This one's for Kari...

...who doesn't think my blog is worth reading unless I post pictures of Kalena.


She would like to pick out toys for herself thankyouverymuch.


Everything goes in the mouth. She pulled herself up on my pants and then tried to eat the drawstring.


Cowboy's fan already. Even though they fell apart this season.

Distracted

I was going to write a blog last night, but then I downloaded a program called Inkscape and got all caught up messing around with it. I was also going to load some pictures from my camera to my computer but let me explain to you how technology works in our house.

Brian has a computer. Said computer works beautifully all the time even though he downloads loads of internet games, programming stuff, and music. Something happens enabling Brian to get a new computer even though the old one still works great.

Elsha acquires hand me down computer from Brian. Suddenly, this computer starts having all kinds of problems. Internet doesn't work, computer won't read my camera card, I get the Blue Screen of Death, and so on. This all happens despite the fact that I pretty much only use the computer for internet surfing and playing spider solitaire. If I get an error, all I have to do is hand the computer over to Brian and it's magically better.

This also happens with Brian's iPhone, our TV, the BluRay player, and pretty much any other technology we have in our house. I don't know what the deal is, he just has a touch. That's how we can tell when something is really REALLY broken-- if Brian can't fix it.

Anyway, my point was my computer isn't reading my camera card right now so I may or may not be posting some pictures later. I'll see if Brian's not too busy to fix it;) Good thing he's a computer science major I guess.

We tried to tell her she's too young...

Apparently Kalena doesn't get enough attention, because over Christmas she resorted to pole dancing. I guess she figured if her great-grandma isn't using that walker somebody should.



Oh Kalena. What am I going to do with you?

Incidentally

I've blogged before about who Kalena looks like. Most people comment on how much she looks like Brian. I'm not sure we'll really be able to tell until she's older.

Looking through my Christmas pictures I found this one and it's been confirmed once again that *I* look like my mom.


And I think that's lovely.

Christmas: Before and After

Here's the tree and all the presents Christmas morning. Yes, it's dark outside. We do Christmas at like 6 am. I'm not sure we've ever opened presents after sunrise.


This is what it looks like when you put presents for 15 people under the same tree. Christmas at my parents' house included: my grandma Gustavson who lives with my parents, my parents, their 5 kids, 4 of the spouses, and the 3 grand kids.


Another view of the loot.


Now, here's a picture and an explanation for reference. In front of the fire place there's a lower level of the living room. It's not very big, maybe 5 feet long by 3 feet wide (guessing here-- could be way off) and has one step down into it. We've always just called it "the pit." This picture is my dad sitting in the pit playing with Espen (who is on the step) and Kalena. Anyway, I'm putting this in here so these next pictures make sense.


Here is what the pit looks like after Christmas morning happens. All the wrapping paper and boxes and such go in there and then burnable stuff gets burned. Less to throw away after that.

Kari and Jonathan sleeping next to the wreckage.


Don't they look adorable sleeping there together? Awwww. They can only do that because they have no kids. YET. That's gonna change come August! Then they'll find out that they'll never be able to sleep at the same time ever again. Ha ha!


Here's some pictures of the tree looking a little sad with no presents under it anymore.


Kari put Kalena in the pit to swim around in all that paper. She says, "Jeez you guys sure made a mess."


"Uh, guys? I think I'm sinking..."


There you have it. Christmas morning at my parents.

Captions

Ah ha! Nobody watching me! What can I get into back here...



Oh, there you are. Well, since you're here why don't you help me get this out?


Might as well drive me around since you have nothing better to do.



Dad's trying to look indifferent here, but he can't resist how cute I am.

Finally rested

10 days ago Kalena started sleeping through the night. Now instead of eating at 3 or 4 in the morning and getting up at 5 or 6, she sleeps until 5 or 6, eats eight ounces and goes back to sleep. It's a little strange to go to bed and expect to sleep for 7 hours in a row.

I don't take any credit for this. But OH.MY.GOODNESS. it is SO nice to sleep all night.

That's all.

