Projects

I haven't been up to doing much lately, but Anda and I did make the best chocolate cake I've ever made last week. Even the batter was irresistable.

But Dan has been very productive lately. His Jeep got a fancy new bumper along with a spare tire, hi-lift, and zombie-apocalypse-approved ax. It looks really cool and is ready for all kinds of adventures now.

He also spent all day Saturday putting in a drip system for our bushes and for my garden.

This has got me really excited about planting this year. Although I think I'd be more excited if a certain someone would get out of my belly so I could bend over to actually do the planting.

Speaking of which, there is at least one other project I've been working on for almost the past nine months. I figured since we have multiple pictures of me pregnant with Anda, it was only fair that this baby have one, too.

Anda felt the same, so she drew the baby a picture with chalk.

Pretty good, I think.

Makeup

I know only terrible moms do this to their two year olds, but I thought it would be fun as long as we weren't going out until I cleaned it off. It turns out "holding still" is as important and as difficult for her in doing makeup as it is in taking pictures. Still, it was a fun half hour.

Snowman

We finally got a little snow that stuck around, so Anda and I made a snowman. She was adamant that it have a carrot for a nose--she started insisting on it as soon as I told her that the tiny ball I was pushing around was going to be a snowman. So once the pieces were in place, we went inside and got the biggest baby carrot in the bag. When we came back out, the snowman was gone. Or rather, it had fallen backward and become mostly indistinguishable from the rest of the dirty snow on the ground.

So we made another one. Being roughly eleven months pregnant, I think I earned the sticker I put on our family goals chart under "exercise" today.

I also want to point out that I was at a loss when it came to putting a mouth on this thing. Eyes from rocks are fine, but I didn't want to use too many then forget about them come spring time, when the lawnmower would discover them again. I asked Anda what we should do and she reached up and drew the mouth all by herself. What a smart little cookie!

She even named the snowwoman (she told me it was female), but the names she comes up with are so made-up-Tolkein-esque that I can never remember them. Just trust me: it was a good one.

Missionary

Last week, we dropped my sister Amy ("Aunt Mimi") off at the MTC. She'll be serving an 18 month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after training for about six weeks.

They really expedited the drop-off process recently, so it was a brief goodbye.

We are very proud of her and looking forward to hearing great stories about her experiences.