Anniversary, President's Day, and Family Update

Sorry we haven't added for a while. I blame it on the fact that Richard always has his computer with him on campus. By the time he gets home at night it's dinner, bath time for Ethan, bed time for Ethan, a few minutes to enjoy each others' company and then we go to sleep. Anyway, we haven't been up to much lately. We had our third year wedding anniversary on the 18th, and just went out to dinner. Nothing too fancy --we even took Ethan with us. We went to the temple the next day while Ethan stayed with his Grandma Sam, and that was nice.
As for our daily lives . . . Richard loves his work. I'm grateful for that. I think his students really like him too. He's learning so much, and I'm hoping that the graduate schools will realize this when they make decisions about our applications. We're still waiting to hear from most of them. So far we've been accepted to Boise State, but no offer for a Teaching Assistant-ship yet (which will be the ultimate deciding factor). The other schools might not let us know anything til mid April and the suspense is killing me!
As for me . . . I'm just as pregnant as ever. I liked the second trimester much better than the third --It's too hard to bend over these days, and even just sitting here the baby is pushing on my ribs trying to make me sit up straighter so I don't squish him so much. He's always getting squished by Ethan, and I guess he'll just have to get used to it. He'll be a human speed bump for the first 6 months of life anyway.
Ethan is growing and getting smarter every day. He's getting a few more words down, especially the ones that are important to him like "show" or "bubbles" (he won't have a bath without them) but he mostly just depends on pointing and grunting. I'm afraid I cater to him too much by being a good guesser at what he wants. He's also very helpful as you can see in the video. I hope no one turns us in for breaking child labor laws, but he just loves vacuuming and sweeping (if you can call it that) and he helps me empty the dishwasher and the clothes dryer all the time (which is nice so I don't have to bend down as much. He just wants to do whatever we are doing. 'Monkey see monkey do'. If I get out a tissue to blow my nose, he gets one out, rubs his nose with it and blows a little, crumples it up and throws it away. If we get out a screw driver, he has to use it too, finding all the screws under the chairs and on the back of the futon to try and tighten them. He also is always wanting to help me cook. As soon as I put something on the stove he's right there with a wooden spoon or spatula to help me stir it. He's such a funny kid. You've already seen how he "shovels" the snow with his spatulas. I'm wondering how many we'll find out there when the snow finally melts. . . Which it's finally starting to do! We'll probably have another storm or two, but it's been pretty warm lately and we can actually see our sidewalk! In fact, the other night I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to hear rain against the window. Weird huh? Still, there is a good foot of snow on the ground, and 4 foot piles outside our front windows. It's hard to have hope that spring will ever come.
Anyway, here's a few fun videos of Ethan and how he spends his time inside. We did get out on President's Day and used our free coupons to rent some snow shoes and x-country skis. It was fun, and the weather was beautiful. We went to the nature park here in town, and got to see the ducks. I wish we had brought bread to feed them; all we had were a few of Ethan's crackers. He loved watching them swim in the little pond down below. Well, hope you enjoy this. Hopefully we'll get in another post before the baby comes, but who knows?

Valentines!

I hope everyone had a great Valentines Day. Our celebrations actually started Thursday with the baking and decorating of cute Valentines Day cookies.

We didn't have a heart-shaped cookie cutter so we made one out of an old quart jar ring. Then we stayed up late decorating them. We were having too much fun, but we eventually ran out of frosting, and room on the cookie sheet. We still had a lot more cookies, so the next day Richard decided that he wanted to give them to his students. I had to make more frosting and frost them all myself (nothing fancy, just solid colors). It was a good reward for those students who didn't miss class to take off or the long weekend, plus they got to meet me and Ethan.

The students were very appreciative. We stayed on campus between his classes to have lunch, and then I took some of the fancy cookies to my sister. Of course, she had about five plates of the same kind of cookies that she had made on her kitchen counter, but it's the thought that counts right?

Today, Richard surprised me with another one of his strawberry and whipped cream waffle breakfasts. He let me sleep in this morning, while he took Ethan in his pajamas to the store. I had no idea they were even gone. Don't I have a great husband?

It was yummy! He also decided that breakfast wasn't enough, so he cooked all our meals today. Turkey sandwiches for lunch, (although Ethan decided he only wanted a hotdog, cheese, a sweet pickle, and some OJ for lunch. Appetizing eh?) and spaghetti dinner. What a guy!