Taylor and Stacy

7

2012-02-17T15:50:00.000-08:00

This little beauty is seven months old (plus a few days). She only gets more fun every day. She is my best little friend and I love spending my days with her. She is growing and learning new things so fast. Just after my last blog post she started sitting up like a champ. She loves to sit and play with her toys and squeal, squeeze and talk to them.

Noelle was visiting for a few days last month and because she is so awesome she took some CUTE six month pictures of Palmer girl. The following gems are courtesy of her great photography skills. One word - adorable.

Palmer loves her solid foods more and more every day. We've moved to two solid meals a day and she still likes everything we give her. She's started eating some little baby finger food snacks - the little puff cereal, and yogurt melt thingies, and she also really loves them. I've been trying to warm her up to sippy cups for a couple of months now. At the beginning she seemed to like the sippy for a few days, but then she got over it and doesn't seem too into the cup now. We'll keep working on it.
She's not crawling or really moving forward much at all still. She can move backwards and turn herself to face any direction she wants, but she hasn't quite figured out how to push herself forward. She wants to and sometimes she'll just kick her legs and kind of shake her body and grunt as she tries to reach something in front of her; it's pretty darn cute. I'm trying to just enjoy whatever time I have left of her staying in one general area.
Palmer is getting very expressive with her cute face. Whether she's happy, sad, amused, excited or even confused she shows it in her facial expressions.
She's starting to really like the dogs. She loves to watch them play with each other (our dog and my parents' dog). She giggles at them way more than I can get her to laugh for me. She's started pulling Elmer's hair pretty intensely and he usually just lays there and lets her do it without flinching.
She is not sleeping through the night, but we are SO close. At this point it is just her annoying little cough that seems to be keeping us both from getting a full night's sleep. This little girl is a light sleeper! Any little sound seems to stir her awake. She is getting really good at getting herself back to sleep after waking up, but once a night she still needs me to help her get back to sleep. About 50% of the time she thinks she has to eat before she'll settle down, but other times all it takes is her lovie and her binky. We're getting close to real sleep...
She went on her first snowmobile ride on the day she turned seven months old. We had gone up to SLC to go riding with Taylor's family. Taylor loves and has always loved snowmobiling...me not so much. I'm kind of a paranoid wimp. Needless to say I only let him take Palmer and me on a VERY slow and short ride around the parking lot. But we got our pictures and she can officially say she's started snowmobiling now.

Luckily the spot that Taylor's family had chosen to go snowmobiling was just past Heber and one of my bestest friends in the world recently moved to Heber. So Palmer and I made a little stop to visit Nicole and McKenzie. I loved visiting with Nicole and Osiris for a bit and loved their new cute house! Palmer and McKenzie shared toys and binkies and were so super cute together. It's going to be so fun to see how they play together as they get older.

Half Birthday!

2012-01-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

Well somehow our little Palmer girl reached her half birthday last week. These past six months have been, without a doubt, the fastest six months of my life. This little girl is my everything; I know that sounds cheesy and cliche, but it is so true. I love starting and ending my day cuddling her; I love her smiles and laughs; I love her sweet little sounds; I love when she gets excited about something and kick kick kicks her legs and flails her little arms; I even love her little pouty face when she gets sad about something.

Palmer Tay had her six month checkup this morning and it was confirmed that she is still perfect. She weighs 13 pounds 8 ounces, which is right around the 8th percentile (the doctor's computer froze up so we just had to look on a paper chart and it was a little under 10th percentile); she is 25 inches long, which is around 25th percentile and her head was 42 centimeters (I think), which was around the 75th percentile - that's my big-headed Lyman girl!
Palmer now loves to roll from her back to her tummy. She will play on her tummy for awhile until she gets bored with that and then she fusses until she remembers that she can roll herself back onto her back, or more often than that we end up rolling her onto her back if she gets mad enough. She is not pushing herself up onto all fours, but she pushes herself up on her hands. She is getting pretty good at turning her body whichever direction she wants to be. She's good at scooting backwards, but hasn't quite figured out how to propel herself forward yet. When we get her out of her crib in the morning or after naps we never know where she'll be in her crib. Sometimes she's at the top, sometimes the bottom, sometimes she's sideways, and sometimes she's flipped her body so her head is where we left her feet; also she's on her belly more often than not when we get her out of her crib these days. When she wakes up in the mornings and from naps she is happy happy happy and will just play contentedly with her lovey and make cute noises until we get her. As soon as she sees one of us at the side of her crib she gets a huge smile on her face and makes a cute little squeal.
Her eyes have stayed blue and I LOVE them and hope they don't change. She has beautiful long curled lashes and almost everyone comments on her beautiful eyes. I can't help but agree - they're super pretty.
Little Miss Palmer is not sitting up yet - she doesn't seem very interested in it. I practice with her every day and I can tell she could probably do it if she would just try. Sometimes when she is real focused on a toy or something she'll sit up by herself just fine, but after a bit of that she'll tip to the side or bend in half over her legs.
No signs of any teeth yet; I'm not looking forward to teething at all.
She's doing great with eating solids. She definitely makes a mess, but she is doing great with opening her mouth for the bites and keeping most of the food in her mouth. So far she has liked everything that I've given her except bananas...crazy girl. She did seem to have a little reaction to the bananas, so I guess it's ok that she didn't love them; she had a very faint rash all over her body the next day after trying bananas. I'll probably forget some but so far she's tried carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, green beans, peas, pears, applesauce, bananas and peaches. Her favorite seems to be pears and peas so far.

She's sleeping better and getting more and more consistent with sleep in general. Lately it is most common for her to wake up to eat around 4:00 or 5:00 and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours, but sometimes she wakes up earlier and ends up eating twice in the night. Her naps during the day are becoming much more routine and it's making it a lot easier for me to plan my day. She's also getting more hair slowly but surely. Her hair is thickening up a bit and getting longer. It's brown for now; I'm excited for the days when she will fight me trying to fix her hair so pretty.
She really loves playing with her toys these days. She's getting more and more curious about the world around her and more interactive. She likes playing patty-cake and peek-a-boo. Sometimes I'll laugh at something she does and it will make her laugh and we'll end up going back and forth just laughing at each other. Those are my favorite times with her.

I love this little girl so much. I definitely don't have this whole mom thing completely figured out and there's been tiring and frustrating times, but she has made every minute of the last six months better than every minute ever before. But now I need her to stop growing so fast because I feel like I'm gonna freak out at her first birthday.
Happy half birthday Palmer Tay!

Resolutions

2012-01-02T20:10:00.000-08:00

So they say that if you write your goals down, and share them with others, you're more likely to achieve them. I'm not sure who "they" are, but I tend to believe them on this one. So, on that note, I'm writing down some of my goals/resolutions for this year. I don't really care if nobody reads them, but the fact that I'm putting them out into the internetiverse (like that one? I just made it up) makes me feel like I have to really work on them.
These are in no particular order:

-Read the Book of Mormon start to finish. I realize that this is not a huge accomplishment, but I don't do well at reading it cover to cover. I start and read a ways and then start over again; I jump around; I get bored with parts (bad to say, I know, but I'm just being honest). So I want to read every single word, in order, this year.

-Lose my post-baby weight and get more toned. No, that wasn't a typo - I really did mean POST-baby weight. I couldn't really eat much during my pregnancy so I didn't gain a lot of weight. Therefore, within a few days of giving birth, I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight, albeit with a pudgy/squishy belly. After I had Palmer I developed a ravaging appetite; I think this was due to the fact that I spent nine months hardly touching or enjoying food and also because with Palmer nursing I could eat and eat and eat and never really get full or gain a pound. It was incredibly enjoyable for two or three months - I ate anything and everything that sounded tasty to me all day long. But then, slowly but surely, I started noticing the pounds coming back. Now, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't consider myself a big whale just yet, but I need to nip the uncontrolled eating in the bud before I become a whale. So, as of today, I am eating A LOT less junk and working out more. I started running again very soon after I had Palmer, but I haven't really increased my distance or speed and I mostly haven't been doing anything besides running, so it's time to up the intensity.

-Save. More. Money. Taylor and I have money in savings and we try to stick to a budget, but we both feel that we could save a lot more and frivolously spend a lot less. So we will.

-Get into a house! Living at my grandma's has been great for us and there's enough space for now, but we can't help but feel that we're living in limbo. We're ready to move on. We had hoped to have broken ground on our house by now, but that hasn't happened. It should happen this month and if all goes according to plan, we'll be in by summer...hopefully.

Our house may end up being a little smaller than this picture :)

I feel like there's a couple I'm forgetting...I guess it's good I wrote these down before I forgot them all. I may need to add goals as I think of them.

2012 is going to be AWESOME!

First Christmas

2011-12-29T18:34:00.000-08:00

Palmer's first Christmas has come and gone; she wasn't too impressed with the whole ordeal, but we sure had fun celebrating her first Christmas with her. I didn't get the best pictures, but she got way too many new toys. She also got some new clothes, pajamas and books.

We had planned to have our party with my dad's side of the family on Friday, the 23rd. Unfortunately the stomach flu decided to start traveling quickly through the whole family on about the 22nd so the rest of the family decided to stay away from us; the party ended up just being my parents and their posterity. It was still a good time with some yummy food. In the end there were very few members of the family that dodged the flu. I got it but Palmer didn't, thank goodness. Taylor has had a bit of an upset stomach off and on since last week but he still hasn't been hit fully by the yucky bug.
The next night we partied with my mom's side of the family. It was fun and crazy as usual. I sure do love all of my family, immediate and extended.
Taylor and I were up before Palmer on Christmas morning so we opened our own stuff and waited for her to wake up. She woke up just in time to "open" her stocking and presents and then we all got ready for church. After church we headed to my parents' house for breakfast with the family and to exchange draw name gifts. I also took some of Palmer's presents to their house to have the kids help open; I thought they'd enjoy it a little more than she would. I was right - they were all very happy to help her open her final presents. We spent Christmas afternoon just resting and enjoying the day. That evening we had my dad's side of the family over for dinner at our place. My grandma always had us all over for dinner on Christmas evening so we thought we should continue the tradition of having everyone eat at her house this year. It went well and it was great to see the Lyman/Black cousins since we'd missed them for the party on Friday night.

This picture isn't the best quality because it was taken with my phone, but I had to include the beautiful baby in her Christmas dress. She is so dang sweet and cute!

My Utah County siblings headed home the next day (boo), but not until Marilyn led her second Zumba class of the weekend. We started that tradition last year, her teaching Zumba at the Stake Center on Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas. I have zero rhythm, but I absolutely love it still. It felt so quiet and boring after everyone went home. I always feel some serious letdown for a couple of weeks after Christmas. I absolutely love the feeling in the air at the holidays and I love planning for Christmas and all the fun, food and festivities; it's just kinda sad when it's over and I realize I have to wait a whole year for another holiday season.

Taylor's parents made the trek down to Blanding on Monday to see us for a quick Christmas visit. They stayed for a day and headed home on Tuesday. It was nice having them visit and they loved spending a little time with Palmer of course.
Here's to everyone having a fantastic 2012!

Cinco de Palmer

2011-12-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I blinked my eyes and my baby girl turned five months old. This little girl is so sweet and so so much fun!

She now rolls from front to back like she owns it. Sometimes she turns and twists while on her back and it is obvious that she could easily roll over onto her belly if she wanted to.
She still has no signs of any teeth coming in, which is just fine with me. She has the cutest gummy smile in the world and she's already made sure that we know that all she'll have to do is flash that smile for the rest of her life and she'll pretty much get whatever she wants from her dad and me. Her hair is definitely starting to come in a little more. She is still pretty bald though...I don't think we'll be using any barrettes anytime soon. Luckily she rocks the bald look. She gets mistaken for a boy all the time, even when she's wearing pink and flowers. It doesn't offend me; I think she's the prettiest little thing that ever existed, but it's not crazy that people wouldn't automatically know she's a girl upon first glance.
Little Palmer girl is really starting to like playing with toys and I LOVE watching her. She's so curious about the world around her and spends her days staring at everything and just taking it all in. She is starting to get pretty good with her hands, grabbing things and getting them into her mouth. She really wants to sit up and does lots of little baby crunches when she's on her back, trying to sit up. She's getting pretty good with her balance and I think she'll be sitting on her own soon.
She still tells the cutest little jabbery stories, but she's quiet more than she's talking. Maybe that will change as she grows but for now she seems content to quietly take in everything around her.
The sleep situation is a dismal one these days. She's gotten more and more needy in the night and at nap time and my level of fatigue has increased right along with her neediness. She's had a few very good nights with long sleep, but overall we're going downhill. We've now started letting her "cry it out" which is KILLING me! We've done it for three days/nights now and while we are making real progress, it is a huge trial for me. I think I've shed as many tears as she has. I can't turn back now because then all her tears would be in vain, but I am having a really hard time with the crying. Other than sleep time though, she is an incredibly happy girl.
As documented in my last post, she went on her first big vacation, to Hawaii with us, last week. I wouldn't have been able to enjoy one minute of the trip if we'd left her home and I'm so glad she was there with us.
She's still a tiny little thing. I don't know her current measurements, but, while she is growing, I think she's just gonna be a little petite cutey. She can still wear a lot of 0-3 month clothes. She wears 3-6 months too, but most of them are still a little big on her.
A few days ago I started trying to ease her into eating rice cereal. She is still a little unsure of it, but she seems to quickly be warming up to it and getting a little more used to it. Before you know it, she'll be eating pizza and ice cream with me!
I am so excited to experience her first Christmas and our first Christmas with a child. I know that she won't understand anything that's going on, but I still think it's going to be so fun. We can't get enough of our little girl; we love her so much and feel so lucky that she's in our family.

ALOOOOOHA!

2011-12-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

WARNING - LONG post!
Well, our Hawaiian getaway sadly has come to an end...all I can do about it now is to do a blog post and try to remember how warm and awesome it was.
My parents had been to Hawaii 26 years ago, but this was the first time to Hawaii for the rest of us. Our flight was out of Vegas so we headed there on Tuesday morning. We drove with my parents and met up with Noelle, Trent and kiddos in Vegas that night. That's not the most awesome drive, especially with a baby who has now decided that she doesn't love being in the car for long drives, so we were nice and tired by the time we got there. We ate a quick dinner at the Luxor buffet (pretty good, not great) and went to bed early.

Palmer, just kickin' it in her carseat at the beginning of the trip...this was before she realized how much traveling we would be doing so she was still happy at this point.

The next morning we headed to the airport to start the long day of flying. The first leg of the flight wasn't the most enjoyable. Palmer and Denver weren't super happy (especially Palmer) so it made me SUPER nervous about the second leg, which would be much longer. Luckily they both did well for the long part (from Seattle to Hawaii). On a side note, I hate layovers in completely out-of-the-way locations; seriously - Vegas to Seattle to Hawaii? Lame! Anyway, we got to Honolulu pretty late and our Utah bodies thought it was even later than the local clocks told us. We went straight to the hotel and to bed.
The next morning we had booked a tour that circled the island and made stops at popular tourist spots. The tour was decent - we saw some things we wanted to see; all the stops were really short. I'll for sure leave some places out but we went to Hanauma Bay, a couple pretty lookouts, Dole Pineapple plantation (yummy ice cream!), North Shore (where big time surf competitions were taking place) and a couple other spots. It ended at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We spent the afternoon checking out some villages at PCC, taking a tram to the temple (beautiful!) and eating a delicious dinner. Right as we got seated for dinner, but before we got our food, a waitress came and asked if we wanted smoothies. Heck yes we did! We had paid a pretty penny for dinner so I thought the smoothies must just be a lovely option with our dinners. Not so much. Turns out they were $10 each or two for $15. We ordered first, then found out the price. We grudgingly paid for the smoothies. Well, as Trent said after the first swig of his smoothie, "Best $10 ever spent!" They were served in a hollowed out pineapple and were huge and D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! Oh. So. Good. By this point in the day the babies were so tired and NOT happy with being drug all around a tropical island. I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to enjoy the show to end the evening. Well, the heavens smiled down on us and both babies fell asleep just before the show began and stayed asleep the whole time. The show, "Ha - Breath of Life," was amazing. We were all SO tired at this point so it's a good thing the show was so entertaining and loud. I think all the adults stayed awake for most of the show. We passed out on the ride back to the hotel. I'm sure we all slept like babies that night. Speaking of sleeping like babies, Palmer slept amazingly well in Hawaii! She had her three longest nights of sleep...8.5, 9.5 and 11 hours of sleep! That's right - ELEVEN! Sadly, her new-found sleep habits did not make it back to the mainland, but I'll talk more about that in her five month post (happy five months to her!).

Me, Noelle, and the babes at the PCC. Palmer's hood is on because it was raining and a little chilly.

Family photo at the PCC

The next day we decided to take it easy to see if we could lose some of our exhaustion and help the babies to get some rest. We got a slow start to the day and then headed to Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling. My parents had snorkeled there in their previous trip and had always remembered the amazing things they'd seen. We looked into the possibility of snorkeling at a couple of other spots but they weren't as easy for our group of 10 to get to, so we stuck with Hanauma. It didn't disappoint. I'd only snorkeled once before in Cabo and I'm not sure if we even saw anything there. This time was much different. There were all kinds of sea-life - big, little, bright, spiky, long, fat etc. Way cool. Maxon and Scout loved playing on the beach and the babies took little naps on their beach towels. After we got back to the hotel we got some dinner and then took a sunset walk to Waikiki beach. Beautiful! I think my parents stayed out on the town for a little while that night (party animals) and I don't know for sure what the DeGroots did, but us Harrisons went back to the hotel and crashed.

The next day was game day...BYU vs. Hawaii - the excuse for our trip :) We spent the morning shopping and spending way too much money, but loving every minute of it. The game started at 2:30 so we headed to the stadium after a little shopping. BYU took care of business and won the game pretty handily. The game was fun, but honestly it was kind of an afterthought to the rest of the trip. The bus ride after the game took FOREVER. All the kids slept the whole ride home. I'm not sure what the other peeps did after they got to the hotel, but we just ordered pizza and hit the hay. We're tired people.

