Mmmmmm

Before you get to the tasty pictures, here's a quick updated--our old ward just got split a few weeks ago. It had gotten to something like 750 members, 4 nurseries, almost 200 children, just a bit too big. So we split and now we have a really small ward geographically and numbers-wise. It's less than 300 people and you can drive to everyone's house in less than 5 minutes (not quite like some Utah wards where you can walk to everyone's house in less than 5 minutes). So that means new callings for everyone! I get to be with the Young Women, which I'm pretty excited about. It'll be lots of fun. Which means Jacob gets to hang out with Rachel on Mutual nights and put her to bed. We did a trial run ahead of time and she was totally fine, so last Wed. we had the real thing, and we'll just say that these cute, happy baby pictures you see below are not from Wed. night. She didn't do too well, I guess, crying for a half hour straight before she cried herself to sleep. So this week we'll try again....
But here are some happy pictures:
Pictures of her new favorite activity.

And some playtime smiles.

Terms of endearment

Since Rachel was born I've learned a lot about the English language that they don't teach you in school, so I thought I'd share it for all to learn, particularly about how to form a term of endearment. Most adverbs end in -ly, and I've learned an easy way to make many nouns a term of endearment, just by adding a -ey-poo. For instance: Rachey-poo. Or Jakey-poo. Or hubby-poo.
As in every other rule in English, however, there are many exceptions. For instance, you can't term-of-endear "dog" or "babe." Doggy-poo and baby-poo just don't sound too endearing. Some verbs work very well for term-of-endearing (the verb meaning to make a word into a term of endearment): snuggle-->snuggley-poo, or hug-->huggy-poo. Some already in use terms of endearment should not be modified to be further endeared: babe (already discussed above), and stinky, and squishy, for instance. Maybe stinky and squishy aren't terms of endearment to everyone, but I call Rachel stinky pretty regularly (especially when she's stinky) and I mean it in a nice way. But stinky-poo and squishy-poo should not be considered a term of endearment.
Well, I guess that's enough of my commentary on the English language. Isn't it a great thing.
And no posting would be complete without a cute picture or video of everyone's favorite baby. Here Rachel was enjoying a game of peek-a-boo, but half the time she would start laughing before she even saw me. We have a kind of fake window between our kitchen and front room where Rachel was sitting and I kept poking my head out there, then going around through the doorway, and back and forth, so she would expect me in one place and I'd jump up in the other and she'd laugh anyway, even before she saw where I was.

Sitting up

Here's Rachel, so happy in her high chair.

And here is Rachel's new skill: sitting on her own. This video was actually from Sunday. Now, just five days later, she has major sitting skills. I've left her in the carpeted room sitting up for a while, and when I get back she's still sitting up. She's not wobbly anymore like she was in this video.

Photo gallery

We finally put some of our tax return to good use and got an SLR (fancy) camera. It's a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I have become a photographic ar-teest. Check out some of these high quality pictures:

Doritos--it sure is fun to play with being able to focus on different things.
More focus experiments:

Now for some cute Rachel pictures. Since it's so much fun to play with this camera I end up taking lots of pictures of Rachel when she's doing funny things. Some of them turn out really cute, and some of them turn out really funny. Enjoy.

Yum yum.
Thbbbbbt.Awwwwww. Isn't she cute?!

WonderWoman

Rolling, rolling, rolling. Yes, Rachel finally rolled over on her own last week and it has quickly become her favorite pasttime. You get her diaper off, she rolls over. You get her diaper on, she rolls over. You get her shirt half on/off, she rolls over. You put her down in her crib when she's already asleep, she rolls over. She loves it. So here's a quick video for you to love it, too. Just imagine if it took this much effort to roll over for you. I think I'd probably just hang out on my back and conserve energy.