Intoducing me to her new boyfriend

I tried to hide the camera so she wouldn't get embarrassed but I think she knew I was taping. I love how she introduces me to her "beautiful boyfriend" as she plays make-believe. She has been really interested in boys lately and especially the older ones. She'll stop in public if she spots a "beautiful boy" and point him out to me!

Discover Gateway's new exhibit

We love this new exhibit and Noelle particularly likes the worker in the video who is playing with her. His name is "Moses" and he is very very cute. She got all dressed up for him last Saturday and even put a dress on and he wasn't even there. She was very upset. She says he's "a beautiful boy and I want him to be my new boyfriend"

Sorry I keep forgetting that I am videotaping sideways. I will remember from now on.

I think she is willing to talk on camera because she doesn't realize I post everything for everyone to see.

Noelle loves playing barbie dream house more than anything in the world. She forces me to play because it can be tedious at times. She has quite the imagination in her barbieland :)

Picking our puppy Rosie

Picking a puppy at the breeders house. Noelle ran away with Rosie and hid so we couldn't find her. She was in heaven! She now says "I did such a good job picking my puppy. Everyone loves her so much!"

Preschool B-Day Party

I bought a cake and brought it in for the preschool kids for Noelle's Birthday. She was very proud to share her special day with her friends. The bakers accidentally put raspberry jelly in the middle of the cake even though I told then it was an all chocolate cake. The kids were not huge fans!

Her Favorite

Pete and I have accompanied Noelle on this one but it goes REALLY fast and always makes us nauseous. It happens to be her favorite though.

So fun :)

The swing ride

The swing ride is of course awesome!

Birthday at "Jungle Gyms"

Good old Utah has tons of fun places like this for kids! This is basically an indoor carnival. It is really cheap to get into and Noelle just loves it so of course we took her on her 5th! The parents can even ride although we never do. This blows Chucky Cheese out of the park!

Birthday dinner at her favorite! Olive Garden

Noelle adores Olive Garden and requested it for her 5th B-day dinner. She was not too happy when we asked the staff to sing to her though. Typical embarrassed Noelle!

Noelle's favorite "The Popup Book Of Nightmares"

This is a really funny book. It happens to be Noelle's favorite book in the world out of her hundreds! She is very animated while reading it as you can see. This is the second I have bought for her this year because the first was read so many times that it fell apart. Not your typical children's book that's for sure and not your typical child either. She likes scary things and is quite desensitized to them by now :)

Noelle's birthday present.

Noelle rides her Power Wheels regularly to the park. She is quite proud and grownup. She brings "Weiny" along.

Temperous fiesty little girl :)

Sorry I had just barely gotten the camera phone and didn't realize I was filming sideways.

Baby hungry as usual!

New Furniture!!!

I am not typically a blogger as many of you already know but I was really excited about some of my new furniture. Mom was kind enough to donate Dee's antiques to furnish my house and it looks amazing now. Here are some pics of the pieces. We weren't sure where to put the mirror so we just decided to hang it above a chair I recently bought from TJ Max. Tell me if it is a random spot. We think that we will put a really large framed print above the couch to tie everything in. The secretary is my favorite and sort of the centerpiece to the home. Since it is dark outside I can't take pictures of the car that dad had fixed up for us so I will post them tomorrow. It looks like a brand new car and he was so generous to have Onick help us. Mom and dad you are the greatest and really hooked us up on the trip!

Barnum and Bailey Circus

We recently went to the circus. I was browsing KSL and saw that the famous Barnum and Bailey circus was coming to town. I wasn't sure how often they came to SLC so I thought that I should take advantage and bought some really great seats. Noelle was pretty bored through most of it. I don't think she understood the "wow factor." I tried right :) They let the kids see the animals outside before the show. The mommy elephant had just had her baby.

Here is a great link you can copy and paste.
http://listverse.com/2007/08/04/top-10-human-sideshow-freaks/
It is the 10 most famous freak side shows. I guess it is sort of sad. The circus has been around for 150 years so these are really old. My favorite is the "Half Lady" in her victorian corset.

Halloween

Here are some pics of Nells trick or treating. It was raining pretty bad that night but she didn't let it ruin her day. I originally had bought her a really cute kid friendly clown costume but Pete didn't think it was "appropriate" Weird! So I went to walmart and got her a boring doctor custume instead.

preschool pics

Noelle's first day of head start was today. She was very excited. Her classroom is at U of U housing and consists mostly of the college students children. They qualify through poverty income. Most kids are white and english speaking in contrast to the other locations which are predominantly hispanic spanish speaking so hopefully it will be easier for her to relate and understand the other kids. Her teacher is a funny character. He is a vegan, mohawk, tattooed hippy type. Not your stereotypical preschool teacher. He is very very good with the kids. Noelle loves him. She says "I love my new teacher so so much he is a boy." She loves the fact that he is a guy and not a girl like her other teachers have been. The class is 4 days a week 3.5 hours a day. Is is pretty low budget but a sweet little class. They feed the kids lunch every day so that is nice. Here are some videos of Nell's special day.

