Christmastime!

Hello Friends!

It has been a wonderful year! I thought I would follow the example of some friends and just post our Christmas letter on the ol' blog here. Yes we are too cheap and lazy to send cards out this year. Sorry. So here is a little update on our family this year:

Ben and Michelle: We are just trying to stay sane in our circus of children! We work together now so it's nice to have Ben at home more; we help people get out of debt, get proper life insurance, and invest for retirement and really love it. Ben is thinking about finishing his master's degree, and Michelle does a great job as always with the cooking, cleaning, and diapering!

Rachel: This little lady has been cracking us up all year. She says and does the silliest things. She is in LOVE with the missionaries. She always asks if they can come over for dinner. She also started a preschool group this year that she loved. We took December off and she came crying to me one day saying "I just wanna go to preschool!"

Brandon: This young man is growing up. He loves to watch "Horton Hears a Who" over and over and over. And he loves "Fwosty the Newman". Brandon is my clean child. He can't sleep in his room unless all his toys are put away. Love that!

Ellie: Big year for this girl. First of all, she was born. And she has filled our days with joy ever since. She is thinking about walking. She stands up for several seconds at a time now. She has four teeth. Her bottom front, and two top fangs. Silly girl.

We have much to be grateful for this year, especially those three beautiful faces in the picture above. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season!

Love,

The Pingels

Opinions Needed

Five months ago, I got the haircut of death. Honestly, I did. The first few days after the hacking, I couldn't walk past a mirror without crying. Ask Ben. There is no exaggeration involved here. I learned some valuable lessons from this experience.

#1 Never ever ever let the power of the haircut chair overcome your better judgment
#2 If you come in with pictures of what you want, don't let people talk you into going shorter "just for fun" and then when they give you a DIFFERENT style than on your picture, it's that much more drastic.
#3 Never color your hair. At least me. I will never again until I am covering gray.

That said, I am in a bit of a pickle. I dyed my hair back to its natural color and have seen some growth in the past few months. However, I still hate the cut. Everyone I have consulted in person says not to cut it, but to give it time to grow out and see what happens. The more it grows, the more it stays the same. I have some pictures to show what a weird cut this is. There is this bottom layer that just drives me insane. So my question is this:

Do I:

A) Cut to the point where the hair is growing at mostly the same length to get rid of the strange dangly look?
B) Keep growing it out til its really long before cutting the bottom layer off (Ben thinks the shortness will give me insecurities again)
C) Are there any other alternatives?


See the random pieces in the bottom? Ick.



Sorry the pictures are upside down, I can't get them to rotate. Any way, advice would be nice. Thanks!

Plate Spinning

Back in the good old BYUI days, I took a class in the general education department. The class focused on helping you become your best self in many areas of life. I wish I could remember what it was called. Anyway, at one point during the semester, my teacher brought up the subject of plate spinning. He said you could start spinning a plate and keep it going round and round even after you let go and added another plate to the stage. After awhile, however, you have to run up and down the stage to keep all your plates spinning, and if you add one too many, they all crash.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I have reflected on the way I live my life. I can spin one, maybe two plates really easily at the same time! I find that if I focus on keeping my house clean, I'm not exercising as frequently. Or if I focus on trying to research/cook super healthy meals, I'm not spending as much time in my scripture study. On and on and on.

So my question to anyone who might read this is how do you find your sense of balance? There are many good things I need to be doing. I guarantee one of my plates is NOT keeping up with current TV shows. Every plate I want to spin has merit. So how do I do all the things I want to do without crashing and burning?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Six Months

Our sweet Ellie Baby turned six months on July 26. I can't believe it has been six months already. Our little princess is growing like a weed. She is a chubber. She has rolls in places you just wouldn't expect...like in her armpit. She has cankles, Relief Society arms - you name it, she's got it. But she is super cute in her roly poly-ness.


Ellie is the sweetest baby ever. She loves to play peek-a-boo with her brother and sister. Sometimes Rachel and Brandon are a little too rough with her, but she is learning to take it in stride.

She loves to eat, eat, eat. Her favorite food right now is pears. She can't get enough of them. She's not so crazy about her veggies, but she will learn one day, right?

Basically Ellie is the cutest baby on the planet (So I'm biased) and we love her to pieces!

