Sam the Manly Man & Avery is 2!

The big 2! I can't believe how big she is! She is becoming the sweetest little girl. So kind and caring. The only time she throws big tantrums is when we tell her to hop in bed, and she hasn't given Sammy a kiss goodnight yet. She always smothers him with love (a.k.a. her blankie) and tries to share her favorite foods (pretzels and goldfish) with him.



Sam has started smiling and cooing. I love it and it sure makes motherhood much more rewarding when they smile! I'm not sure how to shorten this video, but the good parts are starting at :45, and at 1:48 is the nice surprise. I would've stopped it at 2:35 if I'd known how to edit videos.



At the hospital, we were still trying to decide on a name for Sam. The staff always made signs to put on the babies' little beds, so Nathan told the hospital staff that we were going to name him "Wernicke." He told them he was kidding, but it kinda became this joke between them and us. Well, I went to visit Sam in the nursery and was admiring him, and the other cute boys on both sides of him with adorable names: Ethan and Joseph. Then, I looked at his big name tag that the nurses had made: Wernicke. After seeing that, I quickly became very embarrassed, and hoped that the two dads standing in front of little Ethan and Joseph weren't paying attention to Sam's name tag. :)



Sam has started to recognize his fist, and also scratches his face much less than before.


Sam is a manly man, as you can see above. As I was changing his outfit one day, I asked Nathan to get my hairbrush. The rest is self-explanatory. I couldn't resist. :) Hehehe.


Nathan took Avery to a cemetery for Memorial Day. There was a 21-rifle salute, which fascinated her (aside from the initial shock of the first loud gunshot). She also "said" the pledge-of-allegiance for the first time, which meant saying the last word of each phrase as Nathan whispered it to her in advance. :)


Daddy's girl on Sam's blessing day (at least I think it was on Sam's blessing day)!




In-N-Out for Sarah's (Nathan's sister) graduation. Avery had fun with the hat.


This is our last interfaith dialogue while we live in Utah. It was with Asuza Pacific from Southern California. I wasn't able to participate in this one because Sam was only 2 weeks old, and I was very, very tired. I went to bed at like 7 pm that night and let Nathan play host -- which he did a very good job at. He even handled the emergency we-ran-out-of-pizzas situation while being able to join different discussion groups throughout the evening.



Avery's version of the Hokey Pokey.


Avery and Nathan went swimming. It had been over a year since Avery went swimming last, but she seemed to remember he floaty penguin when I got it out. She loved it! It took her awhile to warm up to the idea of getting her hair wet, but after Nathan helped her dip her head in a few times, that's all she wanted to do!


To all you moms out there, I walked into my room last month to find this:



I'll eventurally remove these three pics from the blog, so no one can blackmail her in the future. I assume only the moms who read this blog will know what she's doing, right? :)



Avery blew out one candle on her own. Grandma tried to help. Thank goodness grandpa came to the rescue! :)


Avery loves to play in the dryer.



Nathan's school went fishing on a cold morning in May, so I got to take Sam and Avery along. Last year, Avery was afraid of the fishies. This year she warmed up to them and was intrigued by the men at the table who were gutting the fish. She kept saying, "Fish cut, blood." It was great to see how she didn't grossed out by any of it.



We're moving to Arizona at the end of June, and we found a great rental house with plenty of bedrooms . It even has a backyard (and front yard) with grass in it -- rare for Yuma. We're sad to leave the rain, mountains, and greenery of Utah, but we're excited to meet new people and for Nathan to start a new job. This will probably be my last post for awhile, seeing as things are crazy hectic right now in preparing for the move.

Until Arizona!

A Whirlwind Month

This last month or so has been crazy! We're trying to get everything done before baby gets here at the end of the month, so we've packed everything in to such a short amount of time.

Summary
Here's what we've been up to the past month:

• We hosted an interfaith dialogue with a group of evangelicals from Westmont College in California
  
• We are still re-tiling our laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and entry way (this has been quite the process).
  
• We went to two Expos for Nathan's book design business; one was a three-day expo, and at the other, he taught two classes (one on Word and one on Excel).
  
