Olie from the series by William Joyce
• Frances, Albert, and Gloria from the series by Russell Hoban
• Jeremy Jacob and Captain Braid Beard from How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long
• Olivia from the series by Ian Falconer
• Fancy Nancy from the series by Jane O'Connor
• Ramona Quimby from the series by Beverly Cleary
• Trixie and Knuffle Bunny from Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems
  

And the Grand Prize winners and Elisa and her Daughter Miriam. I'm going to have to come up with an awesome prize for them because they got 21 right. The winner at the baby shower got 11.

Thanks to everyone who played along!

I don't need a crystal ball to tell me we have a problem with clutter around here

Everywhere I look these days, I find advice for de-cluttering and cleaning out. Martha has an article about it in this month's magazine. My mom even has a post about it. At this point we can use all the advice that we can get because we're busy preparing to sell our home.

Now I own a whole lot of stuff, but I think it's been eye-opening for Larry to see that he has boxes and boxes and boxes just full of papers. He's spending many hours in the basement reading and sorting, which is how he uncovered this little jem. You really must click on it to enlarge it and read it yourself. Larry says he actually doesn't remember who Nadia is, but I think maybe she wasn't joking about the crystal ball because boy was she right about Larry one day having a wife who would nag him to clean up his stuff which would cause him to find those old letters.

Larry and I could not stop giggling when we read it.

I Am Packing My Suitcase & Going To The Moon!

I finally finished a new project!

Creed has been able to reach his mobile for a while and he's started tearing the animals off of it so it had to go. I decided to make a new one that we could hang from the ceiling, far out of his reach (I actually moved it higher after I took these pictures).

It took me a long time to get it to balance, but I'm so happy with how it turned out! Creed loves to watch it twirl.

I'm thinking about coming up with some new mobiles for my Etsy shop, but I'm not sure if they would sell because they would have to be priced kind of high to be worth it. For now I'm just having fun sketching out my ideas.

Columbus Corners - Tasi Cafe

Larry and I went out for Valentine's Day the next Saturday because we didn't want to ask anyone to babysit on Valentine's Day. The plan was to head to the new Cameron Mitchell restaurant in the Short North, Marcella's, and then head to a dollar movie (classy, I know, but Larry was taking me to see Enchanted so he scored big points with me). Marcella's ended up having quite a wait and we didn't want to leave Creed for long so we decided to walk over to Tasi Cafe because I've been dying to go there since it opened.

Tasi Cafe is a new restaurant opened by the owner of Rigsby's in the alley behind Risgby's (680 North Pearl Street - the old Pistachio location). It's named after his wife and it serves breakfast all day, but also has great lunch and dinner menu options. They do as much take-out business as they do dine-in.

It's small, you order at the counter and there are only a few tables, but lucky for us there was no wait. Since we weren't waiting for a waiter, this ended up being a quick dinner for us, but there was no compromise on the food. Most dishes are between $6 and $10 and almost everything is made from scratch. Larry opted for the lobster mac-and-cheese

And I went with the roast chicken.

And we split a fruit salad.

We both left very happy. We can't wait to go back to try their breakfast some time.

A Little Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

We had a baby shower for my friend Ellen at my house this weekend, and thanks to Kristin and Kristina (the two on the right side of this picture) it went really well and I didn't have to do much.

Basically, I made limebars. Then I made these tissue paper pom-poms (with directions from Martha, of course) (Thanks for the idea Faith and Cassie). Kristin came up with the cute decorations hanging behind us in the picture of the group of us and she made matching party favors for everyone.I'm sure you can guess the sex of the baby from these pictures!

Then I was in charge of one game. If you know me, you know I hate baby showers games so I tried to come up with something that wouldn't be awkward or embarrassing to anyone, and this is what I came up with: The Name Game. Every parent-to-be has baby names on the brain and soon they'll be introducing their baby to all sorts of fictional friends so this was a chance to review some old and new. I tried to come up with a good mix so no one would be completely at a loss, but a few of them are hard so everyone would get them all right either. It looks pretty shabby because I can't open Photoshop at the moment or my computer will crash, but you get the idea.

And just for fun. How many of these characters can you name? I will send a prize to my friend or family member who can email me with the most character names, but you cannot get help, consult your own library or search online. Be honest because this is just for fun! I think if you click on the picture it will get larger. Good luck!

I told you that Creed is growing up fast!

An Affair to Remember

So the previews for a new movie are making me relive a traumatizing event from my childhood that I have to share with you to get it off my chest. Every fourth grader at Rock Canyon Elementary school looks forward to one big-time event: the Fourth Grade Wax Museum! Every student writes a biography on a historical figure and then they get to dress up like the people they studied and stand for thirty minutes in their wax-figure-impersonation glory while the rest of the school tours the museum and "learn" about the people (ie, do their best to make the "wax figures" laugh or wiggle).