My Little Man

I just feel the urge to pay tribute to my handsome little Brandon Bear. I have been so so proud of him this week. We decided to start the arduous task of potty training. I was a little nervous because Rachel was...well...a nightmare. I didn't want to go back to cleaning puddles several times a day and stumbling upon human playdough again. But Brandon was showing serious signs of readiness. The big one being that he would ASK US to let him go potty in the toilet before bed. Wow.

So on Monday, we said goodbye to his diapers. He had probably three accidents during the day and wet the bed that night. By Tuesday we were down to two accidents in the morning and sleeping through the night while staying dry. Wednesday brought two accidents, and he came into my room in the middle of the night to help him go potty. Today he hasn't had any accidents and has asked me to take him potty when he felt it was time. I can't even tell you how excited we are about this.

My little man is awesome. Everything has gone so smoothly. I don't even think we will have to worry much about church on Sunday. I think he is going to be awesome. He has had several outings and hasn't had a single accident while we were out. He makes potty training seem like a breeze! So anyway, maybe this is a strange post, but I am proud of my son, by golly!

Out of the mouth of Miss Rachel

I always love reading about the funny things kids say, so I thought I would take a minute and share some of the silly things Rachel has said lately.

1. Rachel was watching Grandma make a wedding cake last week. Apparently Rachel went on to tell Grandma that she was going to get married in the temple. And play dressups in the temple. And there would be fireworks.

2. Rachel has developed a dislike of jelly on her sandwiches. So I asked her what she wanted for lunch. After I suggested macaroni and cheese, she said, "No...maybe tomorrow. I want sandwiches! But no jelly. Leave it in the fridge".

3. Rachel loves her little cousins....maybe a little too much. Yesterday she said, "No more Ellie right now. Put her in hospital. I want Baby Jordin!"

4. Rachel has a little animal game that you can mix and match the parts of the faces with different magnets. She found a little pink tongue, and the drawing had a line down the middle. Completely mortified, she looked at me and said, "Mom~it's a bum! It's a bum". I tried to tell her it was just a tongue but she insists it was a bum.

5. Everyday, without fail, she will tell me something about a crazy apple coming. Sometimes it's in her tummy, sometimes its name is Thomas, sometimes daddy "throwed it away". But we hear about it on a daily basis.

6. Sometimes when I ask Rachel to do something for me she will say, "Oh...I can't right now. I sooo sick".

7. We are trying to teach Rachel to automatically say please without being told. Yesterday she asked for a sandwich by simply saying "I want a sandwich". So I said, "I want you to say I want a sandwich, please". So I said we would practice and I said, "Okay I...." and I motioned for her to finish the sentence. After a brief pause she said, "Love you?"

8. She differentiates grandmothers by calling Ben's mom "Grandma" and my mom is "Grandma in the blue house".

There are many more silly things she says and I just love her to pieces. I hope I wasn't the only amused by her little Rachel-isms. :)

Happy Independence Day!

Look at us- two blog posts within a week!

Life has had some fun things for us lately. Here's a little what's been happening in our lives:

Bikes! We got Rachel and Brandon their own bikes, and they are in heaven! Rachel got a princess bike and helmet, and Brandon got a Toy Story 3 bike and helmet. Brandon has yet to grasp the concept, but Rachel did pick it up pretty quickly. She still has some learning to do, but they still love it!
Fourth of July! What a fun time! We had a short but very fun trip down to Soda Springs. We haven't had everyone together for so long- it was great to be together again! We had a lot of fun on Saturday geochaching- I think we'll have to give that a try here at home as well. The weather turned out very nice on Saturday, and we had some fun getting some ice cream. Brandon kinda got it all over himself. Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Mike had Ellie with them, and slipped her some ice cream while Michelle wasn't looking. She quite enjoyed it, and made her cousin Adam quite envious.


Our big girl Ellie is eating cereal now too. Let's just say she's not underfed, and Ben has taken to calling our princess "Thunder Thighs." She's now in the 75th percentile for weight and the 25th percentile for height and growing so fast! We love her little smiles and bright, happy eyes.


While it was a very quick trip, driving down late Friday and coming home Sunday, we had a great time. Now to rest!
We moved into a new place just over a week ago, and we love it! We are saving $200/month, and it's a great, secluded location. It's a relief being on a single level, and the home has a lot more room to it. Stop on by- we're open for visitors!