The next day was Sunday, so we wanted to be a little reverent. We had planned to go to church there but we couldn't find a close ward that met at a time that worked for us so we didn't make it. We went to the Pearl Harbor Memorial that day. It was so neat to be there just a couple days before the 70th anniversary of the attack. Luckily my dad is much better at retaining history knowledge than I am so between him filling me in, and my memories of the movie "Pearl Harbor" I was able to understand better what had happened there that awful December day in 1941. After doing the standard USS Arizona film and memorial tour we took a tour of the USS Missouri battleship. Very cool to be on an actual huge battleship. Those things are amazing and crazy. My mind was blown at the magnitude of the whole thing. After that we had to catch our shuttle back to the hotel. That night ended up being date night. My parents went to dinner on their own. Taylor and I kept the DeGroot kids so Noelle and Trent could go to dinner and then after they got back they kept Palmer so we could go out. While they were at dinner Taylor stayed in our room with the babies and I went to the swimming pool with Maxon and Scout. Saying that the pool was freezing and semi-miserable would be a bit of an understatement. Seriously, it was crazy cold. It didn't help that it had become overcast and breezy, but I would never have imagined that it could be so cold to swim in any pool in Hawaii. The kids took awhile to get in the water with me, but once they did they had a lot of fun and I LOVED hanging out with them. They were so dang cute and fun - I honestly thought of stealing them to have for my own. For mine and Taylor's night out, after walking around for a while and not finding much that really appealed to us, we ended up eating dinner at a random little sports bar and grill. Our food was way good and we were not disappointed. Then we walked around and hit up a few shops before returning to pick up our sleepy little Palmer. That's the night she slept 11 hours so I'm still not sure if Noelle drugged her or not.

The next day was our last, as we were catching a red-eye flight back home that night. We spent a few hours at Waikiki beach. The weather was perfect. We swam, we lounged, we ate, the kids built sand castles and buried Trent. It was a perfect way to spend some of our final hours. After showering and changing clothes we went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner (yum) and then shopped around to kill time before catching the shuttle to the airport. I was dreading the red-eye flight home because as annoying as a crying baby is on a normal flight, I figured it would be like 10 times worse on a red-eye where everyone wanted to just sleep. Luckily both babies wanted to sleep as much as everyone else on the flight. Noelle and I decided to use our carriers on the flight because it had been so uncomfortable holding them on the flight out. She had taken her Baby Bjorn; I didn't take one because I didn't have room in my luggage. I just took an over-the-shoulder sling thing and it ended up being a life-saver for me. I used it every day most of the day. There were different positions that Palmer could be in with the sling, depending if she was awake or needed to sleep. It saved my arms and back a lot of aching I think. Anyway, I think it was a great idea for us to use them on the plane. The babies slept like champs...I can't say the same for Noelle and me, but as long as they slept it was ok. And I think we were much less uncomfortable than the flight out. Our flight home was quicker because our layover was in L.A. Before we knew it we were in Vegas and saying goodbye to the DeGroots to start the long drive home. I was kind of in a daze for the whole drive, due to my lack of sleep the previous night during the flight, so the drive didn't seem too long to me. Palmer must have been super tired too because she mostly slept the whole way home.

It was kind of awful to return home to snow and freezing temperatures, but the trip was amazing and I'm so glad we went. I loved spending time with my parents and Noelle's family. I miss the DeGroots like crazy since we've been home and I miss the perfect Hawaii weather, but at least we get to enjoy Christmas time now. All in all, a lovely vacation!

4 Month Addendum!

2011-11-15T18:27:00.001-08:00

So a couple of big events have happened in the world of Palmer since my post yesterday so I thought I should put them out into the blogging universe. The first big thing was that she slept 8.5 hours last night! 8.5 people! After multiple 3 and 4 hour sleep nights lately that was such a lovely blessing! I'm not naive enough to believe that it will happen every night from now on but at least now I know it's possible and that we're moving in the right direction.
The next big thing was that Palmer rolled over tonight. I had her down for tummy time and she had been happily playing for a decent amount of time. Then she started to kind of get mad and I told her I was going to leave her for a few minutes to see if she would get mad enough to push herself over. She half-heartedly pushed herself up on her side a couple of times and then just kind of laid her head down and acted like she was resigned to the idea of staying on her belly. Then out of nowhere she pushed herself up and over as if she'd done it 100 times. I started screaming and clapping my hands and I think she didn't know what to think of the whole thing cause she just stared at me with wide curious eyes. Taylor was home so he jumped down on the floor by us and started giving her loves too. Needless to say, it was a very exciting moment in the Harrison household. We love our little Palmer girl!

Fall Happenings

2011-11-14T09:57:00.001-08:00

So I'm going to be honest, I don't enjoy blogging. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE reading others' blogs, but I really don't enjoy keeping up on mine. That would explain why I do such a poor job of it. Since Palmer was born I have managed to give monthly updates, but that is really just because I am a horrible scrapbooker, so if I don't document her growth and milestones on the world wide web it will all be forgotten. So that's my long-winded way of apologizing for the fact that every post is just a Palmer update. Hopefully there's some people that like to see her progress but really this blog is mostly for posterity's sake. We are taking a trip to Hawaii at the end of this month so that should give me some good blogging material that's not so Palmer-centric (although she is going with us so there will probably be LOTS of cute Palmer on vacation pics).
Miss Palmer Tay is now four months old as of 11/11/11. She had her four month old check-up today and I was told what I already knew - that she's perfect! She weighs 11 pounds 12 ounces, which is in the 10th percentile. I can't remember what her height was but it was in the 25th percentile. I also can't remember her head circumference but it was in the 75th percentile. She must finally be getting the Lyman noggin; before today's visit she has always measured in the 50th percentile for head. (Her check-up was literally 1.5 hours ago and already I've forgotten her measurements - do you see why I NEED to document her life on blog for anything to be preserved...my memory certainly isn't going to cut it).
Her poor cold has not ever fully gone away. Just when I think she's pretty much better she seems to get some new bug. Her cough seems to be getting better this week but for the two weeks prior to this one she had a very sad croupy cough. It has made sleeping difficult for her and for me, as the cough seems to be worst at night. Like I said though, it's definitely gotten better this week. She got a clean bill of health today though and shouldn't be contagious.
The sleeping situation is pretty grim these days. Her cough has not helped anything in the sleep department. A couple of months ago I thought we were on the cusp of sleeping through the night...it's only gone downhill since then. Her illness seems to have affected her sleep schedule in a really bad way. Lately she tends to sleep only about four hours for her first stint and then sleeps in only two or three hour stints from then on. Usually she still goes back to sleep quickly and easily but every once in awhile she decides to play and jabber for awhile. She's lucky she's so cute because it's impossible for me to be annoyed with her when she looks and sounds as cute and sweet and she does.
She is still not rolling over; she doesn't seem to have much interest in it right now. She is really strong though and can push herself up on her hands and lifts her head very high when on her belly. I can hold her hands and stand her upright and she supports her own weight like a champ. She loves standing and will be happy for as long as I will let her stand.
She has gotten SUPER talkative in the last couple of weeks. We spent a few days with her cousin Denver last week (my sister Noelle's kid) and he loves to jabber and squeal really loudly. Palmer seems to have taken some lessons from him because ever since then she has been telling a lot more loud and squealy stories like he does.
P-Tay had to get one shot this morning (it should have been two but they were out of one of the vaccines so we'll have to go back in a few days for that one - boo!). Last time she did so well with her shots that I wasn't too worried about her "recovery" this time. She did fine with the shot when she got it and then was just fine when we went home. Then a few hours later we were visiting my cousin's CUTE new baby, Heston, and Palmer started crying harder than she ever cries. I figured she was starving because that's really the only time she ever truly cries. I tried feeding her but she wasn't having it and was crying harder and harder. She was inconsolable and I couldn't figure out what could be wrong. But then it hit me that her leg must have been hurting her from the shot. I immediately gave her some Tylenol and then took her home to cuddle. I put a warm rag on the shot spot and cuddled her until she calmed down after about 20 minutes. She got over it about as quickly as the little crying fit had started and she returned to her happy smiley self. I HATE to see my baby in pain!
She was the CUTEST little tiger for Halloween. We didn't do any trick-or-treating but we did make sure to go see Grandma and Grandpa and the cousins.
We sure do love our little sweet Tiger.

Enjoy the cute pictures of our sweet Palmer! Some of them were taken on my phone, so the quality is less than ideal but she's so dang cute anyway. (Also, I finally made it to the 4-Corners Monument. Taylor's parents came to visit for a few days last month and so we drove on over and now I can officially say I've been there.)

THREE!

2011-10-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

My baby girl is three months old as of last week! Where has the time gone? I realize that three months isn't much, but it seems like I had her about a week ago. She is getting to be SO fun! Each day she smiles more than the last and seems so much more responsive to us. I think she knows her mommy cause she seems to smile the most for me :) I love that of course. I can't seem to get a good picture of her smiling - too much of a delay on my camera.
She doesn't seem to be making much progress in the sleeping through the night department. Pretty much she's the same as she was a month ago - five to six hours for the first stretch, then usually around three to four hours for the next stretch. She still eats quickly and goes back to sleep easily so I can't complain too much.
Palmer tells some pretty awesome stories these days. She babbles, coos and squeals all day long and I would just love to be inside her head. She isn't rolling over yet but she seems to be getting pretty close to rolling from front to back. She loves tummy time for about five minutes and then she realizes she's bored and she gets over it very quickly.
One fabulous quality about Palmer is that she does not spit up. I can count on one hand the times that she has spit up in her whole life and two of those times were the morning after she was born.
I mentioned in my last post that she was starting to get into sucking her fingers/hand. Just about a week ago she really started separating her thumb and sucking on it alone. I don't really want her to be a thumb sucker because it can be such a hard habit for kids to break, but it is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life. She sucks so loudly and intensely and I think she's pretty proud of herself every time she gets her thumb in there. I feel like I have more control over a binky as I can take that away when I'm ready for her to be done with it...I can't take her thumb away. I do like that she can self-soothe with the thumb sucking though. She's started pulling her binky out of her mouth and then trying to put it back in. She is not coordinated enough for that yet, but she gets a little closer every day.
Poor little P-Tay is still a little sick. Over the last few weeks her cold seems to have gotten better, then worse, then better again. She still doesn't seem too bothered by it, but it is really sad when she coughs her cute little cough or her breathing gets all congested. I finally took her to the doctor last week just to be safe and she was given a clean bill of health. Her ears looked fine, her lungs sounded clear and she had no temperature. The doctor said as long as she doesn't seem too miserable or the symptoms don't get worse then she should be fine. One good thing about going to the doctor was that we got to get her three month measurements instead of waiting until her four month check-up. Tiny little girl was only 10 pounds 5 ounces, 22 inches long with a head circumference of 15 inches. The doctor was not concerned with her tininess. She said she's very proportionate and seems to be growing just fine. She's just a little cute thing all around :) I weighed her at home the other day and my scale had her at 11 pounds.
As for how Taylor and I are adjusting to life with a baby, Palmer has made things too easy for us. She is pretty easygoing wherever we go and she usually doesn't mind being passed around. Anybody who knows me knows that I am ALWAYS tired and I need more sleep than the average human. This was something I was extremely worried about with having a baby because new moms are notoriously tired. I am more convinced than ever that Heavenly Father loves me because somehow I have felt just fine. Don't get me wrong, I'm still tired, but I am truly no more tired than I was before having Palmer. That is such a blessing for me! Taylor loves his sweet little girl and she loves him back. They're just as cute together as I always expected. I love my little family.
There's not much else going on in our lives these days. Everything pretty much revolves around our sweet baby. Our townhouse is going on the market soon and while it will probably take a good little while to get it sold, we are hoping and praying that it happens quickly.

Again, sorry for all the pics of just Palmer but I take about a million pictures of her each day. I can't get enough. Enjoy!

Baby blessing and more...

2011-09-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'll apologize in advance for the length and randomness that this post could become. I guess that's what happens when I procrastinate doing a new blog post for so long.
We blessed beautiful Palmer on August 28th. It almost didn't happen as our bishop forgot it was supposed to be on the program that day. But thanks to a brave nephew running up on the stand to remind him, we were able to get it done. Taylor's parents and his sister Brook and her family came down for the blessing. Noelle was also here, as were Kacey, Joe, Nicole and Osiris. It was so nice of them to be here and we love them all! Palmer looked absolutely beautiful in her blessing attire; Taylor's mom made the amazing dress, Brook made the cute cute headband, Kacey gave us the sweet little bracelet and Noelle took the awesome pictures. Palmer is so lucky to have so many people who love her so much already. Taylor did a great job with the blessing and Palmer could not have looked more beautiful! Our bishop commented to us after the blessing that he had never seen a baby so peaceful during a blessing. That's our girl!
Palmer was two months old a couple weeks ago on 9/11. Where has the time gone?!?! I'm already freaking out that she's growing up too fast. But at the same time it is so much fun to see her grow and learn new things. She is such a fun and sweet little girl. Everyone always comments at how mellow she is and it's true - she's just way laid back...most of the time! Every once in a while she gets upset for reasons that I am not sure of and she proves that she does actually have some strong lungs. During these little freakouts she will cry for up to a couple of hours and it just breaks my heart. It doesn't seem like she is in pain. Sometimes I think she must be hungry, but she gets so upset that she won't let herself calm down to eat. Maybe she's just tired and needs to let it out...who knows really? She gets over it as quickly as she starts usually and then she'll seem just fine. Hopefully I'm not jinxing it but she seems to be going longer between these little freakouts as time goes on. She does a great job of sleeping at nights. She still isn't giving me a full night of sleep, but that's ok. She usually sleeps five to six hours for her first stint, sometimes a little longer, sometimes less. She's very quick about getting through her midnight snack and then she does a great job of going back to sleep. From there she usually goes about three hours and then eats and goes right back to sleep again for three more hours. She usually seems to want to be up for the day between 8:00 and 8:30 and I hope she sticks with that schedule. She is still really sporadic with napping during the days. Some days she sleeps more than she's awake and some days she barely sleeps at all. When she's awake she's very alert and very curious, looking around at anything and everything. She has the cutest smile in the world, but is a little stingy with them. She is usually very happy in the mornings right after getting up. I LOVE this time with her! She smiles at the ceiling, lights, fans etc. just as much as she smiles at people. She tells cute little stories and I would so love to know what she thinks she is telling us :) She has recently discovered the joy of sucking on her hands. She tries out different combinations of fingers or sometimes it's the whole fist. Every once in a while she sucks on just her thumb, but more often than not she puts multiple fingers in. I don't necessarily want her to be a thumb sucker but it is the cutest thing I have ever seen when she gets so happy to suck on her fingers. She weighed 9 lbs 8 oz at her two month check-up and was 21 1/2 inches long. She's just a little petite thing and we love her so much. I want to cuddle with her all day long! She got her first cold last week and is still trying to get over it. She hasn't acted like it's bothered her much. She's been congested, sneezing lots and coughing a little and she had a little fever for the first day or so. Like I said, she doesn't seem too bothered by it but I hate it! She also had to get shots at her appointment last week. She cried for a few minutes, but overall she was really tough. We love our sweet little girl!
We had our annual Lyman Labor Day weekend extravaganza at the Colorado cabin a couple of weeks ago. As usual it was AWESOME and crowded and dirty and fun! We ate tons of good food and relaxed and just enjoyed each others' company. The men got some good projects done; the kids played tons and we all watched BYU squeak past Ole Miss. Some of us went bear-watching with Justin and we even saw a bear! We almost missed it and by the time we saw him he was about to walk away and he was pretty far, but at least we saw him. All in all, a fabulous time!
We had a really sad occurrence in our family last week. Deco and Kera were expecting a baby in a month and they found out on the 19th that he had died. I can't imagine the heartbreak they felt. We all had a really hard time understanding why this had to happen to them. It made me hold and cherish Palmer even more than before. Deco and Kera handled the whole thing better than I could ever hope to do. They were so strong and you could just see in them that they had a very strong knowledge that they will see him again one day and be able to raise their perfect little boy. Eli Fred Lyman was born asleep on the 20th and he was absolutely beautiful and perfect. They had a graveside service for him in Blanding on the 22nd and it was a really really nice tribute to a perfect little spirit. We all can't wait to meet Eli one day.
For my birthday a couple of weeks ago Taylor gave me a girls weekend with my sisters and mom. He had reserved a hotel room in Grand Junction and talked to the girls beforehand to make sure it would work. So this past weekend we loaded up and headed to GJ. Unfortunately Marilyn and Kera were not able to come, but we had my mom, me, Palmer, Noelle, Denver, Heather, Livvy, Kristi and Camryn so it was lots of fun! We ate some delicious food while we were there. We went to a pottery painting place and got in touch with our artistic sides. Our painted pieces had to stay there to be cooked so I can't show any pictures of our beautiful finished products but it was really fun. Then we did some shopping and went back to the hotel for some relaxing while Cam and Livvy swam. We were tired and lazy so we went to bed nice and early. We went to breakfast, then Barnes & Noble and headed home the next morning. We had heard about a fall festival that was happening in Fruita so we stopped there on our way home. It was a fun little fair/carnival thing. It was a quick weekend, but really fun for me.
Please forgive me for the amount of pictures in this post. It is really hard for me to narrow down what pictures of Palmer I want to use because I love every picture ever taken of her. Also, please forgive the randomness of the order; it is just too much of a pain to go through and get them all in the right place I would like them to be.

Coy is loving his chocolate pudding at the Colorado cabin! Love this boy!

Addison and Livvy love their new baby cousins :)

Palmer and Denver took turns sleeping in the swing at the cabin. Palmer's BYU jersey was way too big on her, but it seemed like the right thing to do to bust it out for the season opener.

The men did lots of projects while we were at the cabin. They worked hard and the ladies kept them well fed so that they could keep up their strength.

Palmer's all ready to watch her first BYU football game.

Elmer loves Colorado. The dogs run all around and get all kinds of dirty.

Scouty was very interested in her movie.

Jeremy J and Jeff made lots of cool paper airplanes for the kids.

One of the best parts of Colorado is the 4-wheelers and my dad's new side-by-side.

This was one of the few minutes that my mom actually sat down. The weekend doesn't end up being very relaxing for her, as she runs around helping everyone with everything. I sure do love my sweet mom.

McKenzie (Nicole & Osiris' little girl) and Palmer can still be best buds even though they cheer for different teams.

This was just a random day when Camryn, Scout and Palmer all happened to be wearing pink and grey striped shirts. Cute cute cousins!

This isn't the best picture but this was taken on Palmer's two month birthday. Such a big girl! (Her jammies are too big cause she grew out of the smaller size recently)

Also a two month old pic with a cute funny face.

Asleep in her carseat on her two month birthday. I love watching this girl sleep - so cute and peaceful!

Ready for another BYU game!

Just a cute picture. Palmer sure loves her daddy and I think he likes her too :)

So. Dang. Cute.

This isn't the best pic, but it shows the full beauty of her blessing day.

Pottery painting - fun for all ages.

This is what Palmer did most of the time we painted our pottery.

What a Week...

