A Few of Sophie's Favorite Things

The garbage man

Every Wednesday morning the garbage man passes by the house twice -- one for each side of the street. Every other week both the garbage and the recycling gets picked up, so we get four passes. And every Wednesday morning Sophie will hear him coming and climb up on the couch to look out the window.

Those mechanical lifts are sure mesmerizing.

Feeding herself, and any kind of personal hygiene/grooming product

Sophie's working on balancing food on a spoon and insists on feeding herself most of the time. Uh, we still have a ways to go, but she uses a fork pretty well now. If she really likes something she'll just put down her utensil and start grabbing it with her hands. That doesn't work so well with soup.

As far as the hygiene/grooming products goes, anything slippery on Sophie's hands or fingers is, to her, either lotion (rubs it on hands/legs), hair mousse (rubs it in hair), or lip gloss (dabs it on lips/tongue). Sometimes she gets them mixed up and will inadvertently eat something she probably shouldn't or rub the wrong product in the wrong place. Or she'll miss the boat entirely as you can see here.

Singing/humming songs, particularly while looking at her songbook.

I have one of those pocket-sized Primary Children's Songbooks that Sophie has attached herself to. If you ask her if she wants to sing a song, she'll immediately start humming and searching for her songbook. Occasionally (and with close supervision by mom) I'll let her flip through the big one. She loves it.

She hums to herself a lot, even when she's not looking at her book. We realized recently that a frequent melody she hums is the first line from "I Feel My Savior's Love". It gets a little hazy after that, but it's really sweet. Steve and I sing a couple of songs to her before she goes to sleep or if she's particularly cranky in the car or getting her hair washed. It quiets her down instantly. I guess I must have sang that song a lot for her to pick it up so quickly. It's one of the first that comes to my head.

This clip is a little long - about four minutes. I didn't want to cut her off, and then she started jabbering about something, and I couldn't stop during that, either.

Floral Mistress

I'm so excited that one of my best friends has joined the Etsy train. She just opened up a shop showcasing her floral arrangements and I wanted to share. These aren't just ordinary arrangements, either. They're made from high quality silk flowers and gorgeous vases. (By the way, I didn't even know she did this until a couple of weeks ago. We really need to get together more often, Stace. :))

Here's the link to her shop: Floral Divine

And here are some of my fav's:

Black Velvet

Tuscan Romance

Eastern Sky

Baker's Initiation or When Dad's Not Here

Sophie likes to stand up on a chair while I'm in the kitchen and watch what I'm doing as she grabs things from the counter and makes twice the mess to clean up later. Today we made Pumpkin Cheesecake Swirl Brownies. (Um... if you like pumpkin and chocolate together, you have to go make these right now. Seriously.)

Steve and I are usually pretty strict about not giving Sophie a lot of sweets and junk food. Until today, I'd never given her a spatula from something I've been baking. I figure eventually I had to start. What kind of childhood would she have if she never got to lick spatulas*? This spatula happened to be covered in brownie batter. Below you can see the progression from complete bliss to total devastation when I tried to take it away from her. The third look down on the left almost made me give in and let her make a complete mess of herself. Almost.

A few tears, a clean shirt, and an extra big package of paper towels later, she forgot all about it. Easy to upset. (mostly) Easy to please.

*Yes, there were raw eggs in the batter. Honestly, I'm not worried. If there was a real danger from eating raw cookie dough and batter, I'd probably be dead by now from how much I've eaten in my life.

Week in Idaho

We're trying to get back into a routine after being gone for a week. Sophie's been particularly moody, whiney, and sassy (yes, sassy. I have no idea what she says, but her tone of voice says it all.) the last couple of days. I hope it wears off soon.

Sophie loved the attention she got from everyone, the space she had to run around in, and of course, playing with Abby (the cat). Abby, who's usually a pretty social cat, spent the last part of the week either outside or hiding in some remote corner of the house for fear of getting hit by balls, having her tail pulled or her eyes poked out. She was pretty patient with the brave little girl who used to be hesitant around her.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures pulled from our camera. (Yes, it came out of my purse a couple of times.)

Psst, Dad. Pick me up before I make a scene.


Typical Devin face. (my brother)


I'm going to ask you nicely to give me the camera.


Fine, I'll use my mean face to intimidate you. (This never works, by the way.)


That's it. I'm just going to take it.

On Thursday my sister went through the temple for the first time. And for the first time, everyone in my immediate family (except spouses) was there together.

It was such an incredible feeling. Something that I'm sure my mom and dad had wished for all of their married lives -- to be surrounded in the temple by all of their children. Yes, we all cried. Even my sister, who's usually the dry-eyed one.

The wedding was Friday morning, which happened to be sunny and warm. Pretty lucky for an Idaho wedding. The sealer who performed the ceremony was the same man who married Steve and me. Yes, we all cried again.

The newly wedded ones. Hillie's colors were hot pink and black, which I thought turned out really cute. Adam's black shirt, pink tie, and silver vest, however, flashed me back to the 80s. He pulled it off nicely, though.


Did I mention it was sunny?


The whole family. (I'm still not sure if I can forgive my siblings for getting married within three months -- before and after-- the birth of my children. Talk about being lumpy... and no nice comment you make will convince me otherwise. It's not really fair. My sister-in-law had her baby three weeks ago and you can barely tell. Sigh. I'll quit ranting now.)


I didn't put her in her nice dress until right before the reception. We still had the luncheon to go to, and if you've seen the way she gets food all over, you wouldn't have dressed her up, either.


Here's little Carter dressed in his tux. I wish he was wearing his jacket in this picture. It has tails on it. Priceless.

The reception was at the same place as ours was held. Hillie even had stargazer lilies in her bouquet like I did. And she was wearing my veil. (aw.) It was sort of a deja vu-ish experience, only I wasn't tied to a wall greeting everyone while my stomach desperately ached for something more than a mozzarella stick.

I tried to pick out some photos that showed off my sister's hair, dress, and flowers up close. Oh, was Sophie in those pictures, too? I didn't notice. :)

Eh, not the best picture of the three of us, but it'll do. We all look like we could use a nap.


Here's the cake. If you can't tell, it has frosting swirlies all over. This isn't fondant, either. I love this cake.


Here's a good one to end on. She's such a cute little stinker.

Little Carter was blessed on Sunday. I don't have pictures of the after party. Probably because I was busy packing. Sniff. Thanks for a great week you guys!!

Side note: There are a few of you who might remember who Duane is. I hadn't seen him since before my mission. He's in my brother's ward. Small world.

MIA

Ok, I'm not really missing. There are lots of people who know where I am. I just wanted to let you know that we made it to Idaho safely. We're doing our quarterly "Steve works in Utah while I visit my family in Idaho" trip.

Except there will be a wedding this weekend. Updates to come . . .