The Snowy Perspective

First Snow–and other things

2012-01-25T10:36:00.001-08:00

It finally snowed enough to stick the other day. It still wasn’t that much and by afternoon 90% of the snow in our backyard was melted. Either way, there was some snow. I was doing stuff on the computer and Hannah was playing with puzzles when she heard a “nose” (noise) outside. She ran to the window to see what it was. It was a neighbor with his 4-wheeler plowing another neighbor’s driveway. She stood at the window and watched for several minutes. Then, she went to the basket of shoes, got me a pair of boots and brought them to me saying “Mamma, shoes, walk, Mamma, Dadda, outside, walk, shoes?” and was pointing outside. I took this as meaning she wanted to go outside and play in the snow (which she’s never done before). We bundled up and went out.

Since she’s never really played in the snow, that’s not what she wanted to do. She wanted to go on a walk to the mailbox. Almost everyday when Jonathan comes home, she gets her coat on and the two of them walk hand in hand to the mailbox. Hannah comes running back in the house when they get back with some piece of junk mail that Jonathan had her carry back. She’s always so proud and excited to deliver it to me. I think it’s adorable.

Well, they haven’t gone on their daily walk in a few days and apparently she was missing it because that’s where she led me. After getting the mail I helped her into the snow. At first, she would pick it up and say “bubbles!” and rub the snow on her belly – because that’s what she does in the bath. Then she tried tasting it. Her little legs are so short that it didn’t take much for her to get stuck in the snow and need help walking. In usual Hannah form, she was very dainty as she played – not too adventurous. I guess I don’t need to run out and get snow pants.

She had a great time.

Here are a few other pictures of her favorite things lately. For Christmas we got her some puzzles and legos – mostly because I felt like puzzles and legos were something we should have, not necessarily something she would like. Turns out. She LOVES them. We do puzzles and play with legos everyday and it didn’t take too long for her to figure them out. She built this tower all by herself the other day.

And sometimes she likes to sit in the puzzle bucket while she does the puzzles. She has a few odd things about her.

Speaking of odd things Hannah does – she’s OBSESSED with “yuckies”. Mostly “yucky toes”. She doesn’t like the lint from her socks or jammies getting between her toes. EVERY time I change her diaper she lifts up her feet and inspects her toes and says “yucky toes” and won’t stop until her toes are clean. Sometimes she’ll ask me to take off her slippers or socks so she can check for yuckies. She’ll work at them for several minutes too. She doesn’t like yuckies on her hands either which means I have to clean off her hands 3 or 4 times while she’s eating. Cleaning her hands and face is never a battle though because we just tell her there are yuckies. She’ll also pick lint or crumbs off my clothes because those are “yuck!”

Hannah talks like crazy – at least I think she does. The other night I sat down to make a list of all the words she says. In just a few minutes I came up with 75 words that she says on her own. She’ll repeat anything I say, but those are just words she knows and will come up with by herself. She’s very good at communicating what she wants. And everyday she’ll say a few more words that I had no idea she knew. She also copies everything I do. She’s my little shadow and loves to help in the kitchen. She always wants to see what I’m doing when I’m cooking. She helps me carry in groceries and put things in the fridge. Often, when Jonathan comes home, I’ll lean against the sink and fold my arms while we talk. Guaranteed within a few seconds Hannah is next to me, leaning against the cabinets with her arms folded. The other day I had one arm folded and I was using the other hand to eat a piece of pizza. Sure enough, Hannah, who had been eating normally, saw me and folded one arm and started eating her pizza with the other arm. I love that she’s my little shadow and wants to do everything just like me.

We sure love our little Hannah and I could go on forever about all the cute things she does. She’s very sweet and always concerned when someone is sad. We got a BYU magazine the other day with Cosmo on the front. She thought he looked “sad” and she carried the magazine around the whole afternoon periodically giving Cosmo kisses. She’s starting to say her own prayers at night and dinner (well, repeats what we say). She does a great job and the whole time watches us and beams with pride. She doesn’t really get the bow your head and close your eyes part. It’s just too exciting. She goes to nursery great and doesn’t care that we leave her…never really did. She loves to take things out of my cupboards in the bathroom while I’m getting ready and line them up on the floor or chair in the bathroom. That’s a little annoying and my bathroom is never clean for that reason, but it keeps her entertained. We’ve only had one casualty when she dropped a bottle of perfume…but our bathroom smelled great for over a week!

Finally, the one thing she does that gets on my nerves is she’ll call my name over and over and over again. “Mamma, Mamma, Mamma”. Even if I answer and say “what?” she’ll just keep saying my name. Do all kids do this? She’ll say it like 30 times in a row. Both ignoring her and answering her don’t work. Oh well, I guess I’ll take her calling my name all the time over other things.

Phase 3

2011-12-14T05:18:00.001-08:00

Phase 3 – PITTSBURGH

(Don’t forget to read about Phase 1 and Phase 2)

Finally, Hannah and I headed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a week or so with my sister Cheryl. This week was the most chill of our entire trip but that doesn’t mean we didn’t stay busy and we didn’t have a great time enjoying one another’s company and kids.

Cheryl teaches about 6 exercise classes throughout the week. She would usually go to those in the mornings while Hannah and I would stay home and sleep in (her kids get up earlier than Hannah). We would then hang out and play with the kids in the morning and after naps try and do something.

We hit up the McDonald’s play area one day.

We hit up the mall play area one day.

We also took advantage of the fact that Cheryl kind of knows what she’s doing when it comes to hair (at least more than I) so Hannah got a haircut.

The highlight was probably the Children’s Museum. The kids loved it as it was totally interactive and at their level. They could play however they wanted and make as big of a mess as they wanted.

And of course, the reason for the trip – quality cousin bonding time.

The favorite games these 3 played was running across the room into someone’s arms after they counted to 3. All of the kids would stand at the wall and wait for me or Cheryl to say, “1, 2, 3!” Then they would run to us. Sawyer was the most aggressive and usually took off early…would would catch himself and scoot his little body back up. Lincoln was the fastest and would make it to us first. Hannah always waited until the coast was clear and she knew she wouldn’t collide with anyone before she took off running. She didn’t care as much about winning.

Thanks for letting us come Cheryl!

Phase 2

2011-12-14T05:15:00.001-08:00

Phase 2: NEW YORK

Start at Phase 1 if you missed it.

