Excursion to Midway

We have been failing at our resolve to get out of the house more, mostly because I just haven't been wanting to lately, but that all changed today. Several weeks ago, I read a newspaper article about this guy up in Midway who makes ice castles each year as a sort of hobby. This year, since it had become so popular, they moved the location to the center of town and started charging a minimal fee to enter (so that he can save for sons' missions and a daughter's wedding). Since I heard about it, I wanted to go. The only trouble was finding a time to do it. Every time we scheduled it, we'd wake up to bad weather. Go figure. Thankfully, today was different.

Midway Ice Castles

It is pretty incredible what this guy has done. From what I could tell, he basically has these sprinkler type contraptions set up throughout the lot that are constantly going at different rates. He must move them around and have a few other tricks to create all of the icicles, tunnels, etc., but everything was made completely out of ice.

This was used to create...

This!!!

Some Incredible Icicles

You could walk through a couple of the towers

After we wandered through the towers of ice, Jason decided that he wanted to try and find the city cemetery. His mission mom passed away a couple years ago and he wanted to pay his respects. So we found a store where we bought a bunch of daffodils and went in search of the cemetery. Upon finding it, we were worried that we wouldn't be able to find the actual gravesite due to the snow and having no clue where it would be. But find it we did. Jason told me about how kind this lady was and how she "didn't have a mean bone in her body--except for when things were unclean." Rest in peace, Hermana Smock.

My Pregnancy: Week 8

Baby's now the size of a raspberry!

Baby is growing like mad, putting on about a millimeter every day and continuing to straighten out in the trunk.  Though you can't feel it yet, baby is moving those little arms, legs, and (now only slightly) webbed fingers and toes like crazy.

Life (and baby) seem to still be progressing well.  The newness of being pregnant is wearing off.  As excited as I am about you, it is hard because I don't feel that pregnant yet.  Does that make any sense?  I mean, I am certainly experiencing symptoms that make it impossible to forget I'm pregnant, but I guess it doesn't feel real yet.

We aren't telling many people, so my coworkers are thinking something's wrong when I have to get up to get a drink of water every half hour.  I am still so early that I can't really do a lot of planning, shopping, etc.  I haven't even heard a heartbeat yet.  Basically, I have to try and continue living my life the same as I always did but with half the energy and a huge secret.

But now I sound like I'm complaining.  I'm not.  I am still thrilled to be pregnant.  I am glad to have the wonderful support of your dad and our families.  As hard as it has been for them to keep their mouths shut, I'm glad we told them so that I have people who can share in my excitement.

One of the symptoms that I haven't mentioned before are my dreams.  I am not one who usually dreams often and when I do, I almost never remember them.  And when I do remember them, I wake feeling exhausted because the dreams are so intense.  Like I said, before I was pregnant, such dreams were a rarity.  They now happen almost nightly and almost always have a nightmarish tinge to them.

Just last night I dreamt that Aunt Annie was two years old again.  Naturally, that meant that I was twelve.  We were in Yellowstone and preparing for some big hike.  Annie threw a tantrum insisting that she be allowed to come.  We gave in.  Once we got to the start of the trail, she started crying, saying that she didn't really want to go.  But it was too late to take her back to camp, so I volunteered to carry her.

We started on our hike (which turned out to be a walk through the campground) and we were doing fine.  Then Annie decided she wanted to walk for a while.  I set her down and she instantly took off at a run.  Before I knew it, she had turned into a squirrel.  She kept running along, far outpacing the rest of us.  Then she saw a potgut and freaked out.  She instantaneously turned into a bird, picked up the potgut, took it far up into the air, and dropped it--killing it instantly.

The group was in shock and she landed, once again becoming the squirrel.  This same bizarre transformation took place several more times and the same scene followed with different potguts.  By now, the entire group was chasing after the bird/squirrel (sometimes she never transformed completely before switching back again), trying to stop the potgut slaughter.  I almost had her in my hands when I woke up.

Strangest thing about this is that it wasn't the first time my dreams have turned toddlers into animals.  A few weeks back, I dreamt that my cousin's daughter turned into a duck while we were at Disneyland.  She would swim round and round the Rivers of America while we frantically tried to catch her without getting in trouble for being in the water.  I'm sensing a theme.

Puppet Craftiness

I tend to start way more projects than I actually finish in one fail swoop, so I seem to end up just rotating through them all since I have such a short attention spen. My current project is sewing puppets.

See, back in my high school child care class, I made a set of paper bag puppets--one for each letter of the alphabet. Each one even had a little poem/song that went with it to help teach children the letter sounds. I still have those puppets, but as I began pursuing my teaching career, I quickly realized that they wouldn't last long. This was a shame because they took FOREVER to color, cut-out, and put together.

To make a long story a bit shorter, I decided to try and create a more durable version of these puppets using my new sewing machine. I'm only finished with the first six so far, but I'm liking how they are turning out and wanted to share.

A bit of an improvement, right?