WEEK 1

Well, I did it. I finally joined a gym. I have some lofty goals of losing all of the weight I’ve put on since the day I married Elliot. Not that I’m blaming it on Elliot, this was all my own doing . . . and maybe I can blame some of it on Safeway for having their 2 for 1 ice cream sales so often. I have worked out 2 times with a personal trainer and have another session tomorrow morning. I won’t give every detail of my journey, but I’ve heard that if you really want to do something, tell someone you’ll do it so that they can give lots of encouragement and help! So I’m holding myself accountable to YOU! After the trainer did my body fat test his comment was (looking on the bright side of things), “Well, fat is energy, so we have a lot of energy to work with!” Offensive, yet motivating. So I’m starting at zero. You can count the pounds along with me bi-monthly and watch the transformation, not back to the cute, thin Whitney, but forward into a better, new and healthy Whitney. Go me!
GOAL: Wake up each morning at 5:00 a.m. and go to the gym. Get in the habit. Go to bed earlier. Remove all of the delicious crap from my house (hint – don’t eat it out of the house, throw it away!)

Broccoli

Guess who loves broccoli?

Cookie Monster

This girl loves those chocolate chip cookies!

First Day of Nursery

Stella isn’t quite 18 months old yet, but since I have connections, we’ve been able to put her in a little early. I never wanted to be one of those moms that couldn’t wait until their kids were 18 months old so they could go into nursery, and on the other hand I didn’t want to be one of the other moms who just assumed that their kids wouldn’t do well in nursery because they are clingy. Well, I’m both. It’s been hard to manage Primary and Stella at the same time, and with Elliot being the bishop, it’s difficult for him to be able to do his thing when he has a cranky baby with him. That’s why she’s in there early. Another part of me just wants to keep her away from other kids because I know she’ll get picked on once in a while. After seeing her a few times, I see that she can handle herself until about 11:00 when she gets tired and can’t handle life. It sure is easier to get her to sleep after church now. She’s exhausted. Here are some of Stella’s friends in nursery.
Tyler

Abe

Victoria

Sam

Donovan

Justin

Edith

Hunter

Stella

Mason

Mackenzie

Haley

Shamrock Farms

The whole Dibble Family (except Aunt Xan, she was playing in New York) went to the Shamrock Dairy Farms in Maricopa, Arizona. It was a fun little tour to learn about how Shamrock raises the cows, milks them, and how everything is done! We had a great day and learned a lot! Thanks for the fun outing Grandpa!

Back: Stella, Whitney, George, Adam
Front: Kent (Grandpa), Bethany, Anabelle, Raymond, BJ (Grandma)
Taking the picture: Elliot

One of the "Rosie"'s (the tour guide called the cows Rosie)

They had a big area where the kids could play in a dairy playground. And this is where we learned of the fate of the cows after they have been rendered useless (about 5 years) or happen to be born male.

If we wanted to, we got to pet the new baby calves. This area almost made me barf because it was so stinky!

George

Raymond, George, and Stella

That's a load!

It's chocolate milk time! We all got a free one after the tour!

She guzzled that chocolate milk right up! As far as I know, it's the first chocolate milk she's ever had (what do you say Grandma?)

Bo-Bo

A while ago Stella started grabbing her diaper when she was poopy or wet and would say, “Bo-Bo.” I don’t know if she’s trying to say “poo-poo” or “diaper,” but we thought it was so funny that we would tell everyone who came over. For some reason today, Stella has just been getting into EVERYTHING! She’s had more time-outs today than any other day. My mood was starting to sour until tonight when she brought me her tiny doll and lifted up the doll’s shirt and said, “Bo-Bo.” So I asked her if we needed to change the baby’s diaper. I went back to what I was doing, and then the next minute Stella came out of her room with the diaper changing pad we use to change her diaper and the baby powder. She laid the baby down on the changing pad and sat in front of her like she was going to change her diaper. It was just what I needed to change my mood.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to YOU! I know I've hurried around these last few days trying to come up with some good goals for the year 2006, but then I decided to change my ways this year. I'll not merely jot down a few things in a steno pad that I'm sure will get filed away in the room of never-ending disorder, I'll really think about improving my life this year . . . better than it already is. I already have everything that I've ever seriously prayed for in my life . . . my adorable husband with an eternal marriage that goes along with him, and my absolutely adorable baby girl, bringing with her more joy than I ever thought existed. No, this year I'm going to improve . . . not ask for more, but improve what I already have. It's a miracle already that I haven't had a heart attack or been diagnosed with diabetes or high blood pressure, so since I've been blessed with such amazing health in my current state, I'm making a promise to my little family and myself that I'll improve myself this year so that we'll not only be able to be a family in the eternities, but we'll be able to live on this earth as long as Heavenly Father intended us to be here! I am so grateful for Elliot and Stella and I love them so much. I like to think they couldn't do without me, just like I'd not be able to function without them!

Bad Santa

I guess we should have gone to the library and checked out some books about Santa so that Stella could have had a fighting chance at actually wanting to meet him. As it was though, she hated him at our ward Christmas party, and even candy couldn't solve this situation. After putting up our Christmas decorations at home a few days later, she learned (sort of) how to say Santa, and wasn't as scared of him when he was hanging on the wall. I hear that her cousin, Anabelle, wouldn't even go near him . . . they should really contact each other more often to discuss these things.

