MLKJ Weekend

We headed down to visit my sweet in-laws the weekend of Martin Luther King Day.

We had a great time with them!

On Saturday, after a Costco run, we headed down to visit Grammy.

She's a hoot! We went out to lunch and had a great time eating and visiting, despite Sweet Girl's face in this picture. She's actually looking at the people at the table across the way from us.

 After we finished eating, we headed back to Grammy's house and visited a little more

and fed the wee one.

 We finally got to get a four generation picture while we were there.

(We have a few more of those that we need to get, hopefully soon).

 After visiting with the Gramster, we headed to the ocean.

 My sweet in-laws have been taking sailing lessons and their instructor took us out on a trip.

 They kept commenting on how the wind wasn't great,

but I rather enjoyed the lazy, smooth sailing that we had.

It was really relaxing!

When we were in college my sweet husband took a sailing class,

I liked sailing then, but we went on Utah lake and I was always afraid of falling into the nasty water..

for some reason falling into the ocean doesn't scare me as much 

(as long as we are fairly close to the shore where the sharks and things don't usually reside).

They let my Handsome Man steer the vessel for a little while.

 The sunset was beautiful

 Since we got to stay for church, our sweet girl wore the adorable dress and bonnet that Grandma and Grandpa C and Grammy gave to her. She looked so sweet, like a little doll!

 I love how happy she is

and how happy Grandma is too!

It was a great weekend with wonderful family!

4 Months!

 This pretty girl turned 4 months on the 5th!

She had her appointment on the 5th,

her stats were:

Weight: 13.2 lbs (43rd percentile)

Height: 25.5 inches (91st percentile)

Head Circumference: 16.1 inches (52nd percentile)

She is such a happy girl! We are so blessed to have her in our lives!

She's getting SO big!

Her legs are completely off my lap when I feed her, she is SO long!

A couple days before her appointment her sleep routine started to go a little weird

and since it's been a bit off.

Right not we are trying the crying it out method,

it's rough, but nothing else seems to work.

It's super weird because she used to go to sleep all on her own,

we would read her a story, sing her a song, lay her down and sing her a song and she would quietly go to sleep. But then one day, she decided she needed to eat to go to sleep.

After that one time she decided that was the only way she would sleep.

It was so weird.

So we're trying to get back on schedule.

Hopefully, it works soon. If anyone has any advice, we are totally up for it.

Other than that, she is the perfect baby!

She LOVES to play!

She loves to eat!

She loves to smile and gives the cutest smiles in the whole world!

She will laugh, with some effort on our part, and it is so worth the effort, it is the sweetest little laugh!

She hasn't rolled over yet, but she is SO close!

She just discovered that she can grab her toes, and LOVES to do that and try to pull off her socks!

We sure love our Sweet Girl!

Sometimes it's hard to remember what life was like without her cute little face.

Rock Climbing

New Year's Day my family came to visit.

We watched football games on New Year's Day,

then we just enjoyed each other's company the next couple of days.

On Saturday, we decided to go to these cool rocks about an hour and a half from our house,

apparently they were used in Star Trek.

We went to go repelling,

it was really fun!

As we were getting ready to go, Grandpa read Sweet Girl a story.

She loves stories.

 Sweet Girl, enjoyed the rocks,

but that may have been because she just got carried around...lol.

 My sweet husband and my Dad set up the repelling rope and such.

Dad was at the bottom to belay.

 Sweet husband went first to show us wimps that it was safe...lol.

 Then we all went

and realized, it was really fun and not scary 

(it helped that it wasn't a very big rock, 

they chose a smaller one since we didn't have gloves or helmets)

 Some of us went multiple times

 My Mama

 My sister

 My brother-in-law

 Sweet Girl and her aunt enjoyed the Baby Bjorn!

Sweet Girl loved to see out... expect when we were walking downhill,

that freaked her out. So I stayed by her side and talked to her as we walked.

 The whole gang at the entrance,

minus my Mama, she's taking the picture.

It was really fun to get out and see these cool rocks

and to see some of the cool stuff so close to us.

I think we often take for granted the neat things around us!

Or, at least, I do.

Learn

One thing I love about the new year is that I get to set new goals. I'm not always the best about keeping those goals, but I really love the fresh start of a new year, I love having a time of the year that really makes me want to stretch myself, try to be better, focus on new things.

I've learned something about myself these past 20 or so years that I've been setting New Year's Resolutions, I need to kind of focus my goals. I like that when I think about the things I want to accomplish throughout the year, I often have a wide variety. However, I've learned that if I decide to start way too many or branch out in too many directions, they don't stick very well.

A few years ago, I read a blog (and to be honest, I can't remember which one it was or I would put a link to it) and the blogger said that she always chose one word to focus on. I liked that idea and have kind of adopted it.

2013: Trust
2014: Brave

2015: Learn. 

The idea for this year came a couple of ways, first I started thinking about the goals I wanted to accomplish, and another way was I read Gifted Hands, it's about a man who grew up in inner-city Detroit and became a pediatric neurosurgeon. It's an autobiography. I decided to read it because I read this talk. It's really good, I've discovered that I really enjoy books that make me think and stretch and grow. I have a very hard time putting them down.

