Happy Halloween!!

Well it's late and I'm tired but I wanted to write just a tiny bit about Halloween. We went out to Hollie's house and went trick-or-treating with them. I got some pictures of her kids but I figured I would let her post the pictures if she wanted to. Hannah was a fairy. Her outfit was mostly homemade, as you can tell. We had a lot of fun with her.

We found out tonight that she loves suckers.

Kissing Sienna.....what cuties.

These are some cupcakes and cookies that we made for some friends

Kisses!!

Anyway, so there's a short blog about our Halloween! I am extremely excited for next year when Hannah will be able to walk up to the doors and say, "Trick or treat!"

Advice Column

This week has not been too exciting for us, so I thought I would make it an advice blog. Sometimes I like to ask for advice from ya'll because it helps me make decisions in life. I only have two months left of school, which means that I have to start looking for some kind of job. Scott needs to focus more on school which means that I need to start making money for our family. I could go back to work full time at Staples.......but hey.....I'd rather chop off both my arms and legs and claim disability (okay, not a very funny joke because there really are people like that and it is sad). The reason I wouldn't do this is because (1. I hated working at Staples and (2. I refuse to put Hannah in daycare. There is nothing wrong with parents who decide to do this, but I personally don't think I could ever leave Hannah with someone else all day. It would make me very unhappy. So, I have tried to think of some "mother friendly" jobs: managing apartments, a mystery shopper, giving plasma, and an ebay seller. The two I am thinking of doing are managing apartments and selling stuff on ebay. Some people make a good living selling things off ebay, but you have to know what to sell and where to get it cheap. I'd have to do a lot of research for that one, but it would be ideal because I wouldn't ever have to leave Hannah. Managing apartments would be okay as well, but then I would have to focus a lot of my time on the apartments. Anyone have any advice on these jobs or on any other jobs they can think of? Let me know, because time is quickly running out.

And the A+ goes to.........

Kerrie!!!! The doctor said that he thinks Hannah has eczema. I have to admit I was was a bit surprised by this. I thought for sure she either had a food allergy or a rash from her pacifier. The reason I didn't think it was because of her teeth is because she doesn't drool. The only time I see wetness around her mouth is right after she has sucked on a pacifier. So, sorry Jed, Hannah will be sent to North Carolina, not New York. Maybe next time. Anyway, I'm not so sure that eczema is what she has. We've been using ointment for the past couple of days and her rash is looking worse to me. Sorry you couldn't see the rash in the picture I posted. It's a lot more noticeable in real life. I hope we can get rid of it soon.

One Year Appointment

Hannah had her 1 year old appointment today. She's had this nasty rash around her mouth for a little over a month now. Some days it looks worse than others. I asked the doctor what he thought it was and he either said......

A. Pacifier Rash,
B. Allergic Reaction to milk products,
C. Eczema, or
D. Getting new teeth causes more drool, which causes a rash around the mouth

Quiz time for ya'll....what do you think he said??? You can see the rash in this picture posted. I feel bad for her and hope it goes away soon. Here are her other stats:

weight: 18 lbs 13 oz which is 13%
heighth (ha ha, mom)...... I mean height: 28.5 inches which is 23%
and her iron levels are back to normal.

She had 5 shots today....and absolutely hated it. Poor little thing. Also, as suspected she is has gotten 4 new teeth in the past two weeks. It's been a very fussy couple of weeks, but she is still an excellent little girl.

This week has been full of fun!!! Scott's mom arrived at our apartment on Tuesday night to stay with us for Hannah's birthday. On Wednesday, we celebrated Hannah's birthday by going shopping and eating at Red Lobster for dinner. I have a lot of photos of this week so I made them small (just click to make big). This photo was taken on her birthday. Everyday she is getting better and better at standing on her own. I still think it will be a month or two before she is walking (which is okay with me), but she enjoys trying to stand on her own. If you're wondering why her legs look so short it's because her shirt is long and her pants are short. It kind of looks funny in this picture.

