Children's Musuem

I think I might have posted way too many pictures... Oh well. We had a lot of fun at the local children's museum this weekend. We met up with Cathrine and her two boys and the kids had a blast.

Elsie loved this thing. Alan and Elsie would fill up a bucket of balls, then Alan would drop them down.

She didn't really get into the whole playing dress up...

Brandon pushing Elsie. Their were a ton of little cars and bikes, and I think Elsie rode them all at one point.

Putting all the food away that they bought at the store.

Of course, my kid is the one who has to bring a stroller to the construction site...

This car was a big hit. Parker fills up the car...

Then takes Elsie and Brandon out for a spin.

Sadly, this was one of the best shots we got of all three of them...

Everyone is concentrating so hard.

Right before we left, Elsie "wrote" a letter to Santa.

It's magic

I opened my blog this morning and there's a little baby widget countdown floating next to my posts. The magic baby fairy must have put it on there...

Little Baby Girl has a birthday now. If everything goes as planned, I will have my scheduled C-section on January 28th. Alan's mom is taking off work to be with Elsie while I'm in the hospital (thanks Jeanine!) and my mom will be flying in as soon as I come home with the baby (thanks Mom!). I've had more doctor's appointments and ultrasounds and everything looks great except the position of the placenta, but there's not much that can be done about that. She's measuring about a week and a half ahead on most everything, but they say the closer to the due date the less accurate the measurements to gestation time is. She's already in perfect position and head down, not that it really matters since I'm having a C-section anyway.

Here's hoping for no early contractions, no bleeding, and no bed rest!

I can be creative

To fill his last general elective requirement for Civilization, Alan has been taking History of Creativity (part one). I can't say that it has been a particularly enjoyable class for Alan, but out of all the options, it was the one that required the least amount of memorizing and regurgitating historical dates and facts. The culminating event in the class was a final project with the instructions to "make something creative". No joking, that was pretty much the extent of the instructions. Since the class covered up to the year 1500A.D. Alan chose to create a replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza. As a medium, he chose rice crispy treats.

While I didn't have anything to do with the construction of the pyramid, I had everything to do with making batch after batch of rice crispy treats.

Elsie might have snuck a few treats to munch on. She actually stayed out of the way for most of the construction, but that was mostly because we did the majority of it while she was sleeping.

We used a lot of marshmallows and rice crispys......and butter.

The final pyramid in all it's rice crispy glory.

Alan and Elsie with his creation at the "Creativity Fair" where it was displayed.

The pyramids final figures are as follows:

Approximately a 1:454 scale model. Base is 20 inches for a perimeter of 60 inches. Height of about 12.7 inches which falls in line with the Egyptian perimeter to height ratio of 2 Pi.

9.06 lbs of rice crispy cereal, 8.25 lbs of miniature marshmallows, 2.16 lbs of butter for a total weight of nearly 20 lbs. It took 25 batches of rice crispy treats.

I wonder what we're going to come up with next semester when Alan has to take part 2...

Living Nativities

We went to a few living nativity scenes this week. The first was at the local tabernacle down the street. We invited Bryan, Katie, and Olivia over for some homemade pizza and then we all walked down together. Elsie liked watching the nativity and saying "baby Jesus" over and over again. In the park outside they had a camel, a donkey, and a few sheep around for the kids to meet. Elsie liked them at first and even tried to give the donkey a kiss on the nose. Then the donkey snorted at her and scared her a little.

The primary kids participated in a nativity at our ward Christmas party. Since our ward only has a nursery and no older kids, it pretty much consisted of about 8 kids dressed in costume running around the stage and passing baby Jesus between them. Elsie was a shepherd.

Happy Birthday Alan!

We didn't take any pictures of the birthday festivities yesterday, so here are some pictures from our (almost) 3 years together.

Happy Birthday Alan! I love you!

Grandma D is awesome

I like to cross stitch, but I'm still more of a wanna-be cross stitcher. I do alright with projects, but my stitches are never as neat as I'd like and it takes me a long, long time to finish anything. But not my Grandma. She's the real deal. She used to cross stitch on sweaters and clothes when we were growing up. A lot of her stuff is framed now; some of my favorites are hanging around my mom's house.
Look at this one. She made this for Elsie last Christmas. Isn't it amazing?

I was finally able to snag one of her framed pieces for my own over Thanksgiving. Look at all the color and detail... it's really something else. I'm so glad I finally have it, and that I have a place to hang it in my bigger apartment.