Thanksgiving

This post is way over-do...but I wanted to put up a picture of Mathew and the "bubble bread" he made on Thanksgiving day.

The next morning after a day full of fun and food I woke up excited to hit the black Friday sales when I opened the door and my car was trashed! Someone decided to break into my car! The ripped off the dash board to steal my CD player and broke the window...however, the joke is on them...the CD player does not work very well....KARMA!

It's a GIRL!

We found out Friday that we have a healthy and active baby girl on our hands!

what will it be?

I feel inclined to update those of you who care about the 4" baby inside of me that is slowly taking over my life.

On Friday, August 24 I will be 15 weeks. Friday is a nice day to help me even out my weeks and where I am at. On Friday, Sept. 28 we find out what we are having! Finally! I feel like I have been getting fat forever (which I have been, but now I have an "excuse")... that said, i set up a little questionnaire on the right that allows you to take a guess.

Some old wives tales say certain things determine what you are having...so here are a few symptoms:

*STILL throwing up everyday!

*Over the super exhaustion and back to what seems like normal exhaustion.

and I think that is it....wait

*MEMORY LOSS! I am a complete space cadet these days.

This is all for now.

Over and out.

It looks like a bean, but it's a baby.

Second picture of the little tyke. The first one really just looked like a peanut. Now we know it has a head (needs one of those!), two legs and two arms!

Now we are just excited and VERY ready for Feb.

brown hair day???

Jack and Monica Mac Photoshoot

Jack and I did a little photoshoot a grace de the Mac Computer.

Mathew and his knee surgery

As most of you know Mathew tore his ACL, MCL and Meniscus in January (2007). After a month of rehabilitating the MCL (since it didn't require surgery) we finally took him in on Tuesday, February 27, '07 at 6 in the a.m. to have Dr. Payne reconstruct his ACL and cut off the torn piece of cartlidge. Some of the pictures are before and some are after. The one with the big 3" scar with stitches is the after (obviously).

BEFORE SURGERY

AFTER SURGERY

they did NOT do surgery on this knee!

they even shaved his leg for him...how sweet.

do·mes·tic·i·ty

n. pl. do·mes·tic·i·ty /[doh-me-stis-i-tee]

1. the state of being domestic; domestic or home life.
2. a domestic or household act, activity, duty, or chore.
3. The quality or condition of being domestic.
4. Home life or devotion to it.
5. domesticities Household affairs.

Domesticity translated in other languages:

Arabic:حياةٌ عائِلِيَّه
Chinese (Simplified): 对于家庭生活的爱好，家庭生活
Chinese (Traditional): 對於家庭生活的愛好，家庭生活
Czech: rodinný život
Danish: familieliv; hjemmeliv
Dutch: huiselijkheid
Estonian: kodune elu
Finnish: kotielämä
French: vie de famille
German: die Häuslichkeit
Greek: νοικοκυροσύνη
Hungarian: családi élet
Icelandic: heimilisrækni
Indonesian: kehidupan rumah tangga
Italian: vita familiare
Spanish: vida casera

Domesticity should be an innate quality for all females. It should be programmed in each of us, I unfortunately missed that training session and have found that learning the art of domesticity is much harder than I had originally anticipated.

I tried to be domestic. It was really quite entertaining for all involved. I got the urge (believe it or not) to cook some treats (i.e. bread, cookies, basically anything), but soon realized when you don't do these things often (cook, bake) it is difficult to find the necessary ingredients in the cabinet.

