Ben's Handywork

Ben and I have been very busy this month. It seems like Ben has no time to spare, ever. We're busy fixing up our house nowadays. Well, actually, Ben is. I watch. He's done a lot of painting and that sort of thing and since I am pregnant and want to be safe I stay away from where he is working most of the time. It's kind of annoying to have to watch and wait for results when I want to be participating in the fix-ups half the time, but it is fun to see our house transforming all the same.

These pictures are of Ben as he put it "performing a death-defying act" which meant he spent a long time on a shaky ladder, sometimes very near the top of it, just to change the light fixture in our entryway. It ended up looking really good though.

Ben and I have a ward talent show coming up and we couldn't think of anything to do to participate. Ben jokingly said something like, "I can't think of anything to do, unless they want me to change a light fixture at the church." (He's already changed five of them in our house.)

I'm lucky I married such a handyman. Among other things Ben has put a peep hole in our door for me, changed our leaky, disgusting, uncleanable tap in the kitchen, fixed a hole in the wall and a sticky drawer in the kitchen and built several very nice shelves in our laundry room and pantry. Last weekend he replaced our counter-top in the bathroom and installed a new tap there too. Everything looks very good and very professional and the best part is that Ben loves doing it!

Shoes?

These pictures were taken around mid-December when Evelyn was obsessed with putting everything on her feet. She spent about half an hour or more trying to put on shoes some days. Later on it was socks. (She says both words really well.) One day I got some cute videos of her trying to put on a shoe. I filmed her for about ten minutes. She sometimes got frustrated and threw herself backwards on the floor before sitting up to try again. She expresses her emotions loudly. She always has. She's either very happy or very upset and there's no inbetween, although her moods do change from minute to minute. I'll give her one thing though; she is very persistent when she wants to be.

Hannah this Time!

These are some of the most recent pictures we have of Hannah. We took them a couple of weeks ago. Hannah is so much fun. She's very independent but very shy. She loves to look at books and she's finally started to enjoy watching movies. But her favorite thing to do is have friends come over. She loves playing with other children. Or bossing them around or something like that. Just kidding. Mostly. It depends how old the kids are. If they are younger than she is, she's the boss. If they are older, she's friends with them. And she laughs a lot and runs around and plays and has a glorious time. It's fun to watch.

In this last picture, Ben asked Hannah to smile and "show her teeth." It looks more like a grimace doesn't it? I don't think Hannah knows how to smile on demand yet!



These are some of the most recent pictures we have of Hannah. We took them a couple of weeks ago. Hannah is so much fun. She's very independent but very shy. She loves to look at books and she's finally started to enjoy watching movies. But her favorite thing to do is have friends come over. She loves playing with other children. Or bossing them around or something like that. Just kidding. Mostly. It depends how old the kids are. If they are younger than she is, she's the boss. If they are older, she's friends with them. And she laughs a lot and runs around and plays and has a glorious time. It's fun to watch.

In this last picture, Ben asked Hannah to smile and "show her teeth." It looks more like a grimace doesn't it? I don't think Hannah knows how to smile on demand yet!

More of Evy

(Evy is the name we usually use for Evelyn. Eh-vie). Anyway... here are some very recent pictures of Evelyn. She's a very active girl. She can hardly ever sit still. (She's also very loving though. She spends a lot of the day coming up to me and giving me quick hugs before running off to play again.) You may notice that she has a black eye. She fell in the bathtub about a week ago. She falls a lot. She likes to climb. That's partly because she watches Hannah and wants to do all of the things that she does.

Evelyn is only fifteen months old but she thinks she is at least three. She's starting to talk a lot too. It's so much fun. She started talking months before Hannah did. Again, I partially think that's because she copies Hannah. She's learned a lot of the things she says around the same time that Hannah did. Although she pretends to say full sentences, usually the last word is the only intelligible one. I bet she can say fifty or more words on her own. It's so much fun! Her latest words are "boot" and "book" (she walks around practicing saying "k" and "t") and "hat." She can pronounce all of them perfectly. She also recently started to enjoy saying words like "hand" and "hair" and "eye" (as she pokes mine of course.) I can't get over how cute it is!

Evelyn My Sweetheart!

I'm in love! Evelyn makes my heart swell every day. She is a bundle of life and personality and joy. She's such a happy baby and she is so much fun! She's so adorable! Her face is always filled with expressions that make me laugh and smile and appreciate life just because it's obvious that she does! I don't think anyone could be any sweeter! It's no wonder that her name means "life" or "light!" It's obvious to me.

I'm back!

So many people have asked me why I haven't been updating my blog. It was obvious to me but not everyone else I guess. I got pregnant near the end of June and Ben was gone for a lot of the summer and I was SO tired. I also felt consistently sick all the time, and I fell out of all the routines I had established and all desire to do anything that I didn't absolutely have to do. It was hard enough to have to change diapers when the need arose! But I'm feeling absolutely GREAT now and overall I have a lot of energy and so I decided to see if I can get back at it!