• We had two different house guests stay for over a week (one was a member of the Church from the Netherlands I knew from my mission).
  
• Nathan taught again for two evenings at BYU for the annual Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium.
  
• I got a new calling as Mia Maid advisor and Nathan got a new calling as 11 year-old scout master.
  
• We bought a new kitchen table and chairs that are a little bigger and more sturdy.
  
• We bought a minivan from my cousin
  
• We sold Nathan's Altima (he was sad to part with it ... it had really comfy seats).

Christmas
I realize that I haven't posted Christmas pictures yet. Nathan has already moved all of our camera pictures onto a CD, so I need to hunt down the CD to post any Christmas pictures.

Here is one picture I did get, though. This was in the box I opened from Nathan:

Yeah. That was my reaction, too. "Umm ... why thank you, Sweetie. How thoughtful. I've always wanted a bow holding a sword and a gun." But, it was actually a puzzle I was supposed to figure out. It took a little while for him to walk me through it, but I eventually got it. It is a "violent bow," right? That sounds awfully close to "violin bow," which is what he had repaired for me. It just wasn't out of the repair shop at the time. :) What a clever hubby!


Tiling
This next pic shows how much fun Nathan and our friend Ryan had demolishing the tile in the entry way. It was old, nasty, dirty tile, that actually matches the design one of our little cabinets in the living room. I bet this was fancy stuff back in the day.


This has been such a long process. We've had our floor torn up for 3 weeks, and haven't been able to use our washer and dryer. Thank goodness my parents were kind enough to let us use theirs. We had everything stuffed into the corner of the still-carpeted living room (including the table, chairs, 3 accent tables, washer, dryer, fridge, and the grand piano). Because the wood floor in the kitchen gives so much, three of our tiles have cracked in the kitchen (even through the backerboard!). The baseboards wouldn't come off without shattering in to pieces (which means we need to buy more, cut them, and paint them), and we were 30 tiles short (which means I had to go out and find tiles that matched as close as I could to the other tiles).

As glad as I am to have a tiled floor, I will miss the carpeted kitchen for a few reasons.

• I never had to wear shoes in the kitchen because the carpet felt so nice on my feet; no cold tile to worry about.
  
• It was hard to tell when the floor was dirty. If I dropped crumbs on the ground, oh well! They were forever lost in the abyss of the brown carpet until I vacuumed again.
  
• Vacuuming is much easier and faster (especially when you're pregnant) than sweeping and mopping.

What the Richardsons Do When We're Bored
Avery loves this game. We did this for about an hour the other night. She was being so silly -- and it never gets old!


Here's a video so you can actually see what the silly bean looks like now. At the beginning of the video, you can see her favorite habit: while she sucks her thumb, she rubs her fingers on the rough side of her blanket. It's so quirky; I love it. Her hair is getting pretty long and mop-like (this video was taken about two months ago, when it was much shorter), which means I probably should cut it, but that's a big step. And it's one that I'm ill-prepared for. I don't want to give her a mullet. Plus, her hair is really curly, especially in the back, and I don't want to cut the curls off.



Our "New" Van
I told Nathan I wanted a van because I had trouble getting Avery in and out of our little car without killing my pregnant back--and hitting Avery's head on the ceiling in the process. It turns out my cousin was selling hers, and we got a great deal on it! It's a silver 2004 Mazda MPV.

The back seats fold into the floor, it has a sunroof, and automatic sliding doors on both sides! I LOVE IT! Now my back doesn't hurt anymore. And when my hands are full, but I need to help Avery in to the car, all I have to do is push a button on my keychain, and viola--the door opens (and closes) by itself! This is a nice feature, especially because our little Hyundai has manual locks.


Notice below how the passenger bucket seat slides over to the center to make it easier to get into the back seats?? Genius!!


