Had A Very Merry Christmas

This was the first Christmas that we spent away from home (besides Jeff’s mission). We had a really great time doing our own thing this year. Because Grandma and Grandpa were here just a few days before Christmas, we were able to do some of our traditional stuff with them which was really fun. We got spoiled rotten by both sets of grandparents and we feel so grateful for everything that they do for us. They probably do too much, but we appreciate it. Cadence has more cute clothes than she is going to know what to do with.

On Christmas day we woke up when Talmage started pounding on his door and yelling for us. We got our gifts from Santa and waited till the afternoon to open our presents from each other which is nice because it felt like it lasted longer. Talmage got every toy made from Disney Pixar's Cars movie. He got a tent and sleeping bag and about a billion Cars characters, not to mention a Cars bike and helmet from his grandma. Cadence got tons of cute clothes as mentioned above and a couple toys to play with when she can hold up her own dome. Later on in the evening Jeff made a Turkey dinner for us all. We decided to try and redeem ourselves after the Thanksgiving Day turkey disaster. It was a wonderful Christmas. Thank you sooo much grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We love you all!

The Return of Cadence

A couple of you have requested some more pics. Don't worry we have PLENTY of pictures. Here is round two of little baby Cadence. Both Mommy and Baby are still doing great. Also thanks so much to all of you that have brought over dinner and also those that have stopped by for a visit we greatly appreciate it.

Introducing Baby Cadence

Baby Cadence Marie Pulley was born on December 11th 2008 at 10:27 a.m. She weighed in at 8 lbs 8 oz and is 20 inches long. Both her and Mama are doing great. We are so blessed to have her as the new addition to our little family. We couldn't be prouder. Talmage is taking it all very well and loves to hold and kiss his little sis. Let's see how long that lasts? Sorry so short. More to come soon....

Happy Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving was probably one of my favorites of all time this year. Jeff and I hosted it which is quite an undertaking even when you're not 8+ months pregnant! My sister Ashley and her hubby Jardin flew out to enjoy the holiday with us. We also invited two of Jeff's friends from school. Despite being such a small crowd, we were not deprived of any of the staples of Thanksgiving, well almost. We served the typical food such as stuffing, veggies, cranberry sauce, fruit, rolls, mashed potatoes, and my altime favorite thing, pies, pies and more PIES! The one and only tragedy we experienced was with the main dish, the infamous turkey. It was our first turkey cooking experience and it was a pretty terrible one. To make a long story short, the super cheap, on sale turkey turned out to be rotten. When we defrosted it the smell was pretty bad but we cooked it anyway not knowing how a raw turkey is supposed to smell. To our dismay, we discovered that there was definitely something wrong with the turkey after all (by the way rotten cooked turkey smells 10 times worse than rotten raw turkey). So Jeff hit up Walmart for some rotisserie chickens and we were good to go.

The pictures here are of us enjoying the beautiful mild November weather in Arizona by the pool. We also visited the Mesa temple on the opening night of the Christmas lights. They are really beautiful. We even got to witness the gay protesters across the street, that is until they got kicked out of the park where they were stationed at 7:00 pm because of the park's curfew (kind of funny). All in all, a great holiday!

Halloween Fun!!!

We had a really fun Halloween this year. It was fun because this year Talmage understood the whole Trick-or-Treating thing. Last year he just he just wanted to run and play and this year he actually wanted to score some candy. As you can see he dressed up like a little pirate, sword and all. No costumes for mom and dad this year. Jeff got back from San Luis like a half an hour before we headed out and there was no time, plus we got lazy. If we would have dressed up it would have been awesome believe you me.

Talmage got a full day of Halloween activities. The day started off with Mom making some yummy pumpkin pancakes for breakfast. Then Mommy and Talmage made some spooky decoration for his room, which he loved. He kept dragging us into his room to show them off to us.

Later on Chelsi carried on the family tradition of decorating the table with the holiday theme. She also made a delicious halloween cake, because we need more sugar on Halloween. After the cake we headed out to the Stake wide Trunk-or-Treat at our Ward building. There was hundreds of people there and Talmage made a killing. He could barely hold up his pumpkin full of candy by himself by the end of the night.

We ended the evening by heading to Chipotle for a free Halloween burrito. If you dress up like a burrito then they give you a free meal. So we threw a little tin foil on and had a late dinner. Good times!!! Here are a couple of Pics from Halloweens past...