Forgot to turn this picture vertical, but here she is (grumpy) at Red Lobster

Playing with a new toy she got from Grandma and Grandpa "D"

On Thursday we went to the zoo again, this time with Grandma Julia. She bought us a family pass that lasts for a year. It will be nice to be able to go again next spring and summer when Hannah can really enjoy the animals (plus they are putting in a merry-go-round, which I'm sure she will love). Above is us on the train (and yes I have no makeup on and look very tired) and below is Scott's mom, Scott, and Hannah in front of the elephants.


On Friday we went to the Hee Haw Farms pumpkin patch. Tis the season for pumpkin patches, as I have seen on a few of your blogs. I haven't been to a true pumpkin patch like this since I was in elementary school (well, as noted in a previous blog, I have a terrible memory so it's possible I've been to one more recent than that). This place was kind of small and the actual pumpkins growing were hidden in between a bunch of dead sunflowers, but it was actually a really fun place for little kids and wasn't very crowded.
We found out recently that Hannah has become terrified of getting too close to animals. She screams when they come within two feet of her. I hope she outgrows this phase soon.

This pig weighs 1200 pounds. It's the biggest big I've ever seen.

Here she is enjoying the hay ride with dad (actually we took almost 100 pictures and got only a handful of her smiling). If you look closely, she has this piece of hay in her right hand in almost every picture. She became attached to it.

Buried in a box full of corn

Riding the horse.....she actually wasn't afraid of this animal and enjoyed riding on him....maybe because she couldn't see his face

Hannah and Grandma

Scott thinks my head looks Photoshopped on to this picture. What do you think?

The only ones riding the animal train (kind of embarrassing)

Sliding down the slide with Grandma

Two feet tall and growing (actually she's closer to 28 inches tall but oh well). We hope to come back to this place for the next couple of years and get more pictures of her standing next to these measurements.

Like I said, this week was a lot of fun. Hannah is turning into a toddler. She seems to enjoy doing things like this, and we enjoy taking her to do things like this. She has also (within the past week) become a "Mama's girl" and is getting worse everyday. We hoped she wouldn't go through this stage....but she is. Luckily, so far it's not that bad. She just wants me to hold her if she sees me when someone else is holding her, but she's okay if I'm not around. She also occasionally gets extremely fussy, especially if she doesn't get what she wants. I'm waiting any day now for tantrums to start (hopefully not this soon). Part of her fussiness could be the fact that she's getting teeth. Her top one came through and it looks to me like three more are on their way. Anyway, Scott's mom left this morning, and we will miss her. We love having grandparents come to visit and are sad when they have to leave. For now, it's back to doing homework and spending all day with Hannah alone.

Birthday Party!!

I know you are all dying to see pictures of Hannah's birthday party (JK). Well, we had a bit of a change of plans. We were supposed to have Hannah's birthday party on Friday night in the park, but unfortunately there was a big storm and we couldn't fit everyone in our apartment, so we had to cancel. Instead, we had her party tonight at Hollie's house with only family. It was still a lot of fun! Little did I know, she is terrified of watching the air let out of balloons. Poor thing. Here are a few pictures......Playing with a few toys she got!

Here's the cake I made. My sisters have all made beautiful cakes for their kids so I tried to make one, but it didn't turn out quite so beautiful. It was still fun to make.

She didn't shove the cake down her throat like I thought she would. I think she was full from dinner. She seemed to like it, though.

These past couple of days we've had my mom and Dave here visiting. It was really nice having them here. They are always fun to be with, and they were able to watch Hannah for us while we went to General Conference (our first time....it was a neat experience). Wednesday is Hannah's actual birthday. We'll have to do something fun to celebrate! I can't believe how fast our little girl is growing up.

My New Toy!

So I told Scott that I desperately wanted a keyboard/piano for Christmas, and he surprised me with one last week. I have really been wanting to play the piano again, and I am so happy that I will get the chance. I quit piano lessons when I was 11 or 12 and have regret it for some time now. After Scott surprised me, we had to move a lot of furniture around in our apartment in order to fit this in the corner. Every wall has something on it in every room. It is cluttered in here, so you grandmas coming to visit this week will have to give me some advice on how to arrange our furniture. So, after an hour or two of arranging furniture and setting up the keyboard, I dug my old piano books out of the storage room. To my surprise, getting back into piano has not been as hard as I thought it would be. After practicing a little, I learned that I can still play a few songs from my last piano book. This gave me a lot of confidence, so I told Scott that I would have Fur Elise ( a song by Beethoven that I know you would all recognize) down by the end of this week. After practicing it over and over, I realized that I'm not that good yet and will probably not have this song down for awhile (and I realized that the songs I have down from my piano book are pretty easy). I can not just read music if a piece is placed in front of me, but probably could play almost anything if I practice it long enough. Anyway, I'm excited to have a hobby again, even if it's hard to get practicing time in.