2011-08-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

So first off, Little Miss Palmer is one month old today!!! How is that even possible? Every single day I ask her to stop growing and stay exactly how she is right now but she just keeps on getting bigger. Truthfully I'm excited to experience all of her milestones but I know I am going to miss this newborn phase so much. She also keeps getting cuter, which I'm not even sure is possible. She is so sweet and so much fun; I can't hardly remember or imagine life without her. So far she has been the easiest baby imaginable (knock on wood). If she stays as mellow and sweet as she is now I am sure I'm going to be in for it with my next baby. She eats well, quickly and easily. She sleeps great. She seems to be figuring out days and nights already. She has times during the day where she will be very awake and alert for two to three hours at a time. During the night she just wakes, eats, gets a diaper change and goes right back to sleep. Generally she goes around three hours between feedings but at night she usually has one longer stretch that lasts anywhere from four to five hours. Last night she had a five hour stretch of sleep followed by a four hour stretch. Amazing! I weighed her on Monday, which was her four week anniversary of life, and she was eight pounds even. She is a little grunter - I absolutely love the noises she makes. She loves attention when she is awake and she loves to be held all cuddly snuggly close. I literally can't get enough of her. I know I'm biased but I think she is the cutest little thing that ever existed!

Taylor got a promotion at work the same day that Palmer was born (woohoo!) With the promotion came the requirement of a lot of training in SLC. He's had to be in SLC every week for the last three weeks and he'll come again next week and in three weeks. Palmer and I came with him last week and this week. She is a GREAT traveler! I was honestly pretty worried about how she would deal with all the driving and hotel life and such. She sleeps fabulously in the car and she seems to love her car seat. She has made it really easy to tag along with Daddy, which is good because we missed him a lot the first week when we didn't go with him. We have been staying at the Sheraton Hotel and it's been a very nice home away from home. I really really like staying in hotels. I think it's a combination of the fact that I associate hotels with vacations and that I don't have to do any cleaning at a hotel! Luckily I am able to take my work with me anywhere that has internet. Palmer and I spend our days coding in the hotel room and then visiting family and friends and running errands. I don't miss living in SLC for the most part, but I do miss the family and friends that live in Utah and Salt Lake Counties and I miss shopping! On that note though, since I have lived in Blanding my love of online shopping continues to increase exponentially. I am positive that I spend more money online shopping than I ever spent at stores when I lived in Salt Lake. By the end of the month I am sure we're going to be very happy to stay in Blanding with no more trips for a very long time.
Noelley Belly had her sweet baby boy yesterday! Little Denver middle-name-to-be-decided DeGroot was in a hurry to get here and his mommy had a very quick and exciting labor and delivery. He is so dang cute and I am super excited to see him and Palmer grow up as best cousin buddies.
Now onto the last item of business for today's post - I was rear-ended on the freeway on Tuesday and now our car is totaled. BOO! That was my first car accident and it was just as awful as I would have expected. The positive side is that neither I nor Palmer was hurt. Taylor wasn't with us; we were on our way to pick him up actually. It was rush hour and the traffic in front of me had stopped due to an accident so I stopped. Apparently the guy behind me wasn't paying attention because he bashed into the back of us after we'd been stopped for a couple of seconds. I don't think he even slowed down much. He was in a big Excursion so it could have been a lot worse than it was. Our back window shattered but luckily Palmer's car seat cover was draped over her car seat and zero glass got on her. She continued sleeping peacefully after it happened while I cried and shakingly checked on her. The EMTs and highway patrolman were very nice and made the situation less awful. The guy in the other vehicle was nice and apologetic. Palmer doesn't seem to have any effects from the wreck and I have been only minimally stiff in my neck, shoulders and upper back. I feel really lucky. I am SO sick of dealing with insurance companies but I must say that both my insurance and the other dude's insurance have been really good and easy to deal with (so far). It took longer than I would have liked to get into a rental car but now that we have it things are good. I guess it's time to start car shopping.

Taylor's golf clubs did not fare as well as Palmer and me.

All in all a busy and crazy week, but mostly good and fun. Life is good.

Palmer Tay Harrison

2011-07-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

We are so happy to welcome beautiful Palmer Tay Harrison into our family. She was born on Monday, July 11, 2011 at 5:55 p.m. She was 6 pounds 10 ounces and 20 inches long. She was and is absolutely perfect!
July 11 was my due date and I had an appointment with Dr. Black that morning. We knew there was a possibility I could be induced that day, but didn't want to get our hopes up too much in case it didn't end up happening. I'd been having contractions for a couple of weeks, but they were irregular and varied in strength. I'd begun dilating a couple of weeks prior also, so we knew my body was getting good and ready to bring her into the world finally. We were so ready to have our baby and had tried all kinds of methods to try to get her here for the week before my due date. It wasn't meant to be I guess.
Dr. Black checked me and I was almost four centimeters dilated and 90% effaced. I'd had contractions all during the night but they hadn't become regular. He asked what we wanted to happen and I told him we would like to have a baby that day if he felt ok with it. He said he felt great about it because my body had progressed as far as it had at that point. Yeah yeah yeah!
So they got me all settled into my room and got me hooked up to the Pitocin. They started at a low dose and my contractions became regular and stronger almost immediately. Around that time it started to become a little more real that we were actually going to have our baby in a few hours. We could not have been more excited!
The next time they checked me I had only progressed to 4.5 centimeters dilated, but at least it was progress.
Taylor's parents had hopped in their car and headed down from Salt Lake as soon as Taylor called to tell them she was coming that day. It was so nice of them and we were glad they were able to be there when the baby was born. They stayed for a couple of days and were super sad to say goodbye to little Palmer when it was time for them to go home.
A few hours later the anesthesiologist came in to get my epidural going. At that point my contractions weren't too bad yet, but they like to get the epidural in early so they don't miss the window if things start progressing too quickly. The anesthesiologist was awesome! He explained every single thing he was doing and made sure I was comfortable and relaxed. It was not even close to the nightmare that I was fearing; it was painless and quick. My right side went numb immediately and he said to kind of tilt my body so that the medicine would flow to my left side hopefully. As the time passed I continued to be able to feel my left side. The contractions got stronger and stronger and way close together. I could feel them really well on my left side. After a couple of hours of that the anesthesiologist came back and explained that he would try to re-adjust the catheter to see if we could get my left side numb. He did warn me that sometimes there will be a nerve block around a nerve or group of nerves that just keeps the medicine out. I was praying that would not be the case for me. He jimmied it around in my back and then had me lay on my left side again. Pretty quickly I started to feel my left side go numb and I was so very happy about that. As soon as the anesthesiologist was content that all was well with the epidural the nurse wanted to check my progress. She checked and was surprised to find that it was time to start pushing! Right then Dr. Black came in to see how things were going so he checked and confirmed that it was time to get the party started. He left to change into scrubs and the nurses busily got everything in place for the delivery. I just couldn't believe that I was so close to finally meeting my little girl. I was a little nervous because I had no idea how long I would have to push, but mostly I was just so excited and ready! My mom and Taylor were in the delivery room and after pushing through eight-ish contractions little Palmer made her debut! Before I was able to see her I heard her little cough and then the cutest cry in the world. I was already in love. They cleaned her off a bit and Taylor handed her to me. I have never seen anything so perfect in my life! I can't put into words the way I felt at that moment, but any parent can understand exactly how Taylor and I were feeling.
We were able to bring Palmer home on Tuesday evening. Her aunts, grandparents and cousins absolutely love her (I'm sure her uncles do too, but they just don't show it in the same way). My mom has been SO helpful. She is amazing and Palmer, Taylor and I will be forever grateful for her help this week. Palmer has been a GREAT baby! She sleeps well (so far), she nurses great and she is just so sweet! I can't get enough of her and I am just so grateful that she gets to be a part of our family. I'm not sure why Heavenly Father would trust us with this perfect little soul but I have a new resolve to be a better person and to teach little Palmer all of the things she'll need to know to live a great life. Somehow my love for her grows every day, which I wouldn't have thought possible when I first held her in my arms.
I had the best doctor and nurses and wouldn't have changed a thing about Palmer's arrival. My recovery has been awesome and I have felt great since we left the hospital. This experience has been amazing and I am so excited to introduce Palmer to the world and the world to Palmer.

40 weeks! This picture was taken Sunday evening, the day before Palmer was born.

First family picture...don't mind my hair.

First of many naps the two of us will take together. This was a couple of hours after Palmer was born. She is so sweet!

Car ride home - how exciting!

What's been going down...

2011-06-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

So I've been a serious blog slacker the last couple of months. It's not because of nothing to blog about, but rather because we've been so busy that I'm just now making myself sit down and get it all onto the blog.

I mentioned in my last post that we were moving into my grandma's cute little house. We've been here for a couple of months now and it's been great. The space is nice and while it was kind of weird to be living here for the first little while, now we're used to it and I kinda just love that I get this time in the house where my grandma lived for so long. I have planted a garden that doesn't come close to rivaling her gardens but I feel proud that my plants are growing and not dying...yet. I should have taken a picture for this post. I'll include a picture when it gets a little closer to producing all the yummy veggies we're expecting to get this summer. On the note of my grandma, she would have been 95 years old two days ago; I thought of her a lot that day and am just so grateful that I got to learn from her great example as long as I did. Hopefully she left some of her essence in this house so it will help me to learn to be the kind of mom and person that she was. I haven't yet taken a picture of the cute little house, but maybe I'll get around to that by my next post (probably not).

While I was in SLC for one of my baby showers (which I will talk about in a minute) there was an event called "Strut Your Mutt" happening. Kacey and Joe had participated in it last year with their dog Peter. It's basically just a fundraiser for homeless/neglected pets. You pay a registration fee and then show up at a park on the day of the event with your dog and you take a one-mile walk around the park with about ten million other dogs. Kacey, Joe, Elmer, Peter and I participated in the event this year. Elmer is such a little wimp - he was pretty scared of all the dogs, but he slowly calmed down and by the end I think he enjoyed our little adventure. Kacey had bought t-shirts for the dogs and they looked so dang cute in their shirts. Elmer needed a serious haircut so his shirt was nice and tight and he had what resembled a lion mane with all of his fur busting out of his neckline on the shirt. Seriously cute!

Seriously those are some cute dogs, even if they wouldn't look at the camera long enough to get a frontal shot.

Cute Caneparis

I know that I love this dog a little too much, but seriously he is the best dog ever!

A few years ago our current bishop and his wife opened up an ice cream shop in Blanding in a cute building that used the be a bank. It was called "Old Bank Creamery" and everyone in town loved it. They opened during the summer months and then closed down for the rest of the year. Well they haven't opened for the last few summers and somehow this year Taylor and Bishop Lyman got to talking about opening it up again. Bishop didn't necessarily want to deal with all the hassles of opening it and running it but he wanted it open and knew that the people of Blanding would love it. Taylor decided that it would be an ideal project for us to take on. I will be honest, I wasn't the biggest fan of the idea of running a business at this very busy time in our lives but I told him it was his call. Well he and Bishop talked a lot and decided to go ahead with opening it up. We opened the shop a little over a week ago and it has been going really well. I'm still not 100% excited about the timing, but I am glad that Taylor is getting some experience in the business world, which is what he wants to do in life. And I'm glad that the people of Blanding can get their ice cream fix for the next few months. It has been A LOT of work and sometimes I feel like I can only think/talk about the ice cream shop and all the little things we need to do to keep it running well. Taylor still works full-time at the bank so that leaves me to deal with the day-to-day issues...I'm not sure what is going to happen when the baby comes. I just really hope that by then our employees will be pretty self-sufficient. I will tell you this...the ice cream is GOOD! I have been eating a lot of ice cream every day and I think the baby likes it too :)

Here's the cute building where we run the ice cream shop. Seriously a way cool building.

Now onto baby updates! This pregnancy has FLOWN by and for the most part I have absolutely loved it! I feel really lucky to have had a breezy and fun pregnancy. I will be 38 weeks tomorrow! She could come any day now...or she could wait three more weeks. I am so dang excited to meet her. I just want her here. Now. I won't go into details about my measurements at my doctor's appointment a few days ago, but things are starting to happen and I really hope that she's getting very close to ready to come meet us. I know I should be more nervous than I am, but in my naivety I am really just excited! We have had three showers thrown for us and they have all been awesome! It started in May with an open house shower thrown by Taylor's mom and sisters. It was so much fun and so nice to see a lot of his family that we don't get to see often since we live far away. We got some awesome stuff and it was a great way to start out shower season. Next up was a shower thrown by Noelle and Kacey for all my up north family and friends. Noelle went all out and seriously put so much time and effort into personalizing everything and making the whole thing so super cute. Kacey hosted it at her house and also put a lot of effort into making it a perfect day for me. Marilyn and her girls helped too and I was glad she ended up being able to come at the last minute. I loved seeing so many people that I love and just like the first shower we got some cute and very useful stuff. Last but not least was a shower thrown by my mom, Kristi and Heather. Marilyn is in town so she was lucky enough to help with and attend yet another shower for me. She definitely gets extra points for that! This one took place yesterday and it was just as fun and awesome for me as the first two. Heather hosted at her house and she had everything looking so dang cute and girly and fun. The food was DELICIOUS and again we got some great presents. Let's just say this little girl is already very loved and very spoiled.

32 weeks pregnant.

36 weeks - not a big difference between 32 and 36 but I could feel and see a difference. Depending when this baby decides to come I may or may not get around to getting one last bump picture.

She's already hooked up very well with the clothes. She also has a dresser full of clothes. It's going to be like playing dress up with a little doll but even better! We have been given so many cute cute clothes from all our family and friends. Girls are so fun to shop for!

Here's the glider rocker chair thing with ottoman that Taylor and Jeremy assembled for me this week. It is very comfortable and hopefully it will make middle of the night feedings a little nicer. Oh and that's cute Taylor and Elmer taking a Sunday afternoon nap on the bed that's in the baby's room.

Here's her crib just waiting for her to do a LOT of sleeping through the night right from day one :)

Lots of awesome baby essentials!

Baby gear! I am so excited to use all this stuff! Thanks to everyone who gave us such great gifts and to those who helped us with the assembly of all the goods.

Cute books and more great baby essentials. Now all we need is the baby!

I have been feeling great. I have the usual discomforts of late pregnancy, but I think mine is not nearly as bad as lots of ladies have to deal with. The baby moves around a lot and it is my favorite thing in the world to feel her movements. I love watching my belly when she is really active. She does get up in my ribs sometimes and at times it feels like she is literally trying to tear my muscles/ligaments/tendons to shreds. That can get pretty painful, but aside from a few days in a row a couple of weeks ago she keeps it to a bearable minimum. I think she has just run out of space and doesn't know what to do with herself in her cramped little area right now. Hopefully she finds her way out very soon. It has started to get pretty hot outside but the hot temperatures really haven't bothered me too much and I feel really lucky and grateful for that. I don't sleep well at all because of discomfort and having to pee a million times a night, but somehow I continue to feel ok during the day and I'm able to get all the stuff done that I need to do each day. Ideally I would take afternoon naps, but that doesn't ever end up working its way into my day. I guess I'm just getting prepared for the sleepless nights/days that are coming my way. I'm assuming that my next post will come after little Palmer's birth so stay tuned for that! Yeah yeah yeah!

Have you ever seen a cuter little chair? Heather gave us this sweet little pink and white checkered chair with Palmer's name embroidered on it - I love it!

On the Move

2011-04-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

The meaning of the title of this post is two-fold: First off we're in the process of moving and secondly, the baby is moving SO much these days!

My sweet sweet grandma died a couple of months ago and left her cute little house empty. My dad and uncles asked us if we would like to live there to kind of take care of the place for now. It's a win-win situation because they don't have to stress about keeping up the yard/house etc. and we get some nice little space to start raising our sweet baby in a couple of months. I'm not going to lie, even though I'm excited for the space and I know we will really be grateful when the baby comes, I am sad to be leaving the apartment at my parents' house. I have absolutely loved living here. I guess I'll probably survive being two blocks south. We should be in the house by this weekend. I'll take a picture of the house and add it to this post soon. Thank goodness for kind family that takes pity on us...otherwise we'd probably be homeless right now.

Update on our townhouse - the value seems to keep dropping so we won't be able to sell this spring/summer like we were hoping. That's the bad news. The good news is that we found a new renter who will move in next month and he will be paying us more than our current renters. That will be nice to get a little extra each month. The whole process of finding him and getting him signed was so smooth and quick and we are SOOO grateful for that.

Now on to the fun stuff - the baby! I LOVE this little girl! She is so much fun and I am getting so anxious to meet her. She moves around like crazy and as you'll see by my big big belly she is getting BIG. Well at least I'm getting big and I sure hope I can blame a lot of it on her :) My belly has had a major growth spurt in the last month and not even Nicole can say my bump isn't legit now. I am still feeling really good and loving every phase of this pregnancy. Since my last post I started on some new heartburn meds and my acid reflux is SOOOO much better now. I have felt a million times better. Prilosec is my new best friend. I can't believe we will be welcoming this baby in less than three months. I really hope we'll be ready for her!

24 weeks

28 weeks (Seriously check out the growth between 24 and 28 weeks!)

Now that is some major growth! I've started feeling some contractions in the last couple of weeks. They haven't been painful at all, but it's making me realize how close to the end I'm getting. I'm sure that when I get bigger and more uncomfortable it will feel like this pregnancy is never going to end, but like I've said before, so far it is flying by and I feel like two and a half months is no time at all.

Continuing with the fun stuff, my parents gave the entire family a trip to Disneyland for Christmas last year. We just had the trip last week and it was so so so much fun. We had a total of 29 of us, plus the three fetuses (feti?). We spent time at the beach (cold cold cold and windy) and a couple of fun and tiring days at Disneyland and California Adventure. The weather for the park days was soooo nice. It actually got a little too warm for comfort, but in my opinion warmth is much better than cold. When we were younger and we would go on family vacations my parents would get us all matching shirts so of course we had to have matching shirts for this trip! We worked together to come up with some SWEET design ideas and ordered some nice BRIGHT shirts; then we went to work. We were pleased with the final outcome. The shirts were as cheesy as could be and some of the in-laws were not too pleased to have to wear them, but most of us thought they were awesome. The kids loved them of course and that's the most important part. I don't have a picture of the whole family in their shirts, but I'm sure my mom's blog will have a post soon with a pic of the whole family. I wasn't able to ride a lot of the rides of course, due to the bambino, but since there were two other pregos (Noelle & Kera) and a bunch of little kids, we were able to stick together and find fun kid rides while the others went on the crazy rides. Thanks Mom & Dad for the awesome trip! Here's just a few pics of the FUN weekend:

Now that is a legitimate baby bump...