Trip to Utah

While in Utah it snowed and Talmage had a blast playing in it with his aunt Amy. They did all the essentials while the snow lasted including snow balls, snow man, and of course snow angels. We hoped he enjoyed himself because that will be the only snow that he will be playing in this year.

Chef Talmage was at it again while in Utah. He was pretty impressed with the Mac n' cheese he made almost entirely by himself. Pumpkin carving is in season now and we got plenty of chances to slice and dice some big orange ones. Talmage mostly just likes to squish the seeds and innards in his hands though. All in all it was a fantastic trip to Utah and a great way to spend a couple weeks while Jeff is away doing his rotation down in San Luis.

Talmage is Getting Excited to be a Brother

THREE

TWO

ONE

IMPACT

San Luis Internal Med

Hello all this is Jeff. I just wanted to chime in with our current predicament. I am writing from beautiful San Luis, Mexico I mean Arizona. Same difference if you ask me? I am here working the underserved population of Mexico, I mean Arizona again. I am easily confused between the two because as I look out of the office that I am working at I see the border patrol and customs. You see I am smack dab on the border of Arizona and Mexico.

This means that ALL the patients that I have been seeing speak ONLY espanol. Big disadvantage for me, I wish I had paid more attention in my high school Spanish classes. I am working in an Internal Medicine Clinic which means we treat patients with a bunch of comorbidities such as: Obesity, Diabetes, Hypertension, Dislipidemia, Hypothryroidism, and the list goes on. Also all the people that we see are very poor and live pretty rough lives. It helps me realize how good we have it. The worst part about being 200+ away from Mesa is that I have to be away from Chelsi and Talmage. I do get to go home on the weekends for 2 days but it still is hard being away. In closing I have posted a picture of my scenic drive to work each day. It is the beautiful fence that the government built to keep all the dirty Americans in the United States.

The First Article of Faith

We've been teaching Talmage to say the first Article of Faith. He actually learned it a lot faster than we thought he would. Two-year-old's brains really are amazing little sponges! Here is a video of our trained monkey in action.

(Scroll down and turn off the music before playing video)

Chef in Training

Our little boy is a chef in training. He really does love to cook, a desire he must have inherited from his dad (as his mom hates to cook). Whether I'm stirring eggs, making cookies or grilling meat, he's there beside me standing on a chair, spoon in hand, willing and ready to be in action. Here are some shots of him stirring the marshmellows for rice crispie treats. As you can see, he is really in his element!

Naughty and Nice

I have to tell 2 funny stories about Talmage that happened today. While I (Chelsi) was teaching piano this afternoon, I heard a huge cry come from his room. I got up to make sure all was well and was informed by Jeff that Talmage had scratched him and was now in timeout, so nothing seriously wrong. After I was done teaching, Jeff was still lecturing Talmage about the incident and the little guy came into the bedroom looking all dejected and forlorn. I told him to just tell his dad sorry for scratching him and then Jeff would lay off. Talmage immediatedly scampered off to the kitchen to apologize to his daddy and then runs back in to where I was fiddling on the computer and announced, "I told daddy sorry for scratching." I said, "Good boy. We always say sorry when we are wrong, but then we have to stop doing the mean thing." Talmage replied, "But mom, I said sorry to him!" Which I think meant "What more do you want from me!"

Earlier today, I showed Talmage a cute pair of pj's I'd purchased for Cadence. When he saw them, he blurted out, "That's little." I said, "Babies are little so the pajamas have to be little too." I then pointed out all the brightly colored flowers on them and showed him the big embroidered cupcake on the side to which he very slowly and loudly replied, "Oh my!"

Later this evening, Talmage came into my room holding his bunny he had received for Easter this year. It is a small, soft, pastel rabbit, holding a carrot that rattles when you shake it. He held it up to me and said, "This for baby Cadence." I replied, "You want to give your bunny to your baby sister?" He said yes, so I told him to go and put the toy in her bed with all her clothes, which he promptly did. So there it sits on top of our pile of baby stuff, a sweet little reminder to me of how much our little ones can teach us. I just had to take a picture.

