Don't Judge Me

Don't be too hard on me about my new Breaking Dawn countdown widget. First of all, it totally matches my blog. And Secondly, no matter how much I try to pretend to be nonchalant about it, I just have to admit that I am more excited for Breaking Dawn to come out in August than I am about anything else right now.

Happy To Have A Girly Girl

I really wanted a girl for my first baby, and when I got pregnant with Rebecca, I immediately knew she was going to be a girl. I was so excited about all of the girly things I would get to do with her, like dress-ups and dance classes and cute hair styles with bows (she's yet to have enough hair to do this one, but I'm still waiting patiently). So far she has not disappointed me in wanting to do all of these girly things and more.

It all started before she even turned two. We came home from church one day, and I took off my shoes to go upstairs and change my clothes. I must've taken off her dress to put away so that it wouldn't get dirty. I came downstairs to find her like this.


This became a regular occurrence whenever I left my church shoes downstairs, so I eventually went out and bought her her own high heels.

After the shoes, she started wanting to dress herself up, even though we didn't have any play dresses for her to put on. She improvised by going through my swim suit and "unmentionables" drawer and putting those things on instead. (I don't know why she's naked in most of the pictures on this post. I swear I dress my child.)

(That was my first time using the video function on my camera, in case you couldn't already tell.)

I eventually went and got her a box of dress-ups this past Christmas, and she has to put on something from that box almost every day. And she only wants to wear dresses when she goes to church. She has one church skirt, but whenever I try to put it on her she screams, "I WANT A BEAUTIFUL DRESS!"

Lately she's gotten more into make up. Just the other day, I found her like this.

That's my mascara that I left sitting on the counter downstairs. Today I caught her trying to curl her eyelashes.

I love my girly girl. She's turned out to be everything I expected and more.

An Amendment to Girlfriends

So I've been thinking a lot about this, and I have to say that not all of the girl groups I was a part of growing up were bad.

When I was in Young Women in the Mountain View Ward, I became part of a big group of girls who went to church, girl's camp, mutual, and youth conference together. We also made a pretty mean team when we would compete against the rest of the stake in Young Women's volleyball and softball. We always had a good time when we got together, and I don't remember ever having a fight with any of these girls. Even when I started to become a bit of a wild thing, they still treated me like a sister and welcomed me with open arms when I made my rare appearances at church activities. I have great memories of ALL the times I spent with these girls, and they were and continue to be some of the greatest women I've ever known. I feel privileged to have been in their company during my teenage years.

I'm sorry to post without pictures, but I can't find some great pictures I know I have from girl's camp. I looked everywhere. I want all of you Mountain View Young Women Alumni to know how much I appreciate your examples to me, and I'm so grateful to have reconnected with many of you through this wonderful world of blogging.

Resourcefulness

What do you do when you're at your mother-in-law's house helping your brother-in-law, and your wife leaves with her mom and sisters to go to dinner for her sister's birthday with the diapers still in your wife's purse, and the baby poops in his diaper?

You clean up the baby and wrap his bottom in paper towels. With some help from Buck, you take a plastic bag and make two holes for the baby's legs and put it over the paper towels. Secure the bag in place with some duct tape.

I wish I got a picture of the baby in this, but he was back in a real diaper and asleep when I got home. I'm sorry I left you guys without any diapers, but way to be resourceful!

Girlfriends

Throughout my life I haven't had much luck with being part of big groups of girls. It started in fifth grade when I hung out with about seven other girls in my class. I had a lot of fun with these friends until the end of the year when one of my friends decided she didn't like me anymore. Because this girl happened to be the the "ringleader" of the group, everyone else followed her, and I was left completely friendless. They even prank called me and tried to send pizzas to my house all summer long. It was the end of the year and it was fifth grade and most of them were not going to my sixth grade center, so I tried to be optimistic that I would make some new friends the next year, but it was really hard.

Then in eighth grade I became part of another big group of girlfriends. This time there were about eleven of us. I also had a lot of fun with these girls, until we all started to find out what each of us were saying behind eachothers backs. I contributed to the gossip not ever dreaming that any of what I said would get back to the people I was gossipping about. It hurt to find out what my friends said about me, but it hurt even worse to find out that my friends knew what I said about them. By the end of the year we were all split into groups of two or three, and I really felt like I had enemies for the first time. It was then that I tried to avoid groups of girls altogether.

Sometimes this was unavoidable. I was a cheerleader in high school. There's a big group of girls for you. Even when there were just five of us my freshman year, we were split two against three. When we numbered fifteen, it was drama every day and over everything. Then I worked at Hot Dog on a Stick during the summers when I was home from college. It's mostly girls that want to work at Hot Dog on a Stick, so I became part of another big group of girls. I have to admit that with the cheerleaders I did contribute to the drama, but when I worked at Hot Dog on a Stick I made a conscious effort to not be involved in it. And I still got sucked in. The second summer I was home, I found out that the mall I worked at the previous summer was fully staffed, so instead of going back to see if they could squeeze me in, I went to another store where I knew the manager and knew help was needed, and I asked to work there instead. One day I was working with my friend Laurie, and she says, "What happened with you and Brittany?" And I said, "Nothing, why?" And she said, "You don't work at the Galleria anymore. Everyone thinks it's because you had a fight with Brittany." All I could think was ,"Argh! Stupid girls!" I had done everything I could to stay out of the drama, and it was created for me anyway.

