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Last Saturday we hosted our first soup group! I heard about soup groups in this NPR bit: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/09/146138924/over-bowls-of-soup-donors-find-recipe-for-change. It was so exciting to think that our little microfund could make a difference, and I was so thankful to every person who came.

My friend Jean needed help raising funds to buy sets of high-interest books for her class, and so she provided our first cause. If you would like to learn more about/donate to her (very worthy!) cause, you may do so here: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=647461&utm_source=FB&utm_medium=FBactivityfeed&utm_content=title&utm_campaign=reg_partial

Later that day, Abe decided to have fun dressing Lydia up:

 

 

A couple Sundays ago, Abe and I realized Lydia had never experienced grass. She’s seen it from her stroller, but she’s never touched it or sat on it or rolled down a hill of it. We felt like bad parents for depriving her of those basic experiences, so we hightailed it to the nearest park.

When we put her on the grass, Lydia started eating the dirt. Abe brushed off my alarm by saying. “It’s just dirt–nothing healthier.” Ten seconds later we saw a man with his dog head for our patch of grass and we realized–oops!–we were in the doggie part of the park. A little closer look at the mounds of “dirt” proved that there were indeed healthier things our baby could be ingesting. We quickly relocated to the spinner.

Lydia was a little bewildered by her whole park experience, but she is not bewildered by toothbrushes! She loves to watch us brush our teeth, and even better, she likes to use BOTH of our toothbrushes to brush her own.  She recently acquired her very own toothbrush, and so she no longer has to resort to using both of ours (simultaneously) to clean her teeth.

And happy belated Valentine’s Day! Here are our valentines:

Somebody had a birthday, and it wasn’t Lydia or I! Abe turned 28 on January 28th, and since he couldn’t be home that day, he took us with him to Moab. We spent three days there, and we didn’t go hiking once. Instead, we lazed around the hotel..

and ate all too frequently at Pasta Jay’s. On Abe’s birthday, we actually considered eating lunch AND dinner there, but we I was too embarrassed. That would mean we would have patronized their restaurant three times in less than 24 hours, and the wait staff would have judged us.

But even though we didn’t go there for dinner, we stopped by after dinner to pick up a piece of their to-die-for cake. Seriously, I’ve never had a better piece of cake–and I don’t even really like chocolate cake! Give me carrot anytime…except when this is around:

When we got home, my mom came over for dinner. As she and I were prepping, we heard Abe exclaim that Lydia was climbing the stairs. We rushed out and saw this:

I should have known this was bad news, but it was so cute and fun that I didn’t think ahead like I ought to have. Specifically, I should have realized then and there that we need baby gates, and I should have made an immediate run to Target for them. Instead, I just applauded and cuddled Lydia for being cute. And today I learned my lesson. It started out with a mess:

Lydia returned to this mess after dinner:

And since she was going to bed shortly thereafter, I thought I could get away with quickly cleaning the mess before she went down. At that point, Lydia had moved on to her stuffed lady bug (or so I thought). Not thirty seconds after I start cleaning the mess, I hear a BOOM! and then a loud wail. Lydia had fallen down the stairs.

After I rushed to pick her up and ascertained that she was miraculously okay (thank you, guardian angels!), all the worst-case scenarios played through my head. Right now, I am feeling intensely grateful to God for looking out for my daughter, and I also know the first thing I’m doing tomorrow: buying baby gates.

And to celebrate Lydia’s new, safe space, I am going to use up the very last one of these:

This weekend Abe was home! It was a real treat, especially considering he’s been in Memphis all week and will be traveling for the rest of January. Furthermore, when we woke up on Saturday, this is what we saw:

So we decided to be hermits all day and stay inside. Abe made up a story with Lydia’s binkies called “Lord of the Binkies.” It involved a series of allusions to Occupy Wall Street, The Book of Mormon, Horton Hears a Who, Ron Paul-esque isolationism, and, of course, Lord of the Rings.  Here’s a scene from the elaborate plot:

We took a lunch break to eat some Hungarian mushroom soup, recipe courtesy of one of the Moosewood cookbooks:

And then Abe had to leave for work again. Boo! But while he was gone, I made him a cake for his birthday celebration at the Miners’ (Suzanne’s family):

Here’s Abe telling Lydia to look at the camera:

And then today we celebrated Sunday by eating a German pancake (and, of course, going to church and all of that good stuff):

My mom used to make these for me every Saturday and bring them to me in bed. I know, I know. I was spoiled beyond belief by the world’s greatest mom. When I told Abe about what my mom used to do for me, he said, ” Well, I don’t know how to make German pancakes, but if you want to make them, you can go back to bed and I’ll bring them to you.” Ummm….we ended up just eating them at the table instead. =)

 

 

 

 

To start off, a couple pictures of Lydia–because she’s cute, and I can’t help it!

