Christmas time

This year, I feel happy that we had a full Christmas experience.

Activities include:
-Going clothes shopping on Black Friday
-Christmas party at church where we forced Crystal to momentarily sit on Santa's lap.
-Trip to the U.S. Botanic Garden downtown where we saw little trains.
-Visit to the Festival of Lights at the temple visitor's center where we watched a saxophone quartet.
-Christmas eve at Grandma Kelley's where we witnessed Rudolph sneaking around the backyard.
-I got a new bike for Christmas! and
-Hosting Christmas day dinner at our home with 19 Kelleys. This was the most exciting for me and it turned out great.

Crystal 18-36 months

Other news:
-We're still moving forward to buying half of our home.
-We're still potty training Crystal.
-I may be teaching a different primary class at church next year: I guess I'll find out when the decision final.
-Steve got a B in his Materials Science class this semester and will be registering for another class for next semester.
-The 6th grader that I've been tutoring got a 100% on a math quiz. Yay!

Loving and Missing the Outdoors

I haven't really been excited enough about anything these last few months. I guess that happens when starts to get cold. My favorite activity lately had been riding my bike (with Crystal in the trailer) to neighborhood playgroups 2-3 times a week and taking extra loops around the lake. I had to stop about a month ago because our garage door fell apart and it became too difficult to open and close in order to get the bike and trailer out. Well, the garage door should be getting replaced tomorrow! Hurray!

Click for some recent photos of our fall camping trip to Shenandoah and Crystal's Halloween costume.

Crystal 18-36 months

Other news:

At church, Crystal loves being in nursery while I teach the Sunbeams class.

Crystal 20 months old now and is part-time potty-training. I would let her be naked all of the time at home, except that she gets bad eczema (dry rashy skin) on her bottom in the winter and she needs clothes on to keep her skin protected from the dry air. So, right now I'm just letting her be naked every hour or so until she goes potty and then her clothes go back on. I'm afraid that that would be punishing her for going potty, so I still don't really have a coherent plan yet. I think that I should get some cloth diapers/training pants or something.

Crystal is also able to say pretty much every word now and several small sentences. She's very good at being polite by saying please, thank you, excuse me, and sorry all on her own. She counts to 12 and she sings some ABCs. She can even say prayers! But, she is still pretty quiet and shy in front of other people, just like her mommy and daddy are. She's also getting better at jumping. She has 16 full teeth.

She goes to sleep 8-9 pm, regularly wakes up for help-milk at 2am and 4am, and gets up at 6-7 am. I sleep on a separate bed in the same room. I think that I'll keep breastfeeding her until after she's at least two. It seems that I still haven't been able to get pregnant while breastfeeding which is fine because we're in no rush.

We're still living with just one car and it works just fine. I loving paying $800 less car insurance per year and not worrying about oil changes too.

We're trying to find a mortgage so that we can buy half of our house (the half that my Mother-in-law doesn't own). The house appraised at $245K, pretty low for it's size and neighborhood, because of its need of major remodeling.

I've also started math tutoring at home and I love it! It has all of the good things about teaching without the bad things like grading, classroom discipline, and bureaucrats. I charge $25/hour and I've only been advertising on craigslist. I need some more students, so please refer me to anyone you know that's looking for a math tutor. As I have a B.S. in Mathematics, I can help with pretty much any high school or college math course.

Earthquake

On August 23rd, a few minutes before 2 pm, I start to feel the house shaking. I'm thinking: Earthquake? No, Maryland doesn't have earthquakes. Can the house be collapsing on its own? No, the house is pretty sturdy. I look out the window and try to see whether the other houses are shaking too. I can't tell. I wander around for a second wondering what I should do, walk over to Crystals room and watch her sleep for the duration of the quake which ended up lasting a few minutes. Afterwards, I get online to check if there was an earthquake forecast for today to learn that earthquakes are generally not forecast. I turn on the TV and see the news confirming the earthquake. After about a half hour, I get a call from Steve and a call from his mother to check on things. We didn't get any damage and nothing even fell down, but there were many other buildings that did sustain damage, including public buildings like the Washington Monument, many schools (some having to close for several days), and the temple's spire got damaged too.

