butterscotch chips

The other day I was making dinner while Rachel was entertaining herself in the kitchen. I heard "mmmmm" and looked down to see that Rachel had gotten a bag of butterscotch chips out of the pantry and had managed to tear it open and was enjoying it. You'll see her sign candy in this video (which she thinks is anything sweet--she also thinks fruit snacks are candy).

And no, my floor was not clean enough to eat off of, but Rachel doesn't seem to care much. It builds up immunity, right? :)

On a different note, we're headed up to Provo later today to spend Christmas with Jacob's family. We're looking forward to it despite the cold. It's our first time driving that far with Rachel, so we're going overnight, hoping she sleeps the whole way. We'll see how that goes....

We don't have many warm clothes so we'll be spending most of our time in a nice heated house, but my very nice neighbor just gave us a bunch of her daughter's old clothes that she was going to get rid of, so we actually have a few semi-warm clothes. Isn't Rachel cute in this outfit. The hat is from Target, but the clothes are from our neighbor.
I'm guessing we won't be posting on the blog while we're in Utah, so everyone have a wonderful Christmas!

The Front Fell Off

If you haven't seen this you need to:

hide and seek

Here's a video of one of Rachel's favorite games of all time: hide and seek and peek-a-boo rolled in to one. I apologize for the bumpy ride. I hope no one gets motion sickness from watching this video. The part towards the beginning in the hallway where Rachel all of a sudden gets really interested in the camcorder is when I turned the viewfinder around so she could see the picture of herself, which captivated her for a bit. Rachel was actually watching the video with me today and was waving and saying hi to herself on the computer screen, and laughing when her computer self laughed. It was really funny.

Joy to everyone

I love Christmas time with all the decorations and yummy treats and music and everyone so happy and maybe a little more Christlike than the rest of the year. A friend emailed me a link to this song called Joy to Everyone. Check it out if you get a chance. I think you'll like it.

What I've been up to

I've been working on a few projects lately. Here's some of the partly finished projects:

An advent calendar. I still have to finish some of the ornaments, but other than that it's pretty much done.
Blocks. I found a few pieces of wood that my neighbors had set out for the brush and bulky pick-up (one man's trash is another's treasure, right?). So I cut the wood, sanded the blocks and still have to paint most of them. Rachel enjoys stacking them, but mostly ignores the unpainted ones, unless they're the ones I don't want her to touch because I still haven't finished sanding them . Lastly, we got out all our Christmas decorations (not that we have all that many) and put them up on Thursday and Friday. We still have a few things to finish up, but mostly our house is decorated. I love Christmas!
We have our little Charlie Brown 3 1/2 foot tree up on our console table so Rachel can't reach. She loves the tree, though, and whenever it's all lit up she goes and tries to climb up the table to get to the tree, then comes and finds me signing tree so I'll pick her up to look at the tree and she can try to pull off a few ornaments.
And see all those presents under the tree? The smaller ones are another project that I'm a little more than half way done with. Maybe after Christmas I'll show what was in them. If I remember.

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving to all! What a great day! A day to be thankful for all of our blessings. I am very blessed in so many ways. I am especially thankful for my family, near and far. Especially a wonderful husband whom I love very much, and a happy little girl. What blessings they are in my life.

We spent the day at my parents' house and enjoyed relaxing with the fam. Rachel had lots of fun outside in the puddles left over from some rain we got this morning.

Of course, she always loves playing with Reese.

And exploring every nook and cranny is another favorite pasttime of hers.

It was a good way to spend the day. Unfortunately by the end of the day Rachel was pooped and had a slight fever (she got some shots yesterday at the doctor). I'm sure she'll be feeling a lot better after a good long sleep tonight.
There is a lot to be thankful for (the gospel,family, friends, work, our home, our country, our freedoms,...) and it's good to have a day set aside to think about it with a little more emphasis than we usually do. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!

$$$$

I was just revisiting a website I enjoy, but haven't been to for a while, and thought these were appropriate for these days. Anyone want a bailout? :)