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We all suspected this... but now we know it's true. I am a genius.

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Happy Anniversary to Us

Happy 7th Anniversary Mike! I love you.

Happy Thanksgiving...

We had a fun Thanksgiving holiday and hope all of you out there in internet land did too. I took our camera and specifically planned on carefully documenting everything so I would have some fun pictures to post, but I never even got it out at the Stubbs' house and only got it out twice at the Kammerman house! We started off by visiting some long-lost Green cousins in Bountiful which was a wonderful rest from the car trip. Then we headed down to Provo for dinner and birthday party for our friend Brady. We then stayed one night at my parents house before we joined the Stubbs clan down in Orem. We relaxed there for a few days with them, and even visited BYU campus with Missy & Claire-bear before heading back to my parents house to help prepare thanksgiving dinner. We had a wonderful thanksgiving dinner (we made wayyy to much food). Today we finished up our holiday with a trip Thanksgiving Point Farms and decorated gingerbread houses with my sis and her 5 kids. Ian had lots of fun seeing both sets of grandparents and playing with cousins. Eliza definitely bonded with her cousins Claire (not pictured..) and Kamry. Hope to see you all again soon!

Our Little Genius

Well, I am a very proud Mom. Of course, every Mom thinks that their kid is the brightest but I realllly think Ian is a smart one. He is able to write his name now which is so neat. I realize that he has the advantage of a short name, his cousins Samantha and Savannah and his Kammmerman cousins may have a little more trouble learning to write their names. Now if we can transfer this smartness to other areas of his life... the other day I caught him trying to drink from the soap filled dirty dish scrubber. Some days I'm not sure what is going through his head!

Vrrrroooommmm

Here is Ian on Mike's new toy. It's a 2007 Honda Rebel. Mike and his fellow students were trying to determine if Mike was going through a mid-life crisis lately, but determined that since he was only drinking 3 Dr Peppers per week and plans on using the motorcycle as a form of transportation and not planning a solo cross country camping trip with it, he isn't going through a crisis. I am relieved. Don't worry, he promises to wear his helmet and leather jacket every time he rides.

Testing... One Two Three...

Mike has his comprehensive exams today, Tuesday and Wednesday. It is quite important that he passes these so that he can go on to defend his theses, graduate and hopefully get a job. So everyone remember him this week as he tries to regurgitate all the info he has stuffed in his brain!

Fall

We went for a walk up city creek trail last Monday for family night. We went with our neighbors, including Ian's little best friend. They are so funny together, you can notice all the dirt and leaves on their clothes. They had a blast finding rocks, sticks, leaves, seeds, anything dirty and anything that they could throw into the creek. It got dark a lot earlier than we imagined it would and had to hurry back to the car. But it's almost impossible to hurry those two because they wanted to investigate every tree and side trail the whole way back.







In other news Eliza turns 7 months old next week and has always hated food. She gags on the baby food as soon as it touches her tongue. She has been known to spit out every little bit of food given to her. As soon as she sees the spoon coming she clamps her little mouth shut and turns away. Most little babies like the pureed fruits, but nothing was good enough for her. For the last couple weeks I decided just to give her table foods, little bits of what we were eating so she could play with them and just get used to having food and flavors in her mouth. I think it must be working because yesterday she actually swallowed a few bites of rice cereal! I am glad because her eating foods takes a little pressure off me so that I might be able to leave her longer than an hour at a time without worrying that she will starve! Plus she is looking really tall and thin lately, she weighed 14#14ozs at her 6 month check up while Ian was over 16# at his 6 month mark. So hopefully she will eat a few bites today as well!

Look! It's twins??

I've been working on scanning all the Kammerman family slides onto our computer for a month now. It's had it's ups and downs but Grandpa Green keeps encouraging me so I haven't given up yet! On monday I came across this slide of my sister, Tiff, when she was about 5 years old. I couldn't get over the resemblence between her and Ian! It was like looking at Ian with pig tails. I'm not sure if it is just the fact that she looks incredibly tired in it but she really does look like Ian here!

Redfish Lake

We had a great time in Stanley last weekend. It was cold and a little snowy but extremely beautiful. Thanks to mark and jan for driving us and putting up with the screaming children and their difficult mother!

Whoops

I found a link on Nancy's page for new backgrounds for blogs and I was excited. I wanted to "pimp" up my blog as my friend Shamae would say.

But I didn't read the fine print carefully so I didn't understand that the new background would erase all my "widgets." And I didn't know what a widget was. So the new background erased my kids' birthday countdowns, my list of books I'm reading and my flower personality link. I am sad, but I do like this background. So maybe it was worth it.

New family member

My sister Tiffany had a baby recently and I wanted to post his adorable picture. His name is Casey and he is a cutie!

ok this is weird..

I got the link for this quiz off of Carrie's webpage (thanks) and was completely surprised by the results.


