Sunday, September 28, 2014

Family Pictures

My Fabulous friend agreed to take our family pictures again. She should maybe consider a career in meteorology, because it was a downpour in Cache Valley for 24 hours straight, but she assured me that as long as we took them between 10 and Noon, we'd be fine. And we all had our doubts. (In fact, when we pulled into the parking lot, Meili said, "It's raining too much to take pictures.") 

Someone might as well have turned the faucet off and then back on, because it was pretty clockwork. 15 minutes after we started taking pictures, the rain stopped, and as soon as we drove 10 minutes away it started raining again. 

So, for your enjoyment... 













 These are the faces I see all day long, but can never quite capture on camera. My favorite!






What can I say? They are definitely goobers, but I think they're beautiful goobers!

Sunday, September 14, 2014

8 Months


At 8 Months Grant....
-Is a couple weeks (I think) away from crawling. He's getting really fast with army crawling, and he gets up on all fours frequently, but he's still having a hard time moving from that position.
-Is a couple of days (I think) away from getting his third, and shortly following fourth teeth. He usually has a couple of good days, and then a couple of grumpy days-poor kid.
-He's so funny. He makes me laugh everyday. He LOVES LOVES LOVES cell phones, computers, etc. And he is a determined little boy, and stronger than most 8 month olds. He's gonna give us a run for our money. He also LOVES LOVES LOVES his mom. So far, it's still manageable, because he'll still go to other people. But only for a little while, and if I'm in the room, he definitely prefers me.The only time I really like the fact that he likes me so much (because I really do like my space, and like to be able to get things done) is watching how excited he gets when he sees me. I usually don't get that reaction when I walk into a room.
-He squeaks. He squeaks when he laughs, he squeaks when he cries. I joke that he's gonna need to outgrow it, or he'll get made fun of, but for right now, we love it. 
Exhibit A:
 -He also eats. I know that I'm not the best judge based on past experience. But I'm pretty sure this kid eats a ton. In an effort to get him to sleep through the night, I switched him to formula. I just felt like he was getting too distracted trying to nurse, and anytime I did bottle feed him, he didn't even finish 4 oz. So I thought that he wasn't getting enough food during the day, and was legitimately hungry at night. Lesson learned. We switched to formula. He still doesn't sleep through the night, and now we're going to be formula broke, because he drinks 8 oz. every three hours, and still wakes up to eat at night. Plus, he loves solid foods. I try to give him enough food to keep him occupied while I eat lunch, and by the time I sit down, he's already gone through everything I gave him. And for only having 2 bottom teeth, he does pretty well eating solids. I gave up on baby foods long ago, because he wanted to feed himself so much, that I couldn't get the spoon in his mouth, and keep his hands out of the way at the same time.

 -He went to his first Aggie game last night. It looks like he really likes the Aggies, but no. This is the face he makes when he sees my phone.

 And it's been awhile since I did updates for Meili. 
-I love my 3 almost 4 year old! She is getting old enough that she can really be helpful. She can get herself ready, set the table, put her own dishes in the dish washer, clean her room (for the most part), buckle herself in her carseat.
-Yesterday, she was trying desperately to figure out how to tie her shoes. 
-She's getting pretty good at recognizing the sounds that different letters make. She can recognize the sounds for S, M, A, B, P, T, L, D, and occasionally some others. 
-She knows how to spell Meili, Kaleena, Mom, (sometimes) Dad and Grant. And she's getting better at recognizing other common words like Josh and Horse.
-She is sweet. She loves hugs and kisses. She really doesn't like to get in trouble, for the most part, not because she's mad, but she doesn't like to disappoint us.
-I cannot complain about her as far as being a sister to Grant. She is really sweet to him, always willing to share and help with him. She doesn't get jealous if he takes something from her or if he knocks something down of hers. I know it probably won't last forever, so I'm just enjoying it while I can.
 This was her acting sad at the Aggie game. For all the great things I've said about her, it sure is getting harder and harder to get good pictures of her.


-She is cute all day long, but she just won't hold still or look at the camera long enough to get a decent picture.

And, to end with a funny story...
Yesterday, in her prayer, she said, "Please bless that my hair will grow long again." (Is she her mother's daughter or what?) And today she said, "Please bless that we can die safely." (Is that an oxymoron or what?) She's not morbid, but we've talked a little bit about death lately-that it's a normal part of life; that she's not going to die for a really long time. So it's just been on her mind lately. 

What silly children I have! They keep me on my toes, that's for sure!

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Family Fun

Josh's sister invited all of Josh's family to go to their timeshare in Bear Lake for the weekend. With everyone's busy schedules, in the end, we were missing a couple of Josh's siblings and family, but we had a good time. Josh thought he was going to have to work both Friday night, and Saturday during the day, but he was able to switch Saturday, and we were all SO excited!

On Friday, a few of us went to the beach to test the waters, then we relaxed in a our condos for a bit, ate dinner, went swimming and played games. On Saturday, we spent most of the day at the beach. 



 It was a little cloudy, breezy, and even sprinkled a couple times-but nothing we couldn't handle.


 Josh's brother brought his paddle board, and it served double duty-shuttling the kids out to the water trampoline since the water was so cold.










 Between playing in the sand and water, good food, and family, playing on the beach all day is just perfect.


...And Grant did what he does best at Bear Lake.

All in all, I'd call it a success. That night we had dinner at the condo, went swimming (again), played games (again), and I, of course, had to get a raspberry shake. We came home this morning and we are all SPENT!

Happenings

In the last month...

Meili started preschool.
 How excited was Meili to started preschool? On a scale of 1 to horses, Meili was My Little Ponies excited about preschool. (WAY excited.) We had an appointment to meet her teacher of Wednesday the 27th, and from then on, she just kept asking when she got to go back to preschool. Her teacher gave her some flashcards to color and cut out and she couldn't focus on anything else until that was done. (Not even her first day of dance.)

 Now, the days that she gets to go to preschool are way better than the days she doesn't get to go. And every day, when we get in the car after preschool, we have to talk about how many days it will be until she gets to go back.

When the other moms dropped their kids off for their first day of preschool, they walked them to the door, and some moms kissed their kids, and told their kids to be brave, and reassured them they would be right back. Some probably even had to walk in to the house with their kids to get them warmed up to the idea. My child got out of the car, and said, "I can go by myself," and ran in the house. Hopefully she maintains this enthusiasm for school for awhile!

This month we also....

Went to the Ogden temple open house. 

 The temple was beautiful, I always love the chance to spend more time with Josh, because I feel like we never get to see him enough. But Meili complained about the little booties on her feet the. entire. time. That made the experience less fun.
 However, it seemed to me that everyone around us was not a member of the church, so I thought that was cool, and liked listening to their conversations.



 This is Grant saying, "Oh, you want to take a picture of me? Let me put on my best smile for you." I also hope this enthusiasm for pictures lasts a long time.

 I love to see the temple.


These are random pictures that Meili and I took one day.
 Grant sits like this fairly often. 


The only thing cuter than squishy baby toes?...

 ...Squishy baby toes sitting in a yoga pose.

I tried to narrow down some of these pictures, because they're really nothing special. 

But I kind of love them.