It was in her eyelashes and everything

Kalena isn't generally a super messy eater, but the other day I made the mistake of trying to feed her when she was tired. About halfway through a jar of squash she put her hands in her mouth and then proceeded to rub her eyes. Of course, that meant I was obligated to take the "baby with food all over her face" picture, and now you are obligated to look at it! Okay, you aren't actually obligated to look at the pictures, but you should-- she's still pretty cute, even with squash all over her face.


You can tell how tired she is here because I couldn't get her to smile the giant smile she normally gives. (You know, this smile, the one that caused Kirsta to call Kalena's mouth a black hole.)

Before you laugh at me...

Some of you might have noticed that I put my reading list back up. (Keeping track of the books I read while I'm 26.) Now, before you make fun of me before reading the entire Twilight series (AGAIN) let me say this in my own defense-- they make great car reading.

Over Christmas break, we spent more than 30 hours driving to and from different people's houses. I drove some of the time, but for the most part I sat in the back seat with Kalena. Sometimes she needed entertaining, and sometimes she needed fed, but mostly she slept. Trying to keep up a conversation between the front and back seat while simultaneously trying not to wake a sleeping baby doesn't really work, so I read. Reading in the car doesn't make me carsick, but it needs to be light reading so the Twilight series was perfect. It did keep me from doing any other reading, but hey, it was vacation!

Maybe in 2009 I'll read something a little more intellectual hmmm?

Hard to spell

Which of these would you think is harder to spell?

"Brian" or "van de Boogaard"

Right. Then you can understand why I laughed when I looked at Brian's new school ID and it read "VANDEBOOGAARD, BRION." Don't worry, he's getting it fixed today.

Why you really read my blog

I haven't posted any pictures in awhile, so today you get pictures and an update. Here she is looking awfully innocent. Don't be fooled!


Here she is looking mischievous. Much more accurate.


Enjoying one of her Christmas presents-- bath toys! Kalena thinks bath time is pretty much the greatest thing ever. Playing with toys plus water! What could be better?!


Check out those chompers.




As for the update here's the info:

She has two teeth (as pictured above.) Her favorite food is sweet potatoes. After that, chicken with sweet potatoes. Then other orange foods (carrots and squash), green beans, and other veggies. She's not too big on fruit but she'll tolerate applesauce. She still thinks rice cereal is flavorless mush...which is true. She started sitting up on her own (without needing her hands to prop herself up) just after 6 months and started pulling herself up to standing soon after that.

She is pretty fascinated by our dogs-- she likes to watch them run by and always wants to touch them. They would like her to leave them ALONE. But they're good dogs so they just run away whenever they see her grabby little hand reaching for them. I'm sure when she starts dropping food on the floor they will learn to love her (or at least appreciate her messiness.)

There you have it. It's a good things she's cute because she's a trouble maker! Okay fine, she's just curious but sheesh, you can't leave this girl alone for 2 seconds!

Me and the lists, we go way back

For Christmas, I got my sisters, my sister in law, my mom, and myself each a little stocking stuffer-- list paper. Cute magnetic pads of paper for random list making. My sister in law got us each a stocking stuffer too-- a set of list pads. Four to a set titled To Do, To Buy, To Remember, and To Get (a pre-made grocery list where you just check off what you need.) And, of course, my mom got us each a stocking stuffer as well-- little books for list keeping! (These are more specific though and tailored to our individual interests.) Nobody was disappointed by the abundance of list making materials though. This is because we are list people.

I'm not sure I've ever blogged about this habit before, but I know Kirsta talked about it a little bit here. Turns out I'm a little obsessive about list making. Everything needs a list-- books I want to read, things I need to do, stuff to pack before we go on vacation, movies we own, etc. (Confession here: the list of movies we own isn't just a list. It's a fully functional spreadsheet including movie title, rating, run time, category (genre), subcategory, two columns for big name actors or actresses (if there are any), a date column listing the last time we watched it, a column to keep track of movies that are borrowed, and the location of the movie (we keep them in binders because we have no wall space for the ridiculous number of movies we own.) Yes, it took a long time to do. Yes, it was totally worth it; we use it all the time. Seriously.) Anyway...

One day I started thinking about when this all started. My mom and my sisters are list makers, so it's not surprising that I am too, but when did all this list making start?

Thinking back:

College: Yep, made lists then. To do lists, homework lists, grocery lists...