Gifted Hands really made me want to read more and learn more. Some of things I hope to learn throughout the year are:
1. To play the violin--my visiting teacher is going to give me and a friend lessons
2. To can/bottle food, make baby food
3. To wake up early and to utilize that time
4. To explore different subjects when I read
5. To eat better
6. To control my attitude
7. To exercise more regularly
8. To enjoy each day and treasure it (instagram is helping me with this)

I'm in a book club and this month our book is The Happiness Project, it is a very good read! The author underwent a year long Happiness Project, each month she had new goals and things to work on to help her to be happier. She wasn't depressed or anything when she started this project, she just decided that she needed to enjoy each day more. I love her idea of having new goals each month, of mastering those goals and THEN adding more goals. Rather than coming up with a 100 new goals and trying to implement them all in one month and being frustrated that they didn't stick.

I'm excited for this new year and I'm excited to exercise and stretch myself.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall...

Who's the prettiest girl of all?

We are pretty biased and would say it's our sweet girl.

And I think she agrees...lol!

She loves to see herself in the mirror or on our phones.

The other day, I was taking a picture of her and showed her the picture.

This is the procession of the pictures.

The original

(I was laughing because she was putting her whole hand in her mouth)

 I told her I was taking her picture

 I turned the camera on my phone to face her

 Then she started making cute faces

 Lol, I love this one

 Then, she started loving on Dirk.

It was adorable!

Hopefully, you all think so too and aren't sick of pictures of Sweet Girl.. lol!

Christmastime

We are so grateful for our Savior and that we get to celebrate His birth every year!
It is my favorite time of the year and even though it gets crazy,
I enjoy setting out my nativities and thinking about the true meaning of Christmas.
I am so grateful for my Savior, I'm so grateful for His help through my trials,
I'm know that He understands and that He is aware of me and my little family.

I know that He is the way back to our Father in Heaven.

I feel like Christmas FLEW by!
I don't think it helped that we didn't really start celebrating

until halfway through December because of work trips and things.

I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to,

we usually take something to our neighbors and friends,

but that just didn't happen this year.

Next year.

After my sweet husband's family left Sunday night,

we had our Christmas with my side!

First, we opened our awesome Christmas pajamas!

 In our family we pick names and give to that person.

So we opened those.

Our brother-in-law had Sweet Girl,

She wasn't so sure about the box..

 But she sure loved the elephant inside it!

My sweet husband named him Dirk

One of my brothers had my sweet husband

 And my other brother had me (he's on a mission, so it actually didn't come until the next day).

So, I opened a gift from my parents.

My dad's good friend made this beautiful jewelry box!

 He also made my sweet husband's present!

 We gave my parents a book with pictures of them and our sweet girl.

I think it was a hit.

 The Monday before Christmas we spent the morning with my family since my Dad was leaving early the next morning to make it back to work.

 That night was Grammy's tree trimming party!

It was a lot of fun!

As we were driving away I realized I didn't take pictures.

Nuts!
We headed home after the party so we could go to my little sister's best friend's basketball game.

 Little One wakes up so happy!
She was making the cutest faces at her Daddy!

 We all received sports paraphernalia from my youngest brother for Christmas, from around his mission area.
So we dressed Sweet Girl in her's for the basketball game, I think we all wore our gifts as well.

Unfortunately, our team lost, but it was still fun to watch their game!
Afterwards, it took forever for my sister's friend to come out of the dressing room,
so my sister and brother started ninja fighting...lol!

 Finally, she came out and we took some pictures.
My youngest sister headed home with her friend,

my Mom and brother stayed for another day.

In the morning, we watched my sweet husband test fly his quadrotor.

Obviously, we took a few pictures while we were watching.

Here's my handsome man troubleshooting.

After my sister and brother-in-law got off work, they all headed to my parent's home.

We were going to head down to my sweet in-law's parent's home,

but due to some sickness, we decided to wait a little longer before going.

It was really nice to have Christmas Eve and Christmas morning together.

Actually, we went to a friend's house for Christmas Eve,

we invited them to come over, but they were already in the midst of preparing dinner and such, so they invited us over instead.

We had a good time, eating and chatting (and of course, I forgot to take pictures).

Christmas morning, we slept in, took some pictures by the tree,

opened a few presents,

I love this picture, she looks SO excited!

We made a delicious breakfast. 

After breakfast and we got ready and headed to my sweet in-law's house.

We had a delicious Christmas dinner and then we exchanged gifts with them.

Sweet girl got an awesome airplane from her sweet grandparents.

The cousins immediately came to help and make sure it worked!

Lol, they loved it! They rode it all over!

The next day we had family pictures and

helped my sweet husband's older brother's family load their moving truck

(obviously this isn't the family picture, but it is the outfit Sweet Girl wore for them and it's what she did while we loaded the truck).

That night we went to see some musical fountains and we rode on a cute little train.

The train

They gave us all conductor hats.

Saturday, we went to the beach.

I think Sweet Girl enjoyed her first time to the beach.

We headed home after dinner that night,
after a long time in the car, we let Sweet Girl wiggle and play on her playmat while we unloaded the car, before we put her to bed.

Sunday, was church and my final time playing the organ for the year.

Monday morning, we met up at Six Flags and had a great time with some of the family!

Sweet Girl really enjoyed it.. lol, she got to stand in line with us and then one of our sweet sister-in-laws would hold her while we all rode the ride (she (our sister-in-law, not the baby) gets motion sickness). For a few rides, Sweet Girl needed to eat or was sleeping so she and I would talk, it was really fun!

Sweet Girl enjoyed her time with Grandpa C too, he held her while we waited in line a few times!

All in all, we had a great Christmastime,

even if it went by SO fast!