I think it was two winters ago, during Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse, when we lost power at our apartment in Greenbelt for 24 hours or so, a tree crashed into the window of the apartment next to ours, and we spent the night with our family members, who did have power, in College Park. One of their neighbors was sadly killed in her car by a falling tree.


This summer, Hurricane Irene appeared to take the power away from even more people and for even longer for some. Church was cancelled even before the storm started. Steve wouldn't allow us to open the fridge even for a moment. We cooked items from our food storage on a propane camping stove on our porch. But without the fresh/frozen vegetables, I still felt like I was so starving, so we wound up eating at a Golden Corral. That made me very happy.

See the leaf debris?

And the new pond at our Assateague camp site.

Beach House 2011

Oh how do I love the beach! The shifty soft sand, the blowing wind, the toasty hot sun, the roaring waves. Relaxing in my beach chair or swimming in the cool wet ocean: Crystal and I only came back inside for meals and naps. Every day, we were the first ones on the beach, and almost the last ones to return inside. Now that we've returned home, I feel satisfied at a vacation well-spent!



Thank you, dear Mother-in-law, for paying thousands of dollars each and every year for all of us to enjoy the magnificent wonder of the ocean and the warmth of our big family's love. I love you very much and I'll soon start counting down again to next year's beach trip. Yippee!

Also, thank you to the Watsons and the Strongs who bought plane tickets to fly across the country for this. Crystal and I loved chatting and playing with all of you and are sad to say goodbye! We love you!

15 Months Update

Crystal is now 15 months old! She's 25 lbs, 32 inches: putting her at 90th percentile for height and 75th for weight. She now has 12 teeth and a little more hair. Walking by herself is still to scary for her and I love it when she often reaches for my hand.


Words that she can say moderately well include book, bike, shoe, flop (for flip-flops), ball, dog, cat, toes, ear, hair, eye, milk, juice, cheese, grape, mommy, and dad. She does try to repeat every word that we say though many of the others come out sounding like "ba."

We got a renter for the upstairs bedroom and he's a 43-year-old Navy officer that had to move to the area for work is leaving his family for a year. He leaves for work early and returns late, goes on many trips, and it's almost like he's never here!

Our Ford Focus' engine died for good, so now we're down to only one car. Right now, we only need one car though it's still an adjustment for us. Steve rides his bike 6.5 miles to work when the weather permits and loves it.

Photos update:

Crystal 12-18 months

Recent photo highlights:
enjoying the airshow
trip to the zoo
Crystal's cousins visiting from Utah

Mother's Day

I love being a mom!

Other news:

-At almost 14 months, Crystal stands on her own now, but will only walk while holding our hands. She goes in the potty about 4 times a day. She still nurses throughout the night. She still has very little hair but she does have 10 teeth. She loves chasing grandma's cat around the yard and her favorite word to say is "book"

-We might be getting a summer intern to rent the room upstairs from us.
-I'm sad that one of my sunbeams is moving away. I've become pretty attached to them.
-Steve's parents have been called to a different ward.

Crystal is One!

We had a little party on Saturday with Crystal's favorite friends and family members. It wasn't quite warm enough to have it outside, so we had the party inside and it was still a blast! Crystal had so much fun and also loved having extra time with her cousins for a few hours before the party and the previous evening.

I had never thrown a party for anyone before and I was totally stressing out about it all week long. I spent much of the previous day and that morning cooking and baking and I really enjoyed doing it. We made pita bread, bean dip, guacamole, hummus, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and a banana cake with cream cheese frosting. Steve liked the bean dip, and my dad liked the guacamole. Crystal also loved the guacamole and the cake. My attempt at homemade hummus wasn't that good. I'll try to be more precise with making it next time. Also, the banana cake was awesome!

The right number of people came including 4 of Crystal's baby friends that she loves. The favorite toy was the dinosaur walker and she ended up with two of those, one from each set of grandparents!

Overall, I was satisfied with the outcome and happy that we did it. Even Steve expressed his appreciation to me!

New Year's Resolutions Progress

Well, it is March, and I still haven't dropped any of my goals. I was thinking about adding one to make handmade bread but I'm still wondering whether it's worth it.

1. Daily family scripture study:
Still have been doing it after dinner but only about 4 times/week. Sometimes Steve doesn't return home from work early enough for us to have enough time before bedtime. Many times, though, we are watching a show from netflix until bedtime and totally forget about reading. We just need to remember to either pause it or turn it off in order to read.

