Happy Holidays!!!

In lieu of mailing out an official Christmas greeting (funny, thought I would suddenly not be cheap and lazy this year. . . . But next year I'm sure the cash and time will be flowing like wine. So, let's keep hoping). . . let's see, where were we? Ah, in lieu of a Christmas card I thought I'd take a minute and post some highlights from the year for those who are interested enough to actually read about us. For those who aren't, just scroll through and look at the pictures (as if I need to tell you :0)

Wow, I just browsed through my pictures to find some great highlight pictures for the year, but it looks like that is going to be harder than I thought. We really didn't take very many pictures this year. We got tired of our very low-quality, low-resolution camera that was totally unpredictable as to when it would work and when it wouldn't. Then our friends the Jensens gave us their old camera, which worked pretty well but we would never take it anywhere because it was kind of big, and also it had like a 3 second delay for taking the picture, so I couldn't ever get a great shot of the kids. Seriously, there were a couple times I would get a picture of them running out the door by the time it would go off, and they had been posing when I had started pushing the button. But luckily we got a few good shots as the year came to a close, and those are probably what I will be posting if I can find them on the computer. Sorry, you probably really don't care that much about the details. Let's move on.

2008 highlights. . . I would say this year's highlights include:
-Buying our first home!!!
-Remodeling much of our home
-News of expecting #3!
-The acquisition of our awesome 15-passenger van, "Moby Dick." (it's white.)
-Ure family reunion over the summer in Kamas
-Bethany's exciting metamorphosis into a ballerina/princess (I'll try to find some pictures)
-Joshua learning to talk quite well! (Just as I was typing that he woke up from his nap and said "HEEEEEEYYYYYYY MOOOOOOOMMMYYYYYYY!!!!!" Case in point.)
-James striking out on his own as an entrepreneur! He owns and teaches at Williamsburg Academy, a private high school. It's going really well and he LOVES what he does!

I'm sure there have been more exciting times than just those, but those are all that come to mind right now. Here are some pictures:

typical thumb-sucking position with blankie-of-choice:

Is it dangerous to post a picture of where I live? Well, there you have it.
It's been a cozy little first house.

Fat kid in a little costume. . .

This was November. I really like this shot of these two, they're a couple of my fav's.

Wow, I can't believe this is really all I could find. I'll have to have James help me find more later, he's the one who uploaded all of them onto the computer. There are a few of Bethany's first ballet performance that I really wanted to post. I'll have to tell y'all about that one later.

But in the spirit of Christmas, I have been hoping to set aside my to-do list during a few special moments this holiday season to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas, and let my heart be filled with the joy of the Savior. I have been rewarded for this effort by the sweet spirit of Christmas filling my heart. I love this time of year because of that joy. I love the words of this verse of "O little town of Bethlehem:"

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of this Heav'n
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.

I hope I got it right, I don't have a hymn book right here. I am so thankful for the "wondrous gift" of God's son, Jesus Christ. He is truly the reason for the season, and the giver of hope.

We hope your Christmas is bright and joyful! Happy Holidays from the Ures!

Finding reasons to celebrate

As an update on the pregnancy cravings:

For those of you who have been worried sick about how I would satisfy my "grass" craving, now that there is a foot of snow outside, worry no more. Phew! Here I will quickly explain to those who may not have read the post about the grass thing, I didn't eat the grass, I just picked it. . . and wanted to eat it for some strange reason. And since then. . .

Let's just say I have consumed 5 containers if alfalfa sprouts and 2 packages of mini carrots in the last 3 weeks. These alfalfa sprouts were SO everything that I needed. I could maybe sing a love song about them.


Yeah, this is a good one. It basically defines my feelings for sprouts right now. You don't have to watch the whole thing, you'll get the idea from the first verse.

And I am reminded of this delightful stash in my refrigerator every time someone says the word "grass," or even other scenarios, such as a political discussion my friend Suzy and I were having, when all of the sudden she said something like, "I think Obama's campaign was just way better financed. He had all sorts of grassroots campaigns. . . grassroots campaigns. . . grassroots campaigns. . ." I'm sure I looked at her with a blank stare and nodded, but I was sucked out of mind and body and into sprouts craving mode.

Another time, today in fact, I was reading in the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia (been a fun read, you should try it sometime), and I will quote the passage that sent me to the fridge this time:

All this while Jill went to and fro, sometimes stirring the pot and sometimes looking out enviously at the Donkey and the Unicorn who were contentedly grazing. How many times that morning she wished she could eat grass!

I sure don't have to tell you what happened after I read that. See, the great thing about this craving is, it's a totally sinless, guilt-free indulgence. Sure, I look like a walrus. Sure, I may or may not have surpassed the maximum weight I ever gained in either previous pregnancy. . . weeks ago. . . and I still have 7 weeks left. . . but look here, the point is, every time I have an uncontrollable craving (at least almost every time), it's either for sprouts, baby carrots, raw broccoli, almonds, or ice--the kind from Subway, the one by Smith's. This is so great! It is really nice to totally indulge without looking back, and not have that nagging guilt that I'm passing the point of no return, or making the baby so fat that it will be a killer delivery.

