An introduction

Here's an update our my little family. Look, a beautiful family photo - now seven months too old. First of all, I cut my hair short. It is very easy to do and I love not walking around with sopping wet hair for half the day. Hair credit goes to Katie C. who introduced me to The Curly Girl and thus began my journey to a less frizzy lifestyle. I could have never done short hair without this.

Willa is 3 1/2 and June is now a rascally 13 months. We are enjoying Las Vegas immensely! Ryan has a job at a good firm that he is enjoying and we feel like this is a place we could spend the rest of our lives.

 Second, I need to introduce my friend Rachel - who has been neglected by me, but wrote a great comment on Katie's post. Here we are in January 2013, both pregnant but hiding it well beneath winter coats. She was in Utah for the winter doing an internship with the BYU Art Museum and I was out visiting my family.

Rachel lives in Boston and is pretty awesome. She has just been finishing an MA in Museum Studies at the Harvard Extension. Recently, she decided to thumb her nose at the traditional thesis, take some time off school to focus on her children, and work on a pet blog project called http://mommyandmemuseum.blogspot.com/. It's awesome, check it out. She also has a private family blog, which I am important enough to have an invitation to, but not you strangers yet :). Here are a few more fun facts. Like Erin and Katie C, Rachel enjoys natural childbirth! Her second son was a real tour de force of 10 lbs, 14 oz and still she did it natural. Like me, she used to have long hair and is now rockin' a short 'do. When she was first married,  she and her husband lived in Mary Cox's parents' ward in Provo. She loves horses. Her dad is an MFHD professor at BYU. There are loads more minutiae that I could write, but I hope you'll get to know her yourselves.

Finally, I'd like to comment on the book and get an update on Katie C. It's been twelve days since she wrote that she was due in two weeks. So, have you had the baby yet? Any news? Girl or boy? How are you feeling?

Second, I loved this book! It was so emotional, but in a good way. Here's my question - how do we create resilient children? How can we help them face hard things in life and to still feel their own worth? I love that outsiders (mostly Via's friends) recognized the wonderful family that August had. They didn't have physical deformities, but they lacked a solid and loving family structure and envied it. By the end of the book, the reader doesn't feel sorry for August, we feel like he has a wonderful life.