Which Twilight novel character are you?

You're Carlisle Cullen - You are very intelligent and have high moral standards. You truly care about people and helping them. Your knack for solving problems and pleasing two warring sides makes you unique and a desirable friend to have, even if sometimes you have to tell people what they might not like hearing. Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

So has anybody who's read the books agree that this is who I am most like? (besides the fact that he is a male and I am a female)

IKEA UKEA We ALLKEA

I was first introduced to IKEA just over 2 years ago in Fairbanks, Alaska. Our last summer in Alaska we moved into a small cabin off of Farmers Loop Road. It was a one room cabin with a loft for the sleeping area. It was completely furnished in IKEA furniture. I really liked the look of the cabin with the IKEA furniture, really clean and contemporary. I worried about how it would hold up to the toddler test, and I had every right to worry. The first problem was a shaggy white carpet. I was scared that we would stain it so we kept blankets over the top of it. Somehow, even with the carpet covered, we managed to get white shaggy fur all over our clothes, and all over our toddler. Annoyance number two was a really awkward shaped piece of storage furniture that wasn't good for storing much of anything. It was wooden with a velvety black lid (see photo above) We soon found out it was a fragile piece of furniture and promptly broke the lid lifting mechanism. We also had an incident involving a chicken enchilada and a kitchen chair cushion. We could not get the stain out and eventually asked my sister who lived nearest to an IKEA drive to San Diego and buy a replacement cushion for us. There were many odd shaped furniture pieces there and the whole experience left me with a slight dislike of IKEA furniture. On a recent trip to utah we visited the new IKEA store there. It was huge! And we loved it. They still have plenty of weird pieces of furniture but we came away fully satistfied in our purchases of 2 kitchen rugs, a bathroom rug, kids plates and cups, a bedroom lamp and dish scrubber. And in the end I think I would even recommend their stuff to friends.

mmmm carbonated yogurt!

So back in my freshman year about BYU (in 1997) I discovered something wonderful at the BYU Creamery. It was called sparkling yogurt. I loved it! It was fizzy and tasty and all things good. But they stopped selling it after a while. Then I discovered their carbonated frozen yogurt and I can't even describe to you how good it was. They sold it experimentally one summer in the "Sugar and Spice" store in the Cougareat. I was working on campus at the library that summer and I bought it during my lunch break almost everyday. It was so wonderful. I was severely disappointed when they didn't continue selling it during the subsequent semesters. Through my college career I would occasionally cross paths with the carbonated yogurt.... the senior graduation party, a food science class, etc. But recently I have found a version of it here. In Pocatello. In Fred Meyers of all places. Yoplait is selling carbonated yogurt called Fizzix in tube form and it's great! I tried freezing it and it didn't retain the level of fizziness I love so I will have to keep it as regular yogurt. But it's still really tasty and brings back some great memories...

Happy Birthday Kid

Last week our favorite son had a birthday. The big number 3. He has been talking about his birthday for weeks now and was so excited to open presents and have a birthday party. We didn't invite nearly as many kids as he wanted for his party but in the end he didn't seem to mind. They all had fun playing in the water, eating snowcones and watermelon and opening presents.
He still is singing "Happy Birthday to Ian"

Tagged

Jobs I've held:
1. Health Education Consultant
2. Government Information Reference Clerk
3. Fry Girl in the Cougareat

Places to go for a weekend getaway:
1. Redfish Lake in Stanley, Idaho
2. Yellowstone National Park
3. Lava Hot Springs

Movies I can watch over and over:
1. Pride and Prejudice (any version)
2. Bringing up Baby
3. Harry Potter
4. A Knight's Tale

Guilty Pleasures:
1. Chips
2. Homemade Cookie Dough
3. Sleep
4. Reading a book while pretending to play with the kids

Places I've lived:
1. Gladstone, OR
2. Fairbanks, AK
3. Provo, UT
4. Pocatello, ID

What were likely the 1st things you thought of when you saw your significant other for the first time?
1. "His brown sweater looks like a Weezer sweater."
2. "I like his glasses."
3. "He's cute."

Places I've been on Vacation:
1. North of the Arctic Circle
2. Denali National Park
3. Mesa Verde in Colorado
4. San Fransisco

Favorite foods:
1. Pasta with Alfredo
2. Pizza with Pineapple
3. Guacamole
4. Zucchini and Yellow Squash cooked in Olive Oil

If in a "jam" with your spouse, what tactics do you use to get out of the doghouse?:
1. Apologize
2. ???
3. Come on, I'm the perfect wife. I could never do anything wrong!

Websites I visit (ALMOST daily):
1. Blogs
2. Gmail
3. not much else....
4.

Places I'd rather be right now:
1. Somewhere cold
2. With Mike
3. Camping
4. Oregon

Who sent this to me:
Nance

Now I get to pick 4 other blog buddies to do this "survey":
1. Julie
2. Jessica
3. Shamae
4. Mike

Something else...

