The Past Month

Here is a picture update of the most exciting things going on in our family - not surprisingly, they all have to do with Carli. Really, when I tried to think of what has been going on in the last month, not much came to mind. Just waiting for the weather to warm up, which it finally has!


Yes, this is our little piano virtuoso at the age of 17 months. She has started to mimic most of the things we do. It's especially funny to watch her with my Beehives (12-13 year old girls). She thinks she's one of them - she giggles just like them and everything.


Sadly enough, this is the only picture I got of her in her Easter dress from Nana, and it's not even with her cute hat. :( Oh well, she's still cute.
We had Easter dinner with Ben, Rachel and their girls and some friends. It was really nice to be with family to celebrate Christ's resurrection.

Here are the girls searching for eggs (with Logan's help).
Carli needed a little encouragement to find the hidden eggs, so this was quite a success for her to grab one on her own.
The weather has finally turned warm around her and we can't be more thrilled about it! We spend all the time we can out there, restocking our vitamin D stores. I love Carli's little ponytail in this one.
This is the look I get when Carli is testing me and my reaction. I told her to keep her hands away from that corner because there were spiderwebs. As you can see, she wants to see if I'll say the same thing the next time she does it, and the next, and the next. . .
I can't get enough of this face. . .but the next two are some of my all-time favorites.

Don't you just want to pinch those cheeks?!These videos will probably only be interesting to the grandma's, so be warned. The first one is of some of the new phrases Carli says. The second one is her counting to 10.



P.S. I am going to start another blog about, well, basically living. Kinda like Martha Stewart's Living, only real life, not fancy dinner parties every weekend life. I finally wrote about how I budget food and thought it would be fun to have a place to put that kind of stuff. So, I'm hoping for your feedback and input. I'd love it if you'd all contribute, so when I figure out a name for it I'll post it!

Chad and Brynn

A couple of weeks ago I had the fortunate opportunity to travel home to Oregon to participate in the wedding of my dear friend Chad and Brynn, his bride. It was wonderful to spend time with my family, see old friends, and most importantly witness Chad's wedding. The festivities were fun, the ceremony went off without a hitch, Brynn was a beautiful bride, and I was reminded why Chad is such a good friend on mine. Chad, it was an honor to be part of your wedding and great to get together. One piece of advice if I may be permitted, love and cherish your wife Brynn "even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it" (Ephesians 5:25), your marriage will be better for it. I know that you got a good one, it seems that somehow, you ended up as lucky as I.

A Birthday Trip for Nana!

We just got back from our own little "Spring Break". Carli and I got to make a last minute trip home for my mom's birthday. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed our time with family in beautiful weather. Carli seems to have grown by leaps and bounds just on the trip.These are Carli's snazzy pink glasses which she chewed the lenses out of. You can see she also chewed the glitter off the sides. I don't know what we're going to do with her inner mouse.

Carli loved her Papa. She always wanted to go get the mail with him. Everytime she saw him she'd excitedly say "Papa!".

Here she is again with Papa, checking out the blossoming fruit trees.

Carli also loves her Nana. Here they are blowing bubbles. She sure loved to give her snuggles and kisses.

My new favorite word of Carli's is Kera. She loves her aunt and had fun hanging out with her. Here they are going on a walk around the neighborhood.

These other pictures are just proof that Carli is growing up. I can't believe what a big girl she is. She sure loved hanging out with her big cousins. I didn't get any pictures of them together, but hopefully I'll be able to steal some pictures from my brother's blog soon. (hint, hint :) ) They loved jumping on the trampoline, playing in the water and playing with the dog together. I was also thrilled to meet little Cameron and love on a baby, since mine is so grown up now.

If you're wondering what's in the cup in all these pictures, it's grapes and strawberries. Carli was NOT going to give up her cup in order for her mom to take pictures.

Logan also took a little trip home to go to one of his good friend's wedding. He enjoyed being with his family and seeing friends too. I had a great time on our trip, but I was also glad to come home to Logan, and Carli was thrilled to be with her daddy.