One of Abe’s best friends got married last weekend, and Dan, Preethi, and their son, Nat, flew in for the wedding. Afterward, Lydia and Nat had a fun play date. Nat showed Lydia how to take block towers down carefully (one block at a time), and Lydia showed Nat how to knock them down in one fell swoop.

The next day I made this eggplant and chard lasagna for our family dinner with Tom, Suzanne, and David. I used Deborah Madison’s recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, but I can’t put a link here because I haven’t figured out how to do that in this new blog. I know it is probably insanely easy to figure out, but it’s 4 am right now…and that’s my excuse. I took a picture of the lasagna because I didn’t think I’d make it again–not because it wasn’t tasty, but because slicing, salting, blotting, roasting, and turning the eggplant slices (of which there were MANY) just took it out of me. But my mom begged for eggplant parmesan this Sunday, so I found myself up to my ears in eggplant again–a mere one week after swearing it off.

And we have new floors! We left for Idaho on Monday when the floors looked like this:

And then we came back on Friday to floors that look like this:

Lydia looooooves the new floors.

Last night Lydia and Suzanne played for an hour on the floors. After all the twirling, sliding, dancing, walking and bum-scooting with her grams, Lydia was worn out! She went right to sleep. Of course, she woke up again at 1 am. After I went to her, I wasn’t able to go back to sleep–and I’ve been up ever since. Oh, the joy.

The title of this post refers to an activity revival on the Darais Family Blog circuit and not, as my brother incorrectly inferred, to the after effects of an excessively bean-y meal.

With that all clear, we can discuss more exciting things–like 2011 in retrospect. We did not do any Christmas cards this year, and since Abe and I had fun reminiscing today about the highlights and blessings we’ve experienced in the past 12 months, here are a few of our favorite memories from 2011:

• Lydia’s birth!!! Thanks to the expertly administered epidural, Lydia’s actual birth was not only joyful but discomfort-free, and I can’t remember ever being happier in my life than during the birth process. I will forever love Abe, our wonderful doctor and fabulous nurses for helping that experience be so spiritual and beautiful.

• Moving to Utah. Abe got the promotion he only dreamed about as a distant and not-so-realistic possibility, and a week later we found ourselves in Utah. Thanks to his dad and Suzanne for taking us in for six lovely weeks, and thanks to his mom for allowing us to  live in her house until we found our own place. We loved living in both places. We are sad to leave our fabulous ward on Capitol Hill, but we hope to stay in touch with our friends there for a long time.

• Visits from our friends! We had so much fun when Jean and Sherelle visited us prior to Lydia’s birth, and seeing them again in Boston was a highlight of our leaf-peeping trip this fall. We also loved having Dan and Preethi come visit; I loved getting some live time with Preethi (although not as much as I’d like!) and Lydia enjoyed falling in love with their adorable son, Nat. Thalia’s visit from South Africa was a highly anticipated thrill for us, and my only regret is that she couldn’t stay for years. Most recently, we had a blast when Candace and Ben came down from Idaho. We had a great weekend anticipating the arrival of their soon-to-be-born baby girl. Of course, Clark’s visits are always cause for great rejoicing, and now that both Jere and David are far away (Seattle and Boston respectively), we love it when they are in town, too. We hope 2012 be filled with more visits from our beloved friends–especially since we are now permanently settled. (Yes, this is your invitation to come visit us!)

• We want to thank Tom and Suzanne for our fun vacation in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts to see the leaves in their autumn glory. We also loved the chance to see David (Abe’s brother) in his new home turf at Harvard.

• And, of course, watching our gorgeous daughter grow and develop is a continual joy to us. We love her so much and are so thankful for her presence in our lives. We are already better people because of her, and the journey is just beginning. We love you, sweet baby Lydia!

Now for some pictures! Abe passed around the Christmas collection plate in my behalf and procured a family-funded camera that is truly spectacular. I love it so much! Thanks to everyone who so generously donated to the cause. Here are some pictures of Christmas 2011 (taken with my brand new camera!):