Happy December

I realize it's been a month since my last post. Sorry about that. There wasn't a whole lot to blog about for most of the month of November. Not that I only blog when I have something interesting to say...
We had a great Thanksgiving. My parents came out to visit us and it was a lot of fun. Eden was sad to see Grammy and Grumpy (and Prince) go. She told me she wanted to go with them. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the week, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
I'm having trouble getting pictures and videos to upload today so you'll have to be content with my promise to post things when I get a chance. Just wanted to let you all know we're still alive. I'll try to be better about blogging this month. At least until we go to Utah on the 19th....

A couple tags

I have a couple different tags I've been meaning to do lately and haven't gotten around to so I thought I would take care of both on them on one post today.

Eight T.V. Shows I Love to Watch:
1. The Office
2. That's really the only show I make time to watch.
3. I don't really have anything else I love to watch on tv.
4. Sometimes we watch America's Funniest Home Videos. Eden calls it the 'Silly Show'
5. Oh, I do like to watch reruns of the Cosby Show. And Friends
6. I usually watch 'Max and Ruby' with Eden, although I wouldn't say I love it.
7. I sometimes watch football and basketball with Andy, although I wouldn't say I love it either.
8. I just remembered, I love to watch General Conference.

Eight Favorite Places to Eat:
1. My parent's house/Andy's parent's house
2. Olive Garden
3. Newman's Pasta
4. Morelia
5. Sweet Tomatoes
6. Cold Stone
7. Disneyland :)
8. Anywhere I don't have to cook!

Eight Things that Happened Yesterday:
1. I went to the library
2. I drank some yummy hot chocolate
3. I made yummy pasta for dinner with Andy's favorite biscuits
4. I started a new book
5. I got to wake up to my Eden alarm clock which goes off later than my regular alarm clock
6. Andy and I read trivia questions to each other
7. I pet the cat
8. I ate 2 Little Debbie oatmeal cream cookies

Eight Things I Look Forward To:
1. Weekends
2. Eden being potty trained
3. Christmas
4. Living in Utah
5. Bedtimes
6. Vacations
7. Monthly book club
8. Thanksgiving

Eight Things I Love About the Fall:
1. All the pretty colors of foliage
2. Cool air
3. The urge I get to buy school supplies
4. I have an increased desire to bake.
5. Sweaters
6. Turning on our fireplace
7. Snuggling up with a good book
8. Soup and fresh bread

Eight Things on My Wish List:
1. More time to scrapbook and sew
2. A non-primary calling
3. A baby
4. A new wardrobe
5. A finished basement
6. A piano
7. A nice tropical vacation
8. I want to live in Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland

For my other tag, I was to open my fourth picture folder and post the 4th picture in that folder. Here it is: This is Eden and "Grendpeppy" Bruce at the Betty Ford Memorial Gardens, which is next to the Gerald Ford birthsite in Omaha. We took it this past July.

I tag anyone who feels like doing either of these things.

Cookie, Cookie, Cookie starts with C

Last week we had an evening where we were all home and had nowhere to go. We decided cookie dough sounded really yummy and if there was leftover, we could make some cookies. Eden had a new cute apron Grammy made for her and I had a new cute apron Grammy made to match Eden's and Andy had a fairly new apron Grammy made for him to BBQ in so we donned our aprons and broke out the mixer (and the camera).

Eden loves to stand on a stool and help me do things in the kitchen. This is usually not helpful to me, but she loves it. She helped me scoop out all the dry ingredients and insisted on licking her finger to taste them all (it turns out she's not a fan of baking soda). She wanted her turn to crack an egg into the bowl (or as she says, "Bang it on the table and squish it in the bowl- which is exactly what she did). Then Andy and I picked egg shell out of the batter.

After that she got bored and decided to do her second favorite thing in the kitchen- wipe things off. She wiped off the counters and the floor and the table and me and the cat...

Once we were ready to pour the chocolate chips in, she was interested again. It was time to snitch cookie dough! She pulls it right off the mixer. You may notice the two packages of cookies in the background of this picture. Those cookies aren't homemade. It's totally different.

The dough turned out great. Oh, the cookies did too. Even with all our dough tasting we ended up with about 50 cookies. And sadly, they're about all gone. Good things never last...