My big girl/Happy Birthday Nana!

This was mostly for my mom's birthday, but it includes some of Carli's new favorite words, so I'm putting it on the blog.

Introducing the newest member of our family. . .

Yep, this is my new baby. We brought it home on Monday after I picked Logan up for his lunch hour and we got an incredible deal on it. We have been (seriously) researching digital pianos for several months now, and this is actually the first one I played and pushed it aside because it was out of our price range. After playing a whole bunch, I still wanted this one, and now, here it is, sitting in my front room. I blame it on the fact that my husband has incredible luck (and I think his charm and good looks might account for part of it too). Either way, it is hard for me to express just how excited I am about this.

Since we got the piano I have played it whenever I can. I am re-familiarizing myself with a part of me I'd forgotten about. Recently I've been blessed (I feel) with musical opportunities, and I'm realizing that I have sorely neglected that part of my life. It's a part of me that I haven't really shared with anyone since high school, and it kind of makes me sad because it's a bigger part than I knew. How could people really know me if they don't know this part? I'll just say this, after playing the piano and the cello so much in the past week, I feel so alive and so happy. Do you know that feeling? It's hard to describe. And I have my wonderful husband to thank for reintroducing that to me. Thank you, Logan! Anyway, that's my personal note for this post.

On a much less exciting note, Carli had her first big fall. The fall wasn't actually that big, it just so happened that it was into the corner of a square banister. It doesn't actually look as bad in the picture as it did in real life (or at least to a first-time mom who kind of freaked out). It's all better now, but it was pretty nasty there for a few days.

Well, those are the major things going on these days. Carli is a little parrot and cuter than ever. Logan is working hard and I'm having fun. Not bad, eh?

In Honor of Dr. Seuss's Birthday

If you Let a Snapagus loose in the House

If you let a Snapaugs loose in the house,
she'll chew through your books just like a mouse.
You'll find dishes on the floor,
and shoes in the drawer,
and A.B.C. gum from the trash in her mouth.

Couldn't resist posting this picture. What a silly girl! She is growing, growing and can reach way more than she used to be able to. Yikes! She says all kinds of things now, including her newest - cheeky. If you're wondering why that would be part of her vocabulary, then you must not know us very well. She gives the best snuggles and kisses and we can't get enough of her.

Logan and I went on a date on Saturday night to his company's 30th anniversary party. It was really nice to get out together, and in his company's usual fashion it was very unique, but extremely nice. We had a world tour of foods - Indian (which was excellent), Caribbean, Asian, County Fair, Western and French dessert. Yum! The rest was a lot of inside computer programmer jokes, including some in Klingon. Let's just say I'm glad I married the business end of that whole thing. Thanks Nicole for keeping Carli for us!

I will start teaching cello lessons this week, which I am really looking forward to. It has been awhile and I am excited to get back into it. Hopefully I will also gain some piano students once we get a piano. (We are still on the hunt for the one I like best. It's hard to do when you have to drive all over to find all the different brand-name dealers. Hopefully we will buy one very soon.)

Now that it's March we can't wait for warmer weather. We've yet to see any sign of it (other than the flood of rain last week that turned the whole area into one giant skating rink overnight), but we know it will come sometime soon. Until then, Carli and I will play our games of hide and seek - she hides our stuff and we find it a week later. I'm just glad I caught the shoes in the drawer before she shut it, otherwise I would have searched for awhile.

Hope you're having as much fun as we are!

Fun Times in February

Our top ten list of activities for the last few weeks:

1. Celebrating Valentine's Day complete with poetry, chocolates, a candlelit dinner, cherry cream cheese pie, chocolate milk and karaoke.
2. Planning/attending Young Women in Excellence/New Beginnings - see pics.

The cute invitations the YW president made.
The excellent decorating the 1st counselor came up with and the handouts the president made.
The door Logan and another husband made into a purse. It would look better if I'd taken the picture from the other end, but you get the idea.
It was a fun purse theme - In "Purse"-uit of Excellence. We did purse games, talked about "purse"onal progress, and our adviser gave an excellent talk on not being a counterfeit and how to be a true young woman of excellence. It was a great night!

