Our spiritual leader

Kiera has taken the position of spiritual leader in our household. She makes sure that we pray at least 20 times every day. She loves to fold her arms and wait for the prayer when we sit down for a meal, and then she wants us to say at least 3 more prayers during the meal (and she won't eat until we do). She isn't exactly great at talking yet, so she says "da-do" for "amen" (da-do also happens to be the way she says her own name). She also enjoys the family nighttime prayer we say right before we go to bed after which she grabs ahold of both Steve and I and makes sure we give each other a hug and kiss before hugging and kissing her. I'm glad we have her around to keep our relationship strong, and make sure we never forget to pray!

This Might be Taking Dentistry a Bit Too Far

Some dentists become orthodontists, pediatricians, periodontists, whatever. How'er, there is one field of dentistry not talked about much, and it's located right here in San Bernardino! Yup, Weight-Loss dentistry! Look, people are already flocking to this dental practice. You can tell these two are patients of this dentist. You should've seen these guys last year--most likely they were overweight...until they went to Dr. D'Wait Begone!


So many Americans are overweight anyway. How much does a tooth weigh, couple of grams? If you let me pull all 32 teeth, that's permanent weight loss that you definitely will never grow back, never mind the side effects. What a sure-fire success or so it seems!

Kiera has been spoiled for the past 3 weeks. She has had a fun outing nearly every day: the park, beach, museums, grandma's house, the swimming pool, pet stores, etc.

Steve's summer vacation has come and gone way too fast. Unlike most of our dental school friends, we stuck around here to enjoy our vacation. We spent lots of time in pools as Kiera is very much a water-baby. Even when she goes completely under the water she comes up smiling and giggling.

Alas, daddy must go back to school and Kiera will have to be content with boring old mommy.

Music Video of Kiera

For one that cannot stand country music, I really had to find the inner strength from within to make this video of our cute daughter. I also just wanted to make sure thet PC isn't as inferior as MAC users say it is

The video is 3:50 long. Enjoy...Summer vacation is awesome!

Beach days

We took Kiera to the beach for the first time this year. We went with our friends the Porters I totally expected her to be scared of the water for a few minutes, but I had no idea that she would be afraid of the sand! From the very first step she took into the sand she didn't like it and just wanted Steve or I

to hold her up out of it. After being there for about 2 hours she finally got to the point where we could set her down without her crying and she had a little fun before we had to go (since naptime was way overdue). Oh well, maybe if we go next time she'll warm up to the beach faster.

Red Toenails

The other day I was painting my toenails and I noticed Kiera was very interested. I didn't expect that she would cooperate much, but I decided to try to paint her's too. Not only did she cooperate, she was enthralled as I painted them. For the rest of the day she would be running around playing and suddenly stop, sit down on the floor with her feet out in front of her, and point to and admire her toes for about 10 seconds before jumping up and continuing to play. She was very excited about the fact that we both had red toenails and the first thing she did when Steve got home was made him take off his shoes so that she could check out his toenails (he's got boring toenails). She is a girl through and through already!

Must......get......through......(gasp, gasp).......finals.........week......

Kiera and I are counting down the days until finals are over and we get our husband/daddy back. 4 more days and then he'll be around for 3 weeks! The days are dragging by so slowly!

Product Review: Dr Mom's Otoscope. There have been 2 times in Kiera's life that I've taken her to the doctor when she was sick with a cold to check for an ear infection since she seemed to be pulling on her ears excessively. (and there have been many times I've wanted to take her in, but have refrained based on cost). This handy little tool that I just bought cost less than one insta-care visit ($23) and now I can check Kiera's ears for infection myself and not have to go through the pain and expense of taking her to the doctor while she is sick. I wish I would have bought it a year ago!

Product review: body pillow. I thought I'd save myself some $ my first pregnancy and forgo getting a body pillow even though people recommended them. I shouldn't have. I LOVE my body pillow-- it makes it so much easier to sleep while pregnant

Some future-dentist's-wives dream of days when they can have their hair done every 2 weeks and a pedicure once a month. I don't have dreams of shopping at Banana Republic, my dream as a well-to-do dentist's wife is to have pest-control people come monthly and eliminate bugs! I admit it-- I'm afraid of spiders, cockroaches, earwigs (or "pincher bugs" as steve calls them). There was a nasty smasty cockroach in Kiera's room yesterday that I had to eliminate. Someday I won't have to be a bug-killer.....I'll hire someone else to do it for me.

"I've got no strings to........ there are no strings on me!"

I'm now a 100% normal-in-every-way pregnant woman. My doctor took out the feeding tube this morning. I didn't realize what a pain that thing was until it was gone and I cold hold Kiera without it hurting, dress myself without it being in the way, etc.. Anyway, I'm glad I had it, but I'm glad it's gone. Maybe now I can just be a normal weight (instead of either under or over weight like I have been). Oh-- and I'm going to be famous: there is a case study about me being published this fall in 2 different medical journals which will include pictures of my fat belly and all. Wow I'm famous now.

Curls and little girls

6pm yesterday:
Steve: Cambrie have you been wearing those shorts all day?
Cambrie: yes. Why?
Steve: Um.. nice behind.