Halloween Night

It's been a little while since we posted, but we're back online again and I have a few posts to do in the next few days. To begin with: Halloween. Eden wanted to dress up like Olivia, a pig from one of her favorite books. She didn't go for the pig snout and ears but she still looks adorable. I thought it turned out really well. Thanks again, Grammy, for making her cute dress. It was a big hit. For those of you who have read the Olivia books, you can kind of get an idea what Eden's personality is like. And she does know at least 40 Very Loud Songs.

We weren't sure how Eden would take to trick or treating so we talked about it for a few days in advance so we could prepare her. She was so excited when Halloween actually came she spent all day asking when she could go trick or treating. She ran up to every house we visited and held out her bag for candy and always said 'Thank you'. Then she would run up to us and tell us she wanted to go to another house. We were out for about an hour and she raked in the candy. She didn't want to take her dress off last night and she was disappointed when we told her we couldn't go again today. By the way, does anyone know how to get a two year old off a sugar high? She's been buzzing all day.

On another note, we finally got some furniture for our living room. We actually got it about a month ago but I just took the pictures. Here's our sofa and part of the love seat. We don't have pictures hanging up yet or a coffee table, but for those of you who wanted to see them, here they are. They aren't quite as pink as they look in the pictures. We're really happy to have them.

In Our Kitchen

Our kitchen is one of the main areas of our house and a lot of stuff happens in there. Here's what's been going on in our kitchen this week:

Eden decided to feed the cat. By herself. She's very independent. It's very messy sometimes. Oh, and just so you don't wonder, the "beer" you can see in the upper left corner of this picture is actually "root beer". So don't worry...

The Suspect

The Crime (with the victim, who is getting fat)

While we talked about the letter D this week, Eden became aware of doughnuts and wanted to try one. So this is what we had for breakfast Saturday morning. YUMMY!

If you didn't already know, I babysit for some friends of ours during the day (Brian and Yohanna Vernon for those of you who know them). Sweet Mia is so fun to watch and Eden loves to play with her. The other day she got Mia to laugh and I grabbed the camera to see if I could catch some of the giggles on tape. What cute little girls!

Yesterday I baked a pie. Razzleberry, fresh out of the oven with whipped cream melting all over the top. VERY YUMMY. In fact, I think I'll go have some leftovers. Hope you all have a great week in your kitchens!

3 Confessions... maybe 4

1. I might have recently watched the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Wait! that's not the confession part!) movie for the first time. And I might have cried in it. But just once. or maybe two little times.

2. I don't like the song I am a Child of God. Gasp! I realize I may be the only person in the world who feels this way. I don't think this makes me a bad person. I just realized after about the 9,000th time I had played in in primary that I find the music a little boring. And overdone. But I still taught it to Eden and when she sings it, I don't mind.

3. I also watched the Land Before Time a few years ago and I cried in it too. (that's two confessions in one!) But to save some face, I will say I have not seen any of the sequels to the Land Before Time. What are they up to now, 15?

4. I have an irrational fear of refrigerator biscuits. You know the ones I'm talking about- they're cans that have paper on the outside you twist off and they 'pop' open and you get the dough to make biscuits and breadsticks and stuff. Who came up with that idea? I cannot open things that I know are going to blow up in my face. I've tried and I just can't do it. Don't get me wrong, I still buy them. But I only use them when Andy is home to open them. I think he finds it an endearing quality of mine. Well, I hope so anyway.

Look at that. 5 confesssions. I feel so much better. You should try it too. Especially YOU, Candice, Katie, Courtney, Mandy and Jessie :) Five confessions, five people. Speaking of five...
Eden loves headbands. Today she was wearing 5 of them. The only way I could get her to let me take her picture is I promised her I would post it on the blog. Here you go Eden.

Look out world! Eden is TWO!

Eden had her second birthday on Tuesday and we decided to take her to the zoo for the day. We had heard Omaha has a really really good zoo and we wanted to check it out. It was a lot of fun and we ended up spending more time there than we were expecting to. We were all pretty worn out by the time we got to the car to head home but it was worth the trip. Eden loved all the animals and had a lot of fun. Here are some of the neat things we saw at the zoo.

In the Jungle

If you are interested, you can go to the Omaha Zoo website and find a webcam to watch these penguins play. They were a lot of fun.

