musings

work has been pretty quiet, so i've had a lot of time to sit and think... a dangerous past time... i know. i've been thinking that a year ago, i was taking the bar, pregnant, and about to start my clerkship. what feels like minutes later, a year has passed, my clerkship is winding down, and i have a seven-month old baby.

i am overwhelmed by a feeling of anticipation in my life right now. not anxiety, but excited anticipation. there is the more immediate anticipation, like the end of my clerkship tomorrow, our trip to california with randy's family on saturday, and another trip up to boise mid-august. but i also have a lot of long term anticipation right now... like becoming a full-time-stay-at-home mom. okay, now that i think about it, that's pretty much it. but everything that comes with that, too. and that's a lot. i have loved my clerkship, but i am so ready to be home full-time. it's time. madeleine is starting to notice a lot more when i'm gone and i'm feeling it a lot more myself.

all of this is mostly just me rambling, but included with my ramblings is a warning: i may have some extra time on my hands in the near future and i may be armed with lots of pictures from our upcoming trips. on the other hand, i may disappear for a little while as i recover from seven months of being a working mom. only time can tell. but either way, be warned...

wall e

it had me from the very beginning. as soon as i heard "out there. there's a world outside of yonkers," i knew that this would be a great movie. i am so glad that the hello dolly theme pervaded the movie. i really think that i may be hampered from objectively evaluating the movie because i was so enamored every time i heard hello dolly references and my body was flooded with endorphins from childhood memories.

we saw wall e last weekend and really enjoyed it. first of all, it was nice because we could take madeleine and she enjoyed it as well. obviously, she didn't get what was going on, but it wasn't a loud action movie that made her cry everytime something blew up and made loud noises. the movie reminded me of a pixar short more than their typical full-length features and felt like they were going back to the style that they started with - not a lot of talking, focus on unspoken interactions to build character relationships, etc.

in general, i really liked it and thought it was cute. my only complaint is that i felt like the animation got a little sloppy once they went to space. it started to feel more cartoony than computer animated. that's my only complaint. other than that, great movie.

happy pioneer day

madeleine's sitting on the floor next to me right now, happily playing with her toys as if nothing happened. as if she didn't get less than an hour and a half of napping in yesterday and still stay up until 9:30 and then wake up screaming inconsolably at 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:30, and 5:30 (and that's after a dose of tylenol after the 11:00 screamfest, figuring that she must not be feeling well because she's never like this). she's just lucky that 161 years ago, the pioneers picked the 24th of july to enter the valley so that i could have the state holiday off today and i don't have to go to work feeling like a zombie.

a week with grammy

we had a great week last week. last sunday night, we went to put madeleine to bed around 9:00 and she really just would not go to bed. it wasn't even that she was being that fussy, she just wouldn't go to sleep. we finally just got her out of bed and she spent the next hour and a half just rolling around on the ground with us and being hilarious. she was in a great mood.

my mother-in-law took some pictures of randy and me playing with madeleine. she loves it when we really get down and play with her. she's started belly laughing every once in a while and it's pretty fun to hear her really laugh like that.

this is a picture of madeleine with both of her grandmothers, right before we had to say goodbye to jeanie. we had such a great week with her. she was so sweet to come down and take care of madeleine so that randy could practice really hard. madeleine had a blast with her grammy and we were all spoiled rotten, as usual. she's so good to us. have i mentioned how much i love my in-laws?

yesterday, we went over to my aunt and uncle's pool and cooled off from the intense heat with my sister, audrey, and her family. we had such a fun afternoon and madeleine did much better this time, although she didn't change her facial expression much from the serious face you'll see below. it may have helped that it was so hot, so the water probably didn't seem so cold. also, the top foot of the pool was about ten or fifteen degrees warmer than the rest of the pool, and that's about the deepest she ever got while floating around. here are some pictures from the day:

farmer's market

madeleine and i just got back from a walk to the provo farmer's market, which is right by our house. i have to admit, i was pretty skeptical going into it because i stopped by one time last year and it was not too impressive. mostly terrible arts and crafts. but this morning i went and was surprised at how much good stuff they had.

i ended up buying a squash, sweet onion, and a couple large tomatoes to make into a vegetable casserole with my own zucchinis. i had my eye on several other things, but after a week with jeanie in town, our fridge is pretty well stocked right now. next week though, i intend to buy peaches, cherries, and some bread that looked absolutely amazing. the bread vendor had a lot of different flavors, all of which looked fabulous, but i'm thinking i'm going to get the asagio basil and make some grilled havarti, basil, tomato and honey sandwiches with it. mmmm... can't wait. there were also some amazing raspberry truffles. i don't know if i can justify those.

pencil in the date

randy is having his "sophomore" recital on saturday, september 6, 2008 at 9:30pm and you are all invited. pencil in the date now. there is technically the chance that it could get changed (he has to do a dry-run for some of the faculty a week before that he is less optimistic about than me), but plan on it.

temple

my mother-in-law (aka "saint jeanie") is in town to help watch madeleine so that randy can get some good practicing time in as he prepares for his recital in a month and a half. not only was she nice enough to watch madeleine all day yesterday, but she volunteered to watch her all evening as well so that randy and i could go to the temple together. the provo temple is closed for maintenance for most of this month, so we went to mount timpanogos, which made our time away even longer.


it was so nice to go to the temple. i always leave feeling like i've finally gotten to sit down and take a big breath and recharge a little before heading out to my busy life again. i feel like i haven't been in forever, and admittedly, it's been about a month, and even that was for a wedding, so it wasn't really the same as when i go to worship. i'm still getting used to the fact that we don't get to go every week anymore. i think it's funny that it gets harder to get away once you have children, but that is when you need the time to go and think and ponder and worship and feel the peace of the temple even more. isn't that how it is with most things in life?

