Recent Happenings

It's been a while since I've posted much about the things we've been doing lately. Here are a few pictures so you can see what we've been up to.

Enjoying the last month of summer

The last few weeks of hot weather are here, and Chaela has been spending the time in her pool. Mostly naked.

We've also been enjoying the produce from the garden my parents grew. My dad makes pickled cucumbers (not quite real pickles, but close) and tomatoes every year around this time, and this year Chaela got to help. Mmmm...

Wibbip

My dad found this big, fat toad in our garage one day about a week and a half ago. We put him in a terrarium and have been feeding him crickets from the pet store. He is officially Chaela's first pet. When I asked her what she wanted to name him, she yelled "WIBBIP!" So that's his name. He's kind of expensive to feed, though, so we'll probably release him into the wild again soon.

Sisters in town

Kristin and Lindsay were both here for Lindsay's wedding. It was a lot of fun for all of us to be together again!

Lindsay's Wedding

Very fun, successful, but way too much work. No more weddings for me until Chaela is all grown up!

Second Pregnancy

I'm pretty positive that everyone knows, thanks to Facebook, but I thought I should announce on my blog that I'm pregnant! Only 4 weeks and 3 days, so it's very early.

Now that I've had a few days to adjust, I'm feeling a little less weird about it. It still doesn't seem real, but it's getting there. It's funny, because so far my emotions and symptoms aren't like they were with Chaela. Last week I was sick for a few days (before I even knew) and I got a migraine, which is something that happened to me a few times with Chaela. Since I found out though, nothing. Hardly any nausea, no more headaches.... of course, I'm not very far along. That stuff has plenty of time to kick in.

I guess the reason this has been so different for me than the first is that with Chaela, I never worried about a miscarriage. I just kind of knew that she'd be fine and I'd see her in nine months. With this one, though, I'm afraid. I wanted to have another one so badly, and now I'm going to, except there's still a chance that I won't. And if I don't have this one, I know that Will won't want to have another one for a while. It scares me.

But I guess at times like this, all you can do is pray, leave it in Heavenly Father's hands, and hope that what you want coincides with what He wants. So that's what I'm going to do, and hope that on or around April 23 I'll be holding my next child, safe and healthy.

Disney, now that I'm older

Since Chaela has become a toddler, I've had a chance to watch all of those Disney movies from my childhood over again. As an adult, I notice things I never did as a kid. Gaping holes in story lines aside, I've revised my opinions. A few movies I loved aren't that great, and few I felt only so-so about are gems.

The Little Mermaid

This is the first "classic" I can remember. The music is still brilliant, but the story itself bothers me a little. As Lindsay put it, "I don't really like it that she blatantly disobeys her father, has a bad attitude, disobeys her father again, sells her soul to the devil, messes stuff up, and then gets what she wants because her dad just gives it to her." To that all I can add is the fact that she knows she loves a guy without even talking to him, then marries him at 16. Ok, I know a few of you are exceptions, so don't jump on me, but would most of us want to be married to the guy we dated when we were sixteen? A big fat no.

Mulan

Gorgeous. The music may not be as brilliant as "The Little Mermaid," but the cinematography went a long way in those eight or so years. Not only is it interesting to watch, but Mulan herself is, in my opinion, an excellent female role-model, something I have recently become deeply concerned with in the past two years. She is a strong woman, but she does what she does out of love for her family, not selfishness. I'm glad that this is Chaela's most-requested movie!