The zoo has a lot of different gorillas to look at. Eden liked the "gorilla-la's" a lot but they were moving a lot and I had a hard time getting a picture of one. WE were sitting on a bench resting by an outdoor cage with a gorilla and when we weren't looking, he came right up behind us and startled us. I didn't get a good picture before he left, but you can see how big he is. It was pretty cool. I think he liked Eden. That's the gorilla on the left. :)

Eden is TWO: Part 2

Every time we asked Eden what she wanted for her birthday, she would say, "Balloons, cake, hats, balloons, cupcakes, balloons..." so we surprised her in the morning with balloons all over her chair and the stairs and the floor. We also baked her a cake with pink frosting and what she calls "sparkles" all over it (they're flower shaped sprinkles). We got party hats with "Doa d'Sploa" on them (translation: Dora the Explorer). I guess we could have stopped there and she would have been happy. However, she's our sweet little girl and we couldn't help spoiling her a little bit more. Every gift was a hit (and thanks to the relatives for helping spoil her) but the icing on the cake, so to speak, was her own little kitchen (which I don't have a good picture of right now). She got some food to go with it and I gave her the dishes I had used in my kitchen when I was a little girl (which are amazingly all still intact and are not missing any pieces, despite them being 25 years old). She loves to play with it and I've been fed more "meals" today than I can count. It keeps her quiet and entertained. I think I'm going to enjoy this kitchen as much as she does.
She's still our Eden girl. We tried to take her milestone picture and these are what we got:

We love our Eden girl! There's never a dull moment at our house, thanks to her. Every day is fun and we're so glad she's a part of our family. What would we do without our sweetheart?

Eden Sings

A few weeks ago I took this video of Eden singing and forgot to post it on the blog. She is starting to learn how to carry a tune and it's fun to listen to her. She spent a good portion of this Sunday singing this song. Eden loves nursery in our ward and each week they sing this song to get singing time started. They name all the kids in the nursery and Eden talks about some the kids now that she knows their names. It's pretty clear but in case you don't understand, here's the transcript:

Heeere we are together in our nursery

There's Jenna and Destiny and.... Eden

Heeere we are together in our nursery

September 11- A Remembrance

Today is that fateful day when people put their flags at half mast in remembrance of things past. That's right. 29 years ago today, Andy was born. Happy Birthday Sweetie! Andy took a vacation day today so he could stay home from work, but he had a conference to go to until 1pm anyway. We're happy to have him home this afternoon and evening. He' s such a great guy he stayed up until 10:00 last night baking cookies to take to work for his birthday.

I just have to take a moment and brag about what a great guy Andy is. He's funny and sweet and patient and kind. He's a great daddy and Eden loves to be with him. He puts his all into everything he does. He loves his job and is hard working and honest. He's strong, but gentle. He's a worthy priesthood holder and a great family man. He's an excellent bug squasher and he never complains when I have odd jobs for him to do. He takes care of me when I'm sick (like right now) and is always thinking about others. He's always willing to sacrifice what he wants for what others want. He knows when to be serious and when to have fun and I always love to be around him. This list could go on and on. How did I get to be lucky enough to get him to fall in love with me? I'll never know, but I'm glad he did! Happy Birthday!

Curly Shirley

Eden had her hair in twisty pigtails the other day and when we took them out at night her hair was curly. It looked so cute I had to take some pictures. Eden calls herself Curly Shirley when she sees herself like this. I can't believe how old she looks in these pictures (especially the second one). I can hardly believe she isn't even two yet!




For those of you who always ask what funny things Eden has said lately (and you know I can never remember them all) I have created a list of Eden-isms on the right side of the blog. I'll try to keep it updated with the latest quotes from our wee one. There's never a dull moment when she's around.

Car Wash

I've had a few people ask me to post more pictures of our house so I took a couple pictures last weekend while Andy and Eden were washing the car. Eden proved to be more fun to take pictures of so I ended up with more pictures of her than of the house. She was also a challenge because if I got close enough, she tried to get me wet. I should have put her in her swimsuit for this endeavor...

Anyhow, I got a few pictures of the house too. I realized I didn't take any pictures inside the house though. Those will have to wait for another post. Back in June while I was in Utah we had a HUGE storm blow through Omaha. Andy was at home that day and called to tell me about it right after it happened and I'm SO glad I wasn't here for it. Our bishop said he's lived here for 11 years and that was the worst storm he's seen so it's comforting to know that isn't normal weather. I don't believe it was an actual tornado, but it blew over fences and power lines and stop lights and flooded our neighborhood. It also hailed really hard. We live on a bit of a hill so we didn't have anyone in front of us or behind us for shelter. We had all the screens on the back of our house ripped from the windows and the hail broke one of the basement windows. We also had the hail punch holes in the framing around the windows. It also did some damage to our roof and slid our a/c unit off it's pad and damaged the side of it. A lot of other houses had even more damage, so we're thankful that this is all we had to deal with. If you look at the pictures from the back of our house, you can see our screens hanging off some of the windows. We're in the process of getting everything put back together. Thankfully our home owners insurance will cover most of the damage, but it is still crazy to think our house isn't even a year old and it is getting a new roof and new windows. Gotta love the Midwest!

