Did you know...

A fun tag, feel free to do it if you'd like. To participate, just copy and paste in your own blog, and bold and italicize all of the things you have done.
1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Ran a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Seen Mount Rushmore in person
101. Learned to play an instrument
Have fun!

Growing

After what seemed like awhile of Edison being too small for most of his clothes, he is now growing out of a lot of his 0-3 month outfits. I was sad to see him get too big for the cute raccoon outfit (it was my favorite), but at least I got a picture of it before he royally messed it up (if you catch my drift) just a couple of hours afterward. Oh, well. It was cute while it lasted.

I thought it would be funny to see if Edison fit in Evelyn's doll stroller, and sure enough, he did! It was a little snug, but before I got the camera he was actually laughing and seemed to be enjoying it. Evelyn had fun pushing him around for a few minutes, although the picture above has a look of "Are you actually doing this to me, Mom?"

Daddy/Daughter time

Evelyn loves playing with her daddy, so she really enjoyed all the long weekend when he didn't have to work. At one point, after playing with him a lot of the day, he needed to work on a few things, so I thought I'd take her to the library (which she always loves). When I told her we could go to the library, she asked David to play with her but he said he couldn't. Then she looked at him and said, "But I need you to play with me!" It about broke his heart, but I eventually convinced her that we should go to the library (which she did enjoy), although she probably would have preferred to play with David. :)

This weekend they played Primary,
acted out stories, danced, went "shopping," played doctor, and so on. Evelyn was in heaven, and David enjoyed it too.
Evelyn now likes to wear her "pretty white dress" when she dances with her animals and/or Daddy, and sometimes she pretends she's either getting married or dancing at her "wedding party." For how upset she was the first time we had her try on the dress, she sure loves it now. She even wanted to wear it to church this morning, but it's not exactly the best dress to be running around in during Nursery.

smiles and laughs

Here's a cute video that David took the other day of Edison. :)

Three Years Old

It's now official: Evelyn is three! She had a great birthday (helped by the fact that she actually got to bed at a good time the night before). As could be expected, she loved opening presents and getting to play with them.

The hit of the day was definitely a set of cooking tools from my grandparents, Oma and Opa. Evelyn kept running around saying, "I love this! I love it!"

I've also decided that I'd like to keep up the tradition I grew up with where you get to choose what's for dinner on your birthday. So for Evelyn's birthday dinner we had chicken nuggets, french fries, rolls, and applesauce.

dress-up clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Alford

a fun apron and chef's hat from the Coxes

lining up and counting frogs from the Coxes

love that cupcake

We got "tagged" to do this by Christine and Jeff. We thought it might be fun. Marie's in regular type, David's in bold

Four random things about my husband/wife:

1. He can't touch his shoulder with his hand (left shoulder, left hand; right shoulder, right hand) / She's 4 inches shorter, but her arms are longer than mine
2. He enjoys long solo road-trips in complete silence / she enjoys doing home repair
3. He talks in his sleep / she introduced me to most of my favorite movies
4. He's the life of a Winnie-the-Pooh tea party / for a class once, she made a working camera from scratch

Four Movies I could watch more than once:
1. Oscar / definitely Oscar
2. The Court Jester/ yep
3. Emperor's New Groove / same
4. Ever After/any number of MST3K movies

Four TV shows I watch
1. Dora the Explorer (library videos)/ Political clips from Saturday Night Live
2. Monk (occasionally online) / same
3. Are you smarter than a 5th grader? (every once in a while, online) / (it's a fun date night)
4. That's pretty much it

Four places I have been
1. Stuttgart, Germany / Yap, Micronesia
2. West Point, NY / Nashville, TN
3. Liechtenstein / Washington, D.C.
4. Nauvoo, IL / St. Louis, MO

Four people who email me regularly
1. David / Wells Fargo
2. Suzanne / OpinionJournal.com
3. Kendy / Kendy
4. Kenneth (mission letters) / Facebook

Four foods I like to eat
1. Ice cream/ ditto
2. Fruit smoothies/ chocolate chip cookies
3. Beef stew and dumplings / Marie's meatloaf and twice baked potatoes
4. Chocolate / good Texas BBQ

Four places I'd like to visit
1. David's mission (Guam and Micronesia)/ I'm all over that
2. Europe with David (anywhere's fine, but especially Germany) / Germany
3. New Zealand/ a cruise--anywhere's fine
4. Disneyworld with the kids (when they're older)/ Jerusalem

Four things I am looking forward to this year (Now till November 2009)
1. Feeling like I have a handle on things/ Patrick's wedding and Christmas in Utah
2. Visiting with family for the holidays/ figuring things out professionally
3. Kenneth getting home from his mission / getting to know Edison better
4. Evelyn outgrowing frequent tantrums (I'm hoping)/ reading some good books

Pictures

Edison, in my opinion, is getting cuter all the time. He's starting to vocalize a little more, which is fun. And he's still got that great smile. :) So here are some pictures of him and a few with Evelyn.

Halloween

Being the unfestive people that we can be sometimes, this was actually the first Halloween that we dressed up Evelyn and took her out to get candy. She was excited to wear her pretty white dress from my sister Christine's wedding reception, and she said she was a fairy. :)

We took her to the Trunk-or-Treat at our church building. She was pretty shy at a lot of the cars, but she did say "trick or treat" most of the time. As was expected, the most exciting part was getting to look at all of her candy and start eating it. I also had fun dressing Edison up in a little pumpkin jack-0-lantern costume that we had. He looked really cute, but he wasn't too sure about it.