Here's a Hannah update as well:

She has recently gone down to taking just one half hour nap a day. The good thing about this is that she is sleeping almost two hours longer at night. She has been going to bed around 7pm and waking up between 8am and 9am. I can definitely handle sleeping in a little bit more. I hope it stays this way. If not, I would be extremely happy if her nap were a little longer and her night sleep were shorter. This Friday we are having her birthday party. We only invited a few friends and family members, but it should be fun! Stay tuned for some cute birthday pictures.

Tag......You're It!!

I wrote this blog a few days ago but decided to post it today to make sure everyone had a chance to read that Scott got in to BYU. I am so proud of him. Anyway, so as most of you know, Kerrie tagged everyone to write 8 things about themselves that people might not know. To be honest, my 8 things are almost exactly the same as hers, minus the reading for pleasure (although this will hopefully change after I graduate) and being on the internet 10 times a day. I figured since mine were about the same as Kerrie's, I would try to come up with 8 other things that are weird or that I wouldn't tell about myself except in this blog, although some of you might already know a lot of these things. Here are my 8:

1. I don't love soda. Every time we have visitors, they are shocked that we don't have soda in our house. I'll admit every once in awhile I'll crave a Dr. Pepper, and I love to drink Root Beer with my pizza, but I could probably go the rest of my life without soda and be okay with that. My favorite drinks are surprisingly ice water and milk......juice is a close second.

2. I don't cry very often. I'm sure most of you have seen me cry at least once in my life, but I'm not your typical girl that cries every week. I do get choked up every once in awhile but fight back the tears really hard if possible. For some reason I feel like I am weak if I cry. It's stupid, I know, because people who cry are not weak. I don't mind if other people cry, I just personally try to avoid it if possible.

3. My hands and feet are ALWAYS freezing. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, the rest of my body is hot while my hands and feet are cold.

4. I bite my nails. I never bit my nails until I got married. I think I just caught the habit from Scott and now I can't stand having my nails past my finger tips. I used to have pretty nails and now they just look bitten.

5. My GPA is 3.55. Usually you don't tell people this because (a. you don't want to brag about it or (b. you don't want people to know how dumb you are. In this case, I can't do either because it's not incredibly good or bad. I don't really care if you know how smart I am because in my opinion, GPAs are a sign of how hard you work, not how smart you are. You can be the smartest person in your class but if you don't do all the work, you will get a bad grade.....or you can be dumb and study your butt off to get a good grade. Of course it's easier if you are smart, though.

6. I am terrified of squishing bugs, especially spiders. I hate spiders, which is unfortunate because I literally see one almost every single day of my life in this disgusting apartment, whether it be dead in a corner, hiding behind the bread box, in the tub, in our bed, etc (you name it, I've seen it there). If Scott isn't home, I have to let the spider roam free because I'd rather see it crawling around than feel it squished in a paper towel between my fingers.

7. I have a terrible long term memory. In fact, I can barely remember anything from before the age of 10. I don't remember things I learned in school as soon as the semester is over. This is probably why I am bad at history and trivia games.

8. Finally, I hate taking medicine. Every time I tell Scott that I'm not feeling well he tells me to take medicine, but I don't like to take medicine. I will take it if the pain is unbearable, but other than that, I'll refuse. Scott also likes to tell me to take sleeping pills for my insomnia, but I will not. I try not to complain too much, though, because then he just tells me to stop complaining and go take some medicine. I think I need to eat better and exercise, rather than popping pills.

So, there are my 8. For those of you who are not in my immediate family and have a blog of your own, now you are tagged. Actually, I don't care if you choose not to do it, but I figured I'd better tag you because that's how the game goes and it's fun to learn 8 new things about people.

