Audrey being silly

She of course insisted on holding the popcorn bowl . . . even though it is twice her size.

This is Audrey in her little Schroeder pose. She loves that keyboard so much and plays it ALL THE TIME. In this picture we'd just barely walked in the door and she went right to it and started playing away.

Dave had a huge stack of old papers from school that he let Audrey play with. She LOVED that.

I found her in her bed like this when she woke up from her nap. :)

Dave Tagged

(dictated by Dave, written by Crystal)
A few things most people don't know about me (Dave).

1. I tried nearly every school sport. I wrestled for 2 years. I wasn't bad, I won about half of my matches (which means I wasn't good either). I won my first match in 6 seconds, I was very pleased with myself. I found out afterward that my opponent had down syndrome, and although now I am mature enough to wish that I had let him win, I remember when I found out. My only thought was, why did it take me 6 whole seconds? I played football for a year. My job was to run across the field and slam into the kicker after he had kicked the ball (I don't know what the point of this was, but this usually made me fall down). I was actually a pretty good pole vaulter, topping out at about 14 feet. I also ran hurdles and distance (cross-country). And finally, drum roll please, I was the only boy on my 7th grade gymnastics team . . . in the whole district actually. I won first place in every meet (boy's division). I can still do a standing back tuck and a hand stand longer than anybody I know. But I rarely wear a leotard anymore.

2. I used to sing . . . a lot. When I was a kid, I was in a group called Sunshine Generation. I had a nice falsetto voice. I got lots of solos. And I didn't realize until much later that people were laughing at me.

3. I had braces and head gear for 2 years. At one point during these 2 years I also buzzed the front half of my hair . . . just because I figured I had nothing to lose (true story).

4. I was my elementary school's sit-up champion. I could do 84 in a minute. Which, now that I think about it, must have just looked like a blur. There was a time when I was sure that my stomach muscles were my only marketable asset. During 6th and 7th grade, I let people punch me in the stomach for anywhere between 50 cents to $1 depending on how big they were. Needless to say, as the only boy on the gymnastics team, I was never short on customers. But I can honestly say that I never remember it hurting. I don't do sit-ups anymore. But on good days, when the light is right, I still have the stomach of a chiselled roman god . . . with head gear.

5. For over a year I actually thought I was Peter Pan. This is true. This is not an exaggeration. I believed that I was, in fact, immortal and that I could fly. I've found that telling people my secret was a good way to earn more stomach punching money.

So basically, in summary, for about a year of my life--when these all over-lapped--I was a singing boy gymnist, sit-up champ, with head gear and a half shaved head, who thought he could fly, and who solicited services to the school sadists. I was cool. Not popular, but cool.

Tagged

I've been tagged by Mel. I think this is how it works: I tell ten things about me that people probably don't know. Then I tag a few more people to do the same.

1. I am a pro frog gigger (frog hunter). Back home in Missouri, the frogs get really huge, and they're legs are delicious deep fried. So, I take my cool frog gigging pole (a long pole with three very sharp prongs on the bottom) and during the gigging season I treck out to our pond in the dark with a flashlight and an old pillow case and hunt frogs. You shine the light along the bank where you can hear them croaking, when the light catches their eyes, they don't move. You sneak up to them and spear them with the gigging pole, stick them live in your bag and find another one. I'll admit, I'm pretty good. As morbid as that sounds, it seems to me just like fishing, only much more adventurous.

2. I really love to play pool. I have my own titanum pool cue named Alice. When I take it anywhere I look like a total shark. But I'm not really. I just really love to play.

3. I've never been to Disneyland. David thinks this is a horrible sin and that as soon as Audrey gets a little bit older, we're going.

4. I used to live in Hawaii. I lived on Maui (Lahaina) for a few months when I was about in 3rd grade. I remember that I went to King Kamahamaha Elementary and my teacher's name was Mrs. Iwataki. My best friend while I was there was Ryan Morgan. I guess you could say he was my little boyfriend. But we've kept in touch faithfully until I got married--that's a pretty long time! Oh, and I ate a ton of rice.