On Saturday, November 5th, I left Hannah at Wendy’s, took a bus, Jonathan took a plane and we met at the Bergen Street Subway stop. I’ve done my fair share of traveling and having to meet up with people, but this is the first time I’ve done it with a cell phone and in my native language, and it sure makes things so much easier. We met up and headed to Brooklyn to Ashley’s place.

Ashley and Blair couldn’t have been better hosts. We felt like we were staying at Hotel Willis, what could have been a 5 star hotel, when we found candy and lotions waiting for us on our beautifully made air mattress. We had to make the most of our time with Ashley and Blair because Ashley had just been hired at Nintendo (cool huh!) and had to go to Seattle for a 3-day training. We dropped off our bags and headed to Times Square for dinner.

We spent the next week doing a lot of touring, site seeing, subway riding, walking, and show seeing. Here’s a run down of what we did each day.

SUNDAY – We went to church with Ashley and Blair, then skipped out after sacrament meeting. The rest of the day was spent tracking down Jonathan’s mission stomping grounds. We wanted to attend a Spanish Branch where Jonathan had served, so we looked up when we could attend one and found a branch starting at noon. We headed over just to find the church website was wrong and it was a Chinese branch at noon. The Spanish branch had just let out so we were able to talk to a few people…no one that Jonathan knew, but they knew the same people. Apparently the church is growing though because 10 years ago that building wasn’t there. They met in a rented space on the second floor of a building down the street.

Next we went on a building hunt as he walked down memory lane. The next place we went had a sign on the door saying the 1:00 meeting was canceled for Stake Conference which was at 10 in a different building. Awesome.

After grabbing some pizza at one of Jonathan’s favorite places, we headed off to find a third building. This one was more of a hunt. We ended up having to walk quite a ways to find it. Had it been dark, I would have felt even more nervous walking that area. It didn’t help that we saw about 10 police vans (Jonathan said they use vans so more cops can travel together) fly past us with sirens blaring and half a dozen other vans pulled over confronting groups of people and half a dozen more vans just parked, waiting in the alleys. Should lots of police around make you feel safer or feel like you’re in danger? I believe it’s probably the latter. Jonathan told me that while he served in this area he once was talking to someone who’s door they knocked and they asked this lady if she had heard of or seen the LDS missionaries before. She responded with, “Yeah, I know who you guys are…you’re the only white people dumb enough to be in this part of town.” It’s true. Aside from the man we talked to in the church building, we saw 1 other white person…and we spent about 45 minutes walking to the church.

I felt bad that we had such poor luck actually attending a Spanish branch, but I’m glad I got a glimpse of Jonathan’s mission areas and I’m glad he got to visit some of the places. We wrapped up the evening by heading out to Coney Island. That too was a bust because they closed everything up the weekend before but we walked along the beach and ate hot dogs anyway.

MONDAY – We did the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island thing on Monday. The statue is closed (the ENTIRE thing) for renovations, but we were able to walk around the island and take the highly recommended (by us – best kept secret of the Statue of Liberty) ranger tour. Then we toured Ellis Island – which was much bigger than I thought it would be.

Once we took the ferry back we walked around the Financial District, watched the Occupy Wall Street protesters, then visited the 9/11 Memorial. We were there at a great time because we got to see it in daylight, but were also there when the sun set and lights turned on.

Finally we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, ate at a Pizza joint called Grimaldi’s that’s located under the Brooklyn Bridge and got ice cream by the river. By the end of this day, especially with it being right after all the walking we did on Sunday, we were exhausted.

TUESDAY – Even though our feet were sore and we were pooped, I dragged Jonathan out of bed early the next morning to hit up the standby line for tickets to the Regis and Kelly Show. Unfortunately, we didn’t get in but believe it or not we had a good time in line as we made friends with the Canadians in front of us in line, got a free breakfast from a food truck, and had our first of 8 celebrity sightings. Regis was walking up from the parking garage (?I assume?) and walked about a block to the studio. He was on the other side of the street, and I ran to take a picture, but of course I forgot my camera was still on the self-timer setting so I clicked, then it waited 15 seconds to take the picture and I got 3 great shots of a truck passing by. I changed that and snapped a few more, just to realized it was on also on a nighttime setting and my pictures were all blurry.

After our bust at ABC studios, we hit up the Rachael Ray show to see if we could get standby tickets for that. This time, we were first in the standby line but it didn’t matter. There was no room for us. The only upside to waiting in line the whole time was we had celebrity sighting #2 – AC Slater. Well, I guess he goes by Mario Lopez these days but as far as I’m concerned, he will always be AC Slater from Saved By The Bell. He was getting out of an SUV to be on the Rachael Ray show (I’m guessing) but then the security guy told him to get back in and go to a different entrance.

We grabbed some lunch hit up a few fun Times Square stores like Toys R Us and the M&M store. Then we headed to Central Park and relaxed for a bit. I was amazed at how huge that park is and feel like you could spend a whole week there and still not see everything. We eventually made our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where once again I learned what a rare man I married. By this I mean, he was the one dragging me from room to room to find certain artists and he was the one stopping to appreciate each statue and painting while I just walked to the next bench and collapsed…and I’m the one with an Art History minor! I’m the one who went on a 3 month study abroad where all we did was walk through museums (and I loved it). My pregnant body was just so tired of walking that sitting on a bench was so much more appealing. I could appreciate from a distance.

This is one of my Grandma Jean’s favorite paintings.

With our early morning in mind, we called it a night and headed back to Hotel Willis and crashed, knowing we had another big day ahead of us.

WEDNESDAY – Again, I dragged Jonathan out of bed early so we could stand outside and watch Anne and Al (celebrity sightings numbers 3 & 4 – does it count as a “sightings” if you go to their place of business…it does in my book) on the Today Show.

Me shaking Al Rocker’s hand, even though he was still talking to someone else.

I was really disappointed that Matt wasn’t there – because let’s be honest, he’s the only one I care about – but he was off in Malaysia doing “Where in the world is Matt Lauer”. This is as close as I could get.

There actually weren’t too many people there so we got a front row spot. I called Cheryl and told her to watch for me and she saw me twice. The second time, she only saw my scarf because I was too busy taking a picture with this fellow (celebrity #5)…

I’m actually not a Twilight fan at all. Haven’t read any of the books. Haven’t seen any of the movies. Don’t really care to. Don’t really care about this character at all but figured I’d take a picture anyway. Jonathan told him it was nice to see him with a shirt on. Not sure he heard, but I thought it was funny.

After the Today Show, we wandered around Rockefeller Square, the NBC studios, and did some more shopping around Times Square.