2. Get Steve a higher paying job:
Well, I did apply to 4 or so jobs for him through the UMD's career center but only one called back and they said that they only wanted someone with experience with PLC. Though, I just applied Steve for another job that was just posted today in the middle of writing this (only because I was writing this).

3. Find a renter for the upstairs bedroom?
I posted it on ldshousing.net and one person that is moving to the area in June asked about it. I told her to ask again when it's closer. I'm hoping for more inquiries to come before the beginning of the fall semester. I have reservations about posting on Craigslist though I may if/when we're closer to fall and still have no one.

4. Plan a few trips to the temple: babysitter?
I went to the temple by myself 2 Saturdays ago for the 8 am session while Steve had the baby at home. It was wonderful although the baby was sad. Steve should be planning a trip for himself also. We need to try to make it a habit for every month.

5. Learn the names of every person at church.
I had been learning two names each week until my new calling and now I'm only learning one each week. Trying to say each person's name in my head or out loud when I see them so that I don't forget.

6. Either take inventory and organize or get rid of everything in basement/attic
Being working on it every Mon, Wed, and Fri night while we're in the basement pumping iron. Threw out 2 grocery bags of junk. Organizing baby/kid clothes during the day. Started posting furniture on craigslist this week. Three people are interested in the china cabinet and one person interested in the pair of dressers.

7. Vegetable garden
Reading a book from the library. I need to go to Behnke's to buy some seeds this week. Tomatoes need to be started indoors and broccoli can also be started soon.

New Church Calling

This past Sunday was my first day teaching the Sunbeams A (half of the 3 year olds) class at church. I had a full attendance of 5 and they are so funny. They learned that "the Holy Ghost helps us," and they got bored silly after only a few minutes talking about it. A few times throughout the 45 minutes they either burst out into silly noise-making or silly romping around the room. They did really well when we sang a short song a few times over at the end. Next week we'll do some gluing and maybe have snacks in addition. The lesson is titled: "I am thankful for the day and for the night." I'm also thinking of ways to get them to want to participate more in sharing time and singing time with the rest of Primary. I love my new calling. :)

Being with Mommy

Eating lunch
Preparing dinner
Doing dishes
Checking internet

Exercising outside
Other things that we do include:
taking a bath, taking naps, going to the grocery store, and practicing 3D Calculus.

This is the life.

Whoa 2011

The camera is broken at the moment.

Crystal is almost 10 months old. At her 9-month appointment, she measured 20 lbs, 4 oz, 30 inches long, and 17 1/2 around head. In other words, for her age, she is in the 75th percentile for weight, 98th percentile for height, and 40th percentile for head size.

I just bought Crystal's next car seat. Even though she meets the physical criteria for it, she's supposed to also be 1 years old. I'm just keeping it next to the door for a day when I can no longer squeeze her into her current belt.

Crystal got a diaper rash from sleeping in a poopy diaper after pooping in the middle of the night, so I've had her diaperless for the past couple of days for the rash to heal. Each day, she typically peed at least 5 times on the potty and twice on the floor.

I had apple slices on my lunch salad today. Yum!

You may think that being a stay-at-home mom would be boring, but it is quite the opposite. I am actually way busier now than I was when I was working and without the baby. For example, now I'm expected to do much of the cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping, and with a baby on my hip, those things take longer. Also, the baby needs me to spend a lot time rocking and snuggling her.

Actually I can think of a time when I was even busier and that was when I was student teaching 4 years ago. I oftentimes stayed at the school until 5 entering grades and making parent phone calls and I feel asleep at 6pm right after dinner and woke myself up at 3am in order to type up lesson plans that were never finished. And I guess that I did all of that for 3 months for nothing since I got kicked out of the program for "poor performance." I thought that the method of assessing me was sort of wishy-washy and I never figured out how to play the game.

New year's resolutions?
1. Daily family scripture study: after dinner?
2. Get Steve a higher paying job. Need $40k+
3. Find a renter for the upstairs bedroom?
4. Plan a few trips to the temple: babysitter?
5. Learn the names of every person at church.
6. Either take inventory and organize or get rid of everything in basement/attic
7. Vegetable garden