2011-02-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, so of course I'll get to baby stuff in a minute but just to prove that I can talk about other things I'm going to tell a little about other things that have been happening in our life.

Last week we headed to St. George for our second annual Parade of Homes/Presidents' Day weekend with Jeremy, Kristi, Nicole and Osiris (and McKenzie this year of course). The weather was less than ideal - cold, raining, wind blowing and even snowing, but we still had a good time. I am proud to say that J & K and Taylor and I went to ALL 26 parade homes, plus one extra open house. J & K always go to all of the houses, but in my first POH experience last year I probably made it to less than half. This year I wouldn't commit to going to all of the houses until we had only three houses left to tour. N & O couldn't be expected to drag Kenz to all of the houses so they were allowed to go home for nap time when it was necessary. A lot of the houses were pretty regular, but there were a few really cool ones and it just made Taylor and me want to build our own house even more than we already did. Will someone PLEASE buy or burn down our townhouse already?!?! Geez! We also shopped (I spent a lot more money than I should have but it was oh so enjoyable) and ate WAY too much food; Dr. Black will definitely not be able to get after me for not gaining any weight at my next appointment. We stayed at Bryce and Cathy's awesome house and, as usual, it was lovely. I took my camera with very good intentions to document the weekend, but I was a slacker and never took the camera out of its case. We love this little St. George tradition and hope that it's able to continue for a long time!

Elmer turned one while we were in SG. I don't think he felt too bad that we missed his first birthday, but we did bring him a couple of toys and some treats. He is HUGE! I hope that he's done growing, but every time I think that he's done he has a little growth spurt and becomes a little more monstrous than before. He is the cutest and sweetest dog in the world...seriously.

Joshy got home from his mission in France earlier this month. He's still good ole Josh, teasing the kids and saying his little Joshisms. It was so much fun at the airport waiting for him to show up. Almost every one of my parents' posterity was there; we were missing just a few. So it was a big crowd with some very cute (and a little impatient) kids. It was all worth it when we saw him coming down the escalator. It's been fun having Joshy Squashy home and even if he puts racing stripes on his new Mustang we'll still love him!

I am absolutely LOVING working from home. It's a whole new world and it's one that I am very happy to be a part of.

Ok, now on to the baby! The last couple of weeks have been very eventful in womb-land. The most exciting news is that we had an ultrasound last Wednesday and found out we're having a beautiful baby girl! Ok, so the ultrasound tech didn't confirm that she'll be beautiful but I could tell in the pictures that she's going to be perfect. It is so much fun to finally know the gender! Time to get serious about names. Also, right after my last post I started feeling her move in my belly. At first I questioned if it could really be her because it started as legitimate kicks, not just weak little flutters like I'd been told it would probably feel like in the beginning. She's a strong one! The kicks and twists and turns continued to get more frequent and more and more strong until I became sure it was her. My stomach is pretty active/upset most of the time ever since I got home from my mission so maybe I missed the little stuff because it just felt normal to me... Sometimes the kicks are so strong that I'm certain that Taylor should be able to feel them. He tried to feel a couple of times with no success but two nights ago she was kicking hard in the same spot over and over so I had him put his hand there. Sure enough he felt a hard little kick! It was sooo cool and we were so pleasantly surprised that he was able to feel her so early on. It's my favorite thing in the world when I feel her move around...even when she decides it would be funny to press on my bladder for a few moments. Taylor thinks she's funny. I am so excited to see him with his baby girl. I am 100% positive she will have him completely wrapped around her tiny finger the second she is born.
We're more than halfway through the pregnancy now and I still feel like it is flying by. Overall I have been feeling a little better, but I still don't usually feel great. I think most, if not all, of my stomach issues stem from my acid reflux. It is constant and it is awful! It is getting progressively worse and I'm hoping to get some stronger meds when I go to my appointment in a couple of days. Acid reflux/heartburn is a miserable curse that I am trying to bear patiently.
I still stay away from chocolate and I've pretty much come to accept that I probably won't be able to stand it for the rest of the pregnancy. I really hope I learn to like, nay love, it again after the baby comes though. I don't sleep well at night. This is due to two lovely pregnancy symptoms - the constant need to pee and my achy sore stiff hips! My upper legs and tailbone area just hurt all the time, but especially at night when I just wanna sleep. People say to get as much sleep as possible now because after the baby comes I won't sleep anymore, but I think my body just wants to make sure I'm ready for what's to come so it's not letting me get a whole lot of sleep right now.

21 Weeks

I don't intend to post bump pictures every two weeks but since I wanted to do a post today and since my belly has grown exponentially in the last two weeks I figured it should be documented. I think I'm getting to the point now where people would probably assume I'm pregnant, even without knowing for sure, instead of it looking like I just ate way too much for lunch. I'm still able to wear my normal clothes, but they're not the most comfortable, so I'll probably be transitioning away from them and into some more comfortable maternity wear in the days to come. Our little girl continues to grow big and strong and we can't wait to meet her in a few months :)

The Bump

2011-02-14T09:11:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is for Tyrel. I hadn't really decided if I was going to take bump pictures to document this pregnancy, but I've read a few times that I will regret it if I don't (I don't really know if that's true, but better safe than sorry I guess). Then Tyrel asked for a bump pic so I decided I'd better just do it.

19 Weeks

I'm 19 weeks along now and I feel like every week of this pregnancy goes faster and faster. I may not feel like that once I'm huge and uncomfortable, but for right now I'm just enjoying the experience. For the most part I've been feeling decent. I haven't been vomiting the last couple of weeks, although there has been a few times when I've come real close. I have gained a couple of pounds so that is good. We will FINALLY find out the gender a week from tomorrow. I feel like my stomach has started to grow noticeably bigger every day. I can still wear my regular pre-pregnancy clothes, but sometimes they feel a little too tight for comfort. I'm entering the awkward phase where I'm going to have to use safety pins and hair elastics to expand the waist of my pants/skirts until I'm really big enough for maternity clothes. I haven't felt the baby move yet, but I'm expecting it any day and I'm super excited for that!
We are so dang excited to meet this little baby in five months! I know our lives will never be the same and I just hope we're ready to give the baby everything he/she needs.

Moving right along

2011-02-01T14:19:00.001-08:00

Well I'm 17 weeks along now. I had a doctor's appointment today and everything is going according to schedule. I got to hear the baby's fast little heartbeat again and see him/her in another ultrasound. He/she was not showing us anything to give any indication of whether we should start buying pink or blue, but it was still so fun to see the little cutie! I guess we'll have to be patient for three more weeks.
I have been feeling better than I did in the first trimester, but I've still had my pregnancy issues. The constant nausea is gone, but I still get sick plenty. My doctor's goal for me by my next appointment is to have gained any weight at all. So far I haven't been able to eat enough/keep enough food down for that to happen. Normally it would be a good problem for a girl to not be able to gain weight, but I know it's important to gain weight during pregnancy so I've been trying to figure out how to do that. I don't have much of an appetite most of the time. For about a week and a half I thought I was past the vomiting and I was even having some cravings and really enjoying food again. For some reason that didn't last and I'm back to food mostly not sounding good and not sitting well in my tummy. I have to eat pretty regularly or I get real sick, so I eat small amounts all throughout the day.
I have pretty constant heartburn/reflux but for the most part it can be kept under control with Tums and an uncomfortable wedge pillow (thanks Nicole - it really has helped)! The discomfort of sleeping with the wedge is better than the discomfort of not sleeping due to reflux.
I've pretty much focused on the negative, but honestly this pregnancy is flying by and I really feel like it hasn't been too bad at all! I am loving this experience. Taylor and I are getting so excited to meet our little baby Spike in a few months. I have now been working solely from home for a week and it is going so great. I feel so lucky that I will be able to stay home with the baby when the time comes. Any guesses about the gender?

Every woman with child should live in Blanding...

2011-01-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

Some of you might think this is a bold claim, but wait until you hear my reasoning: I am just over 15 weeks along and I have had THREE ultrasounds! That's right, best doctor ever! He told us at our first appointment that he really likes to do a lot of ultrasounds so we should just plan on that - I say FINE BY ME! I have only had two appointments, but I had an extra ultrasound to double check the measurements of the baby last week. Also, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that my appointments are costing A LOT less than all you pregnant city girls' appointments. I'm just saying... Ultrasounds. Are. Awesome.

updates Updates UPDATES!

2011-01-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

Ok, so now I have no excuses left. I’m finally pregnant! Here come the blog posts. This first pregnancy post may be really long and boring for most, but I want to document my pregnancy for posterity’s sake so I’ve got to get caught up on the last three months.

So I thought I was 13 weeks along and due July 20th, but I had an ultrasound today and the baby was measuring over 14 weeks so the doctor moved up my due date to July 11th - woot woot! I really hope this doesn't just mean I'm growing a monster baby...I don't want to birth a 12 pounder.
I was actually pregnant when I wrote my last post, but I didn’t know it yet. We found out the next week. Most of you know this, but we had tried to get pregnant for a couple of years and were starting to get quite frustrated and worried. We had started the process of seeing doctors to see if anything might be wrong with one or both of us. The first weekend in November we went to SLC for Taylor to have some tests done at the University Hospital. We found out about three days later that I was pregnant. Needless to say, when we got the results from his tests a month later and everything looked fine we were relieved, but not super surprised. I thought about taking a pregnancy test the day before his tests, but I figured it was probably a week too early and wouldn’t show up as positive yet even if I was pregnant. I had started having pretty constant heartburn (I always call it heartburn, but it’s actually acid reflux I think) and a little nagging voice at the back of my head kept saying it might be because of a bambino in my belly; but I kept brushing it off because I’d been disappointed a lot in the last two years. When the heartburn didn’t go away and my stomach started getting a little upset too I decided to take a test. It was positive! So I took another one...and it was positive too! I literally couldn’t believe it; I showed the tests to Taylor and obviously he was so super excited. It seemed so unreal at first that it wasn’t very hard to not tell people; also I was so so scared of miscarriage. I was kind of a paranoid mess for the first few weeks. (Disclaimer: Not that it really matters, but the following time-frames are based on how far along I thought I was before the doctor moved me up). The real nausea started to set in around week 5 and it pretty much set up camp for a nice stay. During weeks 5-12 I would wake up feeling pretty good with only minimal nausea, but throughout the day it got worse and worse. By the time I got home from work most nights I was pretty much useless. I just laid around a lot and went to bed way early. People keep asking me if I’ve been overly tired, as that’s a super common pregnancy symptom in the first trimester. As I’ve said in this blog before, I’m an unnaturally tired person always. I didn’t notice any extra fatigue until I got a cold around week 8. Colds always knock me out and this one was no different. This cold didn’t want to go away and it pretty much stuck around for about a month. So my extra tiredness during that month was probably a combination of cold and pregnancy. All I know is that I would pretty much go to bed by 8:00 most nights and I didn’t feel one bit bad about it.
Luckily before I got pregnant I was in the habit of running/working out in the mornings so I have just kept that up. As far as working out is concerned it has worked out well for me that the mornings are when I feel best. My nausea seemed to get stronger and stronger as the weeks passed, so I was getting a little worried that it might never go away. I kept hoping that 12 weeks would be the magical time of relief. The days leading up to the 12 week mark were the worst I’d felt the whole time - I was pretty miserable. Well last week I hit 12 weeks (actually 13 it turns out) and luckily my nausea has gone WAY down. It’s still the most subtle in the mornings and increases throughout the day, but it is soooo much more bearable than before. I never have much of an appetite, but if I don’t snack pretty constantly I get really sick. So I’ve been eating LOTS of crackers, dried fruit and jolly ranchers. I have had zero cravings. For the most part the same foods still taste good to me, even though they never sound good when I think about them before eating. The one exception to my unchanged food tastes is chocolate! Pretty much as soon as I found out I was pregnant I started having the weird weird symptom of a very strong aversion to chocolate. I haven’t had chocolate in over two months and I just keep hoping I’ll be able to eat it again someday. It makes me sick to think about it, to look at it and don’t even get me started on the smell! Ugh. Sweets in general pretty much never sound good to me anymore, but nothing makes me sick like chocolate. Those of you that know me well know that I am huge sweets/junk food person normally. I LOVE to make sweets and I LOVE to eat them even more...well I used to - I hope it comes back. I also have a really hard time with smells, as I think is common for most pregnant women. It doesn’t matter what kind of smell it is, if I can smell it, it’s probably gonna make me sick. Perfume is one of the worst offenders. Candles, air fresheners, food, smoke, grease, dogs...all bad news.
Taylor has been so great through the first trimester. He’s been sensitive and patient when I needed it most. He’s dealt with my mood swings like a champ! He gives me good back massages and he doesn’t use cologne on the days when I’m gonna be around him during the day :). At the beginning we both felt like the baby was going to be a boy. My feelings changed quickly to a girl. I could not care less what we have, except that I can’t think of any boy names that I would actually consider using. Maybe that’s why I feel like it’s a girl... If anyone has good suggestions for names let me know. I’m real picky apparently.
The best news of the last couple of weeks is that I have given my notice at my job and starting on January 26th I am going to just do medical coding from home! Scary and exciting! I feel really good about it and I am so happy and grateful for the chance to stay home with the baby. We’ll still have insurance through Taylor’s job, so it worked out pretty perfectly. This year has already started out pretty much as great as possible, but if we could sell our stupid house in Sandy everything would literally be perfect. I know - now I’m just getting greedy.
Wow, when I said this post would be long I didn’t know it would end up this long. Sorry if anyone is actually still reading at this point. Thanks for everyone’s prayers and positive thoughts. We are so happy and excited for this step in our lives and we’ll keep you posted (not so many details from now on...at least not all at once). Here’s hoping for a happy and healthy baby!

I AM A BAD BLOGGER

2010-11-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know I am a bad blogger. I have an excuse though - I really have nothing going on in my life or in my mind that is exciting or interesting enough to blog about. If you have a problem with it then start praying for me to have a cute baby (or even a not-so-cute baby for that matter) and then I'll inundate the internet with posts about him/her to the point that you'll rue the day that you wished for me to have a baby. Until then, I'll probably remain more or less MIA in the blog world. However, I do still love to check all y'all's blogs, so keep 'em coming!

Deco

2010-09-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Ok so this is a little belated, but I wanted to give a little birthday shout out to Deco.
What to say about him...Deco is so incredibly unique. I'm certain that anybody who knows him would agree with me that he is completely his own person. He doesn't conform to others' opinions. He doesn't base decisions on what others think is cool - he just does what he thinks is best for him. Deco is an incredibly hard worker. When he played football in high school other players and coaches were constantly saying how he always gave 100%; even though he was not one of the big guys on the team he played as tough as the big guys. He still works that hard in life. At times in the past few years he has worked three jobs at a time (maybe more?). He works very hard to provide for his family and give them a good life. He is a very loving father and one of the most patient people I know.
Deco and I share a special bond. I think this is partly because of how close we are in age (one year and six days), and also because we served our missions at the same time, speaking the same language. We traveled to Brazil shortly after I got home and we had an awesome trip. He is really good about speaking Portuguese to me...I'm not so good about speaking it back to him. Because of him I haven't completely lost the language yet.
I hope he knows how awesome he is. Love ya D!

In this picture we're standing on the border of Brazil and Argentina and you can see Uruguay in the background...pretty cool.

I am a tired person...

2010-07-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

So anybody who knows me very well knows that I require a pretty ridiculous amount of sleep in order to function in a normal way. I have always envied people who can consistently sleep four to six hours a night and still get things done. If I get less than six hours of sleep in a night then it takes me a good week of eight to nine hour nights to start feeling half decent again. I have learned from experience that I really need a consistent eight hours a night in order to think clearly, but even then I'm ALWAYS tired. I probably average about 7.5 hours of sleep on weeknights, which isn't ideal for me but I make it work; then on the weekends I need to sleep a ridiculous amount in order to store up a little bit for the coming week of work. My whole family (minus my mom) is notorious for being able to sleep anywhere anytime. It's not possible to live a productive life and to sleep as much as our bodies want us to sleep, so we have all come to accept the fact that we just have to be tired constantly. I have had to find the happy medium where I get enough sleep to be able to function properly, but not so much that I sleep away all the hours in the day to the point of having no time to get anything done. I have slept through more classes (especially in college) and work meetings than any respectable adult should in a lifetime. I am not even one little bit kidding when I say that I think I might have a slight case of narcolepsy or something similar. It often gets to a point where I have absolutely no control over falling asleep, regardless of the amount of caffeine or anything else that I take into my body. And that can happan at any time of day in really any situation, even if I've gotten a full good night's sleep the night before. I'm not sure why I'm putting this into a blog post, other than I want the universe to know that I'm not just lazy - I really really want to be awake more and be more productive, but my body won't let me.

My seester

2010-05-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

First of all I wanna say happy Mother's Day to my mom, mother-in-law, grandmas and all the other moms who influence me. I have been blessed to always be surrounded with fabulous moms who are such great examples and support to me.
Besides being Mother's Day, today is also Kristi's birthday so I wanted to give her a little shout out.
When I was young I remember being taught in church or in school (can't remember for sure...probably church though) that we should pick good role models to try to model our lives after. So we made a list of people that we admired and who we thought were good examples. I don't remember anyone that was on my list except Kristi. She has always been such a fun person to be around and I don't even remember her being mean to me when I was a little annoying girl trying to follow her and her friends around.
Kristi is one of the bravest people I know. Her and Camryn are in the process of breaking Camryn's new horse (Stella) right now. The other day they were in the little round pen and something spooked Stella and she took off at a sprint going in circles. Kristi got right in her path and started waving her arms. I'll tell you what, I would have been finding a way out of that little pen...ain't no way I would step in front of a semi wild horse who was running at that speed. But not Kristi, she just stepped in the way and Stella stopped and calmed down. Kristi used to rappel a lot, which I've done a few times but it scares the crap out of me.
Kristi is a HARD worker. She is an awesome mom and devotes a ton of time to her kids' various activities. Very rarely is she doing only one thing at a time. She usually has her computer doing her coding stuff while also attending to her kids' every need, answering my coding questions and laughing at Jeremy's jokes all at the same time. I hope that someday my kids turn out half as cool as hers. I have absolutely loved living so close to Kristi and her family ever since I moved to Blanding. I'm glad she married someone who my husband can be such good friends with. We love hanging out with them.
I'm so glad to have Kristi as my sister and friend. I love her guts! Happy Birthday Kris!

It's a Boy!