Around 11:30 we headed to Gershwin Theatre to enter the lottery for some Wicked tickets. For those of you that don’t know, some theatres do a drawing 2 hours before each show in which they give out great seats for super cheap to the lucky winners. When we got there, we felt we had a good chance because there were only about 30 people waiting and we had been told they usually draw out between 10 and 20 names. Each drawn name can buy 2 tickets, so we figured all 30 of the people there could possibly get in. Throughout the next 30 minutes though, about 100 more people showed up and we were feeling like the odds were against us. So, we had a strategy. There was a nice young couple also waiting for the drawing and the husband was wearing a BYU hat. We made friends with these people and decided that if BOTH mine and Jonathan had our name drawn, we would get them tickets. If BOTH their names were drawn, they’d get us tickets. Well, it was time for the drawing and what are the chances – Jonathan’s name was called. I probably showed my excitement a little too much (especially since out of the 4 of us, his was the only name called and our newly made BYU friends didn’t get tickets) but I was THRILLED. Wicked was the one musical I really wanted to see and it couldn’t have worked out more beautifully. On our first try, we scored FRONT ROW tickets for $25 each. Had we not won this day, we probably would have tried again every other day (wasting a ton of time) until the last day we were there, then finally shelled out $125 each for back row seats.

So, two hours later we went and saw Wicked and loved every second of it. I’ve never seen it, but know all the music and loved seeing how it all tied together. Being on the front row, admittedly is a little close, but I’ll take that over back row any day. We could see the make-up, costume detail, hear individuals voices, and see spit come out of the actors mouths. It was great. I would get so caught up in one person that I would have to remind myself there was more going on and remember to take in the whole stage.

Because we went to the matinee, that freed up our evening to visit a family from Jonathan’s mission. We hurried to the train station and bought our, what we thought were very expensive, Long Island Railroad tickets. We had about 2 minutes from the time we bought the tickets to the time the train was leaving so we ran like mad to catch the train then enjoyed the hour long express ride. Once we got there Abelda and her husband Leonaldo picked us up and took us back to their house where we had a traditional meal of Honduras (a soup with just about everything in it. Apparently sometimes the meat they would serve would be things like pigs foot, but Jonathan and Abelda assured me that wasn’t what we had that night). Jonathan enjoyed speaking Spanish with them and I was surprised at how well I could follow their conversations. She joined the church a few months before Jonathan ever knew her but quickly became the “mission mom” and always had the missionaries over and so Jonathan got to know her really well. Abelda speaks English so we would also talk, but her husband didn’t so much of the evening was done in Spanish. After a few hours they took us back to the train station and we headed home.

Thursday – Again, we were exhausted because we left the previous morning a little before 6 and didn’t get home until after midnight so we slept in a little. Our only obligation today was the David Letterman Show (which we scored tickets to the day before as we were killing time between winning the lottery and actually seeing the show). We shopped around at FAO Schwartz and the Apple store before heading over for the taping. I really wanted to go to a show taping while in New York so I was thrilled to get into David Letterman (although he’s not really the one we watch). His guest that day was Katie Holmes, whom I’m not a big fan of. But, nonetheless, it was interesting to see how small the set actually is, how many people are walking around on stage throughout the taping, and how the whole thing works.

They tape Thursday and Friday’s show on Thursday and I guess Steve Martin was going to be on the Friday show, so he was in the audience, sitting about 10 seats down from us, and he did a little banter with Letterman. So with Letterman, Holmes, and Martin that wraps up celebrities 6, 7, and 8.

That evening we went to visit another mission family. Nuria Reyes owns an El Salvadorean restaurant so we went there for dinner. She treated us to more food than I could possibly eat. What exactly the meat was is still up in the air. Jonathan loved it though. It was a VERY small restaurant (like 5 tables – but really there was only room for 2) and it was near closing so we were able to visit with her quite a bit. She didn’t speak much English so Jonathan translated. Her husband showed up after a while to take her home and he spoke good English so we talked to him while Nuria closed up the restaurant. We then went to their house and met their kids. They have 3 children. One was just a baby when Jonathan met and baptized Nuria and is all grown up now. When Jonathan taught Nuria, she wasn’t married, and since his mission, married and has become inactive. That’s hard to see because they are such nice, loving people. I guess they are still friends with several members though so all hope is not lost.

Friday – Ashley had gotten back from her business trip the previous night, so we headed into the city with her Friday morning. She headed off for work and Jonathan and I went to the Manhattan Temple to do a session. The building was there, but the temple was not when Jonathan served his mission so that was fun for him to see. It’s amazing how calm and peaceful you can feel when in the temple compared to the crowded, busy city around you.

After the temple we got some cupcakes at Magnolia’s Bakery and then joined 5,000 other cheapos at the Target sponsored Free Friday MOMA night. It was crowded, that’s for sure. But worth saving $25 bucks a pop. And this little gem was a fun surprise we weren’t expecting to see.

That night we met up with Ashley and Blair and treated them to a show to say thank you for giving us a place to stay the entire week. Mary Poppins was my favorite musical in London so I’m happy we all got to see it. Our seats weren’t quite as good as at Wicked (sorry Ashley and Blair!), but we still got to see the show and had a good time.

Saturday – I would like to say that Saturday, or return travel day, went off without a hitch, but that’s not the case. We thought we gave ourselves PLENTY of time to get to the bus station/airport. We were wrong. We had our route planned out and when we went to make our first subway transfer, both the lines we needed were closed for the weekend. We scrambled to figure out a new route and went our separate ways. I still made my bus, but only by about 5 minutes (I planned to get there an hour early). Jonathan however, missed his flight. Our original plan had him making 2 transfers and then heading straight to the airport (a ride that took 30 minutes when he got to New York). Today, with the closures, it required 5 transfers (one of which he had to wait 25 minutes for a train to come) and almost 2 hours to get there. His flight left at like 11:55 and he showed up to the kiosk at 11:56. I thought for sure this would cost us BIG as we would have to buy another ticket entirely (as has happened to us before) but we were pleasantly surprised to find it was a $60 charge for a new ticket. Still $60 we would rather have not spent, but glad it wasn’t $500.

Go here for the final Phase.

