Christmas day

We spent Christmas morning at our own place, and then went over to my parents at about lunch time to spend the rest of the day with my parents, siblings and their families. Unfortunately it seems I didn't get any pictures of THAT, everyone being together...odds are I left the camera at the house. My bad. Here are pics from the morning of, at least. 

Look at that little girl's hair!

Christmas Eve...Two and a Half Months Late

I know it's way after the fact, but I still wanted to add what we did for Christmas Eve this year cause it was a first. This year was the first year we tried to do our own thing, at our own place, the day of. We decided to follow a Hatch family tradition, which is making a big meal of just finger foods/appetizers. Yum! 

 We felt lucky because we had my parents and my little brother for company, so we had a good group for our meal. If I am remembering right, we had pigs in a blanket, a veggie tray with dip, a fruit tray with dip, a 7 layer chip dip with chips, homemade bagel chips with chicken salad, and...I think there was one more thing but I can't remember now. Obviously because it didn't make it onto the table, we had to bring it over separately? Anyway everything was delicious. :)

We next sang a few different Christmas hymns, and just got on the lds.org website where the hymns are and used that as our accompaniment.


Then came our scripture reading of the Christmas story. I really liked the idea of acting out the nativity story, but I wanted to do it in a way that Jori might be able to understand it a bit. I was afraid if we just dressed up it'd be way over her head. Plus we had nothing to dress up in. So our solution? Fisher Price Little People! Thanks to Jotham and Jamie, we have a Little People nativity already, so it was just a matter of adding a few more to fill in whatever rolls were missing.

Then each of us 'played' a part, except Sam who narrated (read the scriptures of) the whole thing. 

 I think my dad was in charge of the inn keepers,

 Dave was in charge of the shepherds,

 My mom was the angel coming down,

 And...I was the three wise men? Maybe. I'm forgetting now. But Sam would read and then we'd have the little people say something applicable.

Jori thought it was great. Or so I'm telling myself. I'm still not sure if she got it, but we tried hard and felt the Spirit/had a good time doing it. So I'm calling it a win. 

 Afterwards, we kept up a Christensen tradition, which is ending the evening with my mom's famous homemade eggnog and orange rolls. Yum!

 I am so beautiful. (blegh...I wouldn't add this but it's the only evidence I have that Atticus and I were there!)

 Oh wait! I'm forgetting. After THAT, we had Jori and Atticus receive a pair of Christmas jammies each. Jori's came with a mask too. Awesome.

All in all, a wonderful evening!

A thought from a most-of-her-life skinny girl

I've always wanted to give people a glimpse of something, but haven't for fear of being seriously hated by women.

You know what's weird? I've been skinny my whole life (up until now, and even then I'm not doing that bad for having two kids and never exercising, just got a wee bit of flab in the middle region). But this really gave me no advantage (at least as a minor) in self esteem.

I just thought it might be helpful to know: skinniness wasn't some form of pride for me, because it just...was. In fact, it was quite the opposite: I was a seriously scrawny kid. And I knew it. (And still dis-like my chicken legs, mainly at the knee. Those things will poke your eye out.) Then I hit....12-year-old-hood, and looked around and witnessed all these girls my age blossoming into these lovely young women. But I'd look in the mirror and still see someone who looked three years younger than she actually was, with crooked teeth and pasty-white skin. Boo.

It makes sense now. As one man put it in his blog, women are taught that they are supposed to be desired. Period.

It wasn't magazines, or seeing skinny women in movies that made my self image rocky. It was seeing what men WANTED, which was women who...looked really feminine. So small waist-to-hip ratio, and large breasts. These were the girls, and later women, who got attention, and as I was taught by the media--I was supposed to be desired. Women are supposed to be the ones who are pursued, and should have attentions to brush off left and right.

So what did this tell me? That my worth was not dependent on being small (because from experience, I knew this did not give any advantage), but on being desirable in a more carnal way. And I certainly wasn't. I was a 'late bloomer.'