Finally!!!

As you look at these pictures, you might think that they are a little strange to be on our blog. Let me explain. While I was in high school, all my friends knew that I was a member of the Church, so I always told them that I was going to go to college at BYU. Things went great, until I got my rejection letter. After my mission, I decided to try again. Don't all return missionaries get into BYU? The answer to that question is no, as I found out when I received my next rejection letter. So, after moving to Utah, I went to LDS Business College. After a year there, I figured that I would try again. After all, I was taking religion classes, going to a church school, I had a good GPA, why shouldn't I get in? Someone in the admissions office definitely knew something that I did not. Rejection letter number three. After talking to some people, I was told that I should apply for the winter semester, because I would have a better chance of getting in. The people that told me that are liars, because I still didn't get in. I grew tired of going to Salt Lake for school, so, finally a resident of Utah, I began attending UVSC, soon to be known as UVU. I figured at this point I might as well get used to the fact that I would graduate as a wolverine. Not too shabby, wolverines are pretty tough. In fact, I would not want to be anywhere close to where a wolverine is. I did, though, decide to apply to BYU one more time. This would be last time though, because I was too far in school to worry about it. So, I had my transcripts sent in, re-wrote my essay, got an ecclesiastical endorsement, and prepared for the worst. I even went to talk to my Stake President, who is a Professor at BYU, to see if he could help. All I wanted was a letter of recommendation, but he went into the admissions office to talk to them. He called me last week to tell me that he got no where with them, and that I should just go into the admissions office myself and see what I could do. I actually set up an appointment, but the day of the appointment our car had issues, so I had to cancel.
Then today came... When Maran went out to get the mail, she came back with a letter from BYU's admissions office. We opened it up, expecting to see, "We regret to inform you..." but instead saw "We are delighted to inform you..." So, I finally got into BYU. I am really, really happy about this. To a lot of people, it is probably no big deal, but it is to me. To celebrate, we went to Red Lobster to partake of all the shrimp we could eat. The picture above is me enjoying my second round of shrimp scampi. The billboard of Abraham Lincoln sums up my experience pretty well. And to top it all off, my electric toothbrush started working after weeks of not working. It was a good day.

Celebrity Crushes!

So the other day Scott and I were talking about celebrities. Awhile ago I told him my first celebrity crush was a guy named Devon Sawa (back when I was like 12 years old I had 3 posters of him) and a few days ago Scott told me that he heard a girl on the radio say that her first celebrity crush was Devon Sawa, too. This got us on the topic of who our top three celebrities are right now. I know it's kind of a silly game since we are married to each other but it was fun to see which celebrities Scott thinks are good looking (plus, neither of us are at all threatened by this because we obviously love each other). I came up with my top three immediately and it took Scott practically the whole day to come up with his. I had to name off girls for him because he couldn't even choose three that he found to be extremely attractive. Here are my top three: Justin Timberlake, Orlando Bloom, and Michael Vartan (a guy on Alias). Yes, these are guys the young girls go crazy for, but hey, I'm still young! I've never really been into the Tom Cruise, Brat Pitt type. Scott chose Jennifer Love-Hewitt, the old Britney Spears (she's pretty weird now), and Christina Aguilera (I've got to be honest, I was surprised at that one). My opinion of celebrity girls is quite a bit different than Scott's. So, who are your top three celebrities (it doesn't have to be just about looks)??? If you read this blog you must answer!!!! I'm just kidding, but it would be fun:) Scroll down for a new video of Hannah!!!

Another Video

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Well here's a video of some of Hannah's new tricks. You might have to open it with Internet Explorer if you have something else like Firefox. Hopefully it works for ya'll.

An Activity And An Oinker!

Today we went to a stake activity at Rock Canyon Park. I didn't even know this park existed but it's really nice. At the activity, they had a long slide that a lot of the kids slid down. It looked like a lot of fun and had I known to wear my swimsuit I would have gone down it.
Here are some of the kids in Scott's ward. It's been fun trying to get to know some of them. They all love Hannah!
Scott and the bishop had to do karaoke in front of the whole stake. They were both extremely nervous before going and were glad to get it over with. Scott was lucky that he only had to pretend to play the guitar. The bishop sang by himself and did a great job!