Westmont College Dialogue
This was a really fun one because it was the smallest group of students we've hosted...which meant that our discussion groups were no larger than 4 people! I was in a group with Nathan, Ty (an evangelical from Westmont), and Cat (a visitor from Maine who was United Methodist). We discussed the Fall of Adam and Eve to start off. They both believed it shouldn't have happened, and that pain, although inevitable, is not necessary to experience joy. They were surprised to learn that we not only believe the Fall of Adam was necessary, but a good thing -- and that it is impossible to experience joy without pain. I got to ask them about their belief in the time between death and the resurrection, and they got to ask us about temple work for our deceased ancestors, and how we believe spiritual gifts operate today.
We also got to each discuss what we believed constitutes a "valid" baptism.


I was sad to see this group go because we only had about an hour to an hour and a half to be in our groups because the group was running behind schedule. Usually we have about 3 hours to discuss in small groups. But, the topics were different than the usual, and that made it extra fun.

A Bun in the Oven

Today I made these really good dinner rolls, and I thought it'd be fun to share the recipe with everyone.

Hahah, just kidding!! Yes, I'm pregnant! :) And I won't give you that recipe until you're older. But, we think the baby should be coming in April. :) That means Avery and Baby will be 23 months apart. Oh, and this post has zero pictures. Sorry!

We're so excited, and I was a little nervous about getting uber-sick with this pregnancy like I did with Avery. As it turns out, I don't think I'm as sick as I was last time. But, I'm pretty darn sick and have been in bed for the last 2 weeks, but my Mom has been here taking care of me and Avery every day! She did this for my last pregnancy, too! She's such an angel. I think Avery wears her out because she's so active now and gets in to EVERYTHING. But, my mom is a trooper and has been such a blessing. Thanks mom!!!


Nathan's parents got here this evening and will be here for the next two weeks, too. We'll be having the Richardson family reunion in a week and a half, and we get to host it at our house (because now we actually have a place big enough to host it!). We'll have 25 people here for 4 days! We can't wait!

Food, Glorious, Food!
I also had a wonderful experience tonight. It's funny that being pregnant makes food taste either 10 times worse or 10 times better. Well, we went to one of Nathan's book design clients' house in Salt Lake and he had garden tomatoes and honey comb fresh from the hive (which I had never had before). I felt like puking the whole drive up to Salt Lake, but when I got there and ate that food, it was sooo heavenly. I haven't been able to eat tomatoes since I've been pregnant, but these garden tomatoes tasted better than any garden tomatoes I'd ever had before. And, amazingly, I didn't feel like throwing up for the next 30 minutes after I ate them! I also decided that I want to have bees on our future property so we can eat fresh honeycomb. It just dissolves in your mouth. Yum.

Anyway, I spend 90% of my day thinking about food, and didn't have much to write about for this post, but heck, food's always an easy topic when you're preggo!

Piano Tuning
In other non-food related news, one of the men in our congregation at church is a piano tuner (he teaches at BYU and tunes all their pianos, too). He was teaching a 6-week course on piano tuning, and asked me if I was interested in taking it because one of his students dropped out after the first class. The only downside is that it is each Saturday from 8:00 am to 10:00 am; two hours!!! Ugh. Nathan was kind enough to come with me and make a Jamba Juice run in the middle of class for me. Despite the early hours, it's been really fun, and much more challenging than I thought.

I was surprised to find that you don't need to have a "good ear" for pitch if you want to tune pianos. All you really need to listen to the beating between strings and intervals. Let me give you an example of some of the stuff we have to memorize before next week. This should be fun more my music major friends to read.

Equal Temperament intervals
Wide intervals: 3rd, 6th, 4th
Narrow: 5th, m3rd
Pure and/or slow beating intervals: Unison, octave, 4th, 5th
Fast: 3rd, 6th

Checking a Note with a 5th
This is the 6th - 10th, so M6th > M10th (M6th beats faster than the M10th). A major 6th below the bottom note of a 5th makes a M10th with the upper note of the 5th. If the M6th is faster than the M10th, then the 5th will be narrow as required in equal temperament. All 5ths in the Temperament area should be on the narrow side of pure but almost with out beats.


There's basically a bijillion of these rules. He says we need to practice these on our own pianos at least an hour a day. Our swamp cooler has made our piano so out of tune because of the humidity in a matter of two months. So, I get to practice and make it really out of tune before learning how to tune it back to normal.

