Cutie Patootie!

We had a wonderful Christmas.  Louise was thoroughly spoiled between her aunt, cousins, and grandparents. :)  Books, crayons (she LOVES them), hand puppets, dolls, and sweet little hand-knitted mittens and hat from her Nana.  Justin and I got her some warm pajamas.  I was spoiled too, for that matter.  Justin and I have been justifying buying things that we really need as "it's for Christmas" for a few months now.  :)  First we got two chairs off of Craigslist in October, so we can now comfortably sit 4 people instead of just two on the love seat (the home teachers were glad).  Then we got our winter gear: coats, gloves, boots, and hats from an awesome thrift store and Sierra Trading Post so we can live here during the winter.  Then in November we got an ErgoBaby carrier, that has totally changed our lives.  Well, maybe not quite that drastic, but it has made life SO much easier.  Louise is at the stage where she wants to be independent, but doesn't like the prospect very much, so she would walk right in front of me and hold her adorably chubby little arms out, begging me to hold her all day, making it nearly impossible to get anything done (how can I refuse that?).  With the Ergo I can very comfortably carry her any of the 3 ways and she is quite content to snuggle with me and watch what I'm doing.  We love how cozy and snuggly it is.  We say often how we wish we would have gotten an Ergo in the first place instead of the cheap carrier we got that was uncomfortable for all involved.  We also got the infant insert with the Ergo, so we can use this from birth to age 2 (or 45 lbs.).  We seriously use it several times every day.  Best purchase ever.  Then we got a pot rack to hang on the wall since we don't have much cupboard space and had been keeping our pots and pans in a box on the floor for months.  That was also a wonderful purchase.  So all of this was supposed to be our Christmas, but Justin spoiled me and got me a new blouse and pair of nice jeans.  My old "nice" jeans had 2 huge rips in the crotch that I had tried to patch and repair unsuccessfully, so I really needed a new pair.  I LOVE my new pair.  They finally got here today.  It's my first pair of skinny jeans and I feel so good in them.  Justin's Christmas was a little boring-I felt bad.  He got a collection of Grimm's fairy tales, and about 25 books that he'll need for school this semester.  He promised me he was excited about it.

After we opened presents it started to snow, so we went out (in our winter gear!) and played in the fresh snow.  Louise didn't know what to think. :)  We went to the little park next to our house and she just stood there for about 2 minutes.  She'd never seen snow before!  Justin and I would walk around and tell her to come play with us, but she just stood there.  Finally we took her hands and pulled her a few steps which seemed to convince her it was ok and she was off!  We've gone out several times since then and she really loves it, but her boots are faux suede (not winter boots) and are always soaked when we finish, so I'm afraid she freezes.  We need to find her some real winter boots and snow pants (surprisingly hard to come by here).

I've been getting really crafty lately, which is entirely out of character for me.  I made 2 valances for Louise's room, a quiet book, a Christmas card book, a maxi dress without a pattern, made some old high water jeans into cute skinny jeans, made some cinnamon chips since they don't sell them in stores here and attempted some cinnamon chip bread like Great Harvest's (you just can't compete with Great Harvest), some cute lace boot sock things...I don't remember what else.  Here are some pictures of a few of them.

             

I gave a talk in church last Sunday.  It was kind of scary.  I used to talk all the time, but I realized that it has been almost 3 years since I talked last.  It went well.

I think that's about it.  Louise and I have thoroughly enjoyed having Justin home and all to ourselves the last couple of weeks, but it's back to the grinding stone on Monday.  He's already started on the readings.

Curls. 

This girl loves her food. :)

I'm so excited to go home next week and see my family and friends, while at the same time really not wanting to leave Justin.  The longest we've ever been apart is 5 days for his Napa trip.  I'm worried about Louise not understanding what's going on since we'll be gone for 2 weeks.  Oh well.  Thank heaven for FaceTime, eh?