Goodnight, Goodnight Moon

Grant put an end to (one of) his Goodnight Moon books this week. I don't know if it was an act of two year old aggression, but for one reason or another he took out his frustrations on the mittens/kittens page. As consequence for his actions, we're only going to read him one part of the book at a time. He'll have to be satisfied without saying goodnight to the clocks, socks, little house, mouse, comb, brush, nobody, mush, old lady whispering "hush", stars, air, and noises everywhere. Something tells me he'll get just bring us our OTHER copy of the book instead. Isn't this book amazing?! I wonder if Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd got together and said, "Hey, let's write/illustrate a book that will not only be a best seller and be in every single home, but let's convince people that they need to own more than one copy!" I don't know about other homes, but growing up, we had this book in various sizes, shapes and textures! It's genius, I swear! They must have seen the little Grants of the world coming a mile away!

Grant has always been fascinated with the camera - rarely being happy to pose because he's constantly trying to get his hands on the technology. The other night I let him play and watched to see what he would do with it. After pressing the button to view the pictures and flipping through them, he set the camera to take a picture, put it on the floor, checked the screen, hit the button and tried to make it around to the front of the camera before it snapped the picture. No dice! He stayed on the performing side of the lens and hit the button a few more times, each time trying to get a little lower to look in the camera. He didn't have much success, but still it provided us with a lot of fun for one evening as we watched. I wonder if he'll become the first world renowned photographer who's work consists entirely of self portraits.

Eventually he gave up and started wandering around the room watching the screen as he moved. He managed to snap a picture of Jeremy, but had his finger partially over the flash I've cropped the picture a little bit.

Getting In The Holiday Spirit - Take 2

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Snow Day 2008!!!

I feel like I should be writing more, but I just want to get these pictures posted on here.... sorry for the lack of details.

The park across the street from our apartment complex.

Dang it Mom! Why couldn't we find my gloves?!?!

Grant's 2008 Snow Angel

Grant was determined to go down the slide even though the bottom was covered in snow. I think he changed his mind once he got to the top, can you tell? Gravity took care of the fear though and he slipped sliding perfectly down the slide and laughing at the bottom, sitting on the pile of snow that he'd just cleared off.

He also insisted on going on the swing, even though his little nose was getting pretty red!

He loves swinging on the "big kid" swings on his tummy.

Feeling Scarfy?

My name is Honor and I knit! Well, not with knitting needles, but on a hat loom like the one shown below (thank you, thank you, thank you Cullen - who gave it to me as a Christmas present the other year and really got me hooked - pun intended).

Scarves have been my favorite thing to make because I'm more likely to actually wear them than I am anything else i could make. This is the one I finished tonight and I was so happy that the picture I snapped was able to capture all the different colors in the yarn. Simply beautiful!

These are the other scarves I've made that I still have in my possession, in order from newest to oldest.

Goofy Grant

I was looking at the blog and thinking, "There just aren't enough pictures of Grant on here! I'd better put up more!" So here they are! Just fun pictures taken in the past few days of Grant being his normal little goofball self.

Grant and I were chasing each other around the house. I grabbed the camera and ran into the bedroom and hid behind the bed and waited for him to come find me. This is the resulting picture.

Then Grant ran to the other side of the bed and waited for me to "find" him.

Then I pretended to growl at him and he scrambled up on the bed.

A few days later I found him walking around the house in Daddy's shoes. Usually he goes for my heels or flip flops, but I think he's learning that Daddy's are a little easier to walk in.

Grant has figured out exactly how to work the remote controls and yesterday I found that he had turned on both the tv and the dvd player, put it on the right channel and pressed the play button and was happily concentrating on The Emporer's New Groove.

Snow? Please?

Grant has been pulling out his snow bibs and asking to put them on day after day. Tonight I indulged his requests along with his big jacket. He had a ball running around the house "swishing". I love this little pose he did up there - totally workin it! The only problem is that there's no snow yet. NOT exactly a problem for the rest of us. Just for his snow suit.

Mom had sent us some Thanksgiving stickers and Grant enjoyed himself as he stuck them on his cheeks and pulled them off again until they wouldn't stick anymore. Anyone else happy to have the holiday season upon us? I'm loving it!

SLC Pictures

As we drove home from the museum yesterday, I managed to snap a few cool pictures in downtown Salt Lake. I was happily surprised at how well they turned out!

The temple with a few of the changing leaves on the trees of Temple Square

Looking up at the front of the Church Administration Building

One of several remaining horse-blocks in front of houses along South Temple

The horse-blocks intrigued me. It's just one of the things that make me love Salt Lake. There is "small town" history that you can find everywhere in the city, from the original architecture of old buildings downtown to parks and memorials that date back to the pioneer days. It feels like there's is a story with just about every home or every street you could walk down. I might be naive when it comes to all this - not having lived in too many areas of the world. I'm sure Cammie has many more stories to tell having lived in Italy, but I feel tied to the history here. It's a part of me. I experienced it for the first time significantly when I came on the road trip helping my friend Jodi move here. Her new home was a half block east of Temple Square. I had left California planning on being away for a week, but while in Utah, I kept having the crazy thought of not going home. One night I had the opportunity to walk to Temple Square alone. It was the middle of January and pretty cold. I remember standing around the west side of the temple, looking up at it with nobody around. It felt like a quiet, private moment. It felt more familiar than it should have for the first time I'd really spent any time on the grounds. I thought about the feelings my mother had expressed to me about how she felt during the time she'd spent in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains and of my Great Great Grandmother who saw this valley as Zion and I'm sure stood in the same spots I was, many years before. It felt like a home where I'd never lived. Over the next few days, I had a few more experiences and doors opened to me that made it possible for me to stay in Salt Lake (much to the shock of friends and family). It's unbelievable to think about how quickly time passes. In a journal entry from August 2002, I wrote while sitting on Temple Square, "The trees around the east side are still rather small, but it will be kind of enclosed and shaded when they grow up. I wonder if that is how it will be one day when I bring my children here to visit." Well, I was there the other day, and the trees aren't quite as big as I thought they'd be once I was a mother. Life has sprung on me rather quickly it seems, but it's still strange to think that 6 years have past since I had that thought. Anyway, enough of this - I enjoy getting caught up in nostalgic moments, can you tell?

Utah Museum of Natural History

This guy reminded me of this movie clip from Meet the Robinsons. Never fails to make me laugh!

Jere came home from work early on Friday and wanted to go the Utah Museum of Natural History. Grant loved being able to get his hands on new things even if they triggered the "DANGER" alarm in this Mom brain of mine.

Jeremy tells me I have a big mouth..... It looks kinda small to me!

I'm thinking we need to build Grant his own tee pee. He had so much fun crawling in and out of this one!

I promise that we had fun, but the way Grant ran for the door wouldn't have made you think so. It was a little like he was saying, "My mom and dad are trying to educate me..... HEEEEELLLLLPPPPP!"

And finally, just because Jere never takes any pictures with me in it, I took a picture of me giving him THE LOOK. Not like he looks at our blog, but maybe it'll remind him that I'd like to be part of our family photo history.