Look-a-likes

Everyone keeps asking us or trying to figure out who Liam looks the most like. So, to answer the question here are pictures of all three of us as babies for you to decide for yourself! (Personally, I think he looks just like Tanner.)

Take a look and take a vote!

I'm back!

Thank you to Tanner for keeping the blog alive while we welcomed our little William to our lives. I know he satisfied a lot of "adoring fans" (ha ha) while I was out of comission. What a great husband!

Since getting home from the hospital a lot has happened. We now have a little guy ruling our days and especially our nights. He is a joy even when he is a lot of work. This morning he woke me up at 5:00am to eat. It is still too early no matter how used to it I am becoming. But today was nice. We were lucky enough to get a little extra sleep with Tanner's mom being here to help for a the last few days, and I think that made waking up not too bad. Anyways, while I fed Liam, Tanner woke up and we just got a chance to talk and listen to some music and just have some quiet "us" time while we tried to get Liam to sleep again. Really it was just so nice. I can't think of a better word to describe it. It was just simply nice. That kind of time, I am already realizing, is hard to come by with the baby, Tanner's school and all the other everyday stuff. I think I have a better understanding and appreciation for "early to bed early to rise". At least for today.

So now for the crazy. We have been home from the hospital for 2 weeks now, but lucky me got to have an extra little visit in between. Last Sunday I got to have my first (and hopefully only) visit to the ER. I had had a fever of 101 for over 24 hours and was advised by the doctor to get checked out at the hospital. I found out I have a kidney infection. What a fun thing to add to my list of crazy stuff going on in my life. While I was there my fever went up to about 103.8. I have never had a fever that high. I got to get stuck two more times in the arm for an IV and a blood sample. Not a fun thing when you hate needles. And I had to take a urin sample of course. They told me they test just one drop of the urin sample for white blood cell count. Usually a person in my current situation of just having a baby has about 2-5 in a sample, but they stopped counting when they got to 200. So it was a pretty good infection. They gave me some antibiotics and I started feeling better the next day. But let me tell you-- don't ever get a kidney infection after you have a baby. NO FUN.

Jingle Bells, Frozen Mail and Pedro

So I suppose it is time to update this thing a little bit. You'd think being pregnant with not a lot of energy and being at home I would be so on top of this, but as you are well aware I am not. I don't love sitting in front of the computer all the time and my computer attention span usually gets eaten up by some email and going crazy trying to make the blog cute instead of updating it. I know the updates are more important, but I can't help the fact that I care way too much about cuteness!

Here are the updates....

Christmas

We had our own Christmas the night before we left to spent Christmas in Billings, Montana, at Tanner's family's house. We watched my favorite Christmas show "It's a Wonderful LIfe!" opened presents and ate pizza. It was lots of fun. The picture below was our tree, which Tanner so cleverly tied to the fireplace to keep it upright (it had some troubles last year that we never could fix). We were lucky enough to get to spend about 2 weeks in Montana and another week at home in Nebraska before Tanner had to trudge back to school. We had a ton of fun seeing EVERYONE there. His entire family got to come home for Christmas-- yes all 7 siblings, spouses and their kids too. We had about 25 people there. There was always a lot going on, but Tanner's mom knows how to keep it all going and making sure everyone has a good time. Amazing! We did have a stinky little bug floating around the house that pretty much caught everyone with a one day stomach flu. Both Tanner and I were "lucky" enough to catch that one. We were thankful it only lasted 24 hours. But we were well stocked with Gatorade and crackers so all was well! It was fun to see everyone from Cleveland to Utah, Idaho, Arizona and Nebraska. Krista and Kara blessed their sweet new babies, Connor and Sophie, and I think we took up about four small pews in the Chapel with the whole gang. We very much enjoyed Christmas and were grateful for the break!

COMING HOME

So coming home was nice because we realized late that Tanner actually had one more week of Christmas vacation left. We got to spend a fun week at home. Well, I should say we had to spend a fun week at home because right after we got back a huge storm hit and practically froze us inside. We got about a foot or more of snow added to the foot we already had and the temperature was

-25 or so everyday. Not really what I'd call winter wonderland weather, more like a frozen misery. I was very glad Tanner had all week of so I didn't have to be couped up alone. We played games, watched tons of movies, and finally ventured out at the end of the week, before we went crazy, to the pet store for some low budget entertainment. Some fun facts about much-to-cold-to live-in-weather: Your mail sticks to the mailbox giving you quite and interesting challenge getting it out, even a pregnant lady can get too cold, it takes like 1/2 hour to defrost your windshield and you may actually need to plug your car in, the sun may shine, but it is only deceiving you into thinking it just might be warmer than it really is. Let's just say that life in a Nebraska winter is grand!

DECEMBER PREGO PICTURE

Here was our December Pregnant picture update. I was comparing my belly of Jelly to Santa's at the ward party, but I think I won! Sorry Santa.

JANUARY

It's funny how every year I try to make New Year's goals and resolutions and I try to pick something I can actually accomplish and that I know I'll do, but this year wasn't like that. All the goals I thought of either have to wait until the baby comes or will most likely be messed up when he does come. So I think I'll do some spring cleaning resolutions instead. Clean up my house and myself! Even though I didn't really make any goals yet this year, I did find my self reflecting on the new year in other ways; ways of how our little Bennion lives are going to change forever and for the best! We are very excited to welcome our baby home and, frankly, we hope it is soon! Here is the January Prego pict too. TANNER'S NEW BUDDY

So here is a funny little Tanner update. I am usually good at posting something he probably thinks is goofy or embarrassing about him so here goes another one (because I am writing the post and he is not! And I think he is cute, charming and handsome no matter what!) This semester in his anatomy class he is studying the head and neck only. So as a fun homework buddy the teacher sent home a skull for each student to work with. So lucky us we now have a real human skull staring at us everyday on our living room table (which you can see from every area of the house except the bedroom, unless it is left on the kitchen table instead). It is such an inviting thing to have in the front room as you walk in the door. I have to say though, he is kinda growing on me. He is always smiling and Tanner even named him Pedro.

