Welcome 2009!

Since our last post, life has been a whirlwind of activity. Winter semester began on January 5th; I have only three classes: Biology 100, Anthropology 101, and History 201. Easy, easy--these classes are General Education requirements, so I'm one of the few seniors in these classes with the majority of students being freshmen. I enjoy them though. I was really worried about Bio, but my professor is AWESOME and he makes the subject fun (in the eyes of an English major who initially could care less about Bio). Elizabeth Vanderwerken is in the class--it is great to have a friend, a Jersey friend at that! Anthro is...interesting. Someone in my class referred to Anthro in general as "red-headed stepchild of the campus," as it's essentially taking its data from all sorts of subjects like Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, etc. It's all right so far. History is fun; Alex and I go up to the Salt Lake Center on Tuesday nights for the class. Bottom line, we have a bunch of football players and other athletes in class with us. Lizzie has been wonderful in terms of school. Yes, she attends college classes--what a smart girl ;) On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, when I have Bio and Anthro, she accompanies me to class. I take the stroller with me and she rides along. She's slept through every class except one period of Anthro! On Tuesday nights, Chris keeps her under his watchful eye. So far, so good.
Chris and I have been learning how to deal with disjointed hours of sleep. During the night, when Liz wakes up, Chris gets her and changes her, and then brings her to me so I can feed her. I then put her back to bed. Generally, she'll go down around 11 or midnight and wake up around 2 or 3 am, and then wake up again around 6 or 7 am. She's actually been Chris's alarm clock this past week! Last night she slept from 12:30-6:30 am--now this is a trend I would love to continue! :)
Lizzie has been cute as ever, of course. She is a total doll, really she is. Every time I look at her, I smile because she is so pretty! Her grip is pretty strong and her favorite thing to grab lately is my hair. I'm considering a haircut in the near future haha. Her legs are getting strong too. Here are some more pictures!









On Saturday, the Chaffin's invited us over to their place to see Stephanie and Jeff Stevens, who flew in from TX. It was the Park Glen 1st Ward all over again--man we love them! Liz was being very fussy so we didn't stay very long, but it was WONDERFUL to see everyone! On Wednesday night, Ashley Walters and her fiancee Chris Jensen visited us, and they brought MORE visitors: Stephen Pulsipher, Scott Gibson, and Ben Sardoni! Our freshman boys! During that Winter Semester, we must have hung out every day, I'm not even kidding. This was us, Winter 2006. (Spring, technically, at the end of our freshman year of college: Stephen, Scott, Ben, Ashley, Lisa, Lindsay, me)

It was SO GREAT to see the boys now that they are back from their missions and here again at BYU. We had a wonderful time--I hadn't laughed so hard in a while! Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture with them, but I foresee another group gathering, so I will remember to take pictures then.
Last night we had a ton of fun with the gang. The Stapley's got a hold of another murder mystery game and the Holden's were great enough to host the party at their apartment. Now we have two babies in the mix, Emrie and Elizabeth, and those two were the hit of the party (they wouldn't have it any other way! haha). We have such a good time with these games because we go all out and dress to play our characters, and that makes it all the more fun. This time around, Chris was Rick, a Midwestern businessman on vacation, and I was Melinda, a TV actress, while Lizzie was herself.

Steve as John, a novelist, and Bri as Kristen, a housewife.

Adri as Gertrude, the dorm mom, and Russ as Ken, a sailor.

Steve as Dave, a computer geek, Brit as Monica a neurosurgeon, and Emrie as herself.

And for the group shot, with Bronco the dog in the front!


Now, I have to explain the upcoming pictures. Back before our boys met us girls, way back in 2006, they watched "Be Cool," with John Travolta and Uma Thurman. In the movie, Vince Vaughn is avoiding a fight with Dwayne Johnson and says to him: "Twinkle, twinkle baby, twinkle twinkle!" Well, the boys would always say that to each other and we girls would ask what the heck they were talking about. We Killion's actually got a hold of "Be Cool" and we all watched it together a while back. The Holden's then found these "Twinkle" outfits, and bought one for Emrie and one for Lizzie. So we HAD to get pictures of them in the outfits, both with their moms,

and with their dads, who brought the twinkle to their lives in the first place!

The dads even had them holding hands; they are such cute friends!