So overall the cravings are working with me this time around! Hee-haw (especially pertinent in my case), and Merry Christmas!!!

Would you rather. . .

Here it is. This is my favorite "would you rather" question, posed to me by my brother Nate.

Would you rather stand in the entry-way of your neighborhood grocer NAKED for 3 hours on a Saturday morning (whatever store you go to, the one where there is a good possibility of running into someone you know). . .

OR

Eat nothing but raw meat for an entire year.

Chew on that one. Literally.

Random ravings, utterings, and a curious query to the wise. . .

It’s been a while. Wow, this is my first entry posted from my NEW COMPUTER!!! I am staring at a 22 inch monitor. Boo-yeah. Just to put this in perspective, we have a 20 inch tv. And this is not a tiny tv, just a regular, not-very-big one. For a long time we have just had one good apple laptop, and one old laptop that was getting worse and worse, and from which I could barely (if at all) access the internet. So this is a red-letter day. I finally have a computer at home with me all the time! We didn't know that getting a nice home computer system is as affordable as it is, so when James was researching it one day (like 2 days ago), he just decided it was time. That James is a good man.

Well, our living room is aglow with colored Christmas lights on our homey tree cut right out of the heart of Scipio, Utah. Thanks Stef and Jan. It is bedecked with puffy-painted salt dough ornaments. . . uh, thanks Stef and Jan. I have been trying to appreciate the little sweetnesses and treasures in this stage of life that I know I’m going to miss later on. . . and I must say, I’m not in a hurry to have a Pottery Barn Christmas tree. I’ll take my tin foil star, my colored lights, and my puffy-painted salt-dough ornaments, thank you. Besides, probably half a dozen of these said ornaments have already been thrown on the floor and broken, so. . . I’m glad they were salt dough and not glass.

So how about these gas prices? I am loving life. Today I used my 15 cent discount at Smith's and filled up for $1.34 a gallon. WAA!? I put $20 into our 15-passenger van and it bought me about 15 gallons. That means I could have filled up our Camry from empty for $20. Oil hit a record low today of about $46 a barrel. In July it was at the record high of about $147 a barrel. I don't understand. I don't get how it can go up so high and down so low. It makes me a little nervous--in a giddy sort of way.

In other news, I'm sure this little tidbit has been circulated:



I have always hesitated to try to take advantage of the after-Thanksgiving sales because of the way people lose their minds and their common courtesy to save a few bucks. But this is just outrageous. This guy was 34 years old! I am really shocked by this event.

Okay, not to seem calloused or insensitive, let's move on to another topic.

We are still in the market for a mattress. I have been asking friends what they have and if they like it, and I'll get responses like, "We have a sealy Posturepedic, and we really like it." Or, "We have an intelli-gel and it is awesome. My parents have a Tempur-pedic, which are supposed to be amazing, but we like our intelli-gel bed better." I have also been reading online reviews, which really have made me more indecisive and confused than I was before. I guess different people just like different things. The one thing I do know is that we want a king-sized, non-taco mattress. And the situation is becoming desperate, especially as I increase in size and awkwardness.

So we went to a furniture store over the weekend, just to try things out and see if we can figure out what we like. But what I didn't know is that there are, like, a THOUSAND Sealy Posturepedic beds, a thousand Simmons Beautyrest beds, etc., etc. Silly girl that I am, I thought there was, like, ONE Sealy Posture-pedic, ONE Simmons beautyrest, ONE Tempur-pedic, etc. I thought I could come out of the store saying, "okay, I think I like the fill-in-the-blank the most," after having tried like 5 different mattresses. Wow. I thought I could lay on a bed in the store and say, Hey, I like this bed. And then go home and find it online a get a deal. Haven't yet been able to find a single bed online of the exact model I laid on in the store. And the really tough thing is, you get what you pay for with a mattress. If you want to spend $500, you can get, for example a $500-dollar Posture-pedic model. If you want to spend $4,000, you can get the $4,000 model. Too bad all the mattresses that we liked (that were in the mid-range prices, mind you) were around $2400. Yikes.

Also: I was surprised to note that the beds I really liked were the softer, pillow-top variety. I thought upon entering the store that I would like the super-supportive beds. We tried several (specifically Simmons Beautyrest) mattresses that had thick layers of visco-elastic memory foam on the top, and those were our favorites.

So I guess my question here is. . . HELP ME!!! What kind of bed do you have, how much did you pay for it, how can we get a sweet deal, and, more specifically, if any of you like softer beds of the memory-foam variety, have you gotten sick of it? I wish I had a bigger network base for this survey, but seeing as how maybe like 10 people ever read this I'd really like your input if you have valuable advice.

Well, there you have it. These are the days of our lives.