3. Working.
4. Sleeping.
5. Playing.
6. Enjoying seeing the grass for at least a couple of weeks.
7. Looking for/researching digital pianos (hopefully purchasing one very soon- hooray for tax returns!)
8. Carrying out two callings. Logan is now the Young Men's president and the clerk. Hopefully that won't last long. He will miss being the clerk, but he's really excited to work with the young men too.
9. Planning youth conference for the stake this summer. We're on a committe of 3 couples who will put the 2-day event together. So, if any of you have ideas as to what youth might enjoy, we'd be happy to hear them!
10. Learning more crock-pot recipes. By the way, I will try to make a post dedicated to how I do my food budget, since some of you seemed interested. I can't promise how soon it will be, or how interesting it will be,but I'll do it.

Obviously not an all inclusive list, but those are the major things. I guess the important thing is that we are enjoying life, and we hope you are too!

100th Post! (and some pics)

My big girl finding her favorite song on the CD. I can't believe how grown up she seems these days.

We had a fun weekend with Uncle Ben, Haven and Rory. Haven and Carli had fun riding "Snap" the horse together. Carli got caught at an inopportune time, but Haven's smile was so cute, I had to include the picture.

We had a major melt so we went on a long walk and then raced paper boats in the gutter. We tried the big pond in our backyard, but it was too soppy, we thought one of us might fall in. (Yes, my husband is wearing shorts. How warm was it, you ask? Well into the 40s. You'd think it was 80 with the way everyone was out and about.)Logan, Ben and the girls ready for the walk.

Carli, snacking on Wheat Thins while she watches Baby Einstein. She really is getting so big, I can hardly believe it.

Cute things she's done lately:

1. She continues to say more words each day, yesterday she learned stretch and stretches her arms when she says it.

2. We usually try to give her a bath every couple of nights, but she now wants one every night. Right before bedtime, she knocks on the bathroom door, grins from ear to ear and says "Bath!" so excitedly and expectantly we can't say no.
3. At church she could hear the kids in nursery playing and knocked on the door for them to let her in. For the first time, I am excited for May when she can go play with them.

Pride

Well, I just had a moment of pride - you know the kind that everyone feels when they realize they really are good at something. Teachers feel it when they make a breakthrough with a student, lawyers when they win a case, engineers and artists when they create something, doctors/nurses when they heal, and so on. Well, this really isn't as important as all of that, but my husband just pointed out to me that I consistently feed my family for not much more than a $1 per person per meal. And we haven't had ramen for years! Yay for Home Eckies! (And anyone else who knows how to live on a budget!)

To make this post worth your time, here are some pictures and a video.

I know it must seem like I'm obsessed with her saying kitty - it's ok, I've moved on, my new favorite word of hers is Binky. She says it so cute "bee-bee". But, I've learned she won't be forced into anything, so maybe you'll hear her say it someday, maybe you won't. Here she is dancing to her Daddy's music.

The Promised Videos

Here they are, plus a picture of my new 'do.


This is a video of our little chatterbox. The one below is of her dancing. I kept trying to get her to say kitty because it is my favorite word she says - but apparently she was not in the mood. (Then my camera card filled up, so the video stopped.)

P.S. This is her current favorite song to dance to - we're not really sure why. Everytime she hears the beginning (it's really soft and gets louder) she starts to march really fast. It's funny.

I did worse than I thought. . .

I said I would upload pictures of Christmas - well, I didn't really get any pictures of Christmas. With the whole airport thing and running out of batteries and all, I hardly thought to take pictures over the break at all. Darn it! Here are a couple of pictures from before the break with a promise to post a couple of videos of Carli soon.
Carli playing her favorite game with Mom - undoing everything Mom does. It's pretty fun, you should try it sometime. I'd like to think she's trying to help me pack, but I think it's more likely that she thought I'd put together an amazingly fun obstacle course/treasure hunt for her to rip through.