Tanner's new shades

So Tanner being in dental school now has a pair of sweet (and expensive!) new shades. They are pretty hip if I do say so myself, but I am only his wife :) He tested them out his new high tech Loops, as they are called, by using me as the patient and I got a free and very informative flossing job! Stunning ain't they?

Oh Tanner!

One thing I just had to blog about tonight while Tanner is busy in his little corner studying is our meal tonight. Sounds like it might be goofy to be blogging about my dinner, but if you were here you'd know why.

Tanner has this love of food I think I have only seen on the Food Network. He made homemade pesto and pasta for dinner tonight. (Yes, he cooks and he is a darn good one too!) It was excellent! We both enjoyed it, but Tanner really, really enjoyed it. And I mean really! He makes me laugh and smile like crazy every time he has a meal like this. It doesn't matter if I cook it or he does or we go out, if it's good he lets me know. First he gets excited to cook it/eat it because its new or he knows how much he liked it last time and he keeps talking about it in anticipation. Next he sits down to eat it and continues to comment on how excited he is to try it because it looks so "amazing". Then he finally takes a bite. His eyes roll back into his head, he makes a some kind of "ugh, this is so good!" sound and drops his fork like he just died and went to heaven. Then all through the meal he "oohs" and "ahs" about how good it tastes even though this bite was the same as the last. And if it is really good (and we are at home, of course) he "wahoos" at the end. Today he compared his "wahoo" to the recent Pine Sol commercial. The one with the guy stranded in the life raft in the ocean, but then he smells the Pine Sol from the submarine below and wahoos.

Tanner is like the Emeril of our house. He is a good cook and he has his own version of "BAM!" And I always feel like a good cook. Needless to say, dinnertime is very entertaining at our house!

Here are some pictures of Tanners other "Wahoo" dinners I have captured :)

This was Tanner's wonderful Sunday Roast

This was Tanner's Scallop, Shrimp Pasta in San Fransisco at the Famous Allitoto's.
This was our enormous Thanksgiving crab dinner last year on our honeymoon in San Fransisco. Don't worry, we shared that ;)

Late news of past stuff :)

Well summer is long over now but here are a few fun things we did before we got to our new home in Nebraska!

Right after school got out in June we went on a famous Jones Family Disneyland trip and had a blast!Next we went through Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Teton National Park and Yellowstone. I think we saw every animal alive there! We had so much fun just doin' the road trip thing.
We finally made it to Billings and had fun there visiting all our wonderful family and seeing the awesome fireworks my cousins put on!

It was a great trip and we even found out we are pregnant! And for anyone who actually reads this, I'm sure you already know this since this is, you know, 5 months late :) Oh well, now the news is actually posted and I guess official.Now, I can post some actually relevant and current stuff to really keep you updated!

Thank you George Foreman!

So we had a funny little mishap at our house this week. Tanner was doing some great cooking as always (I knew I married him for a good reason ;) and I was in the living room having a little nap. The next thing I hear is "crap!" I walk into the kitchen (no need to run because it isn't far enough way from the living room in a one bedroom apartment) and I come to find out that when Tanner was preparing his grill he didn't know the plastic drip pan was still inside just melting away. He, needless to say, was a little upset. We thought his grill was completely ruined. So we turned it off and were settled on having to throw it away. Miraculously, when he started picking at it after it cooled off it all came right off. Talk about non-stick! The grill was as good as new; like nothing had even happened to it. We were much happier about that. Tanner has decided he needs to write a letter to Mr. George Foreman to applaud him for his excellent grill. Bravo!

Graduation X's 2!

We are finally graduated! We did make it out alive believe it or not. Tanner graduated from BYU in biology on April 24th. It was an exciting ceremony (as exciting as a college graduation can get ;) because the ever optimistic and amazing Pres. Uchtdorf spoke. It was a great talk and I really enjoyed it. I knew BYU was huge but really know how huge it was at graduation. We got there early and sat clear in the top section! Tanner's parents were able to come down from Billings for the weekend and it was so great to see them. It doesn't happen often enough.The next weekend I graduated from UVU in elementary education on May 1st. It was very different from Tanner's, but great. Since my school is a little smaller than BYU it didn't last quite so long (thankfully) and I could actually see my family :) At the big ceremony Pres. Monson spoke to us. It was neat to have the prophet there to send us on our way, "out into the world". I also loved seeing my good friends again. Of course our family was there too. Thanks to my parents and grandparents and of course Holly and Robbie for coming. Tanner's parents were able to come down too. I am very lucky to have such good in-laws to come down two weekends in a row just for us to sit in really long ceremonies. Thanks! So for two weekends in a row we had big ole' celebrations eating tons, I mean tons of good food.

After all it is good to be graduated. We are through one chapter of our life and have gone through a great experience. I am so glad we chose to go to school and get an education. It feels good to accomplish this. After this we are headed to more school (at least for Tanner) to Lincoln, Nebraska to the University or Nebraska Dental School. I am so proud of you Tanner! We are excited for a new chapter in our life!