Phase 1

2011-12-14T05:12:00.001-08:00

Ever since Jonathan and I have been married, we’ve wanted to go to New York. Jonathan served his mission there and hasn’t been back since his mission. I’ve never been. So, when my friend Ashley and her husband Blair moved out there this past fall we knew it was our chance. We tentatively planned for April 2012, just before Hannah turned 2. Then we found out I was pregnant and due April 15th – so that wasn’t going to work. The latest I could fly was February 19th so we moved the trip up to then. In my mind I still wanted time to plan and get excited. I wasn’t looking forward to cold weather and even more so, traveling across the country, 7 months pregnant with Hannah (who would be 21 months) on my lap. We checked airline prices for November, pulled the trigger, and 2 weeks later our trip began.

I’ve broken this “trip” into 3 separate posts, seeing as it was like 3 separate trips.

Phase 1: Maryland

My sister Wendy and her family live there, so Hannah and I went to visit them. We got there Saturday evening and in typical Wendy fashion she had plans for us. We hurried home from the airport, ate, changed and headed off to the first Halloween activity – the ward Trunk-or-Treat. Unfortunately, Maryland had a “HUGE STORM” (there was a slight frost that covered the grass, but you could still see grass and according to Wendy, it would have canceled school had it been a weekday) that day so the Trunk-or-Treat had been cut short. By the time we got there (and then went home because we forgot costume pieces) and went in we had missed the activity and were catching the end of the Spanish branch’s annual piñata party. At least we looked great.

We spent the next week

Trick-or-TreatingWard Trunk-Or-Treat

We were there over Halloween so we did a group costume. Anderson was Gru from Despicable Me, and the rest of us were his minions.

Hosting preschool Preschool was on Halloween day, so we all dressed up in our costumes and made it an “H” is for Halloween Party!

These two cousins made preschool very difficult.

Playing with new toys

Going to a Pumpkin Patch
Seeing as we did the pumpkin patch the day before Halloween, the pumpkins were a little picked over.

Playing at the park

Going to the DC Zoo
This is the famous Panda Mei Xiang (or maybe it’s Tian Tian) that lives at the DC zoo.

Having quality cousin time (my generation)
My cousin Jill lives in the area and met us at the zoo with her 3 kids.

Having quality sister time

Wrangling 3 kids on the metro

Visiting the Pentagon

Visiting other DC sites

Washington Monument

Jefferson Monument

Martin Luther King Memorial

Korean War Memorial

And we finished up our Monument tour with a picnic lunch on the lawn in front of Lincoln.

Then we headed to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

But most importantly, the cousins were able to have lots of quality time together.

Unfortunately, once I left things took a turn for the worse. They still had a good time, and did fun things like a Pirate Adventure…

There was even a bounce house at the Pirate Adventure.

I guess Hannah never really got into bouncing – but loved watching her cousins.

And an evening at Chuck E. Cheese

But when Hannah wasn’t super distracted with an awesome activity, she was pretty miserable. Just a couple days after I left, Hannah got a pretty bad fever for a few days. She already had a cold and things just got worse for her. She was over the new toys, over her cousins, and wanted her mom to come home. She was pretty clingy towards Wendy and wanted nothing to do with Max.

These pictures were taken the day she had a fever. Poor kid couldn’t stay awake, she felt so miserable.

Even though Hannah was sick, she did pretty well considering her circumstances. I’m so glad I was able to visit Wendy and her family and I’m SO GLAD Wendy was willing to watch Hannah for the next week (through sickness and all) so Jonathan and I could have a week in New York!

Continue reading for Phase 2 and Phase 3.

Loving this stage

2011-10-07T11:44:00.001-07:00

The past few months I have really been enjoying Hannah. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved each stage so far but I think where she’s at right now is particularly fun. She learned how to walk just before she turned 16 months and ever since I’ve felt like she’s no longer a baby but a toddler and I love it. Her personality is so present and she’s learning so much and she does the cutest things.

Ever since she’s learned to walk she LOVES to walk around the house. I’m so surprised she hasn’t gotten bored with that game yet but she carries toys from one side of the house to the other then back again. She’ll bring me toys and put things away. I’m not sure how she picked up on this but Jonathan and I have a basket of shoes downstairs and Hannah has a separate basket and she knows which is which. If I ask her to put her shoes away, she puts them in the correct basket. She likes to go for walks outside so on her own she’ll bring me my shoes (they don’t always match) and then her shoes then she’ll go sit on the stairs so I can put them on her. When we go on the walks, she’ll stop at the door frame or at the curb or anywhere there’s a “big step” and hold up her hand for help.

She’s a great helper. She understands so much and will help pick up toys or get books or put her clothes away. Every time I sweep the floor, she wants to sit on the floor with a dust pan and do it just like I am.

Recently, she’s learned she can hold things under her chin. Does she so this so she can carry more things? Not sure but it’s really cute. She’ll give Jonathan and I things to put under our chins too. She tries to get a lot of stuff under then, then things fall but she just keeps trying. I love that she never gets discouraged or embarrassed. The other day she put a sticker under her chin and then was so confused when she lifted up her head and nothing fell out.

The other night we were putting Hannah to bed. We were singing her a song and out of nowhere she started to conduct us. She waved her right hand around while we sang. Then, she put her hand down, the started up again with both hands.

She’s discovered the trash can. She loves to put stuff in there. Only the one in the kitchen though with a lid that she has to lift up. At first it was a problem because she would throw her toys, her silverware or my spatulas and Tupperware away. Lately, we’ve been giving her things to throw away and that seems to satisfy her desire to put stuff in the trash. We’ll give her pieces of mail, or food wrappers or things like that. Then, yesterday I found her going into the bathroom, pulling off one square of toilet paper, then walking it to the trash. Then, she would go back and get another piece of toilet paper and throw it away. Oh the things that entertain her.

I bought the whole Baby Einstein series before she was born but turns out she’s not really into that. Lately she’s taken to the show “Super Why” but mostly she loves to watch movies of people she knows. This basically means home movies or videos I’ve made. She knows she can watch them on the computer so whenever I”m on the computer she wants to sit in my chair and watch a movie. Sometimes I’ll sit her in my chair and let her watch the movies by herself. I’ll usually find her like this.

The dark is not something that scares Hannah. Maybe this will come as she gets older. Sometimes when I’m getting ready she’ll go into the little room where our toilet is in the bathroom and close the door and then talk to herself. Maybe she likes the acoustics? When I open the door to see if she wants to come out she smiles then closes the door again.

Speaking of talking to herself, she loves to talk. She always has. She feels like she’s part of the conversation. She likes to talk on the phone too. I’ll often see her pacing around the room with the phone to her ear chatting it up with herself.

