Family Movie Night...Chamberlin Style

THIS is how you do movie night...Root Beer in fancy glasses (thank you Brooke!)...



...M&M's (ABC's to Sydney) in the popcorn...



...and Mommy and Papa's bed in the living room! Lots of space to lounge and lay out!

Budding Artist

Sydney enjoys coloring. She colors about once a day, at least. Today, she drew some lovely pictures.



She did this one first. Note the use of colors and the upside down happy face halfway up the page.



This is one of my favorites. Not sure what it is? Let me explain a little.



Notice the eyebrows on a few of them? She's obsessed with eyebrows recently. Don't ask me why.



And here she is coloring on her fingernails. Good thing we use washable markers. Although, she had marker smudges on her face when my visiting teachers came over today. They looked like bruises. Go me.

Ward Christmas Party

I was asked to sing "O Holy Night." Charles insists we don't have enough pictures of me, so he made sure to take some of me singing.



Sydney didn't want anything to do with Santa...until she saw that Santa was giving out candy. Then, she marched right up to him and got her candy cane, thanked him and went to walk away. We had to beg her to stand by him to get a picture of their faces.



And we were very excited that my mom and Talia came up for the two hours to hear me sing. I should have taken a picture of them there, but I forgot. Oh well.

What a Great Papa We Have!

Digging our car out of the snow so we could get out of the house for thirty minutes!

Why Charles had no school for two days

The view out our living room window.


Our car




Sydney was very concerned for the squirrels. She kept calling them to come inside our apartment.

Dancing

Excuse the messy apartment and blurry images, but here are some pictures of Sydney and Damon dancing at our house.

Oh, the weather outside is (going to be) frightful...

We are getting ready for our first Nebraska winter storm (not my first one, but still). It's predicted we will get up to twelve inches of snow tomorrow, not including the three inches we got on Sunday and the one to two inches we got tonight. Schools across the state have already declared themselves closed for the day tomorrow. Hopefully, UNL isn't going to be one of them, as Charles has his first final tomorrow and we don't want it to be rescheduled.

Dedication

This kid cracks me up! She loves this little chair we got her for free off of Craigslist. Last week, Charles was feeling sick and was having a hard time with the cold medications we had him on (apparently antihistamines don't react well with his body...something I will NEVER understand how he can survive without them) and I needed to get some things done around the house. So, I asked Sydney to "take care" of him. You know, kisses and such. She made me bring the chair out of her room and sit it right in front of the couch, right in front of Charles' head, facing him. Every time I tried to move her so they could watch tv or something, it was always, "No, Mommy, I take care of Papa."

What Ails Us?

This morning, Sydney came into our room after she woke up and was snuggling with us before we all got up for the day. She looked at me and asked me to open my mouth. Then she asked me what I had in my mouth. I figured she was talking about my permanent retainer until she tells me that I had a frog in my mouth and it goes ribbit, ribbit. So, I asked her what she had in her mouth. She said that she had a piggy in her mouth and that it goes oink, oink (which is an improvement...her pigs used to say la, la, la). Then, she told Charles to open his mouth. She then told him he had a cow in his mouth and that the cow goes mooo. Wonder how we cure this? ;)

Eye Opener

So, I have a new calling, on top of my calling as Relief Society Music Leader. I am an assistant den leader in the Cub Scouts. Specifically over the Bears. Tonight was my first time attending a den meeting. Holy Cow!!! It is going to be interesting. Those boys have ENERGY! It should be fun.

The best part to me is how excited Charles is for me to be in Cub Scouts. When I received the call, I started asking him about it, and he kept going on about the different levels and awards and how it was going to be good practice for whenever we have sons. I love it. I'll have to tell him that he can even earn a patch next year for the 100th anniversary of Scouting.

Ready

Our tree is up, the wreath is on the door, and I'm anxious to start baking and planning Christmas activities. I'm going to go watch TV with Charles and cut construction paper and make a chain for Sydney to count down to Christmas. I think we're ready for December.

It's good to be home

Highlights from this weekend:

• Spending time with our family, especially Trevor and Julie.
• Charles' birthday.
• Watching New Moon.
• Sydney being SUPER excited for Thanksgiving. She sobbed when I put her down for a nap because she didn't want to miss Thanksgiving.
• Visiting the zoo and Gingerbread Display.
• Going to the temple.
• Listening to my dad's talk about families and his tie ins to Twilight.
  

Too Keyed Up to Write

Winter Quarters Temple

Mmm...

Want to eat a super yummy breakfast?

Try these...you'll love them. I made them for breakfast today and they were GONE!

Now, how can I top that tomorrow?

Happy Thanksgiving!

From our family to yours.

Yeah, it's not the greatest picture, but we were hungry. I'll try harder next time.

Happy Birthday, Charles!

