Yesterday I went to a kickboxing class at 6:15 in the morning. It kicked my trash.

That evening I went to the church building to play volleyball, which turned into poison ball (with a basketball) because we didn't have a volleyball.

After poison ball I went to a Yoga class.

I discovered that going from not working out at all to doing three things in one day can make your calves really sore the next day.

(Instructions for reading this: HURRY and go push pause on the slide show so that you don't miss the first pictures. I know that most people are less blog-ignorant than I am and don't need me to tell you how to manage slide shows, but I don't want you to skip my first pictures after I worked so hard to make this thing. Next, don't forget to read the titles of the pictures so you know what it is, unless you don't care, but I spent tons of time typing in those darn titles so I don't want the effort to be wasted. That is all for the instructions)

Here we go with my first blog entry since Chicago. I will make it brief so that you can see the slide show. One thing I have to mention is that most of these pictures were taken on my phone, and the ones that weren't were taken on Elise's phone, so they aren't awesome quality, but they are all I have to w0rk with b/c Elise controls our real camera and the photos it produces.

So, the slide show: First there is our jam-packed trailer that carried all our belongings to Chicago from Utah. You probably missed this one and will have to wait until the end for it to come around again because you were quick to follow the instructions, but I was so proud of my packing job that I had to put the picture in my slide show. Next you will notice pictures that I have taken myself or that I really loved that Elise took of Violet (yeah, most of the time she is getting into trouble, that's why most of the pictures are of her getting into trouble). After that are pictures of Chicago, mostly downtown, from various vantage points. Some are from our apartment window, others are from the lake near our house, others are from a boat on Lake Michigan or a boat on the Chicago River (those I got during law school orientation, they took us on a boat tour that turned out to be just like the booz cruise from The Office, you can ask me about that sometime if you want some funny stories), or from the top of Sears Tower. After that you have a few pictures of Elise and Violet that I liked (yes there is a pg-rated one of Violet on the toilet, it was just so cute I had to include it; she will definitely hate me for it once she is old enough to realize I did it but by then hopefully no one remembers), and we transition with those to the law school and its reflection pool and into my beloved University of Chicago campus. Really, I love it. I love to walk around and through it because it is awesome, I would do it everyday but I don't have time. I really like the reading rooms in the old library, because they are so big and they smell good like wood and old books, but my favorite place is the Forbidden Chapel; inside it is awesome because all the windows are stain glass and there is ivy all around it so the sun coming through the stain glass seems to move because of the rustling ivy leaves, and it smells like cedar wood or something, it is great. So, enjoy these pictures.

Michelle just left on the bus to go to the airport. Back to Provo. I'm so sad. I didn't even drive her to the airport, but she'll get there faster on the Metra anyway. I am a chicken when it comes to driving on the crazy I-90/I-94 highway. It is always a mess.

On Saturday we all went downtown to see the city. We went to Millennium Park and saw "The Bean" (otherwise known as "Cloud Gate").


We walked down the "Magnificent Mile" and pretended we were highfalutin enough to shop in the shops there. I don't think I'm really that much shorter than Michelle, but I look like a dwarf in this picture.


We went into a big mall--I'm not sure which one--and saw the huge Lego store. That was Dan's favorite, I believe. My favorite was Ethel's famous hot chocolate.


Violet slept through all of downtown in the stroller. We were glad though because it was freezing. After downtown, we walked down to Navy Pier.




Michelle and I bought some sweet stylin' hats at The Mad Hatter. Good thing too, because my hair was dirty.




Thanks for coming and visiting us, Chelle! We love having visitors, so everyone come visit us! Chicago is a great vacation :). We are sad to see Chelle go!

Thursday night my sister Michelle came to town! We spent Friday shopping, eating, and going to our first Broadway in Chicago. Yep! We went to Wicked on Friday night. It was so much fun and such a great performance. I have been hearing everyone sing the songs from Wicked, so it was awesome to finally see them in context. It made us want to see more Broadway shows. Sadly, we can't afford them as often as we'd like :).

Violet is in love with dolls. I already mentioned that. She now has two of them (Sophie and Stella--I named them), due to her recent birthday. The thing is, as soon as she picks up one doll, she has to have the other one too. She goes to bed every night with two dollies and a bottle. It is pretty cute.

I guess she's just practicing for twins in the very distant future? Here is the good little mother, tenderly tending to her twins (nice alliteration, eh?):

Today Dan had is first writing assignment due. He spent hours on it. All day Saturday he was working on it. He finally got it to where he wanted it--nearly.

This morning he woke up at 5:30 to put the finishing touches on it and print it off. To his astonishment, his laptop wouldn't let him log on. His user account was mysteriously missing, and when he tried to access the file from a guest account, he was told he didn't have "administrator privileges." ?

There wasn't even a place where he could enter in his password. Instead, these jeering words (yes, the lappy was jeering) appeared: "Please enter smart card."

Poor Dan. His assignment was due at 8:00 am. The technical support offices didn't open until 8:30. Now he is writing an appeal to the Dean of the Law School so he can turn in his paper late. His first assignment at law school. What luck.