Nathan's First Expo Class
Also next week is another family history expo in Sandy. Because I won't be able to help him out with the booth as much, we're getting a hotel next to the expo center so I have a home base to go lay down/throw up. :) That's exciting because I don't think we've stayed in a hotel room since our honeymoon! Too bad it's during a time when I feel icky. :( Oh, well. It'll be interesting doing this while I'm sick, but Nathan is presenting at this one on Automatic Stylesheets in Word, and he's pretty excited. (See the most recent post on www.richardsondesign.org for the juicy details)

Well, that's about it. I can't wait to update with pics from the reunion! Mmmm...I'm already thinking about the food! :)

Blanding Isn't Boring

Well, we've traveled about 3,500 miles in the last 3-4 weeks. The next few posts will outline our vacation! We went to southern UT, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada. We had a blast!

Blanding
We went to Blanding last month to visit family. In Blanding, we went to a dinosaur museum, an indian museum, and Avery even got to go swimming for the first time in the city pool! She loved it, although she probably swallowed a bit too much water (hence our new Blogger background). :) She liked swimming so much, that we ended up getting her a swimsuit afterward. This is the pre-swimsuit picture. :)





One morning, Nathan looked out the window and asked, "Are there supposed to be horses running through the backyard?" Aunt Dianne does not own horses. So she went out to round them up:



We went out to try to catch them, but to no avail. They ended up ruining the grass in my Aunt's and Grandma's yard. Eventually the owner was able to get them and bring them back to his house. He said that his 10-year old daughter had opened the fence and let them loose. :) Oops. See Nathan's arms outstretched below? He was trying to play Red Rover with them. (Is that only a Minnesota game, or do other children outside of MN play it?)



Here's us not catching them.


We also went hiking up a beautiful canyon with my dad, aunt, and uncle! It was about 2 miles up to the waterfall. Boy, am I out of shape. The trail had this really fun tunnel we had to go through.


Avery didn't like it much. She had to go through on her back most of the way. :)


We discovered that if we took her through on Nathan's back in the baby backpack, she would probably hit her head on the low ceiling:


Here's Nathan posing. I think he thought I was talking a picture instead of a video. :)


We also went to this fun park in Blanding with my parents. Here's Grandma with Avery. Avery is happy because she is holding a cell phone. May this phase of life pass quickly.


Here's grandpa.


Avery didn't think the slide was all that great. It was reallllly hot. Poor Nathan probably has third degree burns in places where it hurts. :)


The teeter totter kept her attention for a few minutes before she tried to wriggle out of my arms to get to the ground!


We love to bathe Avery outside during the summer. It makes less of a mess, and she loves the pool! My parents got it for her for her 1st birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Pinchy Cheeks

A friend of ours from our ward is a photographer. He came over and snapped a few pictures of Avery while he was here and told us he'd email what he did. It turned out AMAZING! This pic really makes me want to pinch the heck out of those cheeks!

If you want to check out more of his stuff, his site is michaelririe.com and his blog is at michaelririe.com/mrblog

Thanks SO much for sharing your talent with us, Mike!

In other news, happy Valentine's Day! I actually entered a drawing in a local store to win a free V-Day getaway to a Salt Lake City hotel for two. We'll see if crossing my fingers worked! I usually don't win these types of things, but heck, part of the fun is just the imagining! :)

Interfaith Dialogues

This past weekend a group of students from Biola University (a private evangelical Christian university) took a trip from southern California to Utah to brave the cold and learn more about Mormons. They toured Temple Square, and they even got to meet with a leader in the Church (a member of the Quorum of the Seventy) and ask him questions. We were so jealous!

While they were here, they participated in several dialogues with members of the LDS church. The goal of the dialogues is to understand the others' doctrines and personal beliefs. Last year Nathan and I participated in other dialogues with evangelical university students from Biola University (California), North Central University (Minnesota!), Wheaton College (Illinois), and others. It's nice to be in a comfortable, relaxed setting where you can just ask about whatever's on your mind.


On Friday night Nathan, Avery, and I went to a local evangelical church to hear a short sermon, listen to some popular Christian songs played by a really good band, and then have some really fun conversations with some evangelicals. We had so much fun! It was good to be with a group of people who were very honest and open, and yet were not critical of our beliefs.