2010-04-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

That's right, we're the proud new owners of Elmer; he is a CUTE black shi-tzu puppy. He's the son of Ellie (my mom's dog) so we've known him since he was born. He is so sweet and so far he seems pretty laid back. There are two exceptions to his laid-backedness - He does not like it when his mom bullies him around and he fights back. They get into some pretty ferocious barking/biting matches, but he never starts the fights. Ellie is a really laid back and sweet dog too, so I think she just feels threatened by all the attention he is getting and she'll calm down once we all get used to each other. The other exception is when we leave him in his little sleeping area all alone at night. He yaps and cries like the world is ending. It is the saddest thing ever, but he is not potty-trained nearly enough to let him sleep anywhere else yet.
Camryn named Elmer when he was born and we think the name fits so we decided to keep it. Taylor tries to act like Elmer doesn't completely melt his heart but they totally love each other and he hates it when Elmer cries when we have to leave him alone at night. We love our new doggy!

Calling all foodies

2010-04-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

I have started a new blog. If you spend any time in the kitchen, whether you like to cook or not, then check it out here What's for Dinner?. I love cooking but I usually hate deciding what to make for dinner/events, so my vision is that a bunch of us can post delicious recipes and help each other out with ideas of yummy things to make. If you would like to be a contributor to the blog and I didn't already send you an invitation, send me your email address and I'll add you.

What ever happened to grammar and punctuation?

2010-03-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

Warning - I'm going to step onto my soapbox for a moment. I was going to give specific examples of all of the common grammatical and punctuation errors that drive me nuts that I see on blogs, emails, FB etc. (and billboards and "professional" websites for crying out loud - if you're going to pay that much money to get your name/business advertised maybe you should have someone who passed the second grade edit it before you print it). Apostrophes (possessive & contractions) seem to be the biggest culprits. Don't even get me started on the messes that happen when people start mixing plurals and possessives; and beyond that are last names that end in 's'...always a disaster. Anyway, I won't bore everybody with a full lesson because I know that nobody cares and I'm not an expert anyway. But I needed to get my opinion out into the universe that as a society we're starting to look pretty stupid if we can't even put into practice the very basic and common lessons we learned in grade school. And no, I'm not perfect and I'm sure I've got my share of errors in stuff that I write, but I hope that I do better than a lot of things I read these days.

I'm going to finish off my post with a thought from my good friend Ross, who pointed out to Rachel that y-o-u-'-r-e means "you are" and y-o-u-r means "your."

J.O. VB

2010-02-26T18:35:00.001-08:00

When I was somewhere in my pre-teen years the Junior Olympic Volleyball program was first brought to Blanding. I played every year that I could and I absolutely loved it! Since then it has gotten bigger and more popular each year. Volleyball is huge in Blanding and they start these girls nice and young learning the fundamentals of the game. Kristi and I are coaching Camryn's team this year. They are all 4th graders who had never played any organized volleyball before and they are all learning so fast.

Camryn - our clutch server...seriously she did awesome!

We had our first tournament in Monticello last weekend and it brought back so many good memories and I really had a lot of fun with the girls. They had such good attitudes and I love their enthusiasm for the game! I wanted to get out there and play with them so badly. They didn't need me though; they did just fine on their own. Tomorrow we have a tournament here in Blanding. I think the girls are really going to come into their own on their home turf.
Enjoy some pics from last week's tourney!

How bout those socks...pretty great right?

Besides being an awesome server, Cam-bam is a really consistent passer too. She's fun to coach

Update

2010-02-16T14:09:00.000-08:00

Ok so we've lived in Blanding for a couple of weeks now and there's not much to tell but it seems like it's time for an update. I started my job with the court immediately after moving here; it's going well, but it's overwhelming as all new jobs are.
Taylor's been able to do some random odds and ends to try to keep himself busy, but he's still looking for his dream job. Keep your fingers crossed that we find it soon! Dream jobs are not plentiful in Blanding.
We are loving the slowness and relaxedness (made up word) of living here. My parents have been awesome hosts and it's been fun spending time with them and eating my mom's delicious cooking again :)
We're looking forward to getting completely unpacked and settled in so we can start spending more time with friends.
I am coaching my niece's J.O. volleyball team with Kristi. So far it's been pretty fun - we've only had a few practices; our first tournament is this weekend...should be interesting. The girls haven't ever played before so hopefully they at least have fun with it and learn a little something. It's been really fun to get to hang out with Camryn...she's my little buddy.
So that's the rundown of our first couple of weeks in Blanding...we still think it's the best place in the world.
Oh and P.S. we're still looking for renters (or better yet, buyers) for our townhouse so if anyone knows of anyone that might be interested send them our way!

Gettin' back to my roots

2010-01-19T20:54:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a lovely tiny town called Blanding, Utah. I loved growing up in the middle of nowhere and I always felt like it was the best place in the world. I always thought that it would be great if I could raise my children there but I knew that would be unlikely to happen if I married a non-Blandingite. When I met Taylor and we decided to get married I figured I was sealing my fate to being stuck in the “big city.” Taylor grew up in West Jordan and his parents and sisters all live within about 20 miles of each other. Luckily I really do like SLC and I figured at least we would always be close to his family and we would likely always be close to at least some of my siblings, being that four of them live in Utah County currently. After one of our first trips to Blanding together as we were driving home Taylor said something to the effect of how much he loved Blanding and that he had a strong feeling that we should try to find a way to live there. Of course I was super happy to hear this, but I made myself stay rational by remembering that it is very difficult to find good jobs in the middle of nowhere and I also worried that Taylor might regret saying he wanted to live there. But as time passed he only became more sure of wanting to live there so we decided to start passively looking at job openings. We assumed it would take quite awhile for us to find the right job opportunity and for us to feel ready to give up city living. Well it did take awhile, but not quite as long as we had thought. A job opening came up at the court in ‘Cello late last year and multiple people told me I should apply. At first I was hesitant because this was the kind of job that I knew I would have an actual chance of getting and I didn’t want to apply if we weren’t serious about moving there this soon. After Taylor and I talked about it a lot and read through the job description a few times we decided I should apply. Well to make a long story a little less long, I ended up being offered the job last week and we have decided to take it. It took fasting, praying, temple-going and even a few tears for us to decide that this is the right thing for us. That is not to say that we are not scared out of our minds, but we know that it will all be ok and we’re super excited for this new chapter in our lives. Unfortunately we bought our townhouse at the exact wrong time and the market has only dropped since then so we don’t have much hope of selling it for close to what we paid for it right now. So we have decided to rent it out and hope that the housing market rebounds sooner than later. We are going to stay with my parents for right now; for their sake hopefully that will end up being a short-term arrangement. As scared as we are to be taking on this new endeavor, I am so so excited to get to be around my parents. They’re two of my top favorite people in the world so I’m so happy that they’re willing to let us crash their empty nest. We are really sad to be moving far away from Taylor’s family and most of my siblings; we will miss getting to see the kids as often as we do. But now we get to hang out with Kristi and Jeremy and their kids so much that they’ll probably be sick of us after a week so we’re looking forward to that! Anyway, the moral of the story is that we are moving to Blanding; we are equal parts excited, scared and sad. I think I am really going to enjoy my new job and I am going to LOVE only working 40 hours a week and not having to stop at any traffic lights or deal with traffic jams on my way to or from work. I think that Taylor and I will adapt very well to laid back Blanding life. People keep asking us what they can do to help. The two things that would be the biggest help for us right now would be for someone to find Taylor a job and for someone to want to buy an overpriced, but very cute townhouse. Since most likely you won’t be able to do either of those things then just cross your fingers for us and hope that all goes well with the move.

GIRLS NIGHT
My super fun sister Noelle hosted a very fun “girls night in” at her house last Friday. She put a lot of work into making it an awesome night for everyone, especially my cute nieces. We all had a blast; we were just sad that Kristi, Kera and Aleyah couldn’t make it. I am just going to post some cute pictures, but if you want more details of the fun evening (as I’m sure you’re all dying to know every last detail of what we did) then you can check out Heather, Marilyn or Noelle’s blogs (I assume my mom will blog about it at some point too).

CUTE CUTE McCoy was the only boy that got to crash the party

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2010-01-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

2009 ended very enjoyably for us. We spent a few days in Blanding for Christmas. We always love our time down there and this was no different. All of my siblings were there, except Joshy, but we did get to talk to him on Christmas day. As it always is when we're all there it was a circus, but it was a very fun circus. I am so thankful for the Christmas season that reminds us to think of the birth of our Savior and it always helps me to realize how blessed I am.

My nieces and nephews acted out a live nativity scene at our Halliday and Lyman family parties. These pictures are from the Christmas Eve nativity in our garage...those are some darn cute kids.

I included this picture because it is the best picture that I got of Paco. We surprised my dad during the nativity with his Christmas present - a donkey! For a couple of weeks before Christmas a lot of people accidentally made mention of the donkey while my dad was around, so I don't think he was very surprised that we got him a donkey, but I don't think he was expecting it on the 24th so at least that part was a surprise. Yes, you read right, we got my dad a donkey for Christmas. My dad had a donkey named Eager when he was younger that he absolutely loved and still talks about. We've joked about getting him a donkey before, but this year we decided we should just stop joking and find the right donkey to join our family. My dad named him Paco and we all absolutely love him. Seriously though, how could you not? He is one cute donkey!

Jake and Maxon played the part of the sheep and they did a very good job of it. Cohen was supposed to be a sheep with Max, but the poor little guy got very sick and spent most of the night at the hospital getting breathing treatments. Luckily, Jake was ready to step in at the last minute.

Grandpa loved Paco right from the first minute he met him.

New Year's Eve also ended up being a lot of fun for us this year. We invited a few friends over to our place at the last minute and just ended up hanging out, rocking out (Rock Band) and eating lots of junk. Happy 2010!!!

We tried a lot of combinations to get our band tour-ready. Some combinations were much better than others, but all in all we rocked out pretty well and had a lot of fun.

Krew even got to join in on the fun for a little while.

Here's the guys ringing in the new year by pulling the popping confetti things. I hope 2010 is as great for us as 2009 was!

Birthdays All Around

2009-12-16T17:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I know I've had a string of quite boring blog posts and this one will be no different for most people who might read it. But since this is the only thing that resembles any sort of a journal for me, and since I hope that one day my kids will read it, I will continue to record the "boring" stuff...mostly for my own sake. So read on if you wish, but you've been warned.

I am a few days late but I wanted to give a Birthday shout out to my little sister Noelle. Noelle is two years younger than me; I spent the first 18 years of my life thinking of her as little more than a pest. She never did anything to make me not want to hang out with her, but I thought I was much too cool to bring my little sister to hang out with my friends so I constantly told her "no" when she asked to do anything with my friends and me. As far as I can remember she was very well-behaved and didn't embarrass me at all the very few times that I actually allowed her to tag along. Right around the time I was getting close to graduating from high school I finally realized how cool she actually was and that maybe I should consider being friends with her, rather than just tolerating her. Ever since then I've considered her to be one of my very best friends. In some ways I think that Noelle and I are very similar and in other ways we're quite different. One thing I am sure of is that she is way cooler than me and it should have been her snubbing me all those years.
Noelle is very mellow and laid back. She's one of the easiest people to get along with that I've ever known. She has always been much more stylish than me...more willing to try new looks. She is an incredible mom who adores her kids as much as they adore her. Even though she's my little sister I really look up to her and hope I can be half as good of a mom as she is.
Noelle is literally great at everything she ever does. She excelled at sports and academics. She has the best hair around. She can cook up anything your little heart desires and she has recently taken up photography. By looking at the pictures she takes you would never guess that this is a new hobby for her; she's amazing. Anyway, I am glad that I finally realized what an awesome person she is and I just love her to death. Happy happy happy birthday Belly!

Today is my big brother Jeremy's birthday. I have a feeling that he would not appreciate a big long post dedicated to his greatness so I will keep this brief for his sake. Let me just say that Jeremy is the most unique (only in a good way) person that I have ever known. He is also the most intelligent person I know in real life. He chose a FABULOUS person to marry, for which I will always be grateful. They make darn cute kids and he is an awesome dad to said cute kids. I am really glad to have such a good older brother who has always been a good example for the rest of us. Love ya bro!

My iPhoto is frozen up right now so unfortunately you don't get any cute photos of Noelle and Jeremy but hopefully I will add a couple soon (I'm sure Jeremy loves having photos of him called "cute")

P.S. So since I started this little birthday shout out exercise I have missed doing it for one very important sibling - my baby brother Josh. I know that he doesn't know, nor care, because he's far far away in Paris. So rather than backtrack I will catch his birthday next year right before he comes home from his mission. Also, I started this after Deco and Kera's birthdays had passed so I'll catch them next year too.

Jazz musings and the ZOO

2009-11-22T12:52:00.000-08:00

So our fabulous friends Kacey and Joe have Jazz season tickets. Because they're awesome they offer their tickets to us sometimes when they can't use them, so we've been to a couple of games this season. We always love Jazz games, especially when they win. Last night's game against Detroit was a lot of fun! It was a really close game the whole time and it had a very exciting finish. The game went into OT and we ended up winning by 3 points. This was quite possibly the rowdiest Jazz game I've ever been to that wasn't a playoff game. Taylor had already been to the BYU football game earlier in the day so he was nice and hoarse by the end of the two games.

Here's a pic of Taylor watching the Jazz game very intently in the 4th quarter.

Even the halftime show was really awesome last night. It was a group of seriously extreme jump ropers. I'm not sure if they were the Summerwind Skippers as I couldn't understand when the announcer introduced them, but I think it might have been them. They were amazing! And how could I not mention the Jazz Bear? I love him and I think he is so talented and funny. When I was in NY for my job training, Taylor and I went to a Jazz - Nets game. It was the Nets' mascot's birthday so he had invited some of his mascot friends from around the league to come party with him. The Jazz Bear was one of them that came to the party. At that point I'd probably been in NY for a month and a half and it was so nice to see him and feel a little closer to home. I know that's cheesy but it truly was nice to see a familiar piece of Utah right there in NJ that night.

Changing subjects, a couple of weeks ago we went to the zoo with Kace and Joe. It was SO worth our time and money. We chose the perfect time to go; the weather that Saturday was not too hot or too cold and we went early enough that we missed the afternoon crowds. The animals were so neat and we got to see all of the new cute baby animals that were born this spring.

Who knew that I'm basically the same size as an adult male gorilla?

Baby giraffe

Penguins are cute

Kace and Joe on the train

The highlight of our trip to the zoo? Zuri, the baby elephant. SO CUTE!

I think the one in the BYU hat is cutest

My Mom

2009-11-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

Well my mom's Birthday was a couple of days ago. I am late posting about it because I spent the weekend with my mom and sisters attending the Time Out for Women conference downtown. I am so glad that Marilyn had the idea for all of us to go to it because it was pretty awesome. If you haven't heard of it before you should definitely look into going to one of their events next year; we all loved it.
Anyway, back to my mom. I could not pass up the opportunity to post about her and to mention just a few of the reasons why I think she is so amazing. My mom is exactly what I aspire to be when I grow up. She was the best mom that I could ever imagine anyone having. She is the sweetest and most caring person that I know; she is constantly serving others just because that is her nature. When I was growing up my mom would always make enough food on Sundays to take dinner to cute little old widowers in the ward. It was such a special little thing that we were able to do each week and I'm sure that none of us, especially my mom, has any idea how much of a blessing it was for the numerous men who got to benefit from my mom's delicious cooking. That is just one of MANY examples of my mom always thinking of others. She cares so much about people and I wish I had half the amount of Christlike love that she has in her.
My mom is the least lazy person that I know. She sleeps a fraction of the amount that the rest of us do. I think it's because she secretly feels like the rest of us sleep a little too much (us Lymans are famous for being good sleepers) so she is trying to make up for our lack of productiveness a little bit by being extra extra productive all of the time. She has a million things going on all the time and she manages to do everything so well. We always had warm home-cooked meals growing up; she even made breakfast. We sat down to delicious dinners together every night. With seven kids there was never a shortage of laundry and dishes and cleaning and helping with homework and everything else that comes with a big family. She quilts, she gardens, she bottles food, and she takes the time to teach her kids how to do those things too.
I've never seen my mom lose her patience. She is so sweet and calm. Her grandkids just love her to death because she is such a fun and kind grandma who always has time for them
Something kind of interesting about my mom is that she doesn't really like sugar. She says that it makes her have weird dreams. Maybe secretly she just thinks that the rest of us eat too much sugar (because like our ability to sleep more than most people would think humanly possible, we also really really like our sweets and we eat a lot of it) so she is trying to make up for it by staying away from the sugar. No actually I believe that she really just doesn't love sweets, which is kind of crazy if you ask me, but it is a trait that I wish I would have gotten more of.

My mom is literally everything that I aspire to be in a mom. I've heard her say multiple times that she doesn't know how her kids turned out so well. We had no choice but to make pretty good decisions with the parents that we had. They did such a good job of teaching us right and wrong and of being such great examples. My mom is the best person that I know and I love her so much; I am so lucky to be able to continue to learn from her always.

stuff

2009-11-11T18:52:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a bit of a catch-up post with a bunch of random stuff

First up is Kacey's wedding last month which equaled my first (and most likely last) attempt at making a wedding cake. Don't get me wrong, it was fun to do and it turned out decent for our first time, but I am not quite ready to quit my day job. Noelle and I spent the day before Kacey's wedding doing her cake. We had our mishaps, but in the end it all turned out ok.

Kace doesn't really like cake so she requested rice krispy treats for the bottom layer. That was the biggest rice krispy treat I've ever made/seen! It was so much fun to make and I think it was real fun that she decided to do it.

Here's the finished product. Kacey chose a simple and classic design and it fit her wedding and reception perfectly.

The happy couple cutting the rice krispy treats (didn't cut quite as easily as cake)

Next is Halloween. My team at work dressed as college students just so we could take advantage of the opportunity to wear jeans and hoodies. I rocked a BYU hoodie and enjoyed the comfort of it to the top T! Halloween night Taylor and I went to a Halloween party at our friends Taylor and Melissa's house. They put on a great party and we're really glad that we went. We dressed up as hippies.

Last weekend my fun sister-in-law called and asked me if I would possibly make a birthday cake for the family celebration the next day for two of her sons' birthdays. I gladly said yes. The only requests she gave me were that they wanted a chocolate cake and it should be football themed. I went to work. It was so much fun to make; I love theme cakes!

The footballs on top of the football field were cake so the whole thing was edible. Porter's flag football team was the Dragons and Jaxon's football team was the Jaguars.