This was Violet's birthday present from her parents. Are we not the coolest?

To celebrate Violet's birthday, we had a party for her today with all her little friends and their mommies--my friends :).

This was the invitation I made on my computer and printed out on my printer. I just love having a good color printer.


I cooked up a storm, if you can believe that. I made pumpkin-shaped pumpkin cupcakes with cream-cheese icing and orange sprinkles. I made fruit pizza with strawberries, kiwis, bananas, blueberries, and raspberries. I even had blackberries, but there wasn't enough room, sadly. I also made sesame chicken pasta salad, which is one of my favorite dishes. I also had two kinds of cookies, but I didn't make those. I bought them. But, as you can see, it was quite the smorgasbord. It was a bit exhausting.



My lovely friend Saerome Parish brought the drink. It was fabulous--lime sherbet and sprite.

For the record, these were the party-ers: Saerome Parish and her son, Aston; Gina Clive and her daughter, Reese; Mardee Clive and her daughters Cadence & Campbell; Ruth Shumway and her daughter Cecily; Bennet Strong (his mom Niyireth came at the end); LuAnn Oliver and her boys Simon & Jack; and Monica Crews and her son, Hunter came at the end.

I was really lame and didn't have any planned activities. Just lots of balloons. And food. Violet got some lovely gifts. We love having so many fun friends around here!

Today Violet Annevieve Roberts turned 1! (Well, technically she doesn't turn 1 until 11:50 pm, MST.) She has changed so much since she was born. It is amazing for me to think of one year ago when she was so tiny.


Now she is into everything. She's been in the toilet a couple times, unrolls the toilet paper, and pulls all the tissues out of the box. She eats napkins and makes all sorts of messes. Her daily mess is to pull all the DVDs off the shelf.

She learns sign language as fast as we teach her and is very expressive. She likes to tap me on the shoulder and then point at things she wants me to notice.

She loves books and baby dolls. If we don't get her when she wakes up at night, she'll get out of her bed and come across the apartment into our bedroom to get us up. (One of the downsides of putting her in a toddler bed already!)

She is getting better at sleeping at night, but usually wakes up once. During the day she is only sleeping about an hour and a half, which is pretty unusual for her age. (Her friends all sleep 3+ hours and they are all older than she is...I am jealous!)

Her favorite foods are vanilla yogurt, apples, pasta, ice cream, and anything Daddy is drinking. She also likes raw onions. She hates jars of baby food, usually doesn't like oatmeal, and gets very suspicious if we aren't eating the same food that she is!

Here is our birthday girl!

This week Violet has had four of her top teeth come in. Of course, teething is always dreadful, but seeing all four of those teeth has been a HUGE relief to me. Why? Well, Dan never had the teeth on either side of the front two teeth. His whole childhood life he had those teeth missing. He usually smiled with his lips closed. When he was a bit older (Junior High, I think) he got a retainer that had teeth built onto it, so he could lower it down a bit and look like a vampire. Attractive, I know. Good thing I didn't know him then. Just kidding. But, his favorite pastime in High School was scaring little kids.

Before his mission, Dan got implants where he was missing the teeth. Unfortunately, they became infected and had to get removed. Now his fake teeth are the "bridge" kind. I don't really know a lot about it, but that's what I know.

Dan inherited this trait from his mom, and she inherited it from her dad. We probably won't get lucky enough for all of our kids to have all their teeth, but at least our first one has them. If a future child later on is missing teeth, then hopefully we'll be closer to the stage in life where we can afford a dentist to fix them up!

Anyway, I am SUPER glad that Violet isn't 100% Daddy. Looks like she got my teeth.

This past Tuesday I took Violet to the playgroup they have here in the Hyde Park ward. She was (as always) the youngest one there.

The first toy she picked up happened to be a little doll. I'm 98% sure that she has never really seen a doll before. Both her cousins are boys, and the friends we play with around here are mostly all boys as well.

Despite that, she seemed to fall in love with that little dolly. She held it pretty much the whole time, giving it kisses and such.

Yesterday, I was at Wal-Mart (again). I was going to buy her a little doll for her birthday, but since she happened to be with me, she kind of ruined the surprise. She immediately took the doll from me and held it the rest of the shopping trip. When I took it away from her to run it through the check out line, she began to cry and stretched her arms out for her doll.

Where did she learn this? When did she get so attached to dolls? Aside from being adorably cute, this instance was big proof for me on the "Nature" side of the whole "Nature vs. Nurture" debate. Any thoughts? Have your children always been drawn to their correct "gender-appropriate" toys?

Many of you don't know this, and it is slightly embarrassing, but that's okay. I deal with embarrassment daily.

I didn't get a driver's license until I was 18. Yep. Two years late. Actually, I was almost 19. I was a sophomore at BYU and living on my own by the time I got my it. Why? Well, a number of factors. One, I got in a car wreck before I was 16 (I was getting my "hours" required for the license), and I was a little wary of driving because of that. Two, I didn't want to pay my own car insurance, nor did I have much money for gas. Three, it was fairly easy to bum rides off people when you don't have a license. Or ride the bus. I rode the bus to work (MTC dining) when I was in high school, and when I was in college, I worked on campus. I also made my boyfriends and roommates drive me around.