Aladdin

Still funny, thanks to Robin Williams. Good story, beautiful to watch, great music. The only problem I have is along the same lines as "The Little Mermaid;" a completely and utterly self-centered female lead character. Another nagging annoyance is the awful Western portrayal of Middle Eastern society. Let's be honest, (and I know it's Disney and whatever, but I just have to say this) if Jasmine and her situation were real, her father wouldn't even have thought about her before he found her a husband.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

For a children's cartoon, this is genius. Ever since Barney, I've hated TV shows aimed at children. I think they're overly simplistic and downright stupid most of the time. Pooh goes back to when people didn't think kids were too dumb to hear words like "supercilious" and "confiscated," in context and not as a word of the day. It's very well animated, and it gives kids a little more to chew on mentally than Dora and Olie, thank goodness. I've had the opportunity to watch this movie probably a hundred times in the past three months, and instead of hating it more each time, I realize how great it is.

I have yet to watch movies like Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Hercules, Snow White, Cinderella etc. in the past few years, but hopefully soon. Sleeping Beauty is still pretty good. I'm so excited for the Princess and the Frog coming out at the end of this year; I think it's going to be a good one, and I'm glad Disney is making 2D movies again!

Chaela's Hair

I put Chaela's hair in a ponytail the other day and I got kind of excited when I could actually do it! So I thought I'd post some pictures of how much hair she's getting. Yay!

This is Chaela and her newest boyfriend, Jordan's friend Ashton. Every time he comes over she yells "Ashi! Ashi!" and then follows him around the entire time he's here and throws a fit when he leaves. Ah, young love!

Here's Chaela decked out in some of her Mickey/Minnie paraphernalia. You know, before she was born and up until she was 18 months I was like, "I'll never buy that licensed stuff, it's ridiculously overpriced!" And it is. However, when my toddler screams with delight every time she puts on her Minnie shirt, I can't help but think that maybe it's worth the money(or the extra time poking around the second hand shop/garage sale).

Stepping it up

So I did something pretty stupid. Since Lindsay's wedding is coming up fast, and my weight loss has been abysmally slow, I decided to challenge any ladies at Curves who would take me up on it. As in, "lose more weight than Caitlyn by August 22nd and get fabulous prizes!" Of course, since it's me, fabulous prizes means "something I made." Then, after I issued this challenge and about eight people took me up on it, I realized we don't have ANY money for me to make these people anything. HA HA! Oops.

I do have one large advantage over all of these ladies, should I choose to take it: I'm about 20-30 years younger than them. So if I can get my butt in gear and exercise like I need to, I should be able to lose more weight in five weeks than them. Should. If. We'll see.

I started stepping it up today with a 30 minute run/walk around my neighborhood. I covered somewhere around two miles, not bad for a first time. However, even though I can do the Curves workout like a beast, it has NOT prepared me for running outside, which is about 50x harder. Yeah.

So this is my plan, do 30-45 mins of running/walking (hopefully more running as time goes on) at home AND do the Curves workout five days every week until Lindsay's wedding. That's an hour to an hour and 15 mins of exercise total most days. I think it should work. I also think my body is really going to hate me for the first two weeks. Oh well! If it works and I can keep it up, I'll reach my goals that much faster and have picked up the healthy habit of working out. Then when I do finally get down to my goal weight, working out 3 times a week just to maintain will be a breeze!!

Right?

My Goal: To look something close to this again.

Opinions?

Hey guys! I made this bag for our up-coming Relief Society service auction. You know how you can never step back from your own thing enough to tell if its actually good? So is this worth trying to give away, or should I scrap it and try again?

So leave a comment and tell me what you think!

Trip to MO

Hey everyone! Here are pictures from our trip to MO. I really wish blogger had a better picture uploader (don't you think it's time, blogger?)! These first ones are from the trip down. For a while she was tired, then she got really slaphappy (there's a great video that I'll have Will post sometime) and then she finally fell asleep for a few minutes. All in all, she was an excellent little traveller both there and back. It's an 11-ish hour drive, so that's no mean feat for a toddler.

Chillin.

Tired.

Slaphappy.

Really slaphappy.

Finally asleep.

The night we arrived, she dipped her toes in the lake and splashed around a lot. I'm really grateful for that life jacket, because the first thing she tried to do was run right off the edge of the dock.