5. I minored in Theatre Arts and after David and I were first married we worked a summer at a dinner theatre up in the mountains of Idaho. I was Ado Annie in Oklahoma! that summer and had to kiss two other men who weren't Dave, not to mention a fake stage kiss with my brother-in-law. Of course it was all done very professionally and none of us thought it was weird.

6. I'm a complete scardy cat. I have bad dreams a lot. I'm totally afraid of the dark. I can't even think about scary things or watch scary movies (even movie previews) without having really bad dreams for several nights. Haunted houses are out of the question.

7. I don't like cats. Once I saw my sister's cat walking around the edge of our swimming pool and couldn't resist pushing it in. I'm ashamed to admit that. I was young and foolish then. But I still don't really like cats.

8. I know how to talk in all sorts of accents thanks to my extensive theatre training. ;) I think dialects are fascinating. Among the few that I can do are cockney, british, brooklynese, southern, french, irish, and of course, plain old "Texas southern" which also happens to be a lot like how Missourians talk. I don't think I've ever been in a play where I didn't have to have some sort of accent.

9. Somewhere within my family history I'm related to Shakespeare. I like to think that gave me some advantage in my study of literature and theatre arts. :)

10. I'm really really really really embarrassingly bad at math. Really. I barely passed my college Math class--Dave helped me a ton to get through that one (he's really good at it). In fact, that class may have had a lot to do with us getting married. We were broken up during a lot of that time, but I still needed him to tutor me so I didn't fail.

Halloween Party

What's All This About the Weather??

So, while I was at this meditation class I was talking about in the last post (I barely talked about it, so if you missed that . . . I went to a class about meditation), we did this exercise where we were to relax and close our eyes and picture a time when we were completely content with our life, when we were most happy. I pictured myself as a young girl, on a summer day, at my grandparent's old ranch in Missouri. I was standing in a field, and it was very sunny, and I was warm and completely content with everything. It was so powerful! I was instantly warmed up and I was instantly calm. I could focus on my life with a perspective that was happy and optimistic. I noticed that I had the power in my head to change so many things, not only my mindset, but actually how my physical body felt. It was freezing in that room, and I got so warm. I realized that the sun played a huge part in my life then. I always wanted to be in it. I always took advantage of the days it gave me. I appreciated it. And now, all I do is worry about bad weather. I think I'm crazy because I think about the weather so much, and probably even crazier because I write about it all the time for the public to see. I realized during this exercise that now the sun makes me uncomfortable. It's probably because I'm pregnant, but it just makes me too hot and uncomfortable, even on those days that aren't really hot, just sunny! Weird! So, I thought to myself, what did I do differently then, that I'm not doing now. Right away it popped into my head--I was so much more active. I ran around, I was always moving, I was fit and energetic. I'm not completely out of shape now, and I realize that my body isn't quite itself right now, but it became clear to me that I needed to be more active again. So, that's my insight on meditation, happy reflection, and the sun. :)

OH, speaking of the sun. I was reading a book the other day about the old testament--it wasn't actually the old testament, but a book about it. And it talked about the time the children of Israel blew the horns to make the walls of Jericho fall. A pretty incredible story. And also how the sun was stopped in the sky to lengthen the day for one of their battles. It mentioned how there is so much speculation on how that happened, whether it was a scientific thing or that God simply made it happen by the faith of the children of Israel. It then pointed out that during the Second Coming of Christ there will be many miraculous things happening--the sun darkening, the moon turning red and darkening, the stars falling, the earth shaking. Scary. But if God is going to make those things happen when the time comes, it seems like nothing for him to keep it day for a little bit longer or knock down some walls. Of course they put it much better than that, but it got me to thinking about the signs of the Second Coming. It all goes back to the sun! What would happen if the sun stopped shining? In that instant, what would happen? Obviously the moon wouldn't shine anymore, the stars would probably be moved because of the forces reacting out from whatever happened to the sun (I watched a history channel special on the sun recently too so this has been on my mind.), the earth would definately feel the impact, because even now it feels the impact of small bursts of radiation from storms on the sun. So, my speculative conclusion is that God will do something to the sun when the Son comes again. How very symbolic! The glory of the Son will overshadow the glory of the sun! Or more like the Light of the World will overpower the light of the world. Now all we have to concentrate on is not freaking out about that and having faith that this is all a good thing, and that the righteous have nothing to fear, but something to look forward too. :) I guess I better stop thinking about the weather and start thinking about more important things like being a better person.

