My Amazing, Wonderful, Terribly Sweet, Handsome and Good Husband

I just wanted to get on and tell everyone about my amazing husband. I was very against him getting a full-time job while doing full-time school. Sadly, it was probably more for selfish reasons than my worry about him, but I was worried about, him, too. That's a lot to have on your plate. But he's doing it! He is not only working full time and going to school full time, but teaching his two classes (until the end of the semester) and doing all that goes with that (like grading), and doing his church calling and helping with Emi when he gets home from work and spending at least some time every day with me.

Then, on top of all that, he submitted some of his work to the school and got one of his research papers accepted into the USU Graduate Conference and one of his short stories tied for 1st place in a writing contest! So...tomorrow he is presenting his research at the graduate conference. And next month he gets to go to the Awards Ceremony to receive his prize. I am so proud of him! I have always known that he is a talented writer and now he is finally getting some recognition for it. Sadly, HE isn't giving himself as much credit as he deserves. Both times that he learned the good news, he said, "Well, they probably didn't have very many entries this year, so I didn't have much competition." Can you believe that? I'll just have to up the number of times I tell him that he's amazing, so maybe he'll get it through his thick skull. :)

Since this is my blog, I figured I can brag a little, right? So there you have it: My Amazing, Wonderful, Terribly Sweet, Handsome and Good Husband.

(The title to my blog is not only a tribute to my husband but to a favorite book growing up called My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.)

MORE SNOW!

When I woke up this morning and looked out the window, there was no snow on our driveway. A little was sticking in the grass, but none on the driveway. That was about 8:30 am. When I got home from church at 12:00 pm, this is what it looked like:

Those shoe prints are mine from my heels that I wore to church. Yuck! Talk about cold feet!

So, since I'm officially not breastfeeding anymore, I could fast today for the first time in 18 months. For those of you who don't know, once a month we have "Fast Sunday," where members of the church are invited to fast for 24 hours. The idea is that if you deny yourself of wordly things or things of the flesh (such as food), you are able to get more in tune with your spiritual side. We then are given time during our church services to share our testimony of Christ or his gospel and we are asked to donate the money we would have used to buy those three meals to the church to use to help other struggling families in the ward or for other humanitarian stuff. It's surprising how difficult it is to fast for 24 hours. It's so easy to walk into the kitchen for something and see a banana or a treat we made yesterday and just eat it without thinking. I had forgotten about that. But I'm really glad I get to fast again. I've missed the spiritual high you can feel while fasting. And the answers to prayers that are so much easier to get as I fast and am better able to feel the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I think it is easier for the Lord to guide us when we are purposefully bringing ourselves closer to him and I am excited to have the opportunity to do so once a month again.

And last but not least, a video of Emi. I haven't posted one in a while, so she's a lot bigger and she can do so much stuff. Enjoy!

Life is good

Some reasons why life is good at the moment:

1. Emilia is sleeping through the night on a regular basis. Usually 10-12 hours at a time. Ahhh...to not be sleep-deprived. It's like I have a new lease on life. :)

2. Steve got a well-paying job. It's full-time, but they're letting him only work 30 hours a week until the end of the semester, so it won't be quite as crazy. Then he'll start full time at the end of April when school lets out. We will all be on the same health insurance, we might be able to go on vacation this summer, and eating out won't be SO out of the question. Hooray!

3. I booked two more jobs this week. One wedding in August (that is getting my biggest package) and senior pictures next month. Senior pictures are probably my favorite to do, so I'm excited.

4. It's almost spring. And although it snowed this week, I have confidence that once it's done this time, we'll have seen the last of it for a while. I really need some green!

5. I got to see the movie Twilight last week and now I'm re-reading the book. We actually hired a babysitter and went out on a date. That hasn't happened in a while, so that was good in and of itself. But I enjoyed the movie. It felt a little low-budget and of course it wasn't as good as the book, and of course the characters didn't look like the ones in my head, but that's to be expected, so I liked it. I don't often re-read books, but Twilight is so light-weight that I started with it today and should be finished with it tomorrow, so it's kind of like eating candy. A quick snack. :)

6. I'm not breast-feeding anymore!!!!!!!!!! Although the American Pediatrics whoevertheyare say that you're supposed to breastfeed until they are a year old. But some babies never get breastfed and they turn out okay, and given the multitudinous difficulties I've had trying to feed that girl it's a miracle I've made it this long. And do you know what that means???? I can eat PIZZA again! and Cafe Rio and Olive Garden....the possibilities are endless. Tee hee hee.