madeleine pictures for the week

madeleine is moving all over the place now but still manages to get herself into positions that she can't quite get herself out of. randy managed to snap a shot of the one above.

this picture was taken right before the following occurrence: during the week, while i was gardening, i had brought madeleine outside with me and she was sitting in her blue bouncy chair that you've probably seen in many pictures. she loves to sit straight up in the chair now, just like she is in the picture, so we buckle her in to make sure she doesn't fall out the front. well, while i was weeding and had my back to her, i heard a thud and turned around to see her chair overturned in the grass and all you could see of madeleine was her two little hands sticking out the sides. it was pretty funny. i wish i had a picture of it, but opted to save her from the situation rather than getting the camera. she actually didn't cry at all and didn't seem phased by the experience. it probably scared me more than it scared her. i think we're done with that chair now.

she's sitting up completely on her own now, and rarely falls over. even when she does, it is a very controlled fall that looks like some sort of ab exercise.

new haircut and vegetables

i got a haircut yesterday. i know that it doesn't look all that different, but i am really happy with the cut. she took a lot of weight out of my hair, which is really nice for the summer. i'm feeling much better about my hair now. perhaps the best part of the haircut was the ten minute wash before she even got the scissors out. that was worth every penny that i paid for my haircut right there.

okay, i know that i keep talking about my garden and i really shouldn't be that obsessed with it, but for some reason i am seriously amazed by my garden. i'm not exaggerating, and i think that amazed is the appropriate word in this situation. randy just laughs at me, but i can't get over it. take a look at my zucchini transformation:

this picture of my two zucchini plants was taken on june 28th, 13 days ago. i thought they were huge then.

this was taken today. look at them! they're HUGE!

i think that the leaves are what really amaze me. i was trying to take a picture of how big the leaves are and decided that the best way to emphasize their size was to have something in the picture to compare it to. the only thing that i had around was my hand.

i had my first harvest today (besides the basil that i have picked a couple times). two zucchini. i promptly grated one, cooked it up in a frying pan, and topped it with parmesan cheese, ala my aunt elna, as a side for my lunch. it doesn't get much better than that. now if i could just have some tomatoes to go with it...

iPhone!

after an entire month of waiting and excited anticipation, randy is at last the proud owner of a new iPhone. birthday and christmas presents came early this year. we'll just have to wrap it up again come those dates.

getting a new iPhone was no simple task. we decided early this week that we would go to the at&t store to pick out a new phone for me so that it would speed up the process come friday morning. when we got there, we found out that we could switch me to at&t then (sorry to my entire family, who are all still on t-mobile) and then randy would be able to switch on friday, so we decided to do it that way. i have a pretty new red phone, by the way. while we were switching, randy was casually asking about the iPhone and the guy who was helping us told us that over 5,000 people had already called about it. i'm a little skeptical about how he came up with that number, but we understood the general message: lots of people want this thing. he also suggested that randy camp out overnight on thursday if he wanted to get one on friday. randy had planned on getting there early on friday morning, but after the at&t employee's comments, he was questioning his tactics.

fortunately, my cousin david, who is also good friends with randy, also wanted to get a new iPhone, and agreed to camp out with randy. it's a good thing, too, because madeleine and i were not up for camping out and randy wouldn't have done it alone.

david and randy headed over to the at&t store at university mall around 8:30pm last night and arrived none too soon. they had about 40 people in line in front of them and as soon as they got there, the line really started getting long. here is their set up in line:

they took movies to watch on their iPods and david's macbook, and just happened to have a spot right in front of a power outlet (you can see it in the picture, next to the tree). randy had had the foresight to bring a power-strip as well, so he was pretty popular with the people around him.

45 minutes of sleep, but almost 12 hours later, the at&t store opened at 8:00 am. they were taking people in 8 at a time and they soon found out that the store had only received 42 iPhones and the 16G phones sold out really fast. even though they had both planned on getting 16G iPhones, randy and david ended up getting 8G ones because they were the only ones left. by the time they got their phones, there were only 5 iPhones left at all. phew! i would have had a very sad husband if he would have had to wait for his phone to arrive in a couple weeks. fortunately, he got one this morning and arrived home a very tired, but VERY excited randy.

i have to admit, it's pretty fun to have around.

bread

to whomever left two delicious loaves of great harvest bread on our doorstep without leaving a note: thank you! what a fun and tasty surprise for me. i wish that i knew who to thank in a more personal way. perhaps you don't even read my blog... but thank you, nonetheless.

pictures from the last couple weeks

here are some pictures from the last couple weeks:

madeleine has hit the stage where every time we check on her in her crib, she is in a different position. it's pretty funny to see the various positions she ends up in. this was one of the more normal ones.





madeleine's eyes light up when we eat our cereal out of these bowls. she reaches and tries to grab on to them any way she can. we finally just gave her one to play with one morning. we put it on as a lovely hat, but she wasn't so interested in that.



she was much happier to have it off her head and inspect it closely.







helping mom with the laundry.



getting ready to swim at the family fourth of july pool party.



all greased up with no place to go.



of course, as soon as i finally got her covered in sunscreen and went to put her in the pool, it was a little too cold for her and she hated it. there was much screaming. she was much happier in the hot tub, but even that didn't last too long and she went down for a nap for most of the remainder of the pool party. all that effort for nothing.





madeleine showed up wearing the same outfit as my cousin, ainsley. they were born a week apart and are the same size and everything. they looked like little twins from a distance.





randy having fun in the pool.

rockin' out to rachmaninoff

this is madeleine, bouncing around to randy practicing.