(I hope I don't sound like some crazy religious zealot to some of you. I talk about church stuff all the time, I go to all these meetings and conferences . . . it's just something that's important to me and that I like to do. I'm not weird, I promise.)

The Rest of October

We have a whole slew of things that happened this month that are blog worthy; and if it'd been on top of things and kept up to date with them, I'd probably be able to tell about them in much better detail than how I'm about to tell them.

While my mom and Grandma were here visiting at the beginning of the month we did all sorts of things. This picture shows us at Niagara Falls. I could kick myself for not getting pictures of my grandma and mom! I'm so lame! And vain, apparently. It was cool to see Niagara, but not THAT cool. My grandma really loved the trip. She hadn't seen very many things because Grandpa was so sick and couldn't really travel. So, since his death, she's really branched out. It was exciting to see how happy she was to be out and about. While we were there we took a trolly around the falls and did a lot of walking otherwise. If we'd had passports we could have seen more cool stuff, but besides that we just didn't have the time. Oh, well. It's a big huge waterfall, what more can I say?

On that same day, on our way to Niagara Falls, we stopped at the Hill Cumorah and Palmyra. Audrey was very tired about this time and slept in the car while Dave, mom, and Gram walked around all the tours at Palmyra. It wasn't so bad because Dave and I had been there before. Again, Gram really loved seeing the church sites. For the other parts of their trip, to and from Missouri, they stopped at several other church sites. That sounded fun.

I don't have pictures from this other stuff, but while they were here we went to the Ithaca Book Sale--an event not to be missed. Of course I spent too much money as usual. But I did not get any books this time. I bought a ton of movies, mostly disney and classics that we love. It was nice to have something besides the same old 4 movies to watch over and over. Mom got a lot of books for Dad. It was a good sample of Ithaca for them.

One highlight for Dave and I in particular was going to the Brian Regan show. He's a comedian, for those who don't know. Very very funny. Audrey stayed home with Gram and Mom while we went on our date. We had SO much fun. The tickets were fairly inexpensive and our seats were good. Dave said it was probably one of the funnest things we've ever done. :) I'm so glad he had such a great time.

Conference was going on while they were here. We watched that at home online. Mom sewed Audrey's Halloween costume during it (which I'll talk more about later) and I cross-stiched a project I'd been working on for years. (Speaking of projects I've been working on, I finally finished scrapbooking our wedding album! Yay!) Unfortunately I wasn't really paying much attention to what I was doing and cross-stitched totally the wrong thing. So now I'm turned off to the project again because I'll just have to fix that one big mistake before I can start making progress again . . .

Anyway, their stay was so nice and so fun. We tried to get them to stay longer, but we only succeeded in getting them to stay one more night. I'm excited for Mom to come out when the baby is due in March.

Before and after their visit, Dave was doing a lot of traveling. He went to St. Louis for an interview before they came. He got to hang out with my cousin Brian who lives there. They went into the Arch, and Dave said it was cool. I just remember when I went freaking out in that little teeny elevator cage they put you in to get to the top. Very scary. But still something worth doing once in your life. Brian took him to a few St. Louis sites, a few nice neighborhoods to get the feel of things if we were to live there. The firm seemed great that he interviewed with. But I don't think we're going to go there anyway.
He also went to Dallas the following week. That trip was something special. He got off the plane to find a nice car and driver waiting for him. He said the man treated him like a hotshot, and it was very cool. He stayed at this really nice hotel in the city and whenever I'd call him, all he could talk about was how comfortable the bed was. It's a month later and he still talks about the bed he slept in there. :) One thing I remember, even though I wasn't actually there, was once when I called him, and we were talking and he said he had to go to the bathroom, and I said, ok I'll wait. Well, a few seconds later he picks up the phone and tells me, lucky for us, there was a phone in the bathroom too. :) How very convenient. Anyway, that firm turned out to be very awesome and presently we have an offer from them, which we are almost certain we are going to take. Dallas, here we come.