A snow drift on the side of the house. It seems much higher in real life than in this picture. If you can see, the peak of it is about 1/3 of the way up the door on the side of the garage.

Here's my good husband shoveling, shoveling and reshoveling. I usually shovel when it snows during the day so he can get into the garage, he reshovels the next day after the wind has covered it all up again. Our snow piles are a bit higher now. The one on the street is up to the actual mailbox, and the little tree in our front yard is practically covered. I have to admit, it is kind of fun to have so much snow, it would just be even more fun if you could actually play in it - it's always much too cold, unless it's snowing again.

Life

Sorry, no better pictures yet. Here's what we've been up to lately:

1. Freezing (Most of the U.S.)

2. Shoveling (Logan and Kate)

3. Staying inside (Everyone we know)

4. Planning New Beginnings (Kate)

5. Playing basketball (Logan)

6. Eating Girl Scout ice cream (Kate)

7. Learning new words (Carli)

8. Figuring out what Carli wants, since she definitely knows (Logan and Kate)

9. Dancing, twirling,running, getting into anything within reach (Carli)

10. Giving/getting as many hugs, squeezes, smiles, and kisses as we can (The whole Snap 'n' the Cheek crew)

Back to Business

It's been awhile - sorry. I don't even have anything that interesting to update because I need new batteries for the camera, so I can't put pictures of Christmas up yet. I will as soon as I can (not that I did any better than usual, I only got a few pictures, darn it!) We had a very nice holiday vacation with my family this year. As usual with airline travel, things didn't quite start out how we planned. We spent Christmas Eve in a hotel in Denver and ate room service for dinner, then spent Christmas morning on the airplane and in the car, but it wasn't too bad. I guess it's memorable. We were just happy Carli wasn't old enough to care. We saw a lot of disappointed faces on kids who'd already written to Santa to tell him to forward their gifts to Grandma's house, only to find out they wouldn't make it there to open them that morning. Everyone was there except my brother and his family, who now have a brand new baby boy - that's now 8 boys and Carli! Welcome Cameron William!

I stole this picture of some of the cousins from my sister's blog. It looks like I wasn't the only one who did something illegal - look at those mugshots!

Anyway, we're doing well here in the tundra. The high today is -5, but it feels like -20. We are currently enjoying 70 degree weather though, since we never leave the house. Carli is growing, growing all the time. Here's a list of what is new for here:

1. Apparently baby-proofing is an ongoing process since she seems to grow an inch per day and can reach new heights all the time.
2. She learned to dance over Christmas break, and she has all kinds of groovy new moves. I'll get a video as soon as I can.

3. She says lots of words: mom, daddy, hi, bye, bath (everytime we walk into the bathroom where she takes her bath), doggy, moo (she even said it when she saw a picture of a cow!), Jack (her cousin's name), yay, don't and whoa (anytime she falls). She even has a couple of two-word phrases - Yay Dad, and Hi Daddy.

4. She loves giving hugs and kisses to her mom and dad now.
5. She is copying us more and more in both words and actions.

6. She walks around chattering and singing all day.

7. She loves using Mom's brush to brush her hair.

8. She also loves brushing her teeth all by herself - don't worry, I do a touch-up.

9. She now likes to talk to Nana and Daddy on the phone, and even answers back.

10. She likes to be on the couch or bed and climb down on her own.

I'm sure there's lots more, but that's a good top ten. The picture below is from our new keychain digital camera that we got for $5. It's not great quality, but it's kinda cool. I just thought it was a great picture. Who wouldn't fall in love with that face? Gotta love those dimples! What a hunk!

Holiday Traditions

Last night the Young Women made gingerbread houses and I had a TON of icing left over, so Logan and I made some at home. It made me reminisce about some of the traditions that really make the holidays. Every year growing up my best friend had a gingerbread house making party and I loved it. Tiffiny, this house is for you.
Logan and I have been talking about what traditions we'd like to have in our family and I'd like to hear what some of your favorite traditions are. Here are a few we had growing up, and a few we'd like to do in our own little family.