As eager as she was the night we got there, she did not like it one bit when we made her actually get in the water.

But inside the boat was ok.

Jordan and his friend Brenden floating around the bay.

I love this picture.

Chaela and her cousin (3rd cousin?) Oden playing in the pool.

The boys playing bags. Or cornhole, if you're from OH.

Chaela getting in the middle of things, as usual.

Chaela loves her great-grandma, and I'm glad that we got to go down there so they could spend some time together.

Can't read Jacob's poker face.

Nick's poker face isn't quite as unreadable.

Sparklers.

McFarland women.

Yeah, the boat was broken, so Jordan, Will, and Brenden went tubing with the paddle boat. Ride that wake, Will!

Kristin and Lindsay make weird faces at the camera.

Patriotic babies! There are probably cuter pictures of this moment out there. The best one I took was foggy because I took my camera from air conditioning to the hot, humid outdoors and the lens got steamed up. Stupid camera! This was the cutest moment all week!

Crazy Hairs.

Yearly tradition of taking family pictures by this sign. Yay! We're cute!

We forced Kristin and Jacob to do it, too.

Sisters by the sign.

We found out that we can get the ear buds to stick in Chaela's ears if she doesn't move around too much. Almost as good at the personal DVD player, and if we can find some we might get her some smaller ear buds before we go down to Memphis later this month!

Woo hoo for Will!

Just a shout-out for my awesome husband. This is a picture of him almost exactly 1 year ago on our yearly vacation in Missouri.


And this is a picture of him today!

Skinny!

While my battle with weight loss rages on, Will seems to have conquered. From a high of 215 right around the holidays, he has come back down to 180; exactly what he weighed when we got married. That is a grand total of 35 pounds! So yay for Will! You look amazing! (I, though I have lost 10 pounds, am actually still about 10 pounds heavier than I was last year, which has me upset, but whatever.) I hope I catch up to you soon, honey! Love you!

Dancing

I know I just posted yesterday, but I haven't put anything of Chaela up in a while, so here are some pictures and a video. The pictures were taken around the same time as the life jacket one, I just didn't post them. The video was taken Monday, I think.

Hair nubs, inspired by the last time we visited Jana and she put them in Addie's hair.

See that crazy look in her eyes? That's because those are Peeps, the reward reaped by one of her very first climbing expeditions. She reached the top of the table where are Easter baskets were sitting... about a month and a half after Easter. They were empty except for those Peeps.

A small obsession with Sneetches. Or "Snitches," as Chaela would say.

The video is kind of long, but entertaining (of course, I always think Chaela is entertaining).

Alright, the upload didn't work. Check it out on facebook.

Review: Confessions of a Shopaholic

SPOILER ALERT: Don't read this if you don't want to learn a few plot points.

I have seen this movie twice in a row tonight, once with my mom and once with Will. All in all, it's ok, but probably not worth more than a rental from Redbox.
The main character, Rebecca, is silly, but the actress, Isla Fisher, is pretty good. You can tell she's comfortable enough in her own skin to do some really weird/funny things on camera. The male lead, Hugh Dancy (from Ella Enchanted) is not hard to look at, or listen to for that matter. He's also not bad.
The worst part of this movie is the story. First of all, I don't find it believable that two parents who are frugal in the extreme could raise a child with no concept of the value of money. Even if she didn't save as well as they did, something would have been passed on. Also, I'm sorry, but a second-hand sale of all of your clothes could not earn you enough money to completely discharge the debt you got into by buying them in the first place and an extra couple hundred.
The best parts of the movie? By far Joan Cusak as Rebecca's mother and the receptionist at the publishing company, played by a guy I've never heard of named Stephen Guarino. John Goodman and Kristin Scott Thomas aren't too bad either. Basically the supporting cast is great, the main actors are good, and the story sucks. Worth a dollar from Redbox? Yes. Confessions of a Shopaholic is a fun rental for a girls' night in.