Book of Mormon

Stella and I finished reading the Book of Mormon on December 31, 2005 over a delicious bowl of cereal. We started reading in September, and even though some of those chapters are extremely longer than a bowl of cereal will last through, we made it! I would read out loud to Stella during our breakfast and lunch each day. I was grateful for the opportunity to read to Stella and learned so much from being able to hear it, rather than just reading to myself. It is a really exciting book, and now I can cancel my subscription to Parenting magazine because the Book of Mormon has all of the instruction that I need to teach my children what is right! Elliot and I are hoping that we will have a few Moroni’s on our hands. I know our family will be blessed because we followed the prophet and read the Book of Mormon!

Christmas Day

We had quite the eventful day on our blessed Christmas! We have church at 8:30 in the morning and Elliot had meetings even earlier than that. I wanted to take a picture of Stella in front of the Christmas tree in her pajamas, so I woke her up at 7:30 and sat her down. I got one fuzzy picture of her sitting up, and then she just started laying down until she was resting comfortably on the floor sucking her thumb.
After a great musical sacrament meeting, we hurried home to start cooking for our Bishop's Brunch. We'd invited some people from the ward over for the morning. That was actually a really good experience for our family and we hope to be able to make this a tradition . . . and I must say, Elliot and I make a great breakfast. We gave some of them rides home, and by noon we were able to open our own Christmas presents.

Stella did amazingly well not playing with the wrapped gifts under the tree, but she did like the beads on the tree though. It was fun to try to get Stella to open her gifts. She'd open a gift and then just want to spend some time with it, not caring that she had more gifts. Elliot was so tired that he nearly needed to take a nap in the middle of gift time.

After a short nap, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Dibble's. We had another gift opening session with Stella's cousins. Ray couldn't get enough of opening presents, and George was so tired that he was asking Ray to open them for him. Anabelle is a great gift receiver with the gasp and thank you. Elliot and I discussed that it is so much fun to watch the kids open the gifts, but our favorite time is just being able to spend the time with family on such a special occasion.

We headed home to meet Keith and Lindsay at our house and had, yet another gift exchange. We had their name for Christmas this year and put together (what we hoped they enjoyed) a little entertainment package with movies and games and popcorn. Lindsay can't stop herself from giving Stella things, so we all got a gift from them too. It was another great time with family, even though we played a completely pointless game to end the night. I hope they come back.

We had an absolutely great holiday, complete with a whole week off of work for Elliot! We hope that your Christmas was just as enjoyable and pray for a fantastic New Year!

Great News!

I like good news, but I love great news! Adam and Xan are having another baby girl! I haven't actually talked to them, but Adam left a message this morning with the great news. We're very excited for them! Congratulations!


Another bit of great news is that some of our friends that moved away to Utah just adopted their second child, a baby girl, and named her Ava Jane. I guess it was an extremely quick event . . . like 4 days! They already have a great 2 year old named Elijah. Congratulations Jared and Sarah!

Exercise Ball?

So our new favorite family activity as I've mentioned before is trying to balance on the exercise ball. When we did this as a family a few weeks ago, we were having so much fun that we seriously contemplated calling some of our favorite people to come and play with us. We decided not to since it was family night, but we just had our friends Mike and Mari Ashby over on Friday and challenged them to a match of balance on the exercise ball. As we predicted, they loved it and we had at least a good hour of laughing as we tried to balance. And to think, I bought the ball to exercise on when it has so many other more enjoyable functions.

Happy Birthday Lindsay!

We celebrated Lindsay’s birthday a few days early this year. Keith was surprising her with a trip to Disneyland (where they were engaged nearly a year ago), so they invited us over on Sunday for a fantastic chicken dinner. Stella and the dogs entertained us for a while and then Lindsay took over as she opened her gifts. I don’t know where we all learned how to be the kind of gift receivers that we are, but I’m a really bad gift receiver (ask Elliot at a different time), I’m sure Natalie is a great gift receiver, and Lindsay is a little in between. She did, however, move herself up to “great gift receiver” status when she opened the Reader’s Digest Christmas music book I got for her. It carries a lot of memories for our family is sure to evoke a smile just by looking at the titles of each song. Happy Birthday Sis!

A New Cousin

Yeah! Stella is getting her 15th cousin in May 2006! Uncle Adam and Aunt Xan announced on Thanksgiving day that they are expecting their 4th child! We were so excited not only because they make cute kids, but because Stella loves her cousins! Now I need to go look in the attic for all of the baby stuff I borrowed! Congratulations Adam, Xan, Raymond, George, and Anabelle!

Roller

For our FHE activity, our family had a balancing contest on the exercise ball. That turned into a comedy hour because we can’t do it when we’re laughing. So we started bouncing Stella on the ball, which makes her laugh so hard that she gets the hiccups, just like her daddy. She says, “Two, Go!” before we can start bouncing her. Stella has her own little ball that she’s started rolling over. She doesn’t care to survey her surroundings before rolls which means that she’s smacked into her crib, the walls, and done horrible looking back bends. It was so fun to have Daddy home and all to ourselves for a night and to be laughing so hard with our baby girl.