Oh, and on the plane from Dallas David is almost certain he saw Dustin Hoffman. He was sitting in first class doing a crossword puzzel. So that's pretty exciting.

The weekend after that, Shannah and I went to Connecticut for a girls' weekend. We got to go to the Time Out For Women conference in Hartford with Dave's cousins. We just stayed the night. The conference was pretty fun, but it in itself probably wasn't worth the 40 bucks I paid to get in I don't think. We did see Hilary Weeks and Pres. Hinckley's daughter (virginia pearce) spoke, as well as Jane Clayson Johnson (my favorite one, a famous anchor woman who worked at ABC, but left to raise her family), and a few others that were pretty good. It was mostly just fun to hang out with Shannah and Dave's cousins. THAT part was totally worth it. They live in this beautiful old house that was built before the civil war. To me it was a teeny bit creepy, but I'm a chicken. It really wasn't though. It was so pretty, and they're such a fun family. We'll be going there for thanksgiving too and I'm very excited. (I keep saying things like "it was nice" and "it was very exciting" and lame things like that because they were, and it was, and I'm just doing the best I can! Ok!? :))

Me with Hilary Weeks--she's a really great singer/ songwriter. And she turned out to actually be a really funny girl. My little claim to fame is that she used my pen to autograph something . . . for someone else. She came up to us while we were sitting and waiting for the thing to start and introduced herself. I didn't realize who she was at first. But she was very sweet and nice. :) And of course, very talented. She sang this song I really liked about believing in who you are and in what you do because your Heavenly Father does. It was nice!

This is all of us during our lunch break. It goes me, one of Afton's friends from her ward (a nice lady who just went through radiation treatments, she's their bishop's wife actually), that lady's mom, Afton, Becca (Afton's sister who came down from Rochester for the conference), and Shannah. I was so proud that I got these two pictures for my blog. :) So . . . be proud of me.

Anyway, on our way home we had some sorta car trouble. Dave called and said that Afton's husband had called him to warn us that there had been some antifreeze leaked onto his driveway and wanted to make sure we weren't leaking. Sure enough, when we checked the tank it was empty. We would have never known! So we refilled it, kept driving, checked it again after a while, and it showed no signs of a problem. It was totally fishy. It was clear to me that Heavenly Father was watching out for us. We would have ended up stranded or with a ruined engine. Also, I had originally just planned on taking Audrey on the trip by myself. We would have had no cell phone and no way to get help when things would have started going wrong. I'm thankful that Shannah was with me (with her trusty cell phone and calm) and that Audrey wasn't! And that we caught the problem before anything bad happened. Well, the car is fine, the mechanics say, so it is totally random that Jonathan even saw a leak in his driveway!

It was a busy weekend. The next morning I had to teach both Sunday school and Relief Society in church. And I hadn't really planned my lessons before I left. I did some during the breaks at the conference thing, and in the morning before church, but that's it. Both went well and was very glad it was over.

The next Friday we had our Branch Halloween party. Audrey finally got to wear her cute costume! She was the little mermaid. :) Mom did a GREAT job and she looked just so cute.

This is a picture of it on Halloween because I don't have pictures from the party yet, but I'll post those when I get them.

THis is me as a witch in all my pregnant glory doing dishes in our teeny little kitchen before the party. Dave was a pirate, obviously. :) We had so much fun that night. Audrey ran around the church with the other little kids to her heart's content, Dave got soup spilled all over his lap and got voted to be "sponged" (you stand against a wall behind a big plastic sheet with your face poking out and people get to try and throw soaking wet sponges at your face. I'm happy to report that I had really great aim that night. He and a few other guys did it and it was way fun.) I got to have some of Shannah's awesome potato soup and got to catch up with all my girlfriends.