Jim Gaffigan talks about Cake

I just got done working on my thesis and needed a bit of humor for some stress relief. This is a hilarious bit from Jim Gaffigan on cake. I was talking about his Hot Pocket skit with one of my coworkers and he told me about this little jewel. It's just good, clean humor.

antique table

I thought I would get some fun antique furniture to go with my old house. I found this intricately carved wooden table on KSL. It needed some love so I found some old polyurethane varnish in my basement and put a coat on today. It looks great. I don't know if I should put it in the kitchen or find a spot in the family room. I also got an old vintage emerald green vase at the DI last week. I might put it on the table and fill it with some hand made paper flowers I found on etsy.

Floors finally finished!

It has been a long and slow week to make sure this floor finally got done. The guy I ended up hiring turned out to be really flaky and wouldn't show up until 5:00 in the afternoon most days. Than he would work a couple of hours and leave. Anyway we had to stay three extra nights in the hotel than was originally planned because of this. It is nice to not have lenoleum anymore. I bought some paint yesterday. I am going to paint the kitchen when Nells starts preschool in a month. White on the crown molding and then yellow on the walls. I am having a hard time figuring out what color yellow to put on because it has to go along with my olive colored walls in the family room. Maybe a yellow with a hind of green. Tricky. Anyone have any suggestions?

Lost Predictions

Ok. So, the Series Finale of Lost is coming soon. I was just talking to one of my best friends from high school who is also a huge Lost fan like myself. We discussed possible theories and then made some predictions for this last episode. If you haven't watched Lost, consider this your spoiler alert for the following paragraphs....

ONE MORE TIME FOR SAFETY.....***SPOILER ALERT***

Prediction #1: Jack dies, and someone else takes over as protector of the island. I thought it was pretty predictable to see Jack become the protector of the island, so I'm going to predict that since this predictable action took place in such an unconventional show that they will surprise us.

Prediction #2: The "Sideways World" will become the truer reality. One of the worlds has to be more real, right? I think they do away with the island because....

Prediction #3: The Island will be terminated/blown up/obliterated somehow. Desmond or Smokey will be the cause of this I'm guessing.

Regan's addition:
The characters will be given a choice between 1 of the 2 worlds. They can either choose as their reality the island existence or the "Sideways World".

Also, what in the world happened to Lapidus? I haven't figured that one out yet. I guess we'll find out soon. Anyways, here's to one of the greatest shows of all time ending....so sad and yet so appropriate. :(((

Noelle's 4th Birthday

We had Noelle's birthday last month. We were going to go to Chucky Cheese but Pete heard about this great little place called Jungle Gyms. Utah has tons of places for children obviously because there are tons of families here in SLC. It was sort of like an indoor miniature carnival. They had about 8 different rides and a huge play ground area. We got her a "Baby Alive Feel Better Soon" doll and a half dozens books that I picked out from the Deseret Industries. I also found a Cabbage Patch doll from the 80s. She has a Cabbage Patch movie so I thought she'd appreciate it. She actually ended up loving her books more than her new doll and barbie dream house. She reads them all day long. Here are some pics of her birthday at Jungle Gyms.

New Tulips

Our beautiful tulips have come in. They do really well in Utah despite the little rainfall and super hot summers. Noelle and I have began to prepare a nursery for the garden this Summer. We have tons of newly sprouted seedlings growing in our "do it yourself" greenhouse indoors. We are growing corn, asparagus, squash, sunflowers, poppies, pumpkins, lavender, carrots, green beans, wildflowers, daisies, and a few more. Hopefully they don't all die. Noelle is obsessed with planting and getting into trouble. She wants to help so bad but doesn't.

Sorry this is very late.

I know that Christmas is well over but I just ran across a great picture of Noelle and Santa that I had forgotten to add in December. At the Civic Center in Sandy they have this great Christmas display of trees and gingerbread houses. We waited in line forever for santa. Noelle was very excited. I wasn't sure if she would be willing to sit on his lap when the time came. She ended up not being scared at all. She was really brave and very happy but a little embarrased. Especially since everyone was looking at her. It was well worth the wait.

Jazz Game

Pete got great seats to the Jazz game from work. His favorite basketball team "Spurs" were playing the jazz. Noelle did pretty good. She doesn't quite last the 3 hours though. She loves the Jazz Bear. Actually they just added a baby Jazz Bear to the big Jazz mascott. Noelle loved the baby bear.