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!!!