December Life Update

Finally! A chance to blog! This month has been crazy (but in good ways!)

Where to begin?

I finished my classes with two A's. Which was surprising because I thought my bankruptcy final (filing a fictitious Chapter 13) was going to be the death of me. I am so happy to be done with this semester and on to what will hopefully be my last semester EVER. Or until I decide I want another degree which is something we're considering but thinking in the distant future.

A few months ago my college program decided to drop another one of my classes. This was the third time in 6 months! It just so happened to be my final class (seriously, what are the chances??) It was a simulation internship class and I needed it bad since the only replacement class is an actual internship (something near impossible since the hubs and I share one car and have no one to watch our baby.) I fought hard to get the class up and going again but couldn't get enough people to agree to take the class. Resigned, I decided I'd have to wait until the fall to take the class which would hopefully be available then. In a last ditch effort I emailed my (favorite) professor, an attorney for the state of Utah, and asked if there was some way I could do an at home internship for him. While it's not set in stone, he's pretty certain we can make it work, which means I will be done with school in May! Yay!

So since school is out, we've been enjoying our short lived freedom by getting into the Christmas spirit. A couple weeks ago we attended our ward brunch. The food was delicious and the entertainment was great! We also went downtown to Temple Square to check out the lights, which are always amazing, but even more fun with a one year old who was obsessed with all the lights and nativities. We've also done a lot of driving around the valley and seeing all the really awesome house lights. We went to this cute neighborhood, I think it was called Christmas Town, where everyone had their houses decked out. It was really something to see!

Jesse is still loving his job. In fact, he enjoys it so much he is considering staying on the recruiting side, over (actual) human resource. He plans on doing more research to figure out where he ultimately wants to end up (it's really a toss up between working towards becoming the director of talent acquisition or director of human resource--final goals, obviously.) He had an opportunity to drive down to Provo with his company's talent acquisition director and learned a lot more of what that kind of position entails, peaking his interest even further. I guess we'll see soon which direction he's going to head. One things for sure is that we'll be staying with Progrexion for a while. He really loves working for such a great company!

Last weekend we went to our dad's family work party where they rented out a movie theater. We saw Penguins of Madagascar, a movie we didn't have high hopes for, but ended up being hilarious. I can't wait till it's in Redbox so we can watch it again. Penelope did really great! Aside from needing to change her diaper, I saw most of the movie. Towards the very end she got a little wiggly but I was very impressed. Penelope hardly sits down for a TV show, let alone movies. 

From there we had lunch at our sister and brother's house, ran home to put Penelope down for a nap, and then immediately headed to Springville to attend a mini mission reunion at Jesse's mission president's new house.

When we were two miles away not only did it start snowing really hard, but our heat and defroster stopped working. We managed to pull into a church parking lot and tried to get a hold of his mission president to come pick us up. With no luck in getting a hold of them, and not really wanting to ask our family to travel 50 + minutes to get us, we got the idea to run into the church, grab some paper towels, and wipe the windows as Jesse drived. I was a nervous wreck the whole rest of the way but we were thankful we were already so close to our destination.

When we arrived at the house we thought we had the wrong address because it looked more like an incredibly fancy hotel than a house. Jesse got out and asked someone walking towards the building if this was the Lindley's and they confirmed it was. Upon going in we got a tour...and learned it was a 1.6 million dollar home! We were almost hoping our car would still not be working properly so we could stay the night (they had enough bedrooms to sleep 29 people!) We were catered a delicious dinner and listened to a former Miss Utah sing Christmas songs. Then his mission president handed out Christmas gifts and we were really excited when we learned it was doTERRA oils (I guess we shouldn't have been surprised though becuase he's the CFO and part equity owner of the company.) We have always wanted to try natural oils but they're a little expensive so we had always pushed it off for a future investment. We've tried a few already but we think we didn't apply them properly. We spent the rest of the night catching up with some of Jesse's old companions and reminiscing on some funny stories they had from their mission. When it was time to leave the Lindleys', who are some of the nicest people ever, they offered to let us stay the night regardless of our car situation, and while tempting, we decided to see if our car was working again. Thankfully it was and so we headed back home safe and sound!

As for our little munchkin, she's as busy as ever. I think I'm starting to get the hang of keeping up with her. The only not so good thing is that  I threw out my back somehow so it's been interesting trying to do some of crawling and swinging her around that I used to be able to do with her. Man, is she heavy!

I apologize for the lack of new pictures (or really any pictures.) I am more of a "live in the moment" sorta person.

Everyday I feel like she says or does something she never used to do which is exciting and scary at the same time. I can't get over how she is no longer a baby! Here are some new things she's been able to do the last few months:

• She can say over 50+ words and say a lot of them very clearly. We counted once and it was something like 63 words.
• She is best at pronouncing words that start with B and D.
• She can count to 2 (with help.)
• And she can say the ABC's to C (with help.)
• She drinks out of a cup all on her own and hardly ever spills
• She can say "Amen" at the end of prayers and actually bows her head now.
• She can kick and throw a ball really well. Hopefully she will love soccer one day just like her mommy!
• She can say a lot of small sentence and phrases. Here are a few off the top of my head: "want that", "want down", "go side (outside)?", "hi, baby (as she pats my belly...that one freaks us out lol). "more milk?", "where is that?", "no, I go", "Love you, buh bye!"
• She knows most farm animals and their noises. She can't say their names but if I point to the animal she'll make the noise.
• She is obsessed with the barbies my parents gave to us on our last trip.
• She will sign please and thank you without any prompting (most days anyway.)
• She doesn't sign very much anymore, but we learned that it's normal. She see's that we mostly communicate with words and so, trying to be like us, is trying to use words instead of signing. This has been very interesting for us since a lot of times we can't figure out what she wants. She points and says, "want that"  (pointing at what appears to be nothing) leaving us totally clueless at times. 
• She has unfortunately inherited a bad quality of mine (probably by observing me) and get's frustrated quickly if she can't do something right or can't get us to understand.
• She will take my bras out of the dresser and wear them around the house.  
• She loves wearing jewelry.
• We recently discovered the one TV show she'll actually watch for longer than 2 minutes. and it happens to be Barney.
• We "started" potty training a few months ago...which really is just making her excited about the idea of using the potty and so far it's been successful. Come February we're buying a potty seat so we can implement phase two of potty training--actually going on the toilet.

So I think this about covers everything. Until next time!

Love,