Do you want milk or water? Ummm, juice.

Something Eden said back in December. It's still funny.

One of the many things we really love about Eden is how funny she is. Some of this is unintentional. However, she really has a sense of humor and she knows when she's being funny. These pictures were taken back in May. We were eating at Culver's one day (mmmmm.... frozen custard :) and she was in one of her silly moods so she started making every face she knows to get us to laugh. Andy's parents and my mom were there too and she had us all laughing for quite a while. Fortunately, Sha-sha had her camera and snapped some pictures. She still makes faces like this once in a while but she's already moved on to bigger and better things so I'm glad we captured this moment.

You'll notice the lovely 'hairstyle' she's sporting. This is a common look for Eden. We call it "I had pigtails earlier today, but I pulled them out." I think she does it on purpose, just because she knows it enhances the goofy factor.

Enjoy :)

Okay, and I had to throw this one in too. We've trained her well. Any time she sees the U emblem, she yells "GO UTES!" We're so proud.

More about Utah

We took Eden to Wheeler Farm in June with the Craven Clan (minus Kevin, Scotty and Ben) and she really had fun. She loved feeding the ducks and looking at all the animals. We went on a ride in a trailer being pulled by a tractor (I think they called it a hay ride, but I didn't see any hay). Eden wore her pig tails special that day but we didn't see any pigs (they were all sleeping in their house). Luckily, all the other animals were being quite social. Eden liked the treehouse and we had a hard time getting her out of it. It was a fun afternoon for her.

Riding on the saddle

Peeking through the treehouse window

More to come...

Back and ready to blog!

It's been a long time. But we're back. We've spent quite a while in Utah visiting with family and friends and it's been a lot of fun. I took a lot of pictures, which I will blog about over the next few days. The computer is running slow tonight (and so am I) so I'll just start with a few pictures.

The main reason for the vacation: Family! Eden loved spending time with her cousins.

The Craven Family cousins: Abbie, Lexi, Sammy and Eden

Sometimes they got a little silly.


Eden's first french braids. Grandma Sha-sha was patient enough to put them in while Eden watched SuperWhy. They only lasted about 15 minutes, but she looked so cute while it lasted.

Tag with non-related picture

So, I'm in Utah and I haven't blogged for a long time. I plan on doing a lot of blogging when I get back to Omaha and I can get my pictures to load onto my computer. However, I have been tagged by a lot of people lately (all the same tag too) so I am going to answer the tag so that people know I am still alive. If you're a relative or friend who doesn't care about this, just ignore it.

Five things on my to do list:

1. Enjoy the rest of vacation
   
2. Go back to Omaha
   
3. Download some pictures and blog
   
4. Finish some books I am working on
   
5. Start up family scripture study again (cuz it's been a while...)
   

Places I have lived:

• Salt Lake City UT
  
• Midvale UT
  
• Wauwatosa WI
  
• Milwaukee WI
  
• Omaha NE

I don't have any recent pictures but blogs without pictures are boring so here is a picture from last summer for your viewing enjoyment.

Why I didn't blog last week

Another grad pic because I'm a proud wiffey :)

We were moving into the house, but I also was having too much fun doing things with the family (not that I only blog when I'm bored, but my family doesn't come out to visit that often). We took a day trip and went to Winter Quarters (which is only about 20 minutes away) and went through the visitors center. It was pouring rain so we didn't walk through the old cemetary they have or get up close to the temple but it was still a nice experience.

Eden is more than willing to push a handcart. What a good pioneer!

One of the highlights of the trip for me was seeing the piano Victor Borge donated to the museum. It was his first piano and also one of his favorites. Don't know who Victor Borge is (well, was)? Shame on you! Go to the library and get a video of him! Go Now! Hurry. He's so funny. It will make your day.
The whole trip was really interesting. The drive was pretty and when we got home my dad made refurgefuripheth. Okay, he made red pudding with cream but in Danish, I swear that's how it sounds. Fortunately, it tastes better than it sounds....

Hubba hubba!