Independence Day

A few months back, my sister-in-law described her 8 month old daughter this way: “She doesn’t crawl yet, but she can get where she’s going”. At the time, I nodded knowingly… but inside I was thinking “Huh? How is that even possible?”

Now, now I understand.

Mackenzie recently made the discovery that rolling could get her closer to a distant toy. Now as soon as she hits the ground, she rolls and scoots, and scootches and reaches and twists and lunges and yes, she gets where she’s going without crawling.

Time to Mackenzie-proof the house.

Happy Birthday Hunk

Err… I mean “Scott”.

We had a great day yesterday, celebrating both Easter and Scott’s birthday. He woke up to a nice pile of presents on the table with a special Big Boggle Birthday Game created by yours truly. I “boggled” words to describe Scott with the first letters spelling out H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y S-C-O-T-T and he had to find them (and other words) to rack up points before being allowed to open his presents.

In case you don’t know Scott, let me reassure you that this was fun for him. A word game first thing in the morning is a treat, not torture. Just thought I’d clear that up.

We also had a fun easter dinner with friends. We ate Hawaiian haystacks plus the homemade roasted garlic hummus and whole wheat pita (pitas? pitae?) Scott and I brought. The pita were easy to make and I was thrilled with the results. They were only 3/4 whole wheat this time so I’ll doctor the recipe and post it when I can pull off 100% whole wheat. But, I digress… back to Scott’s birthday.

In honor of this special day, I hereby present: Five Facts about Scott Bean!

1) He gives me French pedicures (including on the night before we got married!):

2) He and I share a love for chemistry, and spent many wonderful romantic moments hours years studying chemistry together at BYU:

(Photo from when we were in Dover, England. They call pharmacists “chemists” there.)

3) He is the most fun person to be around. Ever. This is the time I got beached on a fountain in London, and we were both laughing so hard it took him a good long while before he hauled me up to sit next to him:

4) He is very driven. My first indication of this was the fact that he had to ask me out on three separate occasions before I finally said yes. My second indication was that on our first date, he wooed me with abandon. He showed up in a tux and took me to the nicest restaurant in Provo (and ate whole wheat tortillas and salsa as his only means of sustenance for like a month in order to afford it):

5) He owns a particular outfit that he knows I love on him, and he also knows I love it when he gels his hair. So when he showed up for class one morning when we were at BYU wearing this outfit, with his hair gelled and a huge grin on his face… I *knew* that he was going to propose that day. I dropped over $50 worth of glassware in my Organic chemistry lab because I kept looking over at him and getting all jittery.

When I was in labor with Mackenzie, he had to run home for a bit and he came back with his hair gelled, wearing my favorite outfit. Just to give me a boost. How thoughtful is that?

So if you see him wearing that outfit one day, you can be sure he’s making me smile. Actually, that’s a pretty safe bet any day of the year. Scott is always concerned about my happiness, and I love that he’s also a great father, son, brother, friend, etc. Happy Birthday Babe!

Due Date!

But she’s not so much doing anything yet.

Hope you’re having a Merry Christmas!

My, what a beautiful tree!

We decided my belly photos would be best taken next to our gorgeous Christmas tree. I think it looks slimming… hehe. Well, at least a bit distracting.

First, let me just tell you how thrilled I am about our Christmas tree.

I grew up with fresh Christmas trees. Some of my favorite memories of growing up involve going to the mountains and cutting down the tree with my family, smelling the tree all month when you walk past it in the house, and decorating it with homemade ornaments and lots of lights.

In recent years, my family’s tree has been in the neighborhood of 15 feet and we’ve decorated it with photos instead of just traditional ornaments. As you can imagine, the cutting down of such a tree and hauling it back to the house, not to mention anchoring it to the wall, decorating it, etc. makes for quite an adventure.

This year, with nieces and nephews and yellow labs in tow, my family drove up to our favorite tree farm (the one at the very very end of a very long and winding road) and hauled home four trees. Two for brothers, one for the office, and one huge one for my parents’ house.

This Christmas is my very first one away from my family and for some reason, missing out on the Christmas tree excitement made me pretty homesick. I thought if we could recreate a similar even here in Columbus (driving to the mountains, cutting down our own tree, wrangling it onto the roof of the car, decorating it with photos, etc.)… it would make me miss home less. Well, eventually I came to my senses and realized Ohio doesn’t have mountains. And I’m very pregnant and no good at all at wrangling Christmas trees in my current state.

So Scott and I started our own tradition: We took a coupon to a parking lot where there was a makeshift tree stand set up. The trees looked pretty pathetic, unfortunately, but we found a gorgeous one lying on its side waaaay in the back. Apparently it had been deemed too beautiful to sell.

I had made sure we had plastic for the top of the car, heavy duty rope, etc. in preparation for tree wrangling. Instead, we handed a nice man our coupon and he baled our tree, used a piece of rope he had on hand to tie it to the roof of our car in less than a minute with a simple knot, and sent us on our way. I was in shock, and even felt a bit deprived due to the lack of wrangling involved in the process.

However, when we got the tree set up in our family room, and I started decorating it, all was right with the world again. I pulled out the box of homemade ornaments my mom gave me when I got married, and I explained each one to Scott (such a good sport he is!). I also pulled out the ornaments I cross-stitched myself in anticipation of our first Christmas tree together. We added lots of colorful ball ornaments similar to the ornaments Scott grew up with, and voila! A tree worthy of being the backdrop for belly photos.