Even into adulthood, when I finally got a smidgen of curves and some guys in college seemed to think I wasn't as gawky as I thought I was, it was the attentions of the opposite sex that gave me my confidence boosts. Everyone wants to be desired, right? But isn't it obvious what a horrible foundation to build one's self confidence on? No wonder so many women have a hard time with aging.

I guess I have a couple points in telling this:

1. I know lots of women have issues, SERIOUS issues, with viewing their body as fat. But not all do. And honestly, I think the biggest impact here will come from the family, particularly the mom. I feel blessed to say I never really remember hearing my mom talk badly about her image in front of me, so I never had a bad example to follow. So yes, the media needs to change...but mamas of girls will make so, so much more of an impact. 
2. No one looks perfect, and basically every female I can remember knowing, when asked (in a girl-talk kind of way) if they would change anything about their appearance, would change something. (I am certainly not exempt: I've always wished I could be tan.)
3. Yes, the average woman with a lead role in a movie is skinnier than the average woman in normal life. But I don't think attacking this is accurate enough: what really needs to change are the stories being told. Women are not as limited as they seem in movies and on tv: they are not just pretty for the men's benefit, a little slice of pie for when he gets bored. They aren't only interested in doing their hair, or being helpless and needing rescue. Or even in, you know, "proving their womanhood" by being ridiculously violent. They can be strong, and insecure, and lovely, but they can also be witty, and un-expected, and awkward, and mature and forgiving. And what I REALLY wish I'd learned: they are not all ridiculously beautiful, and live only to attract men and then shrug off the attentions snootily. They can also be the pursuers! They can also have poor face symmetry and still be a man's entire world; they can be pasty and not have large breasts and still be wonderful company. Their lives do not revolve around sex, on one side of it or another. (And this is still all the romantic stuff, which is wonderful but only one aspect of a wonderful life!) Which brings me to my last idea:
4. Maybe men in movies and on tv need to change, too. I know there are men out there that are as...unscrupulous, as they're depicted to be; who live for one night stands and do view women as objects. But not all do, and it's a dis-credit to them to make it seem like NO men respect women, and the main goal of every day needs to be sexual gratification if you were born with a Y chromosome. It'd be great to see a man who believed in sexual purity, on tv. Who isn't a monk. A monk who usually turns out to be a big fighter, anyway. (FIGHTERS! Violence is another big one, but for another day.)

Midnight musings. I guess ultimately, I hope I can do the same my mom did as far as not giving my daughter(s) one more thing they have to fight, and I hope that my kids can see that there's more to life than only romance, what surrounds romance and violence. Fingers crossed. 

-Ariel June

Rice Cereal and smart girl

We gave Atticus rice cereal for the first time a couple weeks ago!

Its a work in progress. 

Also, we borrowed the book "Tikki Tikki Tembo" from my parents the other day, and Jori loved it so much she memorized the whole name.

Then over the span of two days, Jori watched the Christmas Baby Einstein movie three times. So later on the second day, I was working on dinner when I realized Jori was saying the beginning of the movie over and over. Its something like "For more information about our products for babies and toddlers, visit us at babyeinstein.com. Enjoy the show." Unfortunately I didn't successfully film that one really, so you'll just have o take my word for it. Good memory on this girl!

Schedule update

So, I haven't been the best at the schedule for Jori I created, but haven't been the worst, either. Here have been the highlights:

Obstacle course for active time.

Homemade playdough ( recipe found here ) for creative time.

Our picnic.

 Jori helping make dinner, different days.

 And this handsome fellow:

Lovin' these cuties. :)

Found the P.F. Chang's Lettuce Wraps recipe

As its title suggests, I found the P.F. Chang's lettuce wraps recipe. (Look here.) But that wasn't the best part of that night's dinner: it was making those white crunchy noodles. I found directions here. Basically all that was needed were these:

 

oil, and a pan. But its SO FUN! It literally took 3 seconds. You drop the noodles into hot oil, and FOOM, they poof up! Flip them once (as soon as they grow big), leave for 2 seconds and take them out.

bam. Jori was a fan:

Baby oh baby!

Happy after getting changed :)

Most recent--4 months old!

First time in Bumbo

Holding a cup like a pro

Blobbin' it up at 2 months

Hey cutie. :)