My cooking urge started Sunday with a desire to make homemade bread. We got a bread machine for Christmas, so I thought it would be easy. I opened the book to find that the main ingredients were: eggs (which I didn't have), bread machine yeast (WHAT is that?) and unsalted butter (you mean that unsalted butter is different than margarine ?!) After realizing that my dream of making bread that night was not going to happen, I glided through my cookbook in attempt to find something else I could try out. VOILA...desserts. Perfecto, I thought...that should be fun. I found a great brownie dessert, unfortunately the main ingredients were eggs and unsalted butter (has anyone else ever heard of this stuff?!) I am sure most domestic people have, need I remind you that I am the antithesis of domestic. I came to terms with the bread and was understanding, I started to get slightly frustrated with the brownies, but still kept my cool. I moved on to cake cookies, because I have maybe 1,000 boxes of cake mix at home (not really sure why..I don't eat cake.) PERFECT! I don't need unsalted butter, margarine works just fine. Oil...check, Eggs...NOOOOO! At this point my calm and collective self started to loathe domesticity.

With that said, I went to the store Tuesday night and stocked up on: cornstarch (don't know what it is or what it does, but I am sure that one day I will need it), baking soda, baking powder (don't mix these two up when cooking. I did it once when making baking powder biscuits, I accidentally put baking soda in instead of baking powder...they were horrible!) flour, sugar, brown sugar, shake n' bake (thought it might spice up some boring chicken) and fresh green beans. It was a delightful trip and very fulfilling. I tried to buy some pork, but again I am not domestic and I don't know the tricks of picking out good pork. First, I don't even like pork, but I know I should probably eat it and secondly, I have never bought meat. I don't know what is good and what is bad? If it is a light color is that what I want? Do I want it more pink?

I guess I am done ranting and raging about my lack of domesticity. The next time I post about this stuff I will be a regular Martha Stuart.

Christmas in Ponca City

This Christmas Mathew and I made the 5.5 hour trek to Ponca City, Oklahoma to spend Christmas with everyone in his family! We had such a great time and really enjoyed ourselves.

CHRISTMAS EVE:

Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday this year. What a great opportunity it was for us to go to church and be reminded that the purpose of Christmas and this holiday season is to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

After sacrament meeting the goal was to take a family photo. It was entertaining to say the least, but went off without a hitch. I only have a few of the photos and am very interested to see some of the other pictures taken from the other cameras. The first picture is of all the kids.

From left to right: Jonathon and Chelsea, Nicholas (single), Benjamin (single), Monica and Mathew, Amelia and Brian

Top row: Chelsea, Janet, Monica and Amelia

Bottom row: Jonathon, Tyler, Nicholas, Abby, Benjamin, Mathew, Ryan and Brian

On Christmas Eve it is the Harrison tradition to make homeade pizza. Mathew and Abby made the dough and then after the dough was 1/2 way cooked, we each got to decorate our pizza.

Chelsea and Jonathon

Also, another part of this tradition is to eat in the dark with only candle light. Most of the meal was spent in the dark though, because the boys thought it was hilarious to blow out the candles.

Janet and Tyler waiting patiently for their pizza.

Mathew and Amelia pulling out the first pizza.

Brian and Ryan enjoyed their pizza!

While we were waiting for the pizza's to cook, Tyler and I made a ginerbread train (on the left) and Nick and Abby made a gingerbread house (on the right).

CHRISTMAS DAY:

It is also another Harrison tradition for each person to open one gift at a time. It is a fun tradition if you have never done it before. We had 12 people there and it took an entire day to open gifts! For each person we (I mean I) wrapped several little gifts so they would have more things to open (not really sure where that logic originated from), but I learned my lesson this time and next time I am just wrapping everything into one big box for each person. Even though it took awhile, it was very fun to see and focus on each gift, especially the ones that people had spent countless hours making.

Abby became a school teacher while we were in Ponca and really enjoyed teaching Tyler out of her new school house kit.

This is Nick (my SINGLE brother-in-law). I don't remember what gift he was opening, just thought it was a cute picture of him and would advertise that he is available for dating.

TUESDAY (day after Christmas):

The men/boys went to the chapel to join the Foye's in a little game of volleyball. Whiley they were playing, Chelsea, Abby, Tyler and I played outside and on the stage. We had a ball of a time.

Abby, Zoey (Chelsea's dog), Chelsea and Tyler

the team!

Top row: Brian, Nicholas, Mathew and Benjamin

Bottom: Jonathon