On to a new subject.....Hannah has grown into our little oinker. This is the sign we are constantly seeing these days. It means "more," in case you didn't know (and she has a cracker stuffed in her mouth). She eats SOOO much! It just started happening recently and I don't know how much we are supposed to give an 11 month old to eat but she seems to eat a lot. I'm guessing she's going through a growth spurt. Here are some examples: A few nights ago we had pizza for dinner and normally we don't give her greasy food like that but we decided to this one night. She ate a whole piece of pizza (minus the crust) plus about a forth a can of green beans. The next night she ate a whole piece of tenderloin chicken, some spaghetti, and a half can of green beans. Tonight she had 3 jars of baby food for dinner and was still asking for more (so I gave her a cracker and a few bites of my dinner). I don't really know what to do. I guess I have watched too many Mauri Povich shows entitled, "My 2 year old is 100 pounds." I get worried that I am over feeding her but she keeps asking for more, and I definitely don't want to starve her either. Any advice on what to do? I suppose I should just feed her until she is full, but it never seems like she is full. She's like a little puppy drooling for food. I guess the good thing is that she usually eats whatever I put in front of her, even if it's vegetables (although we found out tonight that she no longer likes carrots). On top of her eating a lot, she eats faster than anybody I've ever seen. She shoves food down her throat. Maybe I'll get it on tape and post it.

Popcorn Popping

Here's a short video of Hannah doing "Popcorn" (I had to hide the camera on the couch) that I just shot after I read mom's comment. Hannah only did the "I looked out the window" part and the "popcorn popping" part. She can do a little more than that but only when she's in the mood.

Scott update!

In case you aren't a Sprague (which are most of you) and haven't checked Uncle Brian's web page, here is a picture of Scott and one child from each of Scott's dad's siblings (Scott's cousins, in case you can't figure that out:). They are all here at BYU.

I would like to update you all on Scott since basically the only things I write about are Hannah and myself (plus I'm really proud of him). What's weird is that Scott used to always be the one to blog but I guess I have taken over. He is really busy this semester with 15 credits and an institute class, plus he is working about 25 hours a week and is also working hard in the bishopric. There are some days that I feel like I don't even have a husband and I get frustrated, but then I have to sit back and realize that he is working really hard and I have to remember how proud of him I am. Yesterday he gave a talk in sacrament meeting because he felt bad for calling people so late in the week to give one (he is in charge of calling people to give talks and didn't have anyone's phone numbers because we just got a heap of new kids in our ward). Anyways, I just wanted to give an update on him and let you know how busy and hard he is working this semester. Below is an update on Hannah and the park next to us:)

This park next to our house has been here for as long as I can remember (since Hollie lived here) and they finally decided to build a playground in it. It's really small and mostly just for young children, but that's great for me considering Hannah is young.We've gone there almost everyday since it opened. She loves the swings (plus I figure we had better get it all in before it starts snowing again here shortly). Anyway, here are a few pics of the playground. Now when ya'll come to visit there will be something for your kids to play on besides that old cannon.


Also, today Hannah is 11 months old. I can't believe she will already be one year old in a month. By the way, we are having a birthday party sometime in the beginning of October and if anyone is around here during that time, you are invited. Anyway, Hannah is learning so much everyday. She has learned how to do more hand movements to songs but will never do them for the video camera because every time she sees the video camera she wants to play with it. I will try to get a video but I might have to hide the camera in order to do it.

What a cutie!

For any of you who might just check this to look at pictures of Hannah, here is a cute one. She now climbs all over everything! If you want to read a long and boring post below, there is one.

Look at me starting up some controversy!

So here's an interesting story. About a month ago I had to write a letter to one of the editors of a newspaper about a sociological issue as an assignment for my Summer class. I didn't want to do it because I hate controversial issues. Nothing ever gets solved and people just end up being mean to each other. Well, I wrote it anyway because I had to but hoped it wouldn't get published. Yesterday Scott and I went to one of his ward activities and the bishop told me he saw my letter in the newspaper. I was really embarrassed and it's too bad that my teacher didn't get to see it published before the semester ended, but what's done is done. If you want to read, click here before reading the rest of this blog and there are about 20 comments that are from a few readers but I wouldn't suggest reading them all. They are long and boring (probably like this blog).