We had a nice day today. I made breakfast for everybody...biscuits and gravy per Charles request. We had a small cake after lunch (we still have cake from Talia's birthday yesterday, so a small cake was necessary). We've played Bang and Break the Safe. And Charles and I went out to Old Chicago for dinner...all by ourselves! We haven't been out on a date in months, so it was really nice to be just the two of us together. Hopefully Charles enjoyed his birthday celebrations.

Birthday Eve

I was going to upload pictures of Sydney playing Wii with Trevor and Julie and from Talia's birthday tonight, but my mom's computer isn't reading my card right now, so maybe tomorrow.

By the way, tomorrow is Charles' birthday. Be sure to wish him a happy birthday!

Looking Back

These pictures are from when Charles and I were first married. This was the first Thanksgiving meal I cooked all by myself. I was so proud of myself. The rolls are a little flat and we didn't own a gravy boat, but not bad for my first try.

Things I Never Knew I Would Say, Or Didn't Know I Would Say So Often as a Parent

1. Sydney, NO! Pepper spray is not a toy.
2. The toilet is not a toy, it is only for pooping and peeing.
3. No Sydney, urinals are only for boys.

Waiting...

Charles is still working on his open memo for his Legal Writing class(it's due tomorrow.) I think at this point, neither of us can wait for Tuesday afternoon, when we head out to my parents house...a whole hour away. It's especially exciting since Trevor and Julie will be there AND it will be Talia's birthday. We're quite excited!

Winter Quarters Temple

Charles and I went to the temple today. It was a nice, much needed break from the everyday.

Random Pictures Accruing in My Flickr Account...part 3

Extreme Hide and Seek

Where is Sydney?



In the closet, in the bathroom, about five feet up!



She thought it was hilarious.

Don't read this if you're hungry...

Seriously!



It might be hazardous...



You will be craving these...



Don't say I didn't warn you!




Pioneer Woman's Apple Dumplings. My pictures don't do them justice! These were soooo good! So good, that Charles willingly took some over to our neighbors so we couldn't eat them all. So good, that I'm pretty sure the apples are no longer fruit anymore. And they were ridiculously easy to make. So, stop sitting there drooling, and get cooking!

Lamp

My sweet mother redid this lamp for us. I love it. It was originally cream and kinda odd looking (at least I thought so) and now it's just amazing! Thanks, Mom!

Cold again

I think that our nice warm break has ended. Today was blustery and cold. Thank goodness we had broccoli cheese soup in the crock pot, nice and warm. It was delicious.

Elder Oaks

We spent the weekend at my parent's house, in part to go to Stake Conference with them. We got to listen to (and shake hands with) Elder Oaks, who came to preside. It was interesting to hear him speak in a setting other than General Conference, since he has more formal speaking style in General Conference. He told a lot of stories to make his points and he made a point to shake as many hands as he could. It's always nice to hear an apostle speak and this was no exception. And it was especially nice to have Sydney recognize him from his picture. We had been showing her pictures of the apostles and telling her who they were and after he entered the chapel, we asked her who Elder Oaks was and she stood up and pointed right at him.
(picture from LDS Newsroom)

Dancy Dancy

My mom and I took Sydney to a Fancy Nancy story time at Borders today. I think she enjoyed it. We dressed her up in Sunday clothing. She got to color pictures, march in a parade around the store and sip hot chocolate and eat cake. It was pretty fun.

Feeling Crappy

I think I have a cold. Expect short entries this weekend.

Blah

I'm not feeling very vocal tonight, so this is what you get. I'll try harder tomorrow.

Babysitting

I'm sitting at home, listening to two two-year-olds laugh with each other. I'm pretty sure that there is nothing better than that. Well, except for maybe eating chocolate cake later tonight when they go to bed.

Big Girl

So, I think it's safe to say that Sydney is officially potty trained. She has not worn a diaper or pull-up during the day for almost two weeks and has not had an accident in that whole time. She's even woken up from her naps and in the mornings completely dry. We're rather proud of her.

History I Witnessed

Today, in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. My family was living in Berlin at the time. My parents have pictures of us at the wall. I'm going to have to find our pictures from then and scan some in this weekend.
(obviously, not my picture...it came from here)

The face behind the lens

One of the good/bad things about NaBloPoMo is that it makes me be creative in what I'm going to post. It's easy to just put up cute pictures of Sydney and recount what we were doing at that moment. But, it gets boring doing that every day. So, since Charles keeps telling me that I never put pictures of myself up, I thought I would rectify that.


This is how I prefer to look at a camera, through the viewfinder.




And, usually, I just look dorky, because I CONSTANTLY close my eyes in pictures so I overcompensate and then look like these pictures.






And, occasionally, Charles gets a decent picture of me. These last ones were from my birthday back in July. Charles took me out for lunch at Los Hermanos. It was delicious.