7. Emilia is healthy and happy and my husband feels good about our situation and I don't mind being at home with the baby. We are more content now than we have been in a long time.

gobs and gobs of pictures

So, I finally have a moment to post all the pictures I've been taking for the last month. Here goes! (The captions are above the pictures)

Emilia in the first thing I bought when I found out we were having a girl. It was beautiful when we were at the Watts's that Sunday.

Emilia playing in her room. She's so cute! :)

Taking a bath in the big tub.

As promised, Mom and Dad. Emilia in her Valentine's Day dress that Nana Frohlich sewed for her. She looks like the Queen of Hearts, doesn't she? She was wearing her cute red dress shoes, too, but for some reason Steve decided they weren't going to be in ANY of the pictures he took. Oy.

My car the day after it snowed 12 inches in a matter of hours.
Some pictures I took trying to be artistic. meh.

Emilia looking out at the snow when we were down at the Watts's in February. I just thought she looked like I feel when I look at the ocean or the mountains.
And finally, some of my favorites from recent photo shoots. Let me know what you think.

So much to do, so little time!

So, I haven't blogged in like a month. I would have berated myself for not being more on top of things just a few short months ago...but a few short months ago, I had nothing to do while my daughter was sleeping ON me. Now she's taking naps in her crib and I feel like I'm finally FREE! Free as a little bird. Wheeeeeeeee!

Haha. Dramatic much? But in any case, I have all this time to work on other stuff and I have been taking full advantage of it. One of the things I've been working on is re-vamping my photography website. I've been teaching myself CSS and it makes websites look so much more professional than HTML alone, so I wanted to update mine. Hopefully it will be online soon so you can all see the hard work I've been doing. I also finished Peter and the Starcatchers and am almost done with Pendragon: Merchant of Death. Up next is the first book in the series by Jim Butcher (which was recommended by Aunt Amy-thanks!).

My photography business has also been picking up. Probably because it's getting on spring. I had two people call me in the last couple weeks to do shoots. One family and one girl who needed pics with her violin for an application. That was kinda fun. And now I have a one wedding in April, two in May, and one in June who have booked with me already. The one in June is on the shore of Beaver Lake. How cool is that? I'm excited.

I didn't get the job at the USDA. They "offered it to someone else." That's what they said when I called them to see if they'd made a decision. The guy said, "You were probably our second choice." Gee. How comforting. That makes it all better, don't you think?

We were kind of disappointed at the time, but I've gotten over it now. I've been working more hours at JCPenny, though. We've been getting more appointments and I have done thier photographer "training," so now I am eligible to work more because I don't have the be the second person on. I can be the only person there. My boss seems to be happy with the pictures I've been taking even though I don't like their mandates on the kind of pictures I have to take.

Emilia is getting bigger, of course. She isn't crawling yet, but she still jabbers up a storm and shes' getting better about tummy time. She isn't signing back to me, yet, but I hope she starts soon. It will make life so much easier when we can communicate with one another.

She is starting to take baths in the big tub. I took pictures the other day, but I don't have my camera with me, so I'll have to post those once I get home (we're at the Watts's this weekend). She has also started sleeping all the way through the night. She's only done it a couple times, but it's been amazing!! Yea! The first time was about 4 days ago. What a milestone, eh?

I've been working on family history lately. There was a class at church that I signed up for, and although I didn't learn much (I took a class at BYU that went way more in-depth), it got me in the mood for it again, so I've been working on it Sunday afternoons while Emilia is napping. I got all of the stuff my mom and dad have so I can scan it into the computer and verify what info we actually have documentation for. It's been really fun to look at the newspaper articles about my great grandparents. I also found a bio written by my grandfather's uncle (George Richau's brother Matthew) that gave the names of the cities they lived in in Russia and Europe before they came to America. I thought I'd have to go to Russia myself to get that info. What a find!

We came down to my parents' house a couple of weeks ago for the weekend, and this weekend we're down here at the Watts's. It's always good to visit family. I just feel bad about not doing our callings. We need to figure out a balance. I'm excited to finally meet Meg, though. Steve's youngest sister, Nicole, had a baby about a month ago and then left for Colorado before we could come down and meet her, but she's coming back this afternoon for a visit.

So. Needless to say, I've been busy. But now I've caught myself up and maybe I'll be more motivated to keep up. ;) We'll see.