My Grandma Blacker gave us this beautiful Amaryllis
before it had bloomed,
and a few weeks later
look what we have! I
never thought it would
be this pretty! I think
I will try to have these
in the house more often.
And the best part is.....
I didn't have to do
ANYTHING! I just
watered it a few times
and it did all the rest.
Amazing!

We had a great time last night with Kade and Ciara. We ate dinner together and they brought lemon pepper chicken and caramelized squash (they both have an annoyingly natural talent for cooking) and I provided Uncle Ben's microwaveable rice and made some garlic cheesy bread (the first batch of garlic bread burned because I forgot to tell Ben it was in the oven when I ran next door to a neighbors!) We all watched America's Funniest Home Video's (one of my favorite shows). Then we all took turns chasing Riley while others would hide and jump out at him and scare him! It is so much fun watching Riley run for his life, and the surprised, angry, fearful, delighted look on his face every time someone jumps out at him! Ben, Kade, and Riley had a great time playing with Riley's trucks. For a few minutes their they were all just a bunch of little boys!

Well I finally figured out how to add music to my blog! It only took me about 5 frustrating hours, and I swear I signed up to 8 different music services just trying to figure out how to get a dang song or two onto my blog. This means my email is now OUT there with all these companies and I will probably have to spend an hour unsubscribing with them all. The website that I found was the most user friendly was ProjectPlaylist. Why couldn't I have tried this website first??? Anyways, if any of the songs are annoying to anyone, you can select a different song on the playlist....or just turn off your sound!

As you can see by the slideshow, Ben, Riley and I went to a really fun place recently. When we were walking up to the building, we were two parents and a child. Once we got through the doors we turned into three children! We had a lot of fun running and jumping and bouncing and climbing. I wonder why all the other parents were looking at us so funny??? I wonder why my back and legs and buttocks hurt so very bad the next day? Hmmm.

I am SO excited because I am almost done with this semester of nursing school. It has been a challenging semster because I had to be to clinicals SO early in the morning. Luckily next semester I signed up for night clinicals, which means every Friday night from 6 pm to 3 am I will be at the hospital. No more getting up early! Riley has REALLY enjoyed going to daycare this semester, and he has learned so much. I'm really glad that he got to experience being around other kids and doing fun things. He also loves eating lunch there, and if I happen to show up a little early while he is eating lunch at the table with all the other kids, he's not too happy with me :) After applying to get him in for next semester, I was told that unfortunately there wasn't any room (single parents get first priority). I have been really bummed about that because I don't want to take him away from something he loves so much. Then the other day I found out that someone else had dropped out and Riley was in! I was really happy.

Ben is doing really well at work, and just got another raise. Woodcraft (now owned by Burton Lumber) has been a really wonderful company for him to work for, and we will always be grateful to Brian Nuttal for introducing him to the company. Ben is also keeping busy with the ambulance crew here in Payson. Recently he went on a call where a mother had delivered a baby at home (not planned for) and so he was able to help with that. Pretty cool huh!

Well, Christmas is getting closer and I just wrapped a bunch of presents last night. My problem is I always want to get more for people! If I had enough money I would spend $500 on everyone!!!

How annoying that it's already Christmas time!!! Actually, Christmas was never as much fun before Riley was born. Now we get to watch HIM have fun and that is fun for us. I never thought it would work that way, but it really does! I always heard that once you have a child you see the world through their eyes and it's like seeing everything for the first time again. I am now a believer.


Ben and I had a "friendly" debate over whether we should have a real tree (bundle up, head out, climb a mountain, chop it down, head back, insert trunk into stand, listen to Ben swear) OR set up our perfectly good artificial tree that is right in our closet just waiting to be loved again as much as it was loved (by me) last year. Well, as you can see by the pictures Ben came to his senses and we set up our wonderful, symmetrical, non-fire hazardous tree :)

For Halloween Riley was a girl! It was the best costume ever. We had so many people fooled, even relatives we don't see much who looked really confused when they saw we had a girl, but would say things like "Oh, she is getting so big!" Hello!!! It's halloween, and if we had a girl what would she be dressed up as...a girl? That would be like dressing Riley up as a boy for halloween. We just got back from a trip to Idaho to visit family for Thanksgiving, and had a great time. It was especially fun to see my mom who Riley hasn't seen for about a year. And of course Riley began another one of his "No, mine!" phases just in time for his debut to extended family. Sometimes people don't know what to make of him. Then he'll snap back into his adorable mode and dishes out hugs and kisses and please's and thank you's like you wouldn't believe. What a funny kid! I think I may have a little Jekyl and Hyde on my hands. Anyways, we had a great time with family and spent WAY too much money on...I don't really know. But we had fun and came back physically fatter than when we left, which is why Ben joined a gym this morning and I went and got a fancy new blender and a supply of SlimFast powder. I am determined! At least for today. We'll see how I feel Friday. Uh-oh, I think I'm in trouble with this blogging thing. It's kind of addicting! But I guess it is just like keeping a journal, so it's time well spent. Now I just need to figure out how to let people know we have a blog...since I know everyone is just dying to read it :)

Trip to Colorado
I recently drove to Colorado and met my mom and grandma at the airport. We then spent a couple of days visiting my great-grandma Sprague who lives in a nursing home. It was good to see her, but also hard because her health has declined so much since I saw her five or so years ago. She can't see or hear very well, and is sometimes unsure of who we are. But I have wonderful memories of her and I'm so glad I got to see her.

Okay I have no idea how to blog, but I guess everyone has to start somewhere. A friend sent me the link to her blog and it is so much fun reading her thoughts and looking at her pictures that I thought mabye this would be a good way to share our lives with others, since we lead SUCH exciting lives :) I have not started a blog yet because I feel like I am way too busy, but Christmas break is coming up soon and it might be fun to post a few pictures. I guess I'll write more later....this is just a start. It's also a test to see how the heck this works!