1. Hosting a Christmas party
2. Reading Christmas stories at night during December
3. Making gingerbread houses
4. Reading Luke 2 on Christmas Eve
5. Fondue on Christmas Eve
6. Driving around looking at the lights
7. Sleeping under the Christmas tree
8. A service activity
9. A talent show/program on Christmas/New Year's Eve

That's just a small list, we'd love to see what you add to it! Hope you are all safe and warm where you are, we're planning on a weekend in, as we're supposed to be hit with a major storm tonight (around a foot of snow). Can't wait to see some of you soon!

Did Summer actually come, or was I just dreaming?

Outside

InsideWell, we started up a new exercise program we hadn't used in awhile. We like to call it moving snow. Shoveling snow sounds too useful. We just move it somewhere else so we can add more to the pile in a few days. The count is now 16"+, but it's not over, so if you'd like to join our health club we are now accepting new members. We'd particularly like to invite Al Gore and his groupies.

Anyway, we're doing well here. As you can see, we had a snow day and Carli was so happy to have her daddy home for the day. When he came in from the garage after attempting to go to work she said, "Yay! Dad!" It was pretty cute. I'm sure this won't be the last post of this nature, so bear with me. It's going to be a long winter.

The Promised Video

Notice that the end of all the videos are the same, regardless of what she is doing in it. I've just learned to stop the video before she grabs the camera.

Happy Birthday/Thanksgiving!

On Saturday Logan's family came to visit for Thanksgiving, so we met them in Chicago and stayed at Logan's uncle and aunt's house for the weekend. They have a beautiful house and it was fun to see some of the sites.
To start our trip off, Carli was supposed to have been taking a nap, and I looked in on her to find this. Take notice of a few things: the binki across the room, the blanket that was in the crib that's on the floor, her pants that she was wearing that she is no longer. Can't imagine what she was doing instead of sleeping. . .On Carli's first birthday we went to the aquarium in Chicago. It was a free day and it was a lot of fun. It is so hard to believe that she is a year old. There were quite a few times when it felt like de ja vu because of Thanksgiving last year. I was sure glad that the one this year didn't end in a stay at the hospital, even though we were thrilled last year's did. And I'm sure that Logan's brothers were especially glad that their X-Box game didn't end the same way it did last year (with a gush and then chaos, if you get my drift. . .) We have certainly been grateful for our cute, spunky, happy, determined, friendly, lovable little girl ever since that time. Anyway, here we are with Grammy in the cute jacket she got for Carli for her birthday.

Papa Tommy was good to take Carli around in the stroller while we all looked around the aquarium (sorry for the weird candid shot).We watched one of those 4-D movies and Carli did pretty well in it until we all got sprayed in the face by "dolphins". Isn't her daddy handsome?
Uncle Will and Uncle Kelly (aka Wilbur and Kelby) pose next to the statues in front of the aquarium.

We celebrated Carli's birthday by eating some fabulous Chicago style pizza. Yum! Carli even got some ice cream, which she thoroughly enjoyed, as you can see. Her dad even let her have the spoon!

After dinner Carli got to open presents. Thank you Grammy, Papa Tommy, Wilbur and Kelby for the fun gifts! She sent each gift through a strenuous round of quality assurance testing with her teeth, as usual.

New fun poky balls!

Thanks Aunt Shanna, Uncle Daryl, Nathan and Josh for the cute book. We love it!

She is now the proud owner of a cell phone, much to her delight.

Carli waving goodnight after her fun day of family, museums, good food, opening presents, eating cupcakes and all of that excitement.

Grammy cuddling with Haven and Carli before the crew had to leave to go to the airport.

I know, I didn't get any pictures of Thanksgiving, but it was great. We certainly had a feast. It was so fun to be able to host everyone here at our house. We love when it is filled up with company, especially our family. I'm very grateful for my family in this season and it is such a blessing to be able to spend time with all of them. Thanks for coming!

P.S. I will put a video up soon. Carli took her first real steps a couple of days before her birthday and now she is a walking maniac. I'm almost regretting letting her have the walker Nana gave her, but she sure is cute when she walks.