My new hobby lately is sewing baby slings. It took me a couple of tries but I finally figured out how to make them. We love our baby sling that someone made us when we lived in Fairbanks and everybody always asks me where we got it because they see Eliza sleep in it through all 3 hours of church. This is a picture of the 4th successful one I've made, I've given all the others away. Making slings is a lot more apartment friendly than quilting so I will have to keep this hobby up for at least another year.
And here's a cute updated picture of the stinkers...

Update...

My wonderful husband finally had a day off of work last week and volunteered to babysit the kids while I went and saw the Harry Potter movie by myself. He is amazing, Ian refused to nap and Eliza refused to take the bottle but he was still smiling by the time I got home. I really enjoyed my alone time, something I never get when it's just me and the kids. It was kind of weird sitting by myself in the theater. I really enjoyed the movie and tried to forget every little detail they changed or left out so I could enjoy the movie more. Now I am anxiously awaiting the copy of the newest book Jan mailed us. Mike and I read the first 6 Harry Potter books out loud together so I feel a little guilty reading it by myself but I just don't think I can wait until fire season is over!

Happy Harry Potter Day

I don't know if any of you have noticed the Harry Potter Countdown that I have had on my Blog for the past year now. I am a big Harry Potter fan and today the countdown for the movie has finally finished! But with Mike gone firefighting down in the Oneida Narrows, I don't know when I will be able to see the movie. I have considered taking the kids to the drive-in but I am a little nervous to do that by myself. So someone will have to let me know how good it is while I anxiously wait for fire season to end!

smiles

Whew! I haven't had a spare second to blog in a long time. With Mike working fulltime and the kids being night owls I don't get much of a break to sit at the computer. But I wanted to post this cute picture of their smiles. Ian is pulling a funny face here but it is still cute.

Could they be related?

So I thought it was funny that we have pictures of both our kids at the same age with this weird hand position. Neither one was posed! As their mother, I still think they are cute even with the weird hand thing.

Happy Birthday Eliza

I just wanted to post this cute picture of 8 day old Eliza and 2 1/2 year old Ian. Aren't they cute together? I found an 8 day old picture of Ian and they look exactly alike! I couldn't believe it! So she may lose her beautiful black hair and turn blond just like him. I am getting lots of rest thanks to Jan and my mom, they have been huge helps with Ian. He is adjusting really well, he doesn't pay too much attention to her right now but does ask to hold her every now and then. He does get upset that I can't pick him up right now because of my stitches but other than that he has been an angel. Eliza sleeps more than Ian ever did, even as a newborn. She is eating well and gaining weight and only has a little bit of jaundice. We all love holding her and taking care of her.

6 more days....

Only six more days until baby number 2 comes.... I can't believe it's already time! I've already packed up the maternity clothes I borrowed from a friend and am just wearing my same few shirts over and over again. My hospital bag is mostly packed. The car seat is in the car. The crib is set up and the clothes are in the drawers. I still need to mop my kitchen floor. But maybe the baby won't notice all of Ian's food spilled on it...I have one more doctors appointment today before the big day on Monday. My biggest worries are my recovery and hoping Ian adjusts well to being a big brother.

March already!

So February disappeared, I'm not sure where it went or what I was doing during that whole month! I have composed in my head tons of different blogs since my last one in January, and each one was interesting, witty, and sure to grab at least 20 comments each. But somehow for whatever reason none of them ever got written. I was going to blog about my neighbor commenting on our living room photos that I've aged a lot and Mike hasn't changed. That was a sad story. I was going to blog about our potty training successes with Ian, he's such a great kid. There was always a good pregnancy/getting ready for baby number two blog to write. And maybe if I stretched it, I could find something interesting to say about doing our taxes. But instead, I decided to just post my usual cute pictures of Ian. He loves to have his picture taken when his mouth is full of grapes. He also loves to help out in the kitchen. One day I couldn't get him to get off the potty, he had been sitting on it for over an hour and I thought that was more than enough time! So I started making juice and he jumped up and ran to come help me. So now I use cooking or helping in the kitchen as bribery. It works better than candy!

Happy Snow Day

We finally got a little bit of snow, about 1 1/2 inches or so. So on Saturday, our family went out to play in the 5 degree weather. We had fun tromping through the snow covered sage brush and pulling Ian on the sled. Ian loves to eat the snow and doesn't seem to notice the freezing cold weather. I think he must take after Mike!

Happy New Year

We had a fun vacation visiting all sorts of relatives in Utah. Thanks to both of our parents for housing and feeding us the whole time. Ian had tons of fun and wonders why we can't go see all of his cousins all the time any more. We did lots of fun things with them, like shopping, playing trains, horseback riding, watching puppy movies and opening presents! Happy New Year!