The TRUE Stroller Test

Thanks to generous sweet Sonja (who gave us this car seat) and our new friend Emily from the Island (from whom we purchased the stroller for a mere $10), we are now the proud owners of a travel system for Baby Nance. Because we are, of course, very conscientious parents, and Mark a very protective father, we took the stroller through for a thorough test drive to ensure that it's good enough for our baby boy.

Final grade: B+
Final grade with curve for cost: A++
(I apologize for the poor camera work!)

My husband rocks!

I just wanted to post this while I was thinking about it. I was chatting with Mark earlier. He's a bit nervous about an interview he has today, because he's interviewing for a full-blown teaching job and going up against full-blown teachers who have been teaching for years. (He'll finish his teaching degree in December. This job will fulfill his student teaching requirement if he gets it, but he'll be an intern and have his own classroom, instead of a student teacher who just takes over another teacher's classroom for 15 weeks.)

Anyway, he was telling me that he'd figured out an answer to what he would say if asked about his lack of teaching experience. He's been working in different classrooms in different schools for the last 3+ years, so he has experience, just not in his own classroom yet. (That was his answer, basically.)

Me being me, I always feel the need to put my own two cents in. (Yes, I will come to the point about my husband being awesome in a bit, just let me set it up...) As I was telling him how I thought that his best selling point was his passion for teaching, it really hit me how true that is and how much I love that about my husband.

Especially now that we're quickly approaching parenthood (!), I value his love of teaching so much more. I'm not as worried about teaching our kids why the sky is blue or how to throw a frisbee (both of which Mark will do marvellously at), but I worry more and more about teaching our kids how to do what's right, teaching them to make good choices, and teaching them the things that really matter.

Times like this, I am so grateful for the gospel that I know is true. Not only does the gospel help guide us in our everyday decisions, the gospel helps us know how and what to teach our children. And my husband is an awesome gospel teacher. He teaches me every day by his sweet, Christ-like example, and he teaches me even more when we study the scriptures together.

He really comes alive, though, when he teaches kids. And I have learned more from watching his 5-minute Primary lessons than I have learned sitting through years of hour-long lessons. He loves what he teaches, and he loves sharing. And I love that. I love seeing his passion and seeing his testimony come alive. I am so excited that I will have him here with me to teach our kids all of the important things: Christ lives, God knows and loves us all, and He has a plan for all of us to return to live with him again. And I'm so excited to have our little boy learn the fun things, too, from his daddy, like why the sky is blue and how to throw a frisbee. :)

TAKEN: Bourne (+) Burn Notice (-) mercy

Disclaimer: I am not a movie critic. Just a girl who watches movies occasionally and sometimes shares. So I'm not going to talk about the artsy side of the movie, like the angles and things, unless I am particularly moved by them. I am all about the plot and the story and character development. Feel free to disagree with me and know that I apathetically embrace your thoughts. :) Also, I try not to include spoilers but I can't promise anything...

After hearing definitively that Taken was an action/thriller type and not a creepy/I'll-sleep-with-the-light on type, we rented it last weekend. And quite enjoyed it. While it's a scary real-life type situation, I liked the fast action and the fact that the movie is short and sweet (as long as Liam Neeson shamelessly wreaking havoc on criminals is sweet to you) at only 93 minutes.

Mark LOVED the action. If you hate when the good guy doesn't win every fight definitively, you will also love it. Mark (and I quote) "loved it because the good guy never got beat and always kicked the trash out of everyone." That's not even an exaggeration. This movie is all about Liam Neeson's "set of skills" that help him kick some major bad guy booty. Quite satisfying, actually.

The storyline, however, not quite as satisfying. Overall, the plot is solid. Liam Neeson's daughter is kidnapped and he spends the rest of the movie hunting her down (which you learn from the trailers). It's a scary concept to think about, but not close enough to home that I couldn't enjoy the movie for the action and Liam Neeson. :) But, the story isn't compelling enough that I would have felt like I missed something if I had stopped halfway through. The daughter is kind of a self-centered brat, so at some point, I figured it wasn't worth it to save her... Does that make me a terrible person?

Final review: B+. Worth $1 at Redbox, but probably not worth a "real" rental in my book.

It's a...

BOY! Somehow, we and our bouncing baby boy have broken the Aggie Village trend! You see, for the last 2 years or so, no first child in our ward and no child in our triad has had more testosterone than estrogen. (If that is not actually a medically correct hormone idea, I don't want to know about it. :)

So, Baby Boy Nance will be joining us on or around September 28. Now we just wait...

If life were a musical

In high school, my friends and I regularly toyed around with the idea of making life a musical--getting a dozen or so of us to dance a choreographed number down the hall, just like in so many musicals. Even though our dream never came to fruition, check this out:


Thanks to Katie and YouTube for sharing the joy! :)

Daddy-in-Training

I just want to take this opportunity to let all of you know that Mark is an awesome dad. Yes, already, 145 days pre-partum. You see, thanks to Seth and Debra, our awesomely cool neighbors, and their adorably sweet daughter Sofie, Mark is no longer scared of infants! In the past two weeks, Mark has exhibited these awesomely cool parental traits:

• Voluntarily taking a screaming child. And then singing her a lullaby until she fell asleep. Yes, the lullaby was about Mr. Clean, Donald Trump, and Sofie, but a sleeping baby is a sleeping baby.
• Wiping up spit up. Even though he grimaces every time.
• Maintaining silence when Sofie spits up. He still makes faces, but doesn't exclaim every time now. :)
• Watching a baby by himself. Yesterday, Mark had Sofie all to himself for almost an hour. He played with her, fed her, burped her, didn't freak out when she cried, and got her in the car seat in the stroller and outside (down the stairs) for a walk. I was impressed. He was even very careful not to hit the bumps in the sidewalk with the stroller. And he scolded me when I opened the canopy and almost woke her up.
  

I think all he has left to conquer is late nights and diapers--right? :)