Let me just start off by saying that I do love America and I wasn't comparing poverty in our nation to that of other nations. I realize that we have it better than most other countries. What I was trying to say, though, is that our country is one of the most unequal countries in the world as far as wealth goes. Before you start wondering whether or not I'm a democrat, let me just tell you that I'm not (not that there is anything wrong with that). I consider myself more of a conservative but since I've taken sociology classes, I understand the liberal side to things and somewhat agree with some of it. There are two sides to everything.

If you read some of the comments people left on my letter, you will notice that some of them are nice and some are not that nice. At least no one was out right mean to me, but there were a couple of commenters going after each other. One guy said that my teacher needs to take an econ class because his data isn't correct. I'm not sure why he is attacking my teacher when all the data we learned came from reliable sources in text books and I know that my teacher has taken econ classes. One guy asked what I suggest we do if we don't have a capitalist society. I do think that capitalism is what sets us free, but I also think that nobody deserves to have billions (no matter what you do) of dollars when there are others who have next to nothing. Sure, those who have more experience and schooling should get paid more (otherwise there wouldn't be much incentive for going to school), but it shouldn't be as unequal as it is. One comment said that the rich deserve it and the poor are lazy. Yes, there are people who have worked their tails off to get where they are and there are also poor people who are incredibly lazy and have no intent of getting off of food stamps. This is not true in every case, though. Look at Paris Hilton for example. She has done nothing besides make a pornographic Carl's Jr. commercial and a dumb TV show but is incredibly rich because of her parents. Then there are poor people who work two or three jobs just to get the bills paid. And whose to say that a capitalist works any harder than a farmer who works 15 hours a day? I personally wish there was a limit as to how much someone could make and the rest would have to go to employees lower than them (farmers, factory workers, salesmen). After all, the Waltons wouldn't be billionaires if it weren't for their employees. We need every job in order for society to function and maybe we'd getter better customer service at Wal mart if their employees were paid more.

I'm not saying that rich people are evil (doesn't everyone want to be rich?) and I know that most of them give money to charities, but only after they have thousands of acres of land, plenty of cars, and HUGE houses, yachts, etc. Anyway, I could really go on and on about this stuff but I won't because I'm sure none of you are as interested in it as I am. The point is, yes America is based on merits but there are so many other factors that go along with it, like who you know, where you were born, life chances, race, gender, etc. I do believe that anyone can make it if they try hard enough, but some are just not given the education or opportunity to even try and that's where I think we need to help out those people. I think the government should provide equal education throughout the country, universal health care, maternity leave with pay, etc, etc because we are far behind these things compared to other industrialized countries. I wasn't saying that the government needs to do everything for the poor or that the rich need to give all their money away, just give them better opportunities to get out of poverty and whether they take them or leave them is their choice.

Anyways, like I said earlier, I don't like controversy which is why I won't comment to the commenters on my letter to the editors. I know that there are many points of view about these topics and I only wish I were educated more so that I didn't just know the sociological perspective. Speaking of sociology, I started my last first day of class today (and I'm going to have to write about 80 pages worth of essays this semester, YUCK). I am glad it will be over soon, but actually a bit sad that I won't be learning anymore about these things. They have been interesting and I feel like I have learned more about our country in the last couple of years than I have in my entire life.

Requests!

So my mom and Scott's mom both had requests for me to post a few things. Here is a comparison of me as a baby reading the Reader's Digest and Hannah reading it. If it weren't for the fact that I was in labor with her for 33 hours and saw her come out of my belly, I would say that she isn't my child. She looks nothing like me as a baby. What is weird, though, is that I've had a few people tell me she looks just like me. I also posted one of Scott and her to show how much they look alike. Hannah looks more feminine, but other than that she looks almost exactly like him as a baby. The video below was made for Scott's mom by her request. I hope you enjoy it! Any other requests, just let me know!

Click To Play