Creativity

It's interesting to see some of the things that Evelyn does and the way that her mind works sometimes. For example, she calls her mittens "oven mitts" and pretends her toy bins are swimming pools for "the guys" (aka--her dolls and stuffed animals).

And this morning she was playing the "piano" by hitting beaters on a book--she likes the metallic ring that they make when she hits them and says they're making music.

She also uses her bed as a bus, a boat, a car, etc. depending on what game she's playing, like the picture below. She and all of "the guys" are on the bus after playing school.

Ahh, the joys of being 2 (almost 3!).

Can you guess who picked the ensemble?

No Question

Looking at baby pictures of Evelyn at this age, I think it's pretty obvious that she and Edison are related.

Happy Boy

While Edison has definitely learned how to cry to truly be heard, most of the time he is a pretty happy little boy. He has such a sweet temperament and has been a pretty smiley baby from the get-go. I just love his dimpled smile; it makes me smile every time (though maybe not quite as big at, say, 2:00 in the morning).

I also love seeing Evelyn and him interact. This morning Evelyn said that she calls him, "Sweet, cute little Edison." She just loves giving him hugs and kisses, checking on him when he's crying, asking why he has the hiccups, etc. And more often than not, he smiles at her when she's around him. I hope this means they'll be good friends as they get older, although I know it's going to rock Evelyn's world once he starts getting into her toys....

Conference Tent

This was one pretty successful venture. Evelyn has taken recently to reading stories out of the Friend. We have months of the Friend that she has practically memorized the stories out of. Well, in the most recent one, there was a story about kids who decided to be like the people of King Benjamin, and build a tent facing toward the prophet, and watch Conference from it. So as not to be to rowdy, they named it the "reverence tent" and brought scriptures, old Friend magazines, and other supplies for watching Conference.

Evelyn thought this was a great idea, and we did, too. So watching Conference at Grandma & Grandpa Hinckley's house, we set up a tent with some pillows, blankets, dolls and snacks. She loved it. She stayed quiet and occupied—if not for the entire time, then at least as long as can humanly be expected of a toddler. I think it helped that I, dutiful father that I am, conceded to watch/nap/snack from the reverence tent as well. This was a much more successful solution than last year's taking turns and only catching half the talks.

Trial Run

After seeing this on a friend's blog, I thought I'd give it a try to post a slideshow of pictures. The most recent ones I have loaded on my computer are from Mom's trip out here (sorry Mom and Dad--I know you've seen all of these pictures already). Enjoy!

Mom's visit

We have been very lucky the past week and a half to have my mom here to help. It has been wonderful. Evelyn has loved playing so much with Grandma, housework has actually gotten done, we've eaten really well, and it's just been fun to be able to hang out and visit with my mom.

She's leaving early tomorrow morning, so it will be back to reality for us. I may go into shock that laundry and dishes don't magically get done, and I'll actually be the one to change all of the diapers during the day. But I suppose it will be good to get things more back to "normal," and I know that Mom is ready to get back home. We have sure enjoyed her time here, though.

Edison Dean

As many, if not all, of you know, Edison Dean Hinckley joined our family on August 29th. He was born at 3:22 p.m. and was 5 lbs. 12 oz. and 18 1/4 in. long. He was about two weeks early, since his "official" due date wasn't until September 11th, but he decided that he didn't want to wait.

So far he has been quite a calm little guy who doesn't cry much. And Evelyn just adores him. She loves being able to help in any way that she can, although sometimes she tries to help a little too much.

I'll be sure to post another entry later giving labor details, for those who want to read them, but suffice it to say we are thrilled to have Edison in our family and are grateful for his safe arrival.

Where's the manual?

I don't know exactly what I thought being a mom would be like, but I'm finding out more and more that a lot of it is just "wingin' it." For example, on Monday Evelyn had a really difficult day (well, mostly the afternoon) but had a lot of fun spending time with Grandma in the evening. So, how did the day end? With a wipeout on hardwood floor that left Evelyn with a big fat lip, hurt teeth, and just very sad. So when David and Evelyn got home (it happened at David's parents' house while I was at home), I find her crying and blood on both her and David's clothes. As the mom, Evelyn wants me to comfort her, but other than holding her and singing a few Primary songs, I feel pretty helpless. It seems like, as the mom, I should just know what to do. We did get her cleaned up and calmed down enough to go to bed, but David and I were also pretty worried. Luckily, though, our brother-in-law Brady (a 3rd year ER resident) was in town and answered our questions about Evelyn's mouth and whether or not we should be worried. Evelyn's fine now, thank goodness, and it's made me realize that even though parenting doesn't come with a manual, we do have a lot of other resources to turn to when we don't know what to do. From family and friends to prayers and the scriptures, we don't have to feel helpless. We just have to know where to turn when we don't know the answers. And I should probably also accept the fact that, like it or not, Evelyn is just going to be our guinea pig in a lot of things as we learn along the road of parenting.

Joining the Bandwagon

Well, I'm finally doing it--joining the blogosphere (or whatever it's called) in an attempt to ... um ... see if anyone is interested in what's happening in the Hinckley household. Sarcasm aside, though, I am looking forward to (hopefully) keeping this updated with photos and stories of our daily happenings. I'm sure there will be a lull when baby Edison joins our family in a few weeks, but I'll get the hang of this at some point.

Anyway. This is just the beginning, but here's to jumping on the bandwagon!