Lastly, I need to send a late birthday shout out to a couple of my wonderful sisters! Marilyn's big day was last week and Heather's was yesterday.
Here are a few reasons that I love Marilyn:
She is the oldest child in the family so I'm sure she wore my parents down a bit for the rest of us.
She loves to try new things and she's so much fun to be around.
She is a really really good example. She is a fabulous mom to her kids, a great wife, a fun sister...she does it all and she doesn't do anything halfway.
If it weren't for Marilyn I probably never would have gotten into running. I still don't like running but she pushes everyone in my family to do 5Ks and triathlons and other fitness events. I am a much healthier person because of her.
Everyone has always told me that I look a lot like her. I have been called Marilyn more times in my life than I can count. I take that as a compliment :)
I am so glad that she is my big sister and I love her so much!

Now for a few reasons that I love Heather and I am so glad that she married my big bro:
She is the sweetest person that I have ever known and it is completely legitimate...she really is that nice!
She makes Jeremy so happy.
She is such a cute and fun mom. Her kids are her life and she does such a great job raising them.
She puts up with us Lymans and she goes along with the stuff we like to do (she even ate biscuits and gravy with us without complaining up until this year!)
Heather is one of the cutest people I know and I just love her so much.

My Dad

2009-10-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

Well today is my dad's birthday. For his sake I won't say how old he is but let's just say it's a big one...big enough that he definitely deserves his own blog post.
My dad is one of my ultimate heroes in life. He always has been but as the years go by I am more and more impressed by the person that he is and I am so very thankful to have him as my dad.
I'm sure that there must have been a time in my teenage life that I was embarrassed by him or thought he was uncool or whatever; but honestly I can only remember ever being proud to say that he was my dad. This post would go on way too long if I wrote all of the things that make me so thankful to be his daughter, so I will only mention a few.

My dad is so supportive of everything his family does. He has seven children and it was so so so rare for him to ever miss anything we were participating in, be it sports, dance, scholastic competitions, church events etc. He still makes every effort to be to everything. With six children-in-law and 14 grandchildren added to the mix and with him living hours away from most of us, I can only imagine how tiring it is to schedule it all in and to travel so much. I know that he and my mom love being able to experience all of the things that they do with us, but I don't think they have any idea how much we all appreciate the effort that they make for us.
In my opinion my dad is what all husbands should aspire to be for their wives. He loves my mom and would do anything for her. They have created a very strong and eternal family and my dad is the strong patriarch leading us all in the things we should do. On that note, my dad has such a strong testimony. Never once in my life have I questioned where he stood on any gospel issues. He honors his priesthood and teaches others (by word and example) to do the same.
My dad has a wonderful and cheesy "dad sense of humor." He loves to smile and laugh and he passes that happy attitude on to others.

Most of all my dad makes me want to be a better person. Anything good that is in me is from my dad and my mom. Everything good that I have achieved and accomplished in my life is only due to their support and example. This post is about my dad but it's impossible to post only about him without mentioning my mom because they are such a good example of being one in purpose. I am so glad that they chose each other.

I could go on and on all night long, but the bottom line is that I am so thankful for my loving daddy. I love him so much and I hope he has 60 more birthdays!

One year older and wiser too

2009-10-12T16:23:00.000-07:00

Well this post is a couple of days late but Taylor had a birthday and I think he deserves a birthday post. He's 26 years old now so I'm going to list 26 of the reasons that I love my cute husband. There are many more than 26 so these will just be the first ones that come to mind, in no particular order.

1. I love that he loves me
2. I love his humility - he's much quicker to say sorry than I am
3. I LOVE his curly hair
4. I love his flexibility (not physical flexibility, but just his easy-going nature)
5. I love that he tells me he loves me many times a day
6. I love that he opens car doors for me always
7. I love his hugs and he freely gives them
8. I love his testimony and that he honors his Priesthood
9. I love that he loves family
10. I love how much he loves kids; he is going to be such a great father
11. I love his laugh
12. I love that we liked all the same sports teams when we met (except baseball, which truthfully I don't really care about). It wouldn't be a deal-breaker if he didn't bleed blue but it makes life so much more fun that he loves BYU as much as my family does
13. I love that he holds my hand always
14. I love that he loves Blanding as much as I do
15. I love the way he whistles when he's in a really good mood
16. I love his goofy personality
17. I love his beautiful blue eyes
18. I love that he likes to cuddle with me
19. I love when he cooks me dinner
20. I love when he surprises me with flowers
21. I love that he gets along with my lifelong friends so well
22. I love that he is willing to work and go to school
23. I love that he makes me smile every day
24. I love when he talks sports and he gets so analytical
25. I love watching him golf. I know that sounds weird, but I just think he's so super cute when he golfs
26. I love that he's my husband and I get to be with him forever

Happy Birthday honey! Love your guts!

Rise and Shout the Cougars are Out! & Labor Day in Colorado

2009-09-19T08:27:00.001-07:00

First things first - GO COUGS! This post is mostly about our annual family Labor Day trip to the Colorado cabin but I gotta start the post with some love for BYU. Jeremy R (with help from the rest of the guys but he gets the most credit) made it possible for us to watch the AWESOME BYU-Oklahoma game while we were at the cabin. BYU 14 - Oklahoma 13.

Every year over Labor Day weekend we have made it a tradition to go out to the cabin in Colorado with the WHOLE family. We all look forward to it all year long. This year we started the weekend early in Blanding because Deco and Kera were getting sealed together with their sweet baby in the Monticello Temple on Thursday. The sealing was lovely, and then baby Aleyah was blessed afterward at my parents' house. Then that evening my mom put on a very nice open house for family and close friends of Deco and Kera. The food was DELICIOUS and it was so fun to see everyone that came. I didn't get any pictures of those events for some reason but I documented the rest of the weekend pretty well. For some reason I didn't get a picture of any of the 4-wheeling action though.

Here's Taylor playing duck-duck-goose with some of the kids on my parents' trampoline.

CUTE troublemakers

Beautiful Scout eating her bread (most of the weekend she was happy to crawl around on the muddy floor and eat dirt clods). It rained sporadically every day that we were there so it was impossible to keep the floor clean for more than 2 minutes at a time.

Kristi and Heather brought a bunch of toys and games to entertain the kids. The kids loved it!

Maxon and Cohen playing with a car and eating licorice. They both ate a lot of licorice that night! They love snacks

One of the horny toads that was caught. Don't worry PETA, this guy was let loose after a few hours of hanging out in the box.

Carter, Cohen and Addi watching a movie

I guess this pictures wants to stay sideways. I had to include it though because Logan's outfit is so classic

The kids spent a lot of time exploring and having fun outside

I went on a very short ride on horses with Kristi, Camryn and Jensen. This was the first time I've been on a horse in a few years...my bum was pretty dang sore for days after the ride. Like I said it was a very short ride because the horses weren't cooperating and Kristi got bucked off (it sounds scarier than it actually was; she was fine).

One of the days we drove over to the Ouray hot spring pools. It was really fun and the water was perfect!

Carter being awesome on the slide

Kristi being super tough on the scary roof. We will all thank her next year when we don't have to worry about water leaking through the roof. Since Jeremy provided the satellite for us to watch the BYU game and with Kristi risking her life to go up and seal the leaks I named them the MVPs of the whole weekend.

4th of July and Bear Lake

2009-08-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

Ok so this post is seriously slow in coming but here it is.
The 4th of July in Blanding this year was fabulous as always. All of my sisters were there and we had a lot of fun. We swam at the dam, ran a 5k, watched the awesome parade, played a little volleyball, ate lots of good food, and watched the famous Blanding fireworks show (seriously it's awesome). It was a really fun weekend. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no better place to spend the 4th of July than in Blanding. Unfortunately I only took one picture. The picture below is of Taylor after the 5k and before the parade. He passed out and took a little nap on Logan's bed.

Last month we also had our annual Bear Lake trip up at Tyrel's in-laws' cabin. It was SO much fun. More of our friends were able to come this year so it was a serious zoo with all the people (especially all the kids), but in this case it truly was "the more the merrier". There were very close to 30 of us counting the kids. The whole weekend was great. We ate a TON of good food and junk. We spent a lot of time on Noelle and Trent's boat. We reminisced about good times. Kacey and Joe won the coveted moose/squirrel egg so they will proudly display it for the next year. This is such a fun tradition and I'm already looking forward to next year!

All the girls (minus Cass because her and Brandon had to leave a day early). Chanelle, Marci, Laici, Noelle, Stacy, Devan, Kacey and Tyrel. I love these girls!

Kacey and Joe proudly displaying their prize. Devan was not too sad to see the egg move on to its next keeper.

The boat was fun for all ages.

Taylor doing some serious wake-surfing.

Me doing some not-so-serious wake-surfing. This was as far as I ever got up, which means I never got up at all. BUT I did get up on the wake-board more than once so let's focus on that and forget about stupid wake-surfing.

Noelle is awesome at wake-boarding and wake-surfing.

A bunch of the kids doing some serious projects on the beach.

Me, Dev, Lace and Noelle cooling off in the water.

Maxon is such a cool dude.

Tye cooking up some DELICIOUS kabobs! Seriously they were good.

Catch-up post (cake class and disastrous camping)

2009-06-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

So once again I have fallen behind on my blogging and I'm sure that my many many faithful followers have been anxiously awaiting another post so here you go:

For Memorial Day we always try to go camping and this year we were bound and determined to continue the tradition even though the weather worked very hard to try to get us to stay home. We went back and forth all morning about whether or not we should go because the rain just wouldn't stop and the forecast gave us no reason to hope for that to change. We finally just made the decision to go and take our chances. I think that overall we had a good time and we were glad we went but it was kind of a disaster and we ended up having to come home at like 2:30 in the morning because Kacey and I were semi-drenched in really cold water all over our bodies and through our layers of clothing (really it was because of me that we came home - I'll admit it, but honestly I was seriously wet and it was seriously cold).

Aaaah...how cute are they? This is a fitting first picture to have for this post because Kacey and Joe just got engaged this week - YAY! I am SO excited that my two best friends are getting married this year and I couldn't have picked better guys for them to marry.

Nicole and Osiris are getting married in less than a month - woohoo! This disastrous camping trip was so fun with all six of us there.

When I was 19 (I think) I was at Costco with my parents and I saw this tent for sale. I thought it was so neat (I still think it is) so I told my parents that I wouldn't be mad if they got it for me for my birthday. Being the fabulous parents that they are they got it for me and it has gotten pretty good use ever since then. It is a really cool tent with four separate rooms or you can leave it as one big room. It is really easy to set up and I love it!

Here's Kace making her famous dutch oven potatoes. As we were driving up to the mountain the rain stopped and it stayed dry for the first little while that we were in camp. We got a good fire going and then some good coals. We put the dutch oven on and started cooking the bacon and onions but then it started POURING! We had to grab all of our stuff out of the rain and we all huddled under a tree and wondered what we should do...should we stay and hope that it stopped or should we just pack up our stuff, count our losses and go home? We decided to stay. Luckily the rain stopped after 15 or 20 minutes (maybe longer...hard to say) and the boys worked very hard to get another fire going, this one even better than the first and we put the dutch oven back on once we had some nice coals. There are very few things that I like more than a nice fire-cooked hot dog and some dutch oven potatoes so once I finally got to eat, it was worth the wait. Kacey and Nicole both ended up being sick and throwing up in the middle of the night and we were wondering if maybe we didn't cook the bacon long enough...still not sure

It rained most of the evening, sometimes really light and sometimes a little harder but we were determined to tough it out. Here's Nicole and Osiris trying to share an umbrella that looks like it's probably not shielding either of them very well...still a cute pic though

I had to include this picture because I am wearing my awesome 49ers hoodie that Kacey got when she was in like 7th grade and then she gave it to me a few years later. It is literally getting so thin and worn that pretty soon it's going to be translucent, but until it falls apart I am going to keep wearing it because I love it. It's especially nice when I wear it with my awesome 49ers sweat pants that Zeb gave me when they were too small for him. That is a snazzy outfit if I do say so myself

This is just a lovely nature picture that Taylor took of the trees and fog. We went for a very short walk to see a nearby river and we saw this beautiful fog. We all just stared at it for a bit. So pretty

Here's the boys working hard on building fire #1...little did we know that it was all going to be in vain...

Catch-up part deux

My sister Marilyn has a friend who teaches cake decorating classes so Marilyn talked her into teaching classes for us at her house. We met at Marilyn's house once a week for the month of June and she taught us a lot of basic techniques in cake decorating. It was so much fun. My sister Noelle and sis-in-law Heather also did the classes and then a few other friends of Marilyn and Heather also came. It was such a fun class and I think we learned a ton of cool stuff.

We threw Nicole's bridal shower last weekend and Noelle and I decided to make her a tiered cake. We had not had any fondant lessons in our classes up to that point (we have now been taught how to correctly make/use fondant and we're pretty much experts) but we decided to take on the challenge and try a fondant cake anyway. We picked a cake design that we found online and we just went for it. The above cake was our final creation. It had some serious mistakes and weird spots but overall it turned out ok for our first one we think, and we had lots of fun making it. Yes, it is supposed to be crooked - it was a topsy turvy cake (not to be confused with my topsy turvy tomato planter that is flourishing and should soon give me some DELICIOUS garden fresh tomatoes). Unfortunately in this picture you can't really see the kissing Nicole and Osiris heads on top of the cake but they were a last-minute touch that really took the cake from so-so to fabulous! I forgot to take my camera to the actual shower but it ended up being so much fun and a few of our friends that we don't get to see too often were there so it was so great to catch up and reminisce about old times. I love my friends so much!

I forgot to take a picture of my first cake that I decorated in class but I decorated the above cupcakes in one of the classes using some techniques that we were taught. I freaking LOVE cupcakes; I think they're the perfect food and I am constantly craving them!

Here is Noelle's final cake creation. As you can see she mastered the fondant technique and her cake turned out awesome!

Here are Heather's super cute flower cupcakes. She was much better at making the flowers than most of us and I think these cupcakes turned out so dang cute.

Marilyn, Jensen and Lexi's cupcakes were so patriotic and so neat! I loved how they turned out - so fun!

Here's my final cake creation. I opted for a buttercream frosting instead of fondant and then covered the top with a jungle of fondant flowers. It was so much fun and I really want to hone my skills and try to get better so if anyone has any special cake requests I would love to try making different cute designs.

Also, today after our final cake class we had our monthly food storage/emergency preparedness class. I was in charge of this month's class and I decided to do emergency kits for our vehicles. We included jumper cables, flares, flashlights, blankets, food, water and first-aid kits. I didn't take any pictures because I was talking and demonstrating but I know that others took pictures so if you really want to see pics of our kits you can stay tuned for the posts on my sisters' (in blood and in-law) and/0r Mom's blogs. Bring on the earthquake/tornado/flood/whatever - we're ready! (I hope I didn't just jinx it)

Yellerstone

2009-05-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

Warning: picture overload yet again with this post!

Last weekend we went to Yellowstone with Kacey and Joe for a fun long weekend. We stayed in the cutest little cabin in West Yellowstone and had even more fun than we had anticipated. The weather wasn't as cold as we had feared and everything was very uncrowded so it made for a very exciting, relaxing and refreshing trip. We will definitely go back!
We spent one full day in the park, driving around and looking at neat things. We saw lots of cool animals...millions of bison (at least it seemed like millions by the end), lots of elk, cool birds and we even saw a wolf. We were too slow with the camera to get a picture of the wolf (well we got a picture of the tail) but we really did see one, which apparently is pretty rare because there's so few of them in the park. We were pretty excited when we saw him. We did not see any bears in the park but on the way home we stopped at "Bear World" in Idaho and we got our bear fix there. We also saw moose, white elk, deer, wolves and some smaller animals at Bear World. On our last afternoon we rented bikes from a little shop and rode the bikes around the town and on a cool bike trail; this turned out to be very fun and we were so glad we did it. West Yellowstone is such a cute little town. We ate SO much junk the whole trip and really just had such a great time. We would definitely recommend going up there for a weekend for anyone who needs a little getaway.

Seriously though, how cute is this cabin?

B-e-a-utiful views and I'm not even really a nature person

Old Faithful herself in all her glory

Joe and Taylor in their rival hoodies (Joe-Utah, Taylor-BYU) doing some awesome tricks with their bikes

BEAR WORLD!

Taylor was not seriously injured, nor were any animals in taking this picture

CUTEST baby bear cubs ever! I wish you could see them better in this picture. I almost couldn't walk away from them

Teenage bears

I asked Kacey how many cinnamon bears she could fit in her mouth and chew and swallow. She did 10 but I'm pretty sure she could have done more.

Awww...how cute are they?

Enjoying some delicious food at the Old Faithful Inn

Random events

2009-05-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

This post will include a lot of randomness. I have had a few get-togethers and events with pictures I'd like to posteritize (it's ok to make up words sometimes).

We threw a baby shower for my sister-in-law Kera the other day. She is going to have a little girl in a couple of months. The shower was at Noelle's house and she made the whole thing so cute. Below are a couple of pictures from the shower.

Earlier in the day, before the shower, we (my mom, sisters and sisters-in-law) got together for one of our monthly food storage prep days. This day we made freezer jam. We made jam for hours at Heather's house and she was a great teacher. We ended up with around 100 pints of jam - DELICIOUS! We try to get together once a month for these little classes. I've missed a couple of times because I've had to work and last month I forgot to take pictures of Marilyn's gardening class. Other classes have included bread-making and canning. I may be forgetting one or two...but we've been doing it for a few months and I already feel much more prepared for whatever disaster might come our way.

Next up is the Easter egg coloring from last month. We invited Nicole, Kace, Cass and their boys over. We had some yummy pizza and then we had fun coloring the eggs (mostly the girls had fun). We weren't able to pull Osiris away from the game he was watching on TV and we barely pulled Taylor and Joe away long enough to color a couple of eggs.

The next pictures are quite old. A couple of months ago we went snowmobiling in Idaho with Taylor's dad and Megan, Jared and kids. The snow was great and we had lots of fun!

Lastly, these next pictures are also quite old. A couple/few months ago Taylor went to some UFC fights with my bros and bros-in-law so the girls decided we should get together for a very girly girls' night. Noelle had all the fixins to make sure we did lots of stuff we wouldn't do with the boys around. We made good smelling bath salts and salt scrubs. We ate LOTS of goodies and we watched a chick flick. It was a lovely girls' night in

MEXICO

2009-04-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

Ok so I'm about a month late in finally getting this post done but hopefully the saying "better late than never" is true in this case. Last month Taylor and I went on a cruise with my parents and Jeremy and Kristi. We had SO much fun and maybe the reason that I haven't blogged about it yet is because I was so sad to be back but I am finally starting to accept that I am stuck in the real world. We boarded the ship in L.A. and headed down to Mexico. If you want a play by play of the trip you can go to Kristi's and my mom's blogs. I'm going to throw in a few details right now and then just attach a bunch of pictures (in no particular order). We made stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. We did a very good variety of things in the different ports and we also had so much fun on the boat. We saw whales, dolphins, seals etc. We took dance lessons. We went to comedy shows and we ate SO MUCH GOOD FOOD! We took naps, read books and we even worked out a little on the ship track and in the gym. Kristi, my mom and I even did a yoga class. Taylor, Jeremy and my dad went to some golf seminars and they're positive that they now have what it takes to make the PGA tour (well, at least Jeremy and Taylor are...my dad slept through the class he went to). We went down a bunch of zip lines in the Sierra Madre mountains, where we also rappelled, hiked and rode mules. We spent time on multiple beaches and of course we shopped. We had such a great time and we can't wait to go on our next cruise (hopefully soon)!