There was also a really yummy potluck beforehand with some delicious chili (you can kinda see it in the background below). My favorite was the white bean and chicken chili. Yummy! My mouth is watering just thinking about it. They even gave us leftovers to take home! Everyone was nice enough to be willing to hold Avery. She basically got passed around from person to person the whole time! They were very accommodating to say the least! Avery seemed to love it! :) She's been drooling buckets lately. She drooled all over Kate (holding her below), but Kate was so patient and didn't seem to mind too much. Thank goodness for bibs!


Below is the Communion, which is an evangelical practice we'd never seen before. During the singing, any believer could take it as a recommitment to follow Christ. Their idea of Communion is very similar to our sacrament. The pic is a little blurry, but it was unleavened bread and grape juice.


After the singing, we broke up into groups and took turns asking each other questions. We sat with two girls and talked about several different topics that we wanted to understand better, like their concept of the Trinity, or our understanding of prophets. We also shared personal experiences of at what point(s) in our lives we developed our own convictions and what difference that has made in our lives.


The two girls that we dialogued with, Vanessa and Sarah were sooo nice! It was probably the best experience I've had dialoguing so far, actually. There wasn't any discomfort; just honest talking and trying to come understand each other, and patience and humor whenever someone had trouble putting into words what they believed. We stayed until about 11:45 pm—for about 4 hours! Above are Nathan and I with Vanessa (middle) and Sarah (far left). They were so kind and I loved hearing their experiences and getting to know them better. They are truly remarkable ladies!

The Biola students come out every year, so we're looking forward to hopefully meeting up with them again!

Avery's Ticklish Spot

It has become an evening tradition to squeeze Avery's legs when we are changing her into her pajamas. For some reason she has always been ticklish on her legs! I freaking love her little laugh.


Nathan is such a great dad! He'll watch Avery after church most Sundays so I can take a nap. I came into the living room after my nap one Sunday afternoon and had to capture the moment.


Now that we are almost all settled in to our house, I've had more time to spend with Nathan and Avery without worrying about unpacking and getting things done. I love it! The next thing I'm looking forward to doing is decorating for Christmas! :)

Jelaire Avery & Halloween 2009

AVERY finally came if you haven’t heard! (We call her by her middle name so we don’t get confused.) She’s so fun! She came on May 29th and was 6 lbs. 8 oz. (and 19″ long if I remember right).



I actually really, really, REALLY like being a mom! I know, I know—who'da thunk, right? But I’m glad to say that I DO! She is an awesome baby and has been sleeping through the night (at least 8 hours) since she was 6 weeks old! She's such a great baby and rarely cries!

I have lots of catching up to do, so here goes! Since my first post, I finally graduated with my masters in social work from BYU (lots of miracles happened to make this a reality) and moved twice. Hence the lack of bloggage. But yay for not having any more school! Now I’m a full-time mama. Plus I love not being sick 24/7. I guess I’ll just jump in with current news!

We went to our ward (congregation) Halloween party and we got to dress her up as a PINK BEAR!!! She is really ferocious if you can't tell from the picture. We told her to growl and frown at people, but she just wouldn't listen!

I had to run some errands that day, so I just decided to leave her in her costume. It was entertaining to hear everyone ogling over her exquisite cuteness. And ya know, I never quite get sick of it! Just to let you know, I promise that the rest of my posts will not be quite so bragful. I'm hoping to get it all out in this one!

Nathan was Frodo/Samwise from LOTR and I was a pirate. He’s had so many people tell him he looks like Sean Astin (the actor who plays Samwise), it was only fitting he be a hobbit!! He also had several people ask him why he didn't dress up for Halloween. Haha! I loved Halloween this year. I didn't get to dress up last year because I was so sick. I managed to barely get out of bed and I got to walk up a street for Halloween last year...and that was the HIGHLIGHT of my day! So, I'm grateful that this year we got to go out and actually do some fun things!

I’ve decided that it’s much easier to keep a blog when there’s a cute little baby to blog about! I LOVE my little family and can’t wait to share more with everyone!