Old Friends

This week has been a week to see some of my old best friends. Yesterday I was able to hang out with my one of my best friends from high school, Cori. She lives here in Utah but I've only gotten the chance to hang out with her a few times because she still lives about a half hour away. It's really crazy to me that she is pregnant with her third child already. I can't imagine having three right now. She's an incredibly good mom, though, so I know she can handle it. Today I was able to see Maren Winterrowd, another best friend from childhood. She just got off her mission to Boston a few weeks ago and I was so happy I got to see her for a bit. I am mad at myself because I forgot to get a picture of us together. Here are a few pictures of Cori, her kids, and Hannah, though.

Cori and Hannah

Her daughter, also named Hannah

Her son, Carter

The two Hannahs and Carter

After hanging out with a few good friends this month (including Stacy at the beginning of the month) I've realized how much I miss having good friends. It gets hard sometimes to make good friends with girls around here. Sure, Scott and I have couples that we hang out with every once in a while, but a girl's gotta have her own friends too. It seems that every time I start getting close to someone around here, they end up moving away. Now that Scott and I are serving in a Singles Ward it will be even harder. Oh well, I'm glad to have my husband and Hollie here to be my friends......and Hannah, even though she can't talk. I hope this blog doesn't sound like "poor me...I have no friends" because that's not what I mean. Having friends now is different than it used to be for me because I am not as close to them. I suppose that's probably usually how it is after you get married though. But someday it will be nice to live in a place where I have real neighbors and can make friends with someone without worrying whether or not they are going to move within the next year. For now, though, it was nice to have a chance to spend time with some old best friends.

This Week...

This week has been kind of boring for us but here are a few things that have happened: Scott started school again on Thursday and he also went down to part time at Staples. It will be good for him to have more time to do his homework but tough on the old budget. I just wanted to apologize in advance that birthday presents and Christmas gifts for the grandparents are probably going to be homemade this year. Sorry about that.....but in just a short couple of years we will be making a salary and presents will continue (I know that none of you care that much about getting presents, but I still wanted to apologize). After I graduate in December, I'm hoping that I can find a "mother friendly" job . I'm not quite sure what yet, but hopefully I will find something until Scott graduates.


On to a new subject, Hannah is learning so much every single day. She knows where my eyes and nose are and I've heard her say words like "hi" "Hannah" and I think I heard her say "Jesus" the other day but I'm not sure. She is also learning quickly that she doesn't like vegetables as she is starting to have better tasting food.

Last night I figured out that I have a gift. A few months ago I was watching "Miss USA" and I picked the winner from the beginning of the show. Again last night, I was watching "Miss Teen USA" and I also picked her from the beginning of the show (just ask Scott). As soon as they called her name to be Miss Teen USA I shouted a big "Hurray" because I guessed her! I should be a judge or something. Oh, and to Kerrie and Jake, this is not like the time I tricked you guys into thinking I picked the winner because I already knew who won.

This is Miss USA

Miss Teen USA

Anyway, I don't know why I posted their pictures and you can definitely tell that this week was uneventful because I am writing about beauty pageants, but I was so proud of myself for picking them both. One thing I find sad about these pageants is that it is all based on looks. They like to pretend that it isn't by making the contestants answer a question at the end but this young woman did not have a very good answer. There was another contestant that I felt had a better answer but wasn't as pretty.

Well, nothing else has really happened lately. I hope you all are having a wonderful week.

Hogle Zoo

** My comments are out of order on this but I'm sure you can figure it out....I don't feel like changing it!

On Saturday we went to the Hogle Zoo. It was a lot of fun! I love doing this kind of stuff now that we have a child. It's kind of too bad she won't be able to remember any of it because she has done a lot of fun stuff this summer: gone to a museum, Seven Peaks, boating, to the ocean, swimming, and now to the zoo! I know we have all seen these animals before but I posted some pictures of them anyway because they are so cute.

Doesn't this bear look so cuddly? I just want to snuggle with him.

This bird (to the right) was staring me down. It was in the tree above me so I was afraid it was going to poop on me or peck at me.






This peacock was just wandering around our lunch table. It was not afraid of people at all. Hannah thought it was pretty interesting!

This white alligator is supposed to be the highlight of the zoo. I guess it's extremely rare.

Hannah seemed to love looking at the animals. The only problem was that she doesn't like to be in her stroller for very long unless we give her keys to play with. We always have to take her out and hold her. She's spoiled. I can't wait to go again someday, though, when she can enjoy it a little bit more.