I hadn't quite had my license for 2 years when I got married. And, I never had a car when I was single. So, you get the picture. I didn't ever drive much. I drove quite a bit more after I was done with school and at home with the baby, but still rarely did I do any freeway driving. Whenever I was going anywhere far enough to take the freeway, Dan was with me. And we all know it is the man's job to do the driving (especially when I was nursing the baby half the time in the backseat).

I'm not sure how many hours I have driven on the freeway, but it is probably like 25, maybe. I did help out a bit driving from Utah to Chicago, but how hard can freeway driving be in Nebraska? It was pretty pleasant and non-stressful, actually. Even with all the I-80 construction.

Now I am in Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S. The traffic here is insane. Always. The roads are ridiculously bad. Potholes everywhere. (This bankrupt city definitely has no funds for repairing its roads.) Lanes commonly merge without any signs warning you.

Up until this week, I hadn't driven at all in Chicago. This week I drove three times. I am very proud of myself. I didn't even get lost (which would have been pretty hard to do since we have a GPS!). Tuesday was the furthest trip--all of about 12 miles :). I hauled Violet and myself out to go shopping. It was quite a shopping day. Wal-Mart first for some sheets and mattress pads for Violet.

I went to Target next for some shoes for Violet. They have darn cute baby shoes there for only $9.99, and since I can't afford these darlings, Target is the next best thing. I bought these brown Mary Jane's.

I next intended to go to Hancock Fabrics (I am slowly easing myself into the idea of trying to sew without my mom or sisters (my younger sisters are all much better than I am...Chelle says it is just because I have no patience to do things slowly..haha)). But, I never made it there. On my way, I saw a store called Marshall's. It looked a bit like Ross, my most favoritest store for buying clothes, and which they do not have at all in Illinois. So, I go into Marshall's, and it looks even MORE like Ross on the inside, only a bit messier, and a bit more unorganized. I excitedly start going through the isles looking for clothes. Of course, I failed to notice that Violet had a face that looked like it was covered in dried brown shaving cream. (I bought these "biter biscuts" at WalMart because she was hungry, and they sure work well for smearing all around the face.) I found a skirt for $7, a dress for $5, and a shirt for Violet for $2.99. Pretty good trip. Except that Violet smeared more brown goo all over one of the store's mirrors. I'm sure they hate me. Oh well.

Right next door to Marshall's was Old Navy. I am not sure why I wanted to continue this shopping trip, because it had been three hours by now. Violet was cranky from all the shopping. I was tired from hauling her around (she lasts in the shopping carts for about 5 minutes and then wants to be carried). Yeah, she only weighs like 16 lbs, which is really shrimpy for an almost one-year-old, but it still can be tiring. I never find anything at Old Navy that I like for myself, but I sometimes find things for Dan. The whole Men's Department selection of sweaters were pretty gay looking, so I didn't buy. But I did get a black tank top for myself and a dress on clearance for Violet. Both were $5. Fabulous, right?

I finally ended this trip (I was tempted to go to Sears next door to Old Navy, and Kohl's right across the road, but Violet reined me in). I drove us home through more insane traffic, only missing like 2 turns on the way, and we made it back safely. I feel pretty good about driving here, as long as I don't have to get on the nightmarish freeways. Luckily I don't have to drive much at all because there are grocery stores, playgrounds, the library, and lots of other stuff like 2 blocks away, but the occasional quick trip (or really ridiculously long trip) to Wal-Mart or Target is definitely feasible for this adventurous girl ;).

The building we live in, "The Piccadilly," has no in-unit washer/dryer. There is a laundry room on the second floor, and each wash and dry costs $1. Not outrageous, yes, but still annoying when you are doing 3 - 5 loads per week, which would be $6 - $10 to wash and dry each load. So, I opt to let my clothes air dry. I have to get pretty creative in finding places to hang the clothes up to dry (the shower rods are only so long). Our lovely bed is wrought iron, and the headboard and footboard (can I really call them "boards" if they are wrought iron?) work great for hanging clothes over. The only thing is, I am no longer in good old dry Utah.

Here in this humid climate (not super humid, but everything is humid compared to Utah), these clothes take like 27 hours to dry. Seriously. In Utah it was probably 4 hours, maybe 6 hours for something heavy like jeans. Alas, that is another thing I miss about Utah. But, I am saving $5 per week, so for now that's what I'll do. Except the towels. The crustiness of air-dried towels is a bit too bothersome for me :).

Anyway, here's another shot of my beautiful daughter.

These pictures are from last week. This week it is MUCH too cold to be wearing sleeveless dresses. Violet doesn't have that many winter clothes yet, so I am sad that she won't be able to wear her cute summer outfits anymore.

I finally uploaded some pictures on my computer, and I had to post this one!



(On the Sears Tower)