Everyday I’m amazed at how much she understands. I’ll ask her questions like “where’s the pig?” and she’ll waddle off and a few moments later return with the pig that goes to the barn in hand. Just after she turned one she learned a few signs but lately she’s been picking up more and more and so quickly. She knows the following: milk, water, more, all done, eat, cereal, sleep, help, please, thank you, and book. She knows what a dog and monkey say. She knows how to say bubble, baby, one, Dada, Mom, Oh wow, what’s that?, Papa, go, car, uh-oh, ball, hi, and bye. She tries to repeat whatever we say but those are the words she has pretty solid. She can find her belly, feet, hands, hair, bow, eyes, mouth, and teeth. Her ears and nose are hit and miss. When you ask her how old she is (in either English or Spanish) she’ll hold up one finger and say “one”.

She likes to hide behind a chair in the family room, especially when she’s mad at me. Then she remembers it’s awesome to play peek-a-boo while hiding behind the chair because her whole body is hidden and she can run out from behind it and say “HI”. This means she doesn’t stay mad at me for too long.

Hannah likes to do somersault but can’t do them on her own yet. So, when she wants to do one, she’ll go into a downward dog position and wait for someone to flip her feet over.

She’s great at giving kisses and makes a “mu-ah” sound when she does it. She kisses everything and loves to kiss pictures. She looks out the window by the front door and waits for Dad to come home. Whenever a door opens our alarm system says “Front Door Open” (or whatever door it is). When she hears that she runs to the door to greet whomever it is. When someone leaves the house or even room she gets sad and runs after them. She says “hi” and “bye” all the time and waves while she says it.

I could go on for pages about all the things I love about Hannah. I am LOVING this stage. She wants to make us happy and she’s so easily entertained and distracted. She finds joy in the simplest of things. No matter how many times she falls she never gets discouraged. I’m so happy she’s part of our family. And I’m so happy we’ll be adding another little one to our group next spring. That’s right…Hannah’s going to be a

Desk

2011-09-20T11:59:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I went to DI to look for a lamp that I could spray paint and use in our newly decorated family room. While there, I stumbled upon something fantastic. A desk. A big, black, solid wood desk. I have been wanting a new desk for a long time because the desk we have been using is small, has no drawers, and is completely eaten up by our computer. I shopped around for a desk but couldn’t find what I wanted. Everything was too executive (i.e. old man) looking, Pottery Barn had the style I wanted, but not the price I was looking for. We even threw around the idea of having a neighborhood friend custom build us a desk. After a lot of looking I decided I wouldn’t stress over it. I had just spent a lot of money getting our front room put together (post on that to come soon) and decided I could put finding a desk on the back burner.

So, when I saw this desk I was thrilled. The price was right, the style was right, the size was right, the quality was right, the color however, was wrong. I have nothing against black, I have a lot of black furniture, but it wasn’t the look I was going for.

I took a picture with my phone and sent it to Jonathan and my mom (I run all my interior decorating decisions past her). Jonathan said he liked it and was supportive of my buying. Our conversation went a little something like this.

Ali – “I want to paint it and make it look like the white armoire.”
Jonathan – “So….does this mean I will paint it to make it look like the armoire?”
Ali – “Very possibly.”

I’m not always the best at finishing projects.

The inspiration armoire

My mom was also supportive. So supportive that she jumped in her new, big car and came to American Fork to drive it home for me. I love her new car. It has hooked me up so many times already. We loaded it up and brought it home then headed to get supplies.

It’s tough to work on a project like this with a little Hannah running around so I could only work on it in 2 hour chunks while she was napping. So, admittedly, it took about 2 weeks longer than it should have but regardless, it’s done.

BEFORE

DURING
Step 1 – Priming it

Step 2 – Painting it

Step 3 – Distressing it

The Finished Product

Pretty much I. love. it. I LOVE how big it is. I love how many drawers there are. I love that there is so much workspace. I think it turned out so well and I’m so proud of myself for actually doing it. Jonathan only helped in moving it and priming the drawers. I’m so happy I didn’t settle for something I didn’t love. I’m so happy I didn’t spend a fortune on a brand new one. I’m so happy I didn’t order one that was slightly better than what we had just to have it be a flimsy piece of junk. I’m so happy that I waited for the right thing to turn up.

My Cancer Story

2011-08-12T22:52:00.001-07:00

I wrote this about a year ago and decided to publish the account of my “cancer story”.

Cancer Story

I had this mole on my knee as long as I can remember. It was bigger and darker than others but not that strange looking. When I went to the dermatologist two years ago I specifically asked about it. The girl told me it was not a big deal. A year later I had Ryan take a look at it. He had spent all summer working in dermatology offices since that’s the kind of doctor he wants to be. I told him I was concerned because it looked like a funny shape to me. He pointed out that it was really two moles, very close together and that was the reason for the funny shape. That made sense. I could now see where the two moles were touching.

Throughout the summer when I started wearing shorts again, I started noticing it more again. I couldn’t really find the two moles anymore. Now it just like one big one (about the size of an eraser on a pencil). For the first time I noticed it was bumpy and there were white flakes on it. I thought about going in for a while, but decided I had other things to worry about, like having a baby and becoming a first time mom.

July 22, 2010- I went to the Dermatologist to have a whole body mole check. It had been about 2 years since I went, I was going off Nebo School District insurance and had already hit my deductible so I figured I might as well go to as many doctors as I could, and I had a funny looking mole on my right knee that was making me nervous.

I didn’t see the actual dermatologist, but I saw the PA (Physicians Assistant). I told him my family history (my dad had pre-melanoma on his face, Grandma Edna had melanoma, and my sister Wendy had melanoma on her arm), then I pointed out the one on my knee and told him I was most concerned about that mole. He looked at it and said, “It does look a little funny, not too bad though. But if you feel like it’s changing, I’ll go ahead and take it off.” He then proceeded with my full body mole check and removed two more things (one on my left arm that was grey-I had never noticed it before, and one on my back-I asked him to remove that because “it would get irritated by my bra”... I just didn’t like it).

That was all. I went home, got Hannah and took off for the Snow Family Reunion in Heber. No big deal.

This is what it looked like after they scraped it off.

August 3rd - I was grocery shopping at Smith’s and had my phone buried in the diaper bag. I never heard it ring. When I got in the car I saw I had a missed call and voice mail. I didn’t recognize the number. I wondered if it was the dermatologist’s office calling. I listened to the message. I thought for sure it would be the secretary's voice saying “We got your test result’s back, everything looks good. Have a nice summer.” Instead, it was the doctor herself (who I had yet to meet) calling from her personal phone at home (come to find out later that made total sense because she only works 2 days a week from 12-4....not a bad life). Anyway, she just said she got my test results back and wanted to discuss them with me so I needed to call her back as soon as possible at her home. My stomach got all in a knot - that couldn’t be good.

