Annie's scriptures

Annie has been memorizing scriptures lately. Her grandparents requested that we get a video recording of it to help us remember this after our memories start to fade. :) Here it is!

1 Nephi 3:7 Round 2 from MaryAnne Hunter on Vimeo.

Annie stretched from MaryAnne Hunter on Vimeo.

Bumps and Bruises

Raising a boy is quite different than raising a girl. I don't remember Annie always having some kind of bump or bruise on her face, but poor James can't seem to heal completely before another one comes his way (or maybe he comes its way). The injury pictured below came when he face planted on to the cement step in front of one of our neighbor's doors. Then yesterday I noticed a scratch by his chin that I don't know how he got. Today I was in the basement cleaning up the glass jar that he'd broken and subsequently cut his lip on, when I heard him screaming. I went upstairs and he was hanging precariously from the shoe rack on our stairs. The cut lip scared me because he hadn't made a peep when he broke the glass, so I whisked him upstairs and was getting the vacuum out when I turned around to see blood gushing from his mouth. Yesterday he followed me into the bathroom while I showered. He usually just stands there looking mournful about the fact that I'm not holding him, but when I closed my eyes to rinse out the shampoo, I thought, "That whimper sounds too close for comfort" and sure enough, he had fallen in (fully clothed) and was almost doing a handstand in the tub. It was pretty funny. I love my gentle, albeit slightly accident prone, James!

James is never happier than when he is eating. He definitely eats more than Annie does. I have yet to see him reject a food (besides rice cereal). Just last night we gave him red peppers and he loved them.

This has nothing to do with this post, but it's a cute picture of Annie and her friend Ruth having a picnic the other day.

a little too senitmental

I've read a couple of posts by friends recently about how they cleaned out their closets and felt so refreshed after throwing out armloads of clothes. I was pretty dang sure I couldn't do that, what with my body pulling an Oprah on me. ("She's fat. She's thin. She's fat. She's thin. I mean pick a body and go with it." Who knows the quote?). BUT I thought I should be able to get rid of SEVERAL t-shirts. No, I'm not talking about cute shirts that I could potentially wear out of the house. I'm talking about nasty exercise shirts that should have been thrown out years ago. Shirts such as my sophomore cheer shirt that says "PLAYER" on the back (we thought we were so clever) or my Friday Night Live t-shirt that I got the first night Brad ever called me his girlfriend. Shirts that are so tied up in memories that I have literally trekked them across the country. I sat down by my (overflowing) drawer to sort through my millions of shirts and ended up with a pitifully small pile of shirts. It's sort of like I feel disloyal to the memories if I throw the shirt away . . . Does anyone else hoard t-shirts or I am just crazy?

Incidentally, the small pile is still on my floor. I haven't yet been able to do the deed. PATHETIC!

Christmas in Utah

Until I checked my camera, I was pretty sure that we'd taken LOTS of pictures on our trip. Turns out we didn't. We pretty much only took them on Christmas. Oops.

Despite our lack of picture taking, we had a FANTASTIC trip! Brad and I kind of couldn't get over how much we enjoyed it. We got to spend a lot of time with both families, which was great. I left a few days before Brad because tickets were cheaper. And, again in order to save money, Brad flew stand-by home. Well, sort of home. It turned out that he and Michael didn't make the Rochester to NYC connection on the first attempt, which meant they were Rochester-bound for one extra day, and then only narrowly made it to NYC on their second attempt. Once they got to JFK, things did not look good for the SLC flight, so they hopped onto a plane bound for Vegas. Once in Vegas, they took the shuttle to St. George, then a sweet cousin shuttled them from St. George to Cedar City, and then Grandma and Grandpa Hunter let them take one of their cars up North. I was SO glad to see Brad at the end of that long day. (Particularly because I wanted to show him my newly-acquired gingerbread house burns - we were talking HUGE blisters, my friends. Still not fully healed, if anyone was wondering.)

We moved locations about every 2 or 3 days. I thought this would be really hard on the kids, but they were great sports. Annie did tell me that we went from "house to house to house". But at each house she found someone that she ADORED, so she was fine. Her older cousins and younger uncles were all so cute with her and SO helpful to me with the kids. They both felt so loved everywhere we went. It was fun for me to see how much both of the kids loved their family. Annie would wander around Bobbie's house looking for Tanner, and James just lit up the moment he saw Grandpa. James' cousins found out he loved to have people growl at him, so his cute cousin Eliza would run up to him and growl the moment we walked in the door. We are so lucky to have such great families!

We played lots of games (For Sale and Qwirkle were the big hits of the season for me). Brad went skiing. Isaac took care of my blisters and got me on antibiotics for the infection. We ate lots of yummy food. We went to a beautiful angel party. We went to the St. George temple. Brad played/arranged some oldies for his Grandma Hunter. We went on several dates - BYU basketball, Hatch's hot chocolate, Moneyball, Temple Square, etc. We witnessed some good friends get sealed in the Mount Timp temple. I'm sure I'm forgetting other important events. The most fun thing for us was being with our families - we just (literally) could not get enough of you. We are missing you! (Annie told me that just today.) It was such a great trip! Here's hoping we see you all again in June!

(My computer where the pictures are died a little bit ago, so these are the only pics I have right now. More to come.)