Unfortunatley, the next night Audrey woke up sick. She threw up a few times, but other than that acted pretty good, not like she was sick at all. Dave had to clean up all of the messes though because my stomach couldn't handle it. Bad turned to worse the next day when I woke up throwing my guts up in the middle of the night and didn't stop for the next 24 hours. I couldn't keep anything down. We almost went to the hospital so I could get an IV with some fluids, but it turned out ok by morning. It took me a while to recover from that one. Dave didn't get sick at all which is so lucky for us. He was so great. He took such good care of us. It was bad though. I couldn't take care of Audrey at all. But we're all ok now.

We also got to go out with some friends the next weekend while my friend Mirinda watched Audrey. We just had dinner and played games. I wish I had pictures from that. Dave and I were feeling extra tired that night though because of the rough week, but it was really nice to get out.

Speaking of Dave, he's been really busy with his Law Reivew "note"--that's what they call it, but it's like 40 pages or something. I have no doubt it will be completely interesting. I'll post a comment from him later about that for those who are interested. He's also been going through all The Office episodes on our netflix. I like The Office too, but Dave always goes crazy when he finds a series he likes; he just watches them constantly for a few weeks until he's done. :) Oh well.



This is Audrey on Halloween with our friend Nicole (she's wearing a great wig. She really has very very curly brown hair). Dave took Audrey out trick-or-treating. He said that at each door he'd say, "Ok, say 'trick-or-treat'." And Audrey would inevitabley yell, "NO!" And Dave would tell her, "Say 'thank you'." And of course she'd yell, "NOOO!" After a few houses like that he decided she wasn't cut out for trick-or-treating quite yet. But she did look cute, and she did get a little bit of candy . . . that mommy and daddy didn't let her eat. After that we went to a Halloween party at our friends' house (Gary and Melanie Adamson, the link to their blog is on the side). There were lots of little kids in costume and scones and cider, halloween movies, all the essentials. Audrey was being kinda ornery though, so we left a little early. All-in-all though, I think her first offical participating Halloween went pretty well.

This is a picture of Audrey in her new chair that Gram got her. She LOVES it and sits in it to watch her Baby Einstein videos. :)

As far as our plans for the next few months, we are going to Connecticut for Thanksgiving to stay with Dave's cousins. It should be SO fun. We're all going to see the play Wicked, which is playing in Hartford then. It's something we've always wanted to do, and it is the best way for us to do it because we'd have a babysitter and good company. We're planning on staying in Ithaca over Christmas this year to save money. We havne't done that yet and hear that there are some pretty fun Christmas activities going on that we'd like to see. Dave will be working a lot on his note then. We bought a christmas tree (before halloween, and I got tons of weird looks at the store) and a few decorations for way cheap. I was very pleased. It will be all gold. We'll definately take a picture when the big day comes, which Dave keeps insisting will be after we get back from Thanksgiving. :p I painted some wooden stars with my friend Dana to put on it for that homey touch. I'm very excited.

Oh, last night we went and watched the CES fireside at the church. It was Elder Oakes speaking. He talked a lot to the single people, but also said some good things about keeping the Sabbath holy and things, and Sister Oakes even spoke a little. She is incredibly cute. Audrey ran around to her heart's content again. She was the only baby there, so she got a lot of attention. That girl is definately going to be a track star, no doubt about it.

Yesterday I taught a Sunday school lesson on chastity. I was so nervous. And of course it was the one day when SO many people came to MY class instead of the other one . . . and all single kids! I was like, well, I guess this lesson is sorta for you guys, so what the heck. Dave was in there and was very supportive, so that helped.

I also forgot to tell you about the Stake Women's conference I went to. Sarah, Angela, and I drove to Owego and spent the day going to classes on different things--meditation, decorating and using color in your house, how to save money be reusing things (that one was hoot! Like i'm really going to make lightbulb maraccas for my baby to play with!), and how to exercise and get motivated, that sort of thing. It was a nice little break. (I've been getting a lot of those lately.) My favorite part was lunch actually. It tasted so good and looks so pretty and I didn't have to cook at all! :)

The ends of my blogs are always so jumbled because I remember things I forget and just tack them on. I hope this updates you pretty well. I'll do some follow ups with more pictures and videos, because I know those are the funnest to see. Until next time . . . we send our love.