When I got home, I got Hannah settled and called her back. Everything she told me is now kind of a blur. She told me the results for the mole on my knee came back as melanoma. It was .42 mm deep. I needed to have it removed. She wanted to see me the next day to see if it was something she could do or if I needed to go to the Huntsman Cancer Institute. That made it seem like a big deal. While she’s telling me all this I was trying to remember the details of Wendy’s cancer. Hers ended up being “no big deal” - meaning, they cut it out and it was over with. That gave me comfort. She wanted to me to call her office and set up a time for tomorrow. I did.

I called Jonathan first. He reacted very calmly. I was also surprisingly calm. It was what it was, we would deal with it as it unfolded, and everything would be fine. I caught it early and that was the good news.

Next I told Cheryl, then Wendy. Wendy was good to talk to because she had just been through this exact thing 2 years ago. I waited until my mom got home from work to tell her. She just kept saying, “Well, crap.”

August 4th - 1:30 I went to the dermatologist. My parents came down to watch Hannah and Jonathan met me there. The whole thing was again kind of a whirlwind. The doctor didn’t have any openings that day. She was just squeezing me in and it sure felt that way. I wanted her to come in and sit down next to us and say things like “Good job for knowing your body and coming in. We caught it early so everything is going to be fine. This is what it means to have melanoma… Here’s a diagram of your skin... This is how deep yours is... This is how it spreads... This is what’s going to happen tomorrow...” Instead, she ran in - looked at my knee, squished the skin around it, said she could do it, wrote a prescription down for me for compression socks, and asked if I had any questions. Well, of course I had questions but I didn’t know what they were or how to ask them. I mean, I had read up on melanoma before coming so I had a basic understanding but I didn’t know how to say “talk to me like I didn’t spend 15 years studying medicine and I have no idea what’s going on - explain it from the beginning.” I asked what my official diagnosis was so I could compare what I had to Wendy. She said, “You have melanoma.” I told her Wendy’s diagnosis and she said, “Oh, I don’t diagnose things that way.” Why don’t all doctors diagnose things the same way?
I came home feeling like everything would be fine. I always knew it would be. I was frustrated though that the doctor didn’t spend more quality time teaching me about the cancer I had.

August 5th - I spent the day going from one medical supply store to another trying to find compression socks and a knee brace that will make it so I can’t bend my knee. The doctor made it sound like it would be easy to find and cheap. That wasn’t true. I ended up at a doctor’s office that makes prosthetic arms and legs. I felt dumb there. They said that most surgeons have those braces at the surgery centers to just give the patients. Mine didn’t. I was starting to get the feeling that this doctor didn’t remove melanoma from knees very often (I later found out that she only has 1 or 2 patients with cancer a year…so not as common as I thought). In the end, I called the doctor’s office because I needed a prescription to get one. And they weren’t cheap - around $100.

August 6th - 1:45 I went in to have the cancer dug out. My mom watched Hannah and my dad drove me to the appointment. Jonathan met us there. I guess I misunderstood what would be happening. I thought she would use the razor thing that was originally used to scrape the mole off but just go deeper and wider. Nope. She numbed my knee, took out a scalpel, and cut a circle around my mole. I started bleeding. Then, she took pliers, lifted up my skin and started cutting with a pair of scissors. The whole thing took about an hour and a half. The chunk of skin was 3 inches in diameter and a couple of centimeters thick. I watched for about half of the cutting before I started to feel nauseous and she had me lay down so I couldn’t see. She stitched it up by doing a purse string stitch. That meant she stitched around the outside and then pulled it together like a purse sting. When she pulled I could feel the skin of my shin and thigh being pulled. Very weird sensation. When she finished she said I still had a dime-sized hole, so she did it again. Then she did seven more stitches along the top.

I was told not to bend my knee for two weeks.

August 7th-20th - I wore my brace only some times. It was hot and cumbersome. I was surprised at how easy it was to NOT bend my knee. I was very aware of the pain associated with me bending my knee. When it was straight though, it was fine. The night of the 7th was when I was in the most pain. I couldn’t sleep because it hurt so bad. They didn’t prescribe me any medication because she told me the pain wouldn’t be that bad. Jonathan went to the store at midnight to get me some extra strength Tylenol. That helped.

I felt stupid wearing the brace. It drew a lot of attention - but then again, so did walking with my knee perfectly straight. People’s reactions surprised me. Some people were very sympathetic. I appreciated that. Most people would see the brace and say, “Oh my gosh what happened?” I would answer by telling them I had some cancer on my knee and it was removed so I had a big hole in my skin with stitches. If I bent my leg the stitches would break, therefore I had to wear the brace. People would respond by saying “Oh, good, I thought it was something horrible like you broke your leg.” One person even said, “Well, you should at least make up a better story than that.” Those responses hurt my feelings. Yes, a torn ACL would be more painful and a longer recovery process. But, a torn ACL won’t kill you. Had I not gone in, I would be slowly dying of cancer. Didn’t people get that? Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer. More than 8,000 people die each year because of it. Now, I know that’s not as many as breast cancer, or lung cancer...but it’s still cancer and it’s still deadly. People didn’t seem to get that.

August 20th - I went in to get the stitches out. That was a pretty quick process. I was told I could slowly start to bend my knee again. It felt like I had to relearn how to walk. I was amazed at how after only a week, my muscles that bent my knee were so weak. With every step I felt wobbly. It took about 3 days before I felt like I was walking normal. It took about 2 weeks before I could go up and down stairs with some normalcy.

September 3rd - It has now been about a month. My knee has a small infection. Every time I sit I can tell that I’m still stretching out the skin. I try not to bend my knee too much. When I was in the 4th grade, I was chasing after a ball, tripped and fell. I had a scar on the right side of my knee from that fall. Now that scar is on the top of my knee. I had another mole on the inside of my knee. Now, that mole is part of the scar. It’s weird to think my skin was stretched that much.

I spoke with the dermatologist’s office today. The test results were back and all margins were clear. All the cancer is gone. I will now go in to be checked once every 4 months for a year, then every 6 months, then once a year for the rest of my life. Because both Wendy and I have had melanoma, our other siblings have a 98% chance of getting it.

