Christmas 2009

On Christmas Eve, I was telling Clara about how Santa would come that night. She started crying and said, "All done Santa." I started explaining to her that he would leave her toys and that he would come while she was sleeping so she wouldn't have to see him. After a few minutes of "discussion," Clara said, "All done Santa's lap." Apparently she's more traumatized than we though. Of course both Jeremy and I were laughing the whole time.

Christmas Eve, we had a live nativity put on by all of Clara's cousins. Clara was a sheep. We had a hard time convincing her to put on the ears, but once she did, she excitedly said, "Sheep, Baa." It was pretty cute.Christmas morning brought lots of fun gifts for Clara. She walked out of her room and I showed her what Santa had brought (without using his name of course.) She didn't want to have anything to do with them at first. So we fed her some breakfast and as soon as she was done with that, she was very excited to go see her new toys. I guess she just needed a full tummy. And once she started, there was no stopping her. She loved all of her gifts. There wasn't a single toy that she didn't want to play with immediately. And she even loved the clothes. Grandma Beck gave her some princess PJ's that she wouldn't let go and was so sad that I would let her keep them on....

Her favorite gift of all though is a tea pot set she got from my brother. She hasn't put that one down yet. It sounds like you are actually pouring water out when you tip the tea pot. She loves it!

Get Away

Thanks to Jeff and Emily for watching Clara while Jeremy and I went on a 2 day (one night) get away. We started our little excursion by watching The Blind Side. If you haven't seen it yet, GO! I had heard great things about the movie, but I was still blown away with how good it was. Not only does it have a great story, but the characters are well developed and draw you in. I was crying through pretty much the whole movie. Jeremy even leaned over once and said, "It is weird that I almost cried?" I LOVED it.

We then headed to temple square to recreate one of our first dates. I had so much fun looking around the church history museum. I always feel the spirit so strongly as I read about the prophet Joseph Smith. I know Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for the huge sacrifices Joseph Smith made so that I could have the gospel in my life. He endured countless hardships and even sacrificed his life so that the world could have the true church on the earth today.

Next was a very yummy dinner at Red Lobster thanks to my wonderful friends in Boise who sent us a gift card to Red Lobster as a graduation gift for Jeremy. Jeremy had never been to Red Lobster before, so it was a great place to go for dinner.

We then were able to check into the Anniversary Inn. It was amazing. They had complimentary cheese cake and sparkling cider in our room. It was so nice to just relax and be with Jeremy for the evening. We rented some movies and watched them. Our room was fantastic. Jeremy ended up taking 50 pictures again. I love watching him become so excited that he wants to take pictures of everything. We were in the Swiss Family Robinson room. Our bed was in the tree house above Jeremy's head in this picture. We also had a waterfall as our shower. It was so fun!Jeremy and I slept in the next morning and just relaxed. It's always so nice to be lazy in the morning. I haven't been able to do that since we had Clara! After having a lazy morning, we were able to attend an endowment session in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. We then headed over to the Draper Temple and did a short sealing session.

We decided to cut our get away short at that point because we wanted to be home before dark. The weather was awful and I didn't want to be stuck driving on black ice. We had seen 6 - 7 accidents that day, we we were so grateful to get home safely.

We had a fabulous break and it has been hard getting back to real life again. Thanks again Jeff and Emily for taking care of Clara. We LOVED getting to spend so much time together. It was a wonderful 2 days.

Yay for Jeremy!

This post is to announce to everyone our excitement! Jeremy finished his last final on Thursday this week. I can't believe that he's actually done with school! We've been celebrating by playing our new Wii that we bought with Jeremy's Christmas bonus from work. Congrats Jeremy, I'm so proud of you. Thank-you for working so hard to finish school. I know it wasn't your favorite thing to do, but I'm so glad you stuck it out!

I also made Clara a Christmas dress this week. I've decided to never make a velvet dress again. It is very difficult to work with. The dress took me twice as long to finish just because of how hard it was to keep the 2 pieces of velvet lined up long enough for me to sew a seam. But I love how long it is. Here are the pictures of Clara in her new dress. I wanted her in the dress to show it off, but boy is it hard to get a good picture of a never still 2 year old!