I was so excited when the whole grade gathered with their teachers to sign-up for their historical figures. My mom had convinced me to sign-up for Pocahontas (I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that my sister was an Indian for Halloween and the costume was just waiting to be used again). There would be no duplicates in this wax museum, oh no, as I stated, this was big-time stuff, but I wasn't worried because we got to sign-up in alphabetical order so with the last name Borup, I thought I was safe. That is until my friend Bonnie Beuss got her turn and sign-up up for Pocahontas. I tried not to panic and stated my second choice, Annie Oakley, but I'd been so caught up that I hadn't heard that Anne Barrett already picked Annie Oakley. The teacher in charge told me I would get another turn to pick after everyone else went. But then all the good historical women were spoken for. Joan of Arc, taken; Amelia Earhart, taken; Kristi Yamaguchi, taken . . . I couldn't come up with a single idea. I wasn't the only one left in that predicament so several of us went home with notes that we had one night to come up with some new ideas for the wax museum.

I went home in despair. Who could I possibly choose? At the dinner table that night my parents threw a few names back and forth, and I'd never heard of any of them. I told them I had to have at least two names and they better write them down since I didn't know who they were (I'd asked them for details, but they told me, "That's what research is all about. You'll learn all about them.")

Then next day, I showed up at school with two names written on a slip of paper in my mom's handwriting: Madame Curie and Anne Boleyn. My teacher gave me a quizzical look and asked me which one a wanted to me. Still disgruntled that I wasn't going to be Pocahontas, I told her I didn't know anything about either of them. She said, "One was a queen and one was a scientist. Which one do you want to be?"

My fateful reply? "The Queen I guess."

"OK, that's Anne Boleyn."

I didn't give it much more thought until we headed to the library the next day to begin our research. There wasn't a single book in the whole school library on Anne Boleyn. The only info on her was a section of the B World Book Encyclopedia. I knew I could never come up with a five-page paper from those little paragraphs, but I skimmed through it anyway to see what she was famous for.

Then I knew.

Anne Boleyn was one of Henry VIII's many wives who was famous because he said she cheated on him and then her head got chopped off. I was signed-up of to dress up like someone who was famous for getting their HEAD CHOPPED OFF!!!!!!

I rushed to my teacher and told her that I needed to switch. I did NOT want to be Anne Boleyn. Sadly, someone else had already signed-up as Madame Curie and she said it was too late to change anyway. She was sure that I could figure something out.

Looking back, I'm sure my parents thought that was a pretty funny thing to do to me, but they paid for it in the end too (Note-to-self, if I ever have a daughter, do not send my innocent nine-year-old to sign-up to pose as Anne Boleyn!). My dad ended up getting stuck looking for more information on Anne Boleyn at the BYU library and helping me dredge through my five-page report (He also come up with the idea to add some color copies of portraits of Anne Boleyn to take up more space in my report). My mom ended up scouring the city for an Anne Boleyn like costume that would fit a nine-year-old and finally found one that she could rent.

And the final product speaks for itself.

It's taken me years, but I can finally say that I find this picture very funny.

I forgive you mom and dad!

Creed at Eleven Months

WARNING: This post is jam-packed with photos of what may very well be the cutest baby in the whole world! See: Oh wait, let's try that again without the binky!

Creed has worked very hard for those two teeth so we had to take the opportunity to show them off!

Oh, where to start this month? Creed is amazing. He's growing leaps and bounds, and I can't believe our little man will soon be one! I have yet to come up with any fantastic party ideas so I'd love to hear any you might have! I've even got Creed thinking hard about it.

He would not hold still, but I had to include a few of these pictures to show off his chubbiness.

He has fallen in love with lights this month and points them out everywhere we go. Here he is checking out the overhead light.

and that's only the beginning of his curiosity.

He's only still when he's strapped down.

He so curious about everything around him and loves to get into everything. I don't usually have the heart to stop his explorations, which lead to scenes like this . . .

And this . . .

And this . . .

Ugh, and this (which of course he's had many a talking to about) And did I mention that he can do this?

Yikes! Seriously! He's not even one!

Larry introduced him to his favorite show, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The Hot dog song at the end seems to be especially captivating.

And he's eating with a fork (although, if you don't stab the food for him, he will use his other hand to put food on the fork, which sort of defeats the purpose).

My favorite new development is that Creed LOVES to be read to. He'd rather sit on your lap reading books than play with his toys or watch TV. He's already becoming so independent; he has to turn the pages himself, he has to crawl up the stairs himself, he's starting to walk around without any encouragement from us, but he still loves to cuddle and won't venture from my lap during baby storytimes. He hates being tossed in the air or swinging around, but he's an adventurous eater that will sample just about anything we hand him.

Oh, how we LOVE this little guy!

Snow, Snow, Snow!

My mom called me this weekend to see if we were ok since I haven't been blogging, which made me laugh. I guess I normally do post a lot. We were experiencing some computer problems, but thanks to our friend David, we are now back up and running. Add to that the fact that we are working to get our house ready to sell and we met with a realtor and you might understand why my mind hasn't been on blogging lately. Not to worry, we've still been taking plenty of pictures so we still have many to share.

Let us begin with the crazy weather around here. We were so excited when it started to snow that I ran out with Creed to check out the huge flakes. He LOVED it!

The snow has been coming ever since so it's a good thing Larry bought me these for Valentine's Day (I know, we are oh so romantic around here, but I really do love them!)

I've been making good use of them

And did I mention the freezing rain? I had never experienced anything like this out west so I took a picture for all of you but it was late in the day so most of it had melted. You still get the idea though.

It formed a thick layer across the snow so you could easy lift of big sheets of it. It's things like this that make me so happy we have a garage!

Mostly we have just spent our time cuddling in our cosy house and who can blame us?