----------------------------------------------------

It’s now been just over a year since it was removed. I don’t in any way feel like I “survived cancer” because when I think of cancer I think of people going through things so much worse. I do, however, have a lovely scar to remind me how grateful I am that I knew my body, and I got it checked out, and it didn’t become a big deal.

This picture was taken last month.

This is zoomed in on my knee. Cool scar, eh?

Moab/Arches National Park

2011-07-26T16:37:00.001-07:00

I’ve lived in Utah my entire adult life and I’ve never taken the 4 hour drive south to see one of the things Utah is most known for. So, when Jonathan’s sister said they would be going to Moab and hiking around arches before the family reunion we decided to tag along – and I’m sure glad we did. It was more fun that I thought it would be and I loved spending time with family.

We left Friday after Jonathan got home from work and pulled into our ultra swanky Super 8 around 8:00. We met up with the Ford’s (Jonathan’s sister’s family), unpacked (I have to unpack when I arrive somewhere, even if it’s only for a few days), and tried to put Hannah to bed. I say tried because it took us 3 1/2 hours before she finally fell asleep. At 9:45 we put her down (much later than her normal bed time) but were worried her crying would be annoying to our neighbors. (By night 2 we got over that fear). We only let her cry for about 5 minutes before I went in and held/bounced her for an hour. She was almost asleep when I texted Jonathan (who had been sitting in the hall) to come in and turn down the AC so it wouldn’t be so loud next to her pack and play. Our stupid, LOUD as could be door woke her up and she was ready for another party. Fast forward to midnight and she’s still wide awake so we put her in the stroller and walked the halls of the motel/town for 30 minutes to find her even more hyper with the new environment. Around 1:15 we just put her in her bed and she cried off and on for another 10 minutes before falling asleep. Needless to say the next morning we were very tired.

We got to Arches around 9:00 and set off for our first “hike”. I’m sure there are much harder hikes to do but we did simple ones that little kids could do with us. I was very pleased with how family friendly arches was.

For the second hike we lost the three year old and his mom but the rest of us went to Landscape Arch and Navajo Arch.

Did I mention that Hannah loved being carted around on Daddy’s back?

But after awhile she started to get tired so we headed back for naps.

That night David and Melissa and their little girl that is just 3 months older than Hannah joined us. We went out for dinner.

The next morning we went to church then headed to “Hole in the Rock”. No, not the place where the pioneers had to take their wagons, but a house that some guy with too much free time built in the side of the mountain. After that we went to the “movie museum” where there were a bunch of pictures documenting all the movies that have been shot in Moab.

The next day, Monday, was by far the most eventful. This was the day we decided to do Delicate Arch. We got a later start than planned (which tends to happen when little kids are involved.) The Fords decided not to go on this one as they wanted their kids to sleep in and they thought it might be tough for the littlest one. We pulled into the parking lot at 9:00 and from the time Jonathan turned off the car and got out and looked in the back window Hannah and thrown up all over herself. We’re still not totally sure what made her sick but it was everywhere. Luckily we had a full thing of wipes and extra clothes. We changed her and wiped up the car seat the best we could, left the car windows rolled down to let it air out and continued on with our plans.

I’m so glad we didn’t turn back then. Delicate Arch was a great little hike and a beautiful sight. We thought we made it….but had to continue on.

The walk back was apparently hot and exhausting for the little girls.

We made a quick stop at Balanced Rock then headed to a laundromat do wash Hannah’s clothes and attempt to wash her car seat.

I’m not sure why car seats have to be so difficult but it was hot, we were tired and hungry, we had a squirmy baby and after half an hour we could not get the thing off. There was one little part that we could not figure out for the life of us. Then, we saw on the label that you’re not supposed to dry it in a dryer and we figured that even if we could get it off, we didn’t have time to let the thing air dry. So, I washed Hannah’s clothes and Lamby (the stuffed animal that we can’t sleep without that was a causality in the mornings incident) while Jonathan did the best he could to clean the car seat. I wish I had taken more pictures of the awfulness that was that afternoon because looking back it was a good memory but at the time I was very stressed. The only picture I took is this one: I’m sitting on the toilet, feeding Hannah lunch while Jonathan is scrubbing the seat.

After we got everything cleaned we headed to Colorado for the Snow Family Reunion. We were in charge of FHE the first night so we had planned to stop at a Walmart an hour away from where we were staying to get popsicles. Well, just as we were pulling into the parking lot, guess who threw up AGAIN! That’s right. So we spent an hour longer at Walmart than intended. We also got baking soda and Febreze while there. Lamby was covered again and this time we had no access to a laundromat. Later that night I cleaned Lamby in the bath tub and then dried him with a blow dryer. Oh, and did I mention it was my birthday? Happy Birthday to me :)

She didn’t get sick the rest of the trip with is great. Not sure if it was just a 24 hour thing, or car sickness, or breakfast didn’t sit well but I’m glad we had a full 5 days to leave the windows rolled down and let the mountain breeze air out the car.

Stay tuned for the details of the actual family reunion…

Happy 4th (a little late)

2011-07-26T14:33:00.001-07:00

I decided that the 4th of July is my favorite holiday. I love the BBQ’s. I love the music. I love the parades. I love that everyone dresses in the same three colors. I LOVE the fireworks. I love everything about the 4th and this year we had a great one.

It started on Saturday the 2nd. We dropped Hannah off at my parents where she was going to have a sleep over. My parents back door neighbors were having their annual 4th of July party and once again they set up an awesome slip and slide that went from the top of their hill down to a water spraying bounce house. Of course, my dad wanted to take Hannah down it. The more she went the more she liked it.

While Hannah was playing and Grandma and Grandpa’s, Jonathan and I headed back to Provo for the “Qualtrics Stadium of Fire”. That’s right, Qualtrics was the name sponsor this year so that meant we got four free tickets. We brought 2 of our nieces, Natalie and Kendra. We all got cool blue tee shirts to wear which was an OK sacrifice to make for such great seats. We on the field, 20th row. David Archuleta and Brad Paisley were the performers. David Archuleta could use some work on his song transitions but Brad was awesome and put on a great show. And of course, the fireworks are the best in Utah and I loved every second of the 20 minute show.

Sunday morning we went to church baby free then headed to Sandy to have dinner. We spent the night there since the next morning Jonathan, Lisa, and Austin would be doing the Pepperwood Mini Triathlon.

Austin did the whole thing himself and Jonathan and Lisa were on a team. Lisa did the swimming, Jonathan did the biking, and they both ran (for fun).

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Then my dad took Hannah for a little run and they crossed the finish line too. It was a pretty casual triathlon.

