Alyssa is 3!

Our little Alyssa just turned 3 on Tuesday! Yay! I love birthday celebrations! I thought I would share some of my feelings about Alyssa.

Alyssa is so special and we just love having her in our family. She is so funny and makes me laugh all the time. She is also so compassionate. If I'm crying, she will come pat my back and put her head on my shoulder and sing me a song to make me feel better. It's so sweet. She seems so much older and wiser than three sometimes. She has been getting really interested in art lately. She would draw, paint, and play with playdough all day if I would let her. She also loves to dance and pretend she's a pretty princess ballerina. She wears pretty dresses and skirts everyday (all her pants are going to waste because she just won't wear them!)

We got Alyssa a scooter for her birthday with Disney princesses all over it and streamers coming out of the handles. It's a girly scooter through and through and she loves it. When we first put it together, we let her ride it in the house. She rode it in the kitchen and then rode it upstairs to the bathroom and then to her bedroom and had to sleep with it right next to the bed. In the morning, she rode it into my room. It was funny to see her so attached to it already.

We also got her a new princess blanket that lights up. She showed it to me and gave me her best silly smile. I'm not sure what she's trying to do, but she looks hilarious!

We love Alyssa so much. We are blessed to have her in our family.

Love It!

We just bought the greatest new gadget. I'm so excited about it. It's kind of like a Tivo, but not as expensive and no service contract and you don't need cable to use it....just good old-fashioned rabbit ears. It's a Magnavox DVD recorder with a 160MB internal memory (got it on Walmart.com, but they are all sold out right now :0(
I can record a show to the hard drive that I want to keep forever, edit out all the commercials, and burn it to a DVD. (Tivo can't do that!) I can pre-set all the things I want to record and, ta-da, they are recorded in perfect HDTV quality. I know I'm behind the times if I think this is awesome, but I've been looking for a long time for something that would work with an antenna and not have a service contract. Can I help it if I'm a little excited?

Random Stuff

So, someone (I'm not naming any names) told me I need to write on my blog more. I told her that I don't have many interesting things to say, and I'm not witty enough to make boring stuff interesting. But, in any case, I'll try to write more.

I was talking to this same person about trials and why we have to go through them. I mentioned a quote I had heard and she was interested in getting the quote, so here it is!

Elder George Q. Cannon (1827-1901) said "The Saints should always remember that God sees not as man sees; that he does not willingly afflict his children, and that if he requires them to endure present privation and trial, it is that they may escape greater tribulations which would otherwise inevitably overtake them. If He deprives them of any present blessing, it is that he may bestow upon them greater and more glorious ones by-and-by.”

I really like that. It helps to know that there's a reason we have trials...not just some quota of misery that God has to fill. :-)

Hmmm, what else can I ramble about while my house remains a disaster. (I'd much rather type than clean.) Oh, I can vent about the most painful choir practice ever last night. It was for a stake conference choir that will perform in 2 weeks. I guess I've taken it for granted that our ward is especially musically gifted and that others are not. We are singing 4 verses of a hymn and, get this...3 of the 4 verses will be sung in unison! I couldn't believe my ears. And then on top of that we had to sit and practice it for half an hour! (and we will practice again next week for half an hour and then again 20 minutes before the Stake Conference session... can I pull out all my hair yet?)

I shouldn't be this critical. I actually feel really guilty that I am criticizing. We are supposed to do the best with what we are given, and if that's what our stake choir is capable of, then they shouldn't do more than that. It's just hard for those of us who like a challenge to have patience in that setting. Can I just say how grateful I am to live in a ward where there happens to be a lot of musical talent? I'm not sure I could attend a choir like our stake choir on a regular basis.

Have I filled my quota for blogging yet? At least for today? .... Good!

THEY ARE FINISHED!

I finally finished my couches (well, at least they LOOK done...I still have some hand-sewing to do). They turned out better than I could have hoped for. We found some really nice micro-suede at a discount fabric store and got a great deal on it. Now I have to make new curtains for the room to be complete. And since the couches turned out so well, Brian wants me to re-upholster a chair in our family room. I think I need a break from upholstering furniture though.