Busy Week Home In Utah

We just got back to Arizona after an extremely busy week in Utah. We had to get all our family and friend time in now because with the new baby on the way, we are not going to be able to come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. We also had to have some fun before Jeff starts his rotations on August 18th. We spent the first part of the week with the Christensons, hanging out, playing games, and going out to eat. Talmage especially loved watching grandpa Christenson feeding his birds (Carey has wild magpies that eat right out of his hands). Talmage just loved playing with Amy and really enjoys all the attention he gets when he goes to grandma and grandpa Christenson's house. We spent the latter part of the weekend with the Pulley's, spending one night up in a cabin in Heber, thanks to the Welches, and the next day at Lagoon. Talmage loved riding all the rides at "Disneyland" as he likes to call it. Pretty much any place that has rides is called Disneyland to him. The next day we went swimming and hung out together playing games at the Pulley house. Talmage had fun with his cousins Grace and Kate. He is not very nice to Kate for some reason however, she is tough and seems to take care of herself just fine. We had such a fun week and will miss everyone over the holidays. Thanks for spoiling us grandmas and grandpas!!!

TWO YEAR OLD FOR SALE

I have a horrifying tale to tell about a very naughty little boy. Earlier today, I was preparing my relief society talk and Jeff had just fallen asleep after a 9 hour study session when I got off the computer to check on Talmage. I'd heard him shut his bedroom door which he never does on purpose. If it does close he cries until someone comes and lets him out (we have child safety handles so he can't sneak out in the night). So, I heard the door close and waited for the cry, but it never came. This was very suspicious! So I got up to investigate and low and behold, there he was covered from head to toe in permanent black marker! My jaw just dropped as I looked him over and then moved my gaze over the room, which was equally decorated. He'd drawn on his rug, the carpet, his sheet, and his bed. I walked into the kitchen to grab a towel (I didn't know what I was going to do with it exactly) when what should greet me but another black marker covered room! He'd also scribbled on the fridge, stove, dishwasher, linoleum, every cabinet and drawer he could reach, as well as the counter tops! I just yelled at Jeff to come save me. When he came in, Talmage was placed in time out (his longest one yet) and we set to work. We discovered that with a great deal of scrubbing, the powdered cleanser (Ajax in this case) was able to mostly remove the marker from all the hard surfaces. The carpet, rug and sheet however are a lost cause. So, we've turned the rug over and I'm going to go at the carpet later tonight with some scissors and try to trim off as much of the black material as I can without damaging it even more than it already is. The sheet is completely ruined but that's pretty good considering the mess we had started with. I am just grateful that I kept my head as much as I did and didn't strangle, hit, scream at or seriously harm my child in any way. I know it was hard for Jeff to restrain but after a big time out, we put the little culprit in the tub and turned our anger on the stains instead. I guess that's the silver lining in this whole experience!

IT'S A GIRL!!!!

We just had our 20 week ultasound and found out that we are having a little girl!!!! We are super excited!!! The funny thing is when we told Talmage that he is going to be a big brother he said, "Talmage get a baby sister?" We were only about 4 weeks pregnant at that time. He must have known something we didn't. We are going to be naming her Cadence Marie Pulley.

Daddy and Talmage right after the good news.

Mama and Talmage right after the good news.

A Couple Cute Talmage-isms

When it rains here the frogs come out. Jeff caught one to see how Talmage would react to it. It turns out that Talmage loves frogs! He is such a boy. We kept it for 2 days and all Talmage wanted to do was play with the frog. He even learned to jump like a frog which became one of his main modes of transportation while we had the frog. Chelsi had a hard time with having the frog in her recently scoured tub and cleaned house and refused to pick it up. She is such a girl. Talmage was soooo sad when we had to let the little froggy go. We need to get him a permanent pet. We'll see.



Talmage is in that ostrich phase of "if I can't see you, than you can't see me." This is how he hides when it is time to go to bed. Whenever he doesn't want to do something he covers his eyes. It is like clockwork. We just play along and start looking for him all over the house. Eventually he gets tired of it and says, "Here Talmage is." He is big into third person speaking too.




This is Talmage and his little friend from our ward, Jeffy. They have a couple key things in common. They both love cars and anything to do with them. They also have pretty funny camera smiles. Talmage really likes playing with other little kids. He has a couple favorites like Jeffy, Madeline, and Brynna. Jeffy and Talmage had a little picnic and played cars cars cars.




Finally, lately Talmage has not loved sleeping in his bed like a normal little boy. There has been a bunch of nights when we go in his room to check on him while he is sleeping and we find him asleep all over the place. Here are a couple pics of some of the places we have found him. He is a goof ball.