Good thing the only places I went yesterday were Dennys (where I fit right in with the crowd) and to my friend Lindsey's house (and it must not have been that obvious because she is a good enough friend she would have said something). Looks like I'm going shopping for new maternity shorts!







I discovered yesterday much to my delight that Kiera's hair has alot of natural curl (I always wanted curly hair). Isn't it cute?






Yesterday I also bought come cute flower hair clips and a little tu-tu for Kiera from my friend Lindsey who makes them and sells them (check out her website here:)

notes on Nursery

We dropped Kiera off in Nursery for the full 2 hours for the first time on sunday. We've taken her in for a few minutes at a time (and stayed with her) before, and she loved it. Steve dropped her off and I went to check on her about 40 mins later. Even after I arrived and stayed to play she was crying-- she just wanted out of there! I hear that the best way for them to get used to it is just to tell them you're leaving, that you'll be back, and then leave dispite protests so I guess that is my plan. It's just hard (for me, Kiera, and the nursery leader too!) It is difficult for me to surrender my daughter to nursery for a few other reasons too:

1. Germs-- As predicted, Kiera woke up sick monday morning. I guess that that's life though and she'll get the germs eventually anyway.

2. Candy-- don't give my 1-year old candy! Espcially not gummy bears or skittles on which she could choke!

3. I am no longer the sole influence on her little life. As I was sitting in nursery trying to play with Kiera I overheard one of the nursery leaders telling a 2-year old "just wait until your parents come-- you are going to be in trouble. They are going to be mad at you and yell at you. Just wait till they come." I don't want anyone ever telling my daughter that! I don't care what she is done, I'm not going to yell at her and I certainly don't want her to dread my coming!

It almost makes me want to be a nursery leader myself so I can protect my little sweet daughter from everything..... but then I realize that I can't go to kindergarten through college with her. I guess it is time I just let her grow up. I'm just not ready to give up my baby!

Should have been born with fins...

Kiera LOVES water so much. There is no puddle she won't personally splash or sit in. When we took her miniature golfing a few weeks ago the course had ponds and fountains and she squeeled with delight when she saw the water. She was way more interested in the water than the golf course or balls.

Kiera had her first experience with rain yesterday. It rained in the morning and I took her outside to stand on the porch to watch. She was so excited about it that I ended up letting her play in the rain. She LOVED it and was mad when I took her inside. This video is of her second experience with rain (we had quite a storm last night!) As you can see, she was very excited about it again.

P.S. I have to say that I love rainy days. Yesterday was the perfect rainy day: we played in the rain, got dry and put on warm sweaters, baked pumpkin bread and cookies while Kiera and I cuddled under her blankie and read books. I love days like that.

Weight Stuff and Money Fluff

1. Today I am officially the same weight that I was when I went into the hospital to give birth to Kiera. (and I'm only 24 weeks pregnant which means this baby weighs about 1.5 lbs) Ouch.

2. I sat down with a calculator today and added up all of the medical bills from this pregnancy thus far. The total was $104,464.86 and we've only had to pay about $500 of that since we have good insurance.

Country Music is true

I used to be anti-country music. Why? Because my parents were. Why were my parents so against it? The same reason anybody of sense would be: in their day country music was horrible! Twang, twang.... I remember a home-health patient of mine who made me listen to one of his favorite songs entitled "There's a tear in my beer and it hurts up to here". Golly.

I'm here to tell everyone that country music has changed and is now a great thing (for the most part-- I admit that twangy music does occasionally mix in with the good stuff). The great thing about country music is that not only do the musicians have actual talent, but the messages in the songs are really great and uplifting. They teach good principles and have nice little stories to them.

There's my opionion. I thought I'd blog about something other than my daughter (that is especially for you Jen).

A long blog on Food Storage

For years the topic of food storage for me was something I didn't really pay much attention to. For one thing, you can't store much food when you live in an apartment that is so small you barely have enough space for the food you normally use say nothing of food storage. Also, it was one of those things that people vaguely talked about in church that some prophet a while back said that we should have.

As you can tell from the pictures of some of our newly acquired wheat pictured above, my attitude has recently changed. It started when I was made aware of the fact that food prices (wheat in particular) were skyrocketing. The price of white wheat is so high in fact that the LDS storehouses/dry packs no longer sell it. There was a wheat-acquiring frenzy that went on in Utah when this was announced and there were severe restrictions placed on what people could buy. I didn't have that problem here in California and I went to my local LDS storehouse and bought the very last of their white wheat (500 lbs of it). According to the church website's food storage calculator, this is only enough wheat for 4 people for 6 months. Since all I currently have for food storage is wheat, my tiny garden (pictured above), and extras of food we already eat, I still have a long ways to go, but it's a start. Since I now live in a house and and room to store it, I no longer have an excuse not to. And considering the fact that we have been told quite a few times in just the past year by our first presidency (in the All Is Safely Gathered In pamphlet) which was distributed to members, and the very straight-forward talk given in April 07 General Conference, I can no longer put off the prophet's counsel.

So, I've learned a lot about using oxygen absorbers and mylar bags as we packaged up our wheat to put in long term storage. I personally don't believe that I will be needing to use it (or any other of the long-term food storage I intend to buy) any time soon, but I'll store it because we were specifically instructed to do so in 2007. In the meantime, I'll have to deal with a little less closet space.