P.S. There's a video below if you want to watch!

Say Cheese!

Click To Play

Here's just a short clip of what it is like trying to get all 11 grandkids to smile for a picture. I hope all of the kids can watch this in 20 years and laugh! Sorry....this video is really blurry.

Hobbies

I love being a wife and a mother. Sometimes, however, I feel like I have lost who I am because I am so busy trying to take care of Hannah or get good grades in school or clean the house. I feel like I don't have any hobbies anymore. When I do have time to myself, I usually like to watch my favorite TV shows as most of you know (although there has been nothing on that I enjoy this summer). I used to love to dance, play the piano (when I was young), and even scrapbook just before Hannah was born. Anyway, the reason I am writing this is because I think it's important for those of us who are extremely busy to make sure we find things we can do every week to better ourselves or that we enjoy doing. Last week I decided to sew some pillows for our new comforter. Can you guess which ones?

Hannah looks kind of silly in this picture....but I have a picture of myself in this same position when I was a baby. Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell, I made the striped pillows. Pillows are pretty much the easiest things to sew, but I had so much fun making them. I would love to learn how to sew other items (don't worry, I'm not planning on sewing our clothes) because I really have no idea what I'm doing. Anyway, I just need to practice and learn a little more about how to keep my fabric straight. I would also love to practice the piano again, so if anybody knows of anyone giving away a piano or selling one for cheap, let me know. I would have to make room in our tiny apartment but I'd make it work. Also, after watching a few episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance" I realized how much I miss dancing. I was never even close to being as good as any of the people on there, but I would love to start taking dance classes again......probably not until Scott and I are both out of school, though. As soon as school is over for me, I will start up scrapbooking again as well. I realize that most of you probably don't care much what hobbies I am trying to pursue, but I do believe it will better myself as a person if I find a little time to practice things that I enjoy in life.

10 MONTHS

Well here are some 10 month old pictures of Hannah. I can't believe in two months she'll already be 1 year old. It has just gone by way too fast. She finally started crawling and pulling herself up onto things on her 10 month birthday!! She's still trying to master it, though, which could take a week or two. Here are a few things she's learned this month:
1. How to wave hello and goodbye (and she actually knows that "hello" and "goodbye" go with the hand movements).
2. How to roll her hands like she's doing "The wheels on the bus"
3. How to disobey- yesterday she picked up a crumb off the floor and I told her "no" (she knows what that means) and she smiled at me and stuck it right in her mouth.
4. How to roll a ball towards me (she drops it off the tip of her hands).

I know I always say this but she is growing up so fast and it makes me sad. I guess it's time to have another baby-----Just Kidding! It is fun to see her learn new things, though.

Vacation #2

I realize that no one is probably going to comment on this because those who do comment are still on vacation in California. However, I know that there are a couple of you who check this who were not in Sacramento this past week. I don't have very many pictures because our camera's batteries died while we were there. Hopefully I can get some good ones from the rest of you who took pictures. We did some really fun stuff while we were there.
Scott turned the big 2-6. We had a nice dinner put on by my mom and some yummy ice cream cake afterwards. The next night Scott's parents took us out to Mikuni, a delicious Sushi restaurant.

Later that week we went boating with Scott's parents and most of my nieces and nephews and all of my sisters and brother. It was a lot of fun, but my muscles were aching for days after riding the tubes. I guess I'm not as strong as I thought I was.

Hannah at the lake with some food on her face, as usual.

Hannah at Grandma Julia's house.

We did a lot of other things this week and I wish I could have gotten more pictures. We went to Stinsen (sp) Beach on Friday with my dad and Vickie and had a wonderful lunch with them. It was Hannah's first time to the beach. Unfortunately she was a bit grumpy during a lot of this vacation because there were days she did not get good naps and bed time was different every night. The ride home to Utah wasn't bad but Scott had a piece of sand in his eye from the beach which we think might have scratched his cornea. He could barely see out of it so I had to drive the whole way home. It really wasn't bad but I was nervous because I saw 4 or 5 cops during our trip who were just waiting to pull me over. One I drove past while doing 85 mph (it just happened to be the one minute I was trying to pass a semi) but luckily he spotted someone ahead of me going faster and pulled them over. Scared me have to death, though because I have never been pulled over before. Anyway, now we are home and Scott's mom is staying with us this week. Tomorrow I have my final for my class and then I get a three week break until my next classes start. Only 5 more months of school!!!!!!