Pay It Forward

2009-03-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

{The Rules}
1. Be one of the first THREE bloggers to leave a comment on this post, which then entitles you to a handmade item from me - something crafty or yummy, who knows?!
2. Winners must post this challenge on their blog, meaning that they will Pay It Forward, creating a handmade gift - anything - for the first THREE bloggers who leave a comment on their post about this giveaway!
3. The gift that you send to your friends can be from any price range and you have 365 days to make/ship your item. And, remember: It’s the Spirit and the Thought That Count!
4. When you receive your gift, please feel free to blog about it, sharing appropriate pictures and comments! If you are not one of the Top Three Commenters on this post, you can still play along.
Go ahead and start your own Pay It Forward chain, and encourage your blogging friends to do the same! REMEMBER...Pay it forward!

Super Bowl festivities

2009-02-10T17:13:00.001-08:00

As promised we had a lovely Super Bowl party last week. It was so much fun to have so many friends here and we were so glad that so many people came. The outcome of the game may not have been what most of us were hoping for but it was still a great day.

Before anyone showed up it was nice and calm - Taylor was switching between basketball and football pre-game.

People slowly started showing up. Here's Joe and Brandon hanging out.

Then all at once it seemed that everyone showed up and that's when the party really started.

Most of us spent a good amount of time in the kitchen.

The spread... Everyone brought so much deliciousness. I bet we all gained some serious poundage and we still barely made a dent in the food. Thanks to everyone who came and helped to make it a fun day!

Joshy Squashy is all grown up

2009-01-27T14:13:00.000-08:00

We spent the last weekend in my favorite place in the whole world - Blanding. The reason for the trip was because my baby brother Josh is going on his mission this week and he spoke in church on Sunday. He did such a great job and I have no doubt that he will be a great missionary in Paris, France. I can not believe that he is old enough to go. I think most of us still picture Josh as the little wild boy with the cutest curls in his hair.
Josh doesn't allow pictures of him to be taken so I don't have any recent pictures of him that aren't of the back of his head or his hand over his face. If you want to see some cute pictures of him through the years check out Kristi's blog. Josh has always had a personality all his own and I think this will work strongly to his advantage on his mission. He will be the type of missionary that everybody loves. Most of the stories that I can think of about Josh might be kind of embarrassing for him so I'll keep this post mild and just post some things that you might not know about him. Josh is a total carnivore; pretty much since he started eating solid foods he has LOVED all kinds of meat. I like meat but I'm all about the carbs (noodles, rice, bread...) so if my mom ever made a dish that included like noodles and meat I would trade a bunch of my meat with Josh and he would give me a bunch of his noodles. When Josh was quite young (probably 4-7 years old) he made people call him Steve Young. Sometimes he answered to Josh but a lot of the time he would only respond if you called him Steve. There was a tiny break in this a couple of times during basketball season when he switched over to being called John Stockton but for the most part he was all about Steve Young. He loves pretty much all sports and always has. Josh is very humble, he has no idea how cool/smart he is. Hopefully his mission will help him realize what a cool dude he is. Josh absolutely knew he would be called to serve in France and even though the rest of us doubted (I was sure he'd be called to Brazil) he never wavered and he was probably the only one that wasn't shocked when he opened his call (even though he wasn't shocked he was pretty dang excited). I am so proud of Joshy Squashy and I will definitely miss him over the next two years.

B-town happenings

2009-01-27T13:29:00.000-08:00

While in Blanding over the weekend we had a lot of family time and a little bit of friend time. There is never enough time to see everyone that I'd like to see while I'm down there. Here are just a few pics of our fun days.

If there's any question about where our allegiance is just stop by any family gathering and you will probably find at least a few BYU shirts. Here's Jeremy, Taylor and my dad keepin' it real for the Cougs.

Addi and Oakley doing some serious gaming

The kids love to mess with Uncle Tay so he makes sure to put them in their place like he is doing to Logi in this picture. If you're wondering why Logi Bear's face looks weird it's because he has a sippy cup in his mouth which is covering his cute face.

Laici and Tye invited us over to their house for some fun games and reminiscing of the good ole days. Trevor and his wife Niki also came. Laici, Tye, Trevor and I all grew up together. We had so much fun hanging out with them. We love Tye and Laici's house and luckily Tye said that if we ever move down there he will build us a house too and all we have to pay him is a bunch of Mexican Coca-Cola.

Trev and Taylor hangin' out

We roasted marshmallows in their fireplace and made some delicious smores.

Laici and Tye's little girl Jacelyn is so dang cute and she showed me all her toys and we played with her dollhouse. She has such a fun personality. Looks like she might grow up to be a cowgirl.

Super Bowl

2009-01-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

When: February 1, 2009
Where: Our place
Who: Cardinals vs. Steelers
Why: SUPER BOWL BABY!
Time: 4-ish I think

Ok so ever since we were younger my friends and I always got together to watch the big game. This was always a girls only gathering and our place of choice to watch the game was Cassie's house. There was always an abundance of good food (mostly thanks to Bonnie) and a seriously good time. Now, to some people reading this a Super Bowl party with a bunch of teenage girls might sound pretty lame but that would mean you don't know us. We actually liked and followed football; we knew the teams and players and we knew what had gone on in the season. We all had our favorite teams and no matter who was playing in the championship game we would all bring/wear our favorite team memorabilia. Tyrel would bring her cheesehead; I would wear my 49ers hoodie; Kace would bring her 49ers cushion backrest thingy; Cassie and Marci would don their Cowboys gear; obviously Nicole wasn't a Texans fan back then but now she proudly displays her Houston license plate holder everywhere she goes (I can't remember what teams some of my other friends cheered for). Whether we truthfully cared about the two teams playing or not we would all state before the game who we wanted to win and we would stick with it throughout the game. At halftime we would go outside and throw around a football and let out some of our energy before we headed inside for the rest of the game. We actually watched the game and understood what was going on. Anyway, this tradition has continued more or less throughout the years. Some years the gatherings are bigger than other years but every year we get at least a few of us together to watch the big game. Obviously now that a bunch of us are married and a whole plethora of kids have been born to my friends the dynamics of the parties have changed but it's always a good time and it seems that every year there's more food than the last. Last year was a sad year for me because I watched the game all by myself in New York so this year I want to make up for that and bring back the old days when EVERYONE watched the game together. So consider this your official invite to watch the big game with us at our place this year. I don't want to hear excuses about living too far away or having morning sickness or sick kids (ok so that's kind of a legit excuse), but the bottom line is if you don't already have plans to watch it somewhere else then maybe you should just plan to come watch it with us. It will be lots of fun! Husbands and kids are welcome :) Let me know if you have any questions about the big day.
P.S. this invite is not only for my friends from way back when; it's open to any of our friends, new and old, that might be reading this.

2009!

2009-01-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

So this post is a little late but since I've got nothing else of interest to add to the blog I'll blog about our New Year's festivities. We spent New Year's Eve at Noelle and Trent's house with a bunch of my siblings and a few friends. My nieces and nephews kept things lively and interesting as usual. And there was WAY too much delicious food; I think I ate enough to last me all of 2009.

Elmo kept everyone entertained with his story-telling.

Addi and Livvy - the cutest little cousin BFFs ever

Cohen - this little man never stops and he is SO dang smart and silly.

Addi and Taylor rocking out

Logi rockin' the drums

This is shortly before midnight. Taylor and Logan are such good buddies and they fell asleep watching Shrek 3. Kristi and I were watching people play Rock Band at this point, too lazy/tired to get off our own butts and play. I barely kept my eyes open until midnight...

Happy New Year everyone!!!

VEGAS BABY!

2008-12-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

Well I didn't really take pictures on Christmas but we had a very nice holiday. It was nice and slow and relaxing. We slept in and got up when we felt like it, opened presents and then made biscuits and gravy and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Then we hung out for a little bit before heading to Taylor's parents' house. We spent the rest of the day there with his family. It was a very good day.
Last night we went to Temple Square to see the lights with our friends Rye and Jessica. It was cold, but completely bearable and the lights were totally worth the cold. I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures of the Square but I did get a phone picture of their gecko named "Sticky". He totally climbs up the wall - it was so cool!

He's kinda blurry because he was moving so fast

The weekend before Christmas we went to Vegas with most of my family for the Vegas Bowl. BYU did what they love to do lately which is break our hearts. The weekend as a whole was fun, but the game was stupid. A couple of things that happened at the game besides BYU playing awful was early on in the first quarter I had just taken a drink of Dr. Pepper and was putting the lid back on the bottle. Taylor got excited about something that happened in the game and flung his arms up (anyone who has ever watched any sporting event with Taylor knows how intense he gets). Anyway he slammed into my arm and the Dr. Pepper went flying forward. It was almost completely full and it got all over the people sitting in front of us and on their bench. Needless to say they were not very excited about that. Then in the second quarter Taylor was upset about some play or call and once again his arms went flying and I had my phone in my hand and he hit my arm super hard, the phone shot straight forward out of my hand and hit the lady who was already covered in Dr. Pepper; it hit her right in the butt and then went under their bench so they had to reach down and get the phone for us. I'm sure my face was bright red and I can't remember the last time I felt that stupid. Overall though, we definitely had a great time spending the weekend with my family in Vegas.

Stupid final score

We took BYU face tattoos and everyone put them on before the game.

Our view - not bad at all

Marilyn's view - it looks like she was sitting right on the sideline

Taylor and Jeremy right after a chest bump before the game

Standing around "pretending we don't know what we're doing" as Josh puts it. Taylor looks cute with my purse right? He was holding it because I was playing with Josh's crutches. I used them a lot more than Josh did.

I love Christmas!!!

2008-12-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

Well it's Christmas time and I'm actually kind of sad that it's already the 14th of December; Christmas is coming way too fast and before I know it it's gonna be over.
We've had a busy couple of weekends. On Friday last week we went to Taylor's cousin Amanda's UVU Christmas ballroom dance production. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and I was completely impressed with all of the dancers. It was a good night. We went to another dance recital yesterday; this time it was our niece Livvy's recital. I'm not gonna lie, we got lost on our way there and her dance was the first one so we totally missed it. She looked very cute in her little leotard though and I'm sure she did great. Hopefully next time we'll actually make it to see her dance.
Last Saturday morning I went to a bread class taught by the "bread lady" and her daughter. For anyone who hasn't heard of this lady she is amazing. She's seriously a bread (and all things bread-related) guru! Check out her blog here bread lady's blog. Marilyn and I went to the class together; I was excited to go and I knew it would be helpful because I am definitely not a bread-making genius but I had no idea how much I would love the class. I learned so much! This lady has been giving these classes for over a decade and now I can see why she continues to be in such high demand. The bread lady's not only a genius about bread (although that's obviously her specialty), she's also very smart about budgeting and meal planning and food storage etc. She gives awesome tips and advice about so many things. Even for anyone who thinks they're already pretty bread savvy I would HIGHLY recommend taking this $20 class.I put my new knowledge to use last Sunday. We had Landry and Susan over for dinner and we had homemade pizza, breadsticks and for dessert a delicious strawberry cream cheese braid. I forgot to get any pictures of my creations. Yesterday we had some friends, Nola and Brian, over for lunch and we had soup and breadsticks. This time the breadsticks turned out even better cause I put more seasoning on them. I also made some loaves of bread. I hope to never buy store bought bread from now on.

We LOVE homemade bread! At our house we're pretty much on an all carbs diet most of the time.

After our nephew Porter's baptism last Saturday we went to the mall and did some serious Christmas shopping, which was very enjoyable :) I sure do LOVE shopping! After shopping and stopping by a friend's house for the end of the Jazz game we came home and even though we were so tired I made Taylor help me put up the Christmas tree and some lights and decorations around the house.

If you look closely you can see the twisty lights on the railing of both our decks.

This pic's kinda blurry.

We got this chintzy tree last year because that's all our little apartment could fit.

This year we were too lazy and cheap to get a new tree so we're sticking with this little guy. It works for now. Taylor likes how my dad uses all blue lights for his Christmas decor (go Cougs!) so we are kind of following in his footsteps and showing our love for BYU with all the blue. We made some delicious hot chocolate because it seems like you should drink hot chocolate when putting up Christmas decorations. Last night we built and decorated the gingerbread house. As you can tell, we didn't put a lot of time and effort into the design but we had fun. Bring on Santa!

Yeah, it looks like little kids did it...

Turkey and Twilight

2008-12-01T14:30:00.000-08:00

Well I'm really annoyed right now because somehow I managed to lose my most recent pictures both on my camera and on my computer so I don't have any good pics to go along with this post; sorry I know that makes it boring.
Thanksgiving was fabulous as always. We ate at Noelle and Trent's house and the whole family was there, which made for a very loud and fun Thanksgiving. We ate a ton of food and also managed to get some family pictures taken while everyone was together. Because of the millions (well it felt like millions) of kids I did not get my usual Thanksgiving Day nap, nor did we manage to watch much football, but it was still an enjoyable day. I had to work the day before and I also had to work on Friday and Saturday (boooooo) so I did not get in any good shopping or relaxation for that matter. It was great to see all of my family for a minute though.

The things that I am most grateful for, and I'm sorry that they're all the same cliche things that everyone puts but it's truly what I'm thankful for, are the following:

Taylor, because he is so much fun and refuses to be a grown-up because grown-ups are boring. He keeps life interesting

My whole family (including my in-laws); I couldn't ask for better parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, grandparents, in-laws etc. than I have. I'm very lucky

A stable job (knock on wood); in today's economy I guess I shouldn't complain about working Thanksgiving weekend; I should just be thankful I have a job and steady income.

The gospel; who would I even be without it? It's scary to think about.

The best friends in the world; my friends played a huge part in making me who I am today (which may not be fabulous, but could be a lot scarier without their friendship and good influences)

I have so much more to be thankful for, it's kind of ridiculous that I spend any time complaining about anything.

Now, on to the second topic of my post...TWILIGHT. When I first heard that they were making a movie out of the first book I was not very excited or optimistic about how the movie would turn out. I just couldn't see how they could put the emotion and details on a screen in two hours. I figured that I'd eventually see the movie, but probably just when it got the the dollar theatre or something. But then the movie came out and I heard mostly good reviews, especially from my friends who saw it so I decided I needed to see it sooner than later. I got Taylor to go with me last week (what a good husband) and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Obviously they had to leave out plenty of details, but they included the important stuff and they kept it intense and humorous and emotional and everything you'd want to see in the Twilight movie. Overall I was very pleased and after I saw it I kind of just wanted to watch it again. Now the hard part is going to be waiting for New Moon to be made into a movie...patience is not a trait I was blessed with.

Hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving and that you're all getting ready for Christmas! I LOVE Christmas time!!!

Family Time

2008-11-21T17:45:00.000-08:00

This post is coming from the middle of nowhere, which is also the center of the universe...Blanding. Taylor and I decided to come down for the weekend for a little bit of Lyman time. We talked Noelle, Maxon and Scout into coming down with us so we've been having a lot of fun. Below are my feet, Noelle's, my mom's and Camryn's. We glitter painted our toes blue for the big game tomorrow. Don't mind that it's more of a periwinkle blue than cougar blue, it's the closest we could get. Kristi's out to dinner with Jeremy tonight but I'm sure we'll get her toes glittery before tomorrow afternoon. We love Blanding!

And yes, we realize we have creepy huge gaps between the big toe and the second toe...don't judge us for it.

Glitterin it up

Our favorite part about coming to Blanding is playing with the kids. Taylor and Logan are good buddies.

It's very hard to get a smiling picture of Camryn, but look how pretty she is when you can somehow trick her into smiling in front of a camera.

Taylor and Josh looking very excited. Josh is getting all ready for his mission to France; he leaves in January.

How awesome are these little dudes?

This was a couple of nights ago. We got free tickets to the Jazz game - we never turn down free anything. This was the second game we've gone to this season, we love Jazz games.

Go Jazz!

At a family dinner at Jeremy and Heather's last month. I just think this picture is so cute - Kolton reading to Maxon with Jensen looking on.

How cute is Scout?!?!

And how cute is Maycie the ladybug?!?!

The annual Harrison family Halloween party. Grandma Harrison reading one of my favorite books to all the kids in their cute costumes; the book is called The Halloweiner. I was laughing harder than the kids through the whole book.

My cute sister-in-law Meg, holding my cute nephew Easton who's holding his cute cousin (and my cute niece) Maycie.

8 Fun Things

2008-11-09T08:20:00.000-08:00

I was tagged by Cami...enjoy!

8 tv shows I love to watch
1. The Office
2. The Hills
3. Grey's Anatomy
4. Friends reruns...til the day I die
5. Private Practice
6. Desperate Housewives
7. Ace of Cakes
8. Big Bang Theory

sadly I could add a few more but I'll leave it at 8

Favorite 8 restaurants
1. Old Spaghetti Factory
2. P.F. Chang's
3. Texas Roadhouse Grill
4. The Cheesecake Factory
5. Red Robin
6. Crown Burger
7. The Olive Garden
8. Wingers

8 things that happened yesterday
1. Taylor and I went to the BYU game...GO COUGS!
2. We went to the mall and did a little shopping :)
3. I cleaned my house
4. I introduced Taylor to Ernie's Sports Deli in Orem...I hadn't eaten there in years and I LOVE their sandwiches
5. I went to the gym
6. I watched multiple college football games while Taylor rubbed my feet...good husband!
7. Paid bills
8. Watched Friends reruns

8 things I'm looking forward to
1. The next two months...I love the holidays!
2. Having a kid...hopefully soon-ish
3. Moving to Blanding some day
4. Having long hair again some day
5. The BYU-Utah football game
6. Deron Williams finally being able to play
7. Taylor finishing school some day
8. Going snowmobiling with my cute husband

8 things on my wish list
1. Like Cami, I wish for new bedding
2. I wish Taylor would never pass out again
3. I wish for a lot of new clothes
4. I wish I got a huge raise at the end of the year
5. I wish Taylor got a huge raise at the end of the year too
6. I wish that this winter would be half as long as last winter
7. I wish that gas would keep getting lower and lower, or at least stay where it's at right now
8. I wish that Taylor liked cheese

8 people I tag
1. Mom
2. Marilyn
3. Kristi
4. Heather
5. Noelle
6. Kera
7. Matt (I don't think he'll do it but I'm out of people to tag)
8. Jeremy J or Jeremy R (ditto)

More mood swings than a pregnant woman...