High School: Yes again. Mostly homework lists with the occasional to do list thrown in.

Middle School: I don't remember a whole lot of list making in middle school, but I'm sure I did because suddenly I am remembering a ridiculous amount of list making going on in elementary school.

Yep. Apparently we started young. Here's what I remember.

Whenever my sisters and I had some free time and we didn't know what to do we would sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper and make a list of possible activities. Now, I don't mean that we quickly jotted a couple things down and decided. This was SERIOUS business. We would each have our own pencil and paper and we would set a time limit (I KNOW!) for the process. Then we would each come up with as many possibilities of things to do as we could. And then? We would read our lists to each other and VOTE on what we would do. The funny thing is, most of what I remember is the actual list making, not doing anything else. I guess we all thought that was the best part anyway, because otherwise why didn't we just KEEP a list and refer back to it? Who knows? I guess we were just born list makers.


Well. Now that I've alienated all my friends with clear evidence that I am CRAZY, why don't you tell me your craziest list story. Then go back to your own blog and blog about your bizarre childhood habits. I promise I won't judge.

The Nativities

I promised pictures of my nativities so here you go.

The first one we bought with some Christmas money in 2006, the first Christmas we were married. (It's from Big Sky Carvers and normally they're pretty expensive but the store was discontinuing this set so they were like 60% off.) This isn't the whole set, you can also get moose dressed as sheep, a camel, and a cow, but they didn't have those at the store. I may need to order them online...


This one was a gift from Brian's mom in 2006. All the characters in this one can be hung as Christmas ornaments, but I like to set them out. Aren't they cute?


This one was a Christmas gift from Brian in 2007. It's probably the most traditional nativity set we have. Since it's ceramic it's also probably the most breakable, so I imagine it will keep its place on top of the bookcase for many years. Interestingly, it's also the only nativity I have where baby Jesus and the manger are two separate pieces.


This one was a gift from Brian's mom for Christmas in 2007. I don't know how much you can see from the picture, but all the pieces are hand painted and the detail is GORGEOUS.


I bought this one this year. I stopped by the stand to look at them every time I was at the mall so I finally bought one. Obviously this can also be hung as an ornament but we didn't even put up the tree this year so it just got set out.


Sorry about the glare on this one. Without the flash the pictures were blurry (and you could see my reflection which was a little weird.) This one was a gift from Brian's mom this year, and it is magnetic (that's our fridge creating that lovely glare.) I'm sure Kalena will enjoy playing with this one next year and I'm guessing it will be much loved (and abused) by little hands in the years to come.


Another addition this year, the last one was a gift from Brian for Christmas. Maybe I need a nativity tree with all these nativity ornaments?



Anyway, I love nativities. Obviously. I know everyone has their own favorite decoration, so tell me yours!

New for the new year

New year, new blog look. Also, new computer. Well, it's new to me anyway, so I'm still working on getting all my pictures and such over here. Don't be surprised if I'm posting Christmas pictures in the middle of this month.

I thought about posting new year's resolutions, but most of the ones I have are a little vague and hard to measure progress on. BUT! I do have one concrete goal for the year that I'm sure you're all DYING to hear. This year, I am going to finish some projects! Those of you who know me know that I have a tendency to procrastinate. Alright, I'm HORRIBLE about it. As a result I get started on projects that then don't get finished for, um, pretty much forever. So for 2009 I have 4 projects that are started and I WILL finish.

1.) Our honeymoon scrapbook. This one is mostly done, but Thanksgiving will be 3 years since we went so it really should be finished.
2.) A memory quilt (I guess that's what it is?) that I started making with my grandma out of my sorority stuff from college. The front is done, so I need to back it and bind it. I'll probably need to have someone to show me how to do a binding since the last time I did one was like 10 years ago.
3.) A cross stitch piece for Kalena's room. (One of the ones where you fill in the name and birth date and such.) I actually quit working on this one because I broke my only cross stitch needle. But I got new needles months ago...
4.) Last, but not least, Kalena's baby book. I'm not sure I can fill all of it in this year (I think there may be spots for 2nd birthday stuff) but I'll do as much as I can.

What about you? Any projects for the new year?