So you can imagine my anxiety when our ward split, and there were about thirty or forty girls all around my age, instead of about 200 as it was before. We would all see each other every week and at the activites, and with the smaller number we would all have to eventually interact with eachother. We became a big group of girls, and I was nervous about what would happen next. But I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by ALL of the girls in my ward, and I do mean ALL. I have seen almost no drama (I say almost because you're still going to get a little drama with girls) even though this group of girls is three or four times the size of the previous groups of girls I belonged to. When we all get together, we are just like a bunch of sisters who let loose and have a good time and accept eachother the way we are.

Last week Rushelle and I decided to go to dinner. We found out there were a few other girls interested in going to this particular place, so I decided I would call the other girls in the ward to see if they would like to go to. (If you are reading this and thinking, "I didn't get a call," I promise I called you. There were three or four girls whose lines were busy, and I tried a few times, or their numbers on the ward list were not the right numbers. And I didn't call Kate, Ashley, Lynda or Kelly because Rachel S. told me she talked to them.)

About seven of us went. This is Janet, Wendy, Rushelle, me, Khali, Rachel, and Jane. We had a great time. I think we stayed for almost four hours! The singing and dancing waiters weren't like I remembered, but we did happen to get the waitress who had the best voice in the whole diner. She sang this incredible version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Every other girl in the ward I talked to or left a message for about the dinner either called me back or talked to me at church letting me know they were sorry they missed it, but to let them know when we would go again. They all seemed genuinely appreciative for the invitation. These girls are great!

I'm glad to know that big groups of girls can get along, and I'm happy to be part of an amazing group of girls. The girls in my ward really are the cream of the crop. I love you guys!

Memorial Day

My oldest sister Denise has three horses. The last time we went to see them as a family was when my sister Jodi was pregnant with her oldest son. That was thirteen years ago. We were long overdue for a trip out to Boulder City to see the horses, so Denise decided to take all of us out there with our kids for Memorial Day.

This is Nelson with Denise's husband Buck. (Yes, my kids have an Uncle Buck. We were so excited about that when Rebecca was born.) The riders are Abbey, Tyler, Jodi, and Hailey. Nelson used to live at Willie Nelson's ranch. Nelson's brother's name was Willie. Go figure.

This is Wyatt with my brother Bret and his daughter Hannah. Wyatt is the son of Denise's other horse Sugar. Sugar's not great with kids, so she wasn't brought out to ride, but we visited her later with some apples. Hannah is two, and she started off riding with Bret. She wasn't happy with him on the horse with her, so she made him get off and rode all by herself.

Even the babies took a turn. I know these all look like the same baby, but the top pictures are William and the bottom are Spencer. William was so happy we was kind of singing. You can see it in the top left picture.

Wyatt started getting tired and quit walking so my brother had to start leading him around the corral again. Buck, who happens to work in the same office as Kevin, made me get a picture of Kevin being led around so that Buck could pass it around the office for everyone to laugh at.

Here are just a few other pictures of Wyatt with Rebecca, Whitney, and Abbey. I was so happy that Rebecca wanted to have a ride. She was especially fond of Wyatt because she loves to watch Super Why.

Thanks for taking us to see the horses, Denise. We need to visit them more often.

Success!

• William has successfully learned how to go down the stairs.
  
  

When he first started crawling, he immediately started going up the stairs, so I immediately went out and bought a baby gate. I remembered that we never had a gate for Rebecca. She learned to go down stairs at my mom's house while we were waiting to move into our house. My mom has a million stairs, so she had to learn to go down the stairs there.

I decided that I would rather teach him how to go down stairs than have to climb over a baby gate all day long going up and down the stairs. So I took the gate back, and I'd been worried about William falling down the stairs ever since. I still have to watch him go down to make sure he doesn't turn around and dive head first, but now I'm not as worried about him.

• Rebecca has successfully stuck with her new dance class.

A few months ago I signed Rebecca up for a gymnastics class at the community center her cousins go to. She went to two classes and had a great time. Then at her next class she started screaming at her teacher until her teacher finally made her leave the class. She wouldn't even go inside the gym the next time I tried taking her. I loved taking her to her gymnastics class because it gave me a set errand that got me out of the house every week, so I was quite disappointed when she didn't want to go anymore.

Two months ago she asked me if she could go to dance, and I was a little worried, but I really wanted her to have a fun class to go to. I signed her up with Miss Stephanie where Emilee takes Madisen. We started at the beginning of this month, and I didn't post about it because I didn't know if she would want to keep going. She has gone to three classes, and she really likes Miss Stephanie. When I ask her if she wants to keep going to dance, she says, "Yes!" When I would ask her if she wanted to go to gymnastics, she would say, "I don't want to go to gymnastics." Maybe it was the teacher. Who knows?

Emilee - thanks for letting us borrow Madisen's dance shoes and clothes while we figured out if Rebecca would stick with this.

• Kevin has successfully finished his last and most demanding film class for his film degree.

Toward the middle of this past semester he said to me, "I think I'm going to have to retake my portfolio class because I'm not going to be able to finish everything I need for my portfolio." I told him that I would try to leave him alone and give him more time to work on his projects. He was able to throw some things together, and he just finished the class with a B. I'm so happy for him.

I'm feeling pretty good about all of the success going on in our house.