2008-10-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

This is Taylor. I just wanted to get out some feelings I have had on my mind since Thursday's events... First of all the BYU game... Wow, what a painful couple of hours. We had some friends over, and Stacy made a smorgasbord of delicious treats. It seemed like it was going to be a joyous event. Not so much. By half time I was just wanting everyone to get out of my house. It is absolutely nothing agianst them obviously; I just did not want them to see me cry.
I had to give up hope of any kind of comeback with about two and a half minutes left in the game. I know I held out FAR to long, but I just love my Cougs so much I was having a hard time accepting the fact that the BCS was not in the cards this year. So when I did give up on the comeback, I swiched to TBS to see how my Red Sox were doing. Down 3 games to 1 in the best of 7 ALCS - American League Championship Series. Quickly to clarify, the Braves are my number one team.

But as Jeremy Redd taught me, you have to have a team from both the NL and the AL. Plus I need to have a team to cheer for in the postseason, and my Braves have been letting me down in that category the last few years. And I fell in love with Big Pappi and the Sox in '04 when they came back and beat the Yankees. I HATE the Yanks! Well, the Sox were down 7-0 in the 7th inning. Not looking good! But after some clutch 2 out 2 strike hitting from Dustin Pedroia, the Sox were on the board. And then Pappi being Pappi, took it to 7-4. Then they were able to tie it up in the 8th, which included a 2 run homer from J.D. Drew. This entire time, my emotions are all over the place. Excited about one of the better postseason comebacks in recent memory, to depressed once again in the pain my Cougars had put me through. Then in the 9th... an error, and another clutch hit from Drew, and I was on cloud nine!!! 'Til I thought of the Cougars again...
Clearly I take sports much too seriously, but it's just who I am.

Fun Day Friday, Pumpkins, Odds & Ends

2008-10-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

This post will be kind of a hodge podge of information just to get caught up in the blogging world. Every Friday at my work we have "Fun Day Friday". Over about a six month period each team is assigned to be in charge of one Friday competition of some sort for the whole office. The winning team is allowed to wear jeans to work the next Friday. My team has never won; in the last competition we took second place by a VERY narrow margin and it was so heartbreaking. We decided we'd rather take last place than second. It just hurt too much to be so close to the jeans and then to have them ripped away from us. Yesterday's competition was a pumpkin carving contest. The below pumpkin was my team's entry. Another girl on my team and I concocted up the idea, made our own template and carved the whole thing. If I had my way we would have just done something Cougariffic but more than half of my team cheers for the wrong team so we had to compromise and include both schools. We were pretty pleased with how it turned out, but we did not win.

without the light

The winning pumpkin - Napoleon
I have to admit, he looks pretty cool. The winning team got their template online...not as original as ours but whatever. Notice the pocket with the tots, the chapstick and the "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt. The team sits right next to us so when next Friday rolls around and we have to see them in their jeans all day it's going to hurt especially bad.

Some of the other pumpkins. The one on the far right is the CEO of our company. In real life it looked better than in this picture. It was very easy to tell who it was supposed to be.

Binge-drinking - never a good idea!

Maybe I should try to transfer to the team that carved this pumpkin - they obviously have their priorities straight!

Continuing with the hodge podge, this is just a picture of Taylor and I at Lagoon this summer. We went with Kacey and Joe (and the rest of Kacey's office, which used to be my office). It was really fun.

For Valentine's Day this year Taylor drew me a picture of a coffee table that he planned to make for me, which I was very excited about of course. Since we were in NY at the time he wasn't able to start right away. When we got back he got started on it and worked during his breaks and sometimes he would stay late to work on it. Well he finished it on my Birthday and I absolutely love how it turned out! He designed it and made it from start to finish; I was incredibly impressed!

While my sister Marilyn and her husband have been on a cruise their five kids have been making the rounds staying with different aunts and uncles. This weekend has been mine and Taylor's turn with them. We've stayed with them at their house. Five kids is so much more than a handful! We wanted to do pumpkins with them but we decided that actually carving them might be a little more than what we could handle so we got these peel off pumpkin tattoo face things and did them instead. Best of both worlds, the kids got to make cute fun pumpkins to put on their porch but we didn't have to deal with the mess and hassle of carving them.

Awww - how cute are they?

Uncle Tay helping the kids :) We couldn't get Kolton to do pumpkins with us - party pooper!

Uncle Tay being such a fun uncle, playing Legos with Oakley.

The above video is what Addi and Oakley did for a large part of the weekend. They fell more times than I can count, they ran into each other and doors but never once did I see one of them cry because of it...hey, whatever keeps them happy and busy!

Colorado cabin - Labor Day

2008-09-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get caught up on my blogs so that I'm not always a month or two behind but for a little while longer I'll still be reporting old news.
My family has made it a tradition to go to the Colorado cabin over Labor Day weekend. This year every single one of us was there, which meant there were 15 adults, 11 1/2 kids and eight dogs; it was a serious zoo! But we had so much fun.

We went 4-wheeling

We rode horses

We ate food

We played games

Some read books and some watched 'Rella on iPod

We watched anxiously for bears (and saw none)

And we ate more food. We had so much fun :) This is a tradition I look forward to every year!

Kacey's 6

2008-09-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Kacey does not have her own blog so I have tagged her and graciously offered to post her insignificant six on our blog. Here they are:

1. I neglect my feet. I probably wear flip flops 9 months out of the year (I hate shoes) and I never put lotion on them, or file them, nothing. I might paint my toenails, but the paint will undoubtedly either chip off, or grow out because I won’t ever touch it up.

2. I LOVE hot dogs. I could eat one at least every other day, if not every day. I love them prepared any way; boiled, fried, grilled, heated in the microwave, I can even eat them raw. It’s all just so delicious to me. My favorite is a camp fire dog with just miracle whip on the bun.

3. I wish I could rap. I don’t want to make a career out of it or anything, but I wish I had the skills like that boy on “Drill Bit Taylor” does.

4. take full advantage of being the baby (and favorite) of the family. We all know there are certain perks that come along with being the baby, and I do not hesitate to partake in the blessings that are given. J

5. I play dirty in sports, especially against boys. As soon as I know I’m not better than the person I’m playing I will take as many little cheap shots as I can. I try to act like I’m just being aggressive but secretly I know I’m being out-played and I want to try to even things up a bit.

6. I talk to my fish like he’s a person. When I come downstairs in the morning I always go to his bowl and talk about my day, and then when I get home at night I go to his bowl (unless I’m rushing to pee, which happens a lot) and say hello. So maybe he can’t hear me, but he at least knows I love him.

Insignificantly

2008-09-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

1: I am doing this just because Stacy said that I wouldn't do it.

2: I was on the newspaper staff my senior year at West Jordan High. This is insignificant because we did not publish a single issue all year. In fact, I would show up 20 minutes late to class, stay for a half hour, and then leave to go "get quotes" for the paper.

3: After my mission, I basically took two months off... to play xbox. I got very into NCAA football. I created my own school with my friends as the players. And if they did not perform well in the game, I took it out on them in "real life". Yes... I am like an 11 year old boy.

4: When I WAS an 11 year old boy I would give play by play to basketball, football, baseball games... that I was playing in. (Honestly, I think this had stopped by the time I was 11. Not sure though.)

5: I hate cheese. HATE HATE HATE it. And it does hate me back a lot too.

6: I am about 75% deaf in my right ear. This is due to a syndrome called minears (spelling?) syndrome. Which is a kind of complicated thing to explain. But real quick, I have too much fluid in the inner ear on the right side, which causes ALL sorts of problems... namely, dizziness, nausea, passing out. It also forced me to make some drastic changes in my diet, mostly dropping my sodium intake to 1000-1500 mgs a day. My G-pa, who has a pacemaker can have 2000 a day!!! And the big one? No caffeine. Thats right! No more DEW!

I tag.... whoever.

Insignificant Six

2008-09-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

Six insignificant things about me:

1. I am obsessed with keeping my fingernails clean. I am constantly checking them and washing my hands intensely with a lot of soap under the nails to make sure they’re clean. I hate hate hate grungy, dirty nails on myself and others. I cut my nails really often, probably because they feel cleaner when they’re super short.

2. I cannot set foot in a bathroom with bare feet. I wear flip flops into the bathroom at all times. It completely grosses me out to step into a bathroom with bare feet, ESPECIALLY if there’s even a drop of water on the floor. Even if it’s my own bathroom and I just cleaned it thoroughly I will not go in without flip flops. On a related note I can shower in tub showers with bare feet, but if it’s just a shower without the tub for some reason I have to shower with flip flops on.

3. I LOVE to cook! If I had all the time and money in the world I would cook three meals a day, plus desserts. I love to try new recipes and even more than that I love to make up my own recipes and see how they turn out.

4. I can fall asleep any time anywhere. This is a Lyman trait that I think we’re all a bit proud of and we loathe at the same time; we’re very tired people. I fall asleep during 90% of the movies that I watch. That includes in the theatre, at home, at someone else’s house, middle of the day, evening, sitting up, laying down etc.

5. Up until last month I had zero desire to read the Twilight series. For some reason, one day in August, I decided out of nowhere that I would read the first book just to see what all the fuss was about. I immediately got hooked of course and I read all four books really quickly to catch up to the rest of the world. I loved them of course!

6. I am always cold. I spend probably 90% of my life with goose bumps. I wear long-sleeved shirts and sweaters to work in July and August. At home I’m almost always wrapped up in a blanket. I’m only comfortable when normal people are much too warm.

I tag Taylor (even though he probably won’t do it) Noelle, Kristi, Heather, Marilyn, Erin, Mom, Dad, Dawn, Bryan, Kera, Paris and Kace (she doesn't have a blog but she can post her 6 on mine)

Bear Lake

2008-09-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

OK, so this is long overdue, but our Bear Lake weekend in July was too fun to not blog about. This year we had our first annual friend get-together (I'm not going to write the official name of the reunion because it sounds naughty, even though it's not) at Tyrel's in-laws' awesome cabin! We are hoping to make this an annual occurrence and we are hoping that even more of our friends will be able to come in future years.

First of all get a look at this awesome cabin! The cabin is nicer and bigger than most houses and it is right on the golf course, which was heaven for Taylor. He managed to get in two rounds of golf. This is the same golf course that he plays every year during his family's Bear Lake getaway, but this year he was not very happy with his scores. Since I played the course with him last year I can verify that he really is much better than his 2008 scores indicated.We spent time at the beach/lake. We rented a jet ski and had tons of fun with it! Surprisingly there were no injuries (besides a couple of people getting their breath knocked out of them from some intense spills)…no casualties. We buried each other in the sand, collected sea shells, played frisbee in the water and ate a lot of food.

We relaxed at the cabin just the right amount. Tyrel was the cutest mom ever and brought crafts for all of the little kids! I think some of us adults had the most fun with the crafts, but the kids definitely enjoyed them too! I absolutely love my friends! I know I know, I'm turning all www.seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com on ya, but I really believe that I have the best friends a girl could ever ask for. We can go months or even years without seeing each other and as soon as we get together it's like we've been hanging out every day since preschool (which is when our friendship began).

This weekend was the start of what better be a very long tradition for us. All of you who didn't come this year need to mark your calendars for next year. I think we decided that we will always try to do it the third weekend in July so now you definitely have enough time to plan to come…no excuses!

I've got a kinda sad, kinda happy side note I thought you should all know about... I sold my hamsters. That's right, hamsters plural. I think I only blogged about Eleanor but the week after we got Eleanor we got her a little friend named Mary Todd. Eleanor and Mary Todd hated each other and they engaged regularly in boxing and biting matches. Eleanor stole MT's food every day and she piled up the bedding under MT's wheel so that she couldn't run in it. Eleanor was the literal definition of a bully, but we loved her just the same. We sold them because I just didn't give them the attention they deserved. I cleaned their cages regularly but I HATED to do it, so after the last gagarrific cleaning I decided it was time to ksl.com the rats. I had interested buyers calling immediately and Miss Eleanor Rose Harrison and Mary Todd Harrison now officially reside in Riverton. At times I miss them, but I never miss them at 2 a.m. Now I can now sleep through the night without hearing them running and running and running in their wheels. I am having technical difficulties trying to get my pictures to upload from my camera so when/if I get that fixed I will add a picture of tiny Mary Todd.

Good News Minute

2008-08-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

So every week in Relief Society before the lesson is started it is always asked if anyone has any good news from the prior week to share with everyone. My good news minute to share with all of you is the following: For the last couple of months our CD with our wedding pictures has been lost. I still can't even begin to imagine where it could be and I know we've had it since we moved into this place. Anyway, I have torn the house apart up and down multiple times looking for the CD. I kept thinking I needed to call Shutterbugz Photography to see how much it would cost for me to get a new copy but I kept putting that off because I was certain that they would charge a lot and I didn't want to pay for something that I knew I already had. Well I finally bit the bullet and just called them. Now for the good news... It was free. The dude said that they charge nothing for a new copy! I called at about 10:00 a.m. and by 1:00 p.m. I had my new copy of all of our wedding day pictures! I was so happy. Anyway, so now I have added a bunch of pictures to our anniversary post from July if anyone has any interest in scrolling down to check them out :)

MEMORIES

2008-08-02T16:09:00.001-07:00

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory (or more) that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you

It's a girl!

2008-07-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

Well we have a new addition to our family and her name is Miss Eleanor Rose Harrison. I know I know, what respectful adults who don't even have kids get a pet hamster? Honestly we're asking ourselves that too but we love her!

Eleanor kind of looks like a rat, but not as creepy and she doesn't have a gross rat tail.

She has her own bike. She is supposed to get inside the big wheel and roll all around but she doesn't seem to love the bike just yet. We'll keep trying and see if she warms up to it.

*UPDATE*
Right after my Eleanor post we went to Bear Lake for the weekend (which I still need to blog about) and we left Eleanor home all alone. Well when we got home on Sunday evening Eleanor was not in her cage! We searched all over for her and were sure she was dead and we wouldn't find her until she started stinking or something. The good news is that we found her behind some boxes in the back of the pantry and she was just fine. We then decided she needed a friend so she wouldn't try to run away again so we got another hamster (I know, what's wrong with us?). I will try to post pictures of Mary Todd sometime soon. Let's just say calling them friends would be a huge stretch of the word "friend". Eleanor is a serious bully and we have had to save Mary Todd from getting beat up many times.

One year, going on forever...

2008-07-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

Sunday was mine and Taylor's one year anniversary. We left Blanding on Saturday and headed to Manti where we stayed at the Manti House Inn B&B, which is right next to the beautiful Manti temple where we got married!

We ate dinner at the bed and breakfast and had some amazing chocolate fondue with lots of delicious treats to dip in it. We then went for a little walk up around the temple. It was so cool to be there with Taylor one year later.

The next morning we slept in, had breakfast and watched Hitch (yeah, real romantic I know). Then we headed for Park City. We spent the afternoon shopping, which is always great! Then we went to dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. All I can say is that it definitely lived up to my high expectations! My food was sooooo good and Taylor really liked his too. After dinner we had to come home and back to the real world.

I am so thankful for my life with Taylor. He is the best husband in the world! He has made me laugh every day that I've known him. He is so thoughtful and I literally want to be with him every minute of every day. The last year has been the happiest and funnest year of my life. I look forward to many many more years like the last.

4th of July

2008-07-09T18:00:00.001-07:00

Well last week was the 4th of July, which is one of my favorite holidays of the year. Blanding is the BEST place to be on the 4th! I had been talking it up ever since I met Taylor; we didn't go down last year because we were getting married in two days, so this was his first Blanding 4th. I warned him that he wouldn't get much sleep for a couple of days. We drove down after work on Wednesday. Thursday we spent the day with my family. We first went to baby hour at the pool with Marilyn, Noelle, Trent, Maxon, Oakley, Addi and Logan. It was lots of fun. Then we went up to our cabin on Blue Mountain with the whole family and ate lunch and four-wheeled around. As soon as we got back to town we had to go to the baseball fields for the beginning of Midnight Madness (overnight softball tournament). We had gotten a team together with some family and friends of ours. Luckily we got out soon enough that we were in bed before midnight, but it was a LOT of fun playing and next year we're hoping to win a game or two. The next morning, which was the 4th, we got up bright and early and headed down to the park. Taylor ran the annual 5k with some of my family members. Neither of us really know why he agreed to run but he did so well! I was so proud of him and I think he was glad he had done it. Then we had breakfast at the park and headed home to shower and get ready for the parade. The parade was the same as always, great and awful at the same time. Then it was carnival time. We pretty much just stood in line for Phillipino food for the longest time only to reach the front as soon as they ran out of most of their food. We did get some delicious kabobs so the wait wasn't completely worthless. We walked around and saw a bunch of my friends and caught up with a million people. Then we headed home for nap time. After resting we went to the boxing matches at the high school. They were enjoyable as usual. That evening we went to the melodrama because I figured I wouldn't be able to say I had given Taylor an authentic Blanding 4th of July experience without the melodrama. It was interesting of course. Then we headed down to the park for live music by "Crossroads" the band and then the best fireworks around. We were dead tired by the time the day ended but we had tons of fun! We loved spending time with my family and seeing so many friends I hadn't seen in a while. We forgot our camera so this post will have to remain pictureless for now.

Our house

2008-06-24T17:03:00.000-07:00

When I found out in January that I had to go to NYC for a couple of months Taylor and I were already under contract to buy a new townhouse. Luckily we had a really good real estate agent (my best big bro) who helped to make the process easy for us, even from the other side of the country. We ended up doing the closing from our apartment in NY, so when we came home we had a new place to live that we were seeing finished for the first time (it was new construction and Jeremy did the walk-through for us).

This is our kitchen, which is SO much better than our old kitchen at our apartment. The door you can see goes out onto our first deck. Upstairs is deck #2 outside of our bedroom. Why would any two people such as us need two decks you might ask? We're not sure, but we've got em. I am loving the space and the openness of our new home.

We have loved living here and pretending to be grown-ups who own our own place.

This is our guest/game room. As you can see we have got double-shot basketball set up in there. We have yet to set up our dart board and air hockey table. I took this picture from the top bunk of the bunk beds so if any of you ever want to stay with us this is what you have to look forward to :)