2009 Christmas Letter

This year has been a year of many ups and downs. We started this year by being unemployed. Jeremy finally got a job in March at Chargeback Guardian. He still works there, and it has been a wonderful company to work for. They are willing to work around his frequently changing schedule, which has been blessing for us.
We had had the opportunity to take several family vacations this year. We drove to California for a Zachreson family reunion. We finally made it to Boise to visit friends of ours. It was their first time meeting Jeremy, and I was so glad that Jeremy got along with them so well. We attended the Beck (extended family) reunion since it was held in Salt Lake this year. Another small vacation we had this summer was Jeremy's first annual immediate Beck family reunion. We were also able to go visit my grandparents in Montana this year.
Jeremy has been working very hard at both work and school. He decided to take an internship at Richter 7, which is one of the best companies in Utah for the field he's studying. It's an unpaid internship, so we are hoping it beefs up the resume enough for him to get a good job. But all of Jeremy's hard work has paid off. He'll graduate from UVU in graphic design by the end of this month. We are all looking forward to no more homework!
Sarah keeps herself busy raising Clara, babysitting, and tutoring. She loves getting to be a stay at home mom so that she can watch her little Clara grow and change. She also loves watching Addi, and is looking forward to babysitting Addi's new little sister when Addi's mom goes back to work after her maternity leave. Sarah also tutors both high school and college students in their math classes. She's had the opportunity to tutor Calculus this year, which is something new to her. She never taught it, so it was fun going back and relearning it. She has found a new love of Calculus.
Clara continues to grow and change. She is definitely the source of entertainment in our house. She loves to learn. She has learned all her letters this year, as well as numbers 1 - 12. She also knows all the basic colors and shapes. She gets so excited when she sees different shapes. Her favorite thing to do is dance and run fast. She'll come up and ask me to twirl her. When I do, she never grows tired of spinning in a circle. Even when she is so dizzy she can't stand up, she'll get mad at me if I stop twirling her. She will also come up and ask me to sing. As soon as I start singing, she'll start dancing. Her favorite song to dance to is Give Said the Little Stream. She'll also want me to join her in dancing anytime she hears music. Her favorite movie is Cars. Whenever a song comes on during that movie, I have to sing the words to the song (even if I don't know them) and dance with her. She also loves to run fast. We play "go" in our house a lot. That is where we run from one end of our little apartment to the other over and over again. However, Clara also wants me to run fast with her in the middle of grocery stores, at the library, or any other place with lots of people around.
We hope your year has been as wonderful as ours has been. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love,
Jeremy, Sarah, and Clara Beck

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

So Clara now knows who Santa is. I don't think she quite grasps the idea that he gives presents, etc. But whenever she sees a picture of Santa, or Santa on TV, she gets really excited and says, "Santa!" So I thought there just might be a chance that she would sit on Santa's lap this year for our Ward Christmas party. No such luck. So here is another hilarious family photo that we will laugh about for years to come. After she got off Santa's lap, it took her a long time to calm down. She loves looking at pictures of herself, so I decided to distract her by having her look at the camera. Well, when we got to the pictures of Santa, she started crying and said, "All done Santa." We were one of the first people to get to sit on Santa's lap. People who didn't know we had already gone would come up and ask Clara if she wanted to sit on Santa's lap. She would start sobbing and say, "No no no no." It made me laugh. Poor kid wasn't getting any sympathy from her Mom, and where was her Dad anyway? She knew she had to wait for him to get out of the Church with that crazy Santa in it.

Other funny things Clara has done this week. We were leaving a store when Clara told me she was hungry. Since we were already in the car on our way home, I told her I would get her something to eat at home. She responded by telling me the store was hungry. I think she thought that if the store was hungry too she might get to eat there instead of having to wait to get home. Same type of story: Clara was telling me she was hungry. I was in the middle of a task and so I told her that I would get her something to eat as soon as I was done. (Which really meant that I would help her as soon as I got to a point where I could.) She brought me one of her blankets and said, "Blanket hungry, Mom." Maybe if it's the blanket that's hungry I might feed it sooner?

And the count down continues for UVU. Thursday is Jeremy's last final. By the time I write next week's blog, he'll be a college graduate! Ok, so maybe an almost college graduate since we have to wait for the diploma to arrive in the mail before I can officially say that, but he'll be done with every thing he has to do to be able to graduate!

A Whole Bunch of Nothing

There wasn't a whole lot to report on for this week. Clara decided to put her Elmo bucket on her head. I found that amusing. I find that most of my days are being filled with things that Clara does to amuse us. For example, she is starting to copy things that we say. Jeremy was calling for me, and Clara decided to call too. But she said, "Sarah" instead of Mommy. Jeremy also got slightly frustrated one day and in an exasperated tone he said, "Ugg!" Clara repeated it with the exact same face and tone of voice. It was so hard for me not to laugh. I have also been having a hard time getting Clara to try new foods. I'll have a tiny amount of the new food on a spoon/fork and say, "Just try it." Clara will now bring me her food and say, "Try it Mom." Now I know how she feels because I definitely don't want to try her pre-chewed food. :)

Jeremy only has 10 days left of school. Just 10 more days of getting Clara ready for bed myself because Jeremy has homework. Just 10 more days of feeling guilty if I leave Clara with Jeremy because he won't get as much homework done. Just 10 more days of Jeremy not getting to play with us when he gets home from work. I am sooooooooooooooo excited!

P.S. In case you were wondering, Jeremy's favorite picture was #2. It was the clearest and he kind of liked us all not looking at the camera. That's the artistic point of view for you. :) My favorite was #3, but it was blurry. So my next favorite was #1, but the we couldn't tone down the bright sun shining off our faces. I also really liked #5, but it was too grainy. So we left it up to our wonderful readers to decide for us. I did put up picture #5 as our family picture on our side bar. But that will not be the one we print for our Christmas letter as it really is too grainy. We are going with our viewers 2nd choice (and my favorite) of #3. Thanks for all your votes.