Next was breakfast, music, playing on the playground and the tennis tournament.

My dad participated in a tennis tournament. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad play tennis before so it was fun to watch and I learned a lot about scoring. Unfortunately, the last time my dad played tennis was 10 years ago and the man he was playing against plays tennis 3 times a week in a prestigious tennis organization. My dad held his own but ended up losing.

After the Pepperwood festivities we head to Willow Creek Country Club for lunch and games. Hannah rode a train and got her face painted. After lunch we (Jonathan, Ali, Tom, Carrie, Lisa, Austin) stayed to play cards. Hannah was keeping herself busy crawling around but found a leftover bowl of popcorn. She got a piece caught in her throat and threw up all over herself and the carpet. That was her first real throw up that wasn’t baby spit up.

Finally, we went home and had a special 4th of July cake I had made.

Hope every one had a Happy 4th!

Not bad for $15

2011-06-25T10:16:00.001-07:00

This week I participated in Bountiful Baskets for the first time. The location is just down the street from my house in my neighborhood. I went early and volunteered which was more fun than I thought it would be and I came home with a great haul. All this for $15. Not bad.

1 cabbage, 1 lettuce, 1 celery, 2 green onions, 6 carrots, 1 package of grape tomatoes, 1 package of strawberries, 10 peaches, 7 plums, 6 mangos, 5 bananas, 8 apples, and 13 limes.

Anyone have some good ideas for limes?

I also got 5 loaves of bread for $10.

Alaska

2011-06-24T17:08:00.001-07:00

Last week we got back from the most wonderful vacation. My entire family (adults only) went on a 7-day Alaskan cruise. It was beautiful. It was fabulous. It was a little cold. It was so fun to be with family. It was so nice to be without children. As a thank you to my parents, we made this video of our trip. Enjoy.

My sister Wendy also blogged about it so go here for some more pictures and details.

Hannah’s Birthday

2011-05-15T13:58:00.001-07:00

I can’t believe that 1 year ago Hannah entered our lives. I can’t imagine my life without her, yet at the same time this past year flew by and I can’t believe she’s already 1!

To celebrate – we had a party. As I was preparing for this party I knew it was all for me and Hannah wouldn’t understand what’s going on; however, during the party I really think she knew it was a special day and she was getting a lot of attention and she LOVED it.

THE PREPARATIONS:

The Invitations

With the help of a creative friend and her Cricut, I put together these invitations and mailed them out.

The Outfit

Six months ago I saw a onesie that looked a little like this and I thought it was a cute idea for a birthday shirt. I tucked that idea in the back of my head and once Hannah’s birthday grew nearer I got to work creating her birthday outfit.

I’m sorry about the closed eyes – it was really sunny the day we took these pictures so I didn’t get any with her eyes open/not totally squinted.

I made her a tee shirt with a pink cupcake and the word “ONE” on it. I made a coordinating bow for her hair and a big pink and white tutu. She looked adorable.

It’s important to note that the last time I used a sewing machine I was in in the 6th grade making a square pillow for Home Ec. This was a big deal for me. My mom, who’s an awesome seamstress, helped a great deal. But I will say that I didn’t just want to dump my project on her (although that probably would have been faster and easier). I wanted to do it myself with her guidance. I am proud to say I did a lot of the sewing myself too.

The Banner

So, after having such great success making the outfit, I decided to tackle a “Happy Birthday” banner. I wanted this to be gender neutral, fun, colorful, and good quality so I can use it for years to come. Again, I went to my mom for help. We found a blog that gave us “4 easy steps to a fabric banner”. My mom took those 4 easy steps and turned them into 15 not-always-easy-for-a-beginner-sewer-steps. The changes were great though and well worth the extra work because we ended up with a super cute, sturdy banner that will last forever.

The Food

For dinner we had Hawaiian Haystacks.

We also had some yummy punch and most importantly cake and ice cream.
I made 3 different kinds of cupcakes:

Vanilla with Buttercream

Devil’s Food with Chocolate Ganache
(but I thought the Ganache was gross so I scraped it off and threw some store bought frosting on top)
Red Velvet with Creamy Vanilla Frosting

The Book
Ever since Hannah was born, Jonathan and I have been writing down cute stories and accomplishments as they’ve been happening. I decided to print this out and add some pictures to make it a book about Hannah’s first year.

The Movie
This was a beast. This was the bane of my existence for the month leading up to her birthday. This was cause for much frustration. This was my favorite thing that I did.

I got the idea because my sister, Wendy, did this for her son’s first birthday and I LOVED it. I thought it was so cute and a great way to document the first year. I made a movie consisting of hundreds of pictures and dozens of videos put with 13 songs telling the story of Hannah’s first year. It ended up being 34 minutes long.

The Party

The Guests
Mom
Dad
Grammy
Grandpa
GG (Great Grandma Jean)
GQ (Great Grandpa Queed)
Tom
Carrie
Lisa
Austin
Nana and Grandpa (via webcam)
Wendy and Max (via webcam)
Cheryl, Ryan, Lincoln, and Sawyer (via webcam)

That’s right, we wanted everyone there so we had 3 computers set up so the out-of-towners could join in the fun. (The one on the right is Jonathan’s parents. They could see and hear us but we couldn’t get their picture to show up on our side.)

Everyone arrived around 5:30. We drank punch, ate dinner, and visited. At 6:30 we got everyone connected through web cams and we opened presents. Hannah was spoiled and got tons of great gifts. The best part was she was genuinely excited about each and every present. She would flap her arms up and down and squeal with excitement. She would pull the present close to her face and scream. She loved every present.

After presents we headed over to the dessert table for cake and ice cream.

Hannah loved her cupcake and very daintily ate the frosting off the top.

After dessert we watched the movie I made of her first year. Then we played “One Word Password”. In coming up with a game for her party I wanted it to be themed around the number 1 since Hannah was turning one. So, I tweaked the game Million Dollar Password to fit my needs. At the beginning of each round I would draw 2 names out of a bucket. This kept the game interesting as it switched up the teams each and every round. The 2 people would come up to the front and one would stand with their back to the TV and the other would face the TV. The person facing the TV had the job of describing the word that popped up on the screen to their partner. The trick was, they could only give 1-word clues. After the first clue, their partner had to take a guess. If they were wrong, another 1-word clue was given. This continued until the word was guessed. Then they could move onto the next word. Each pair had 45 seconds. At the end of the round everyone was repaired and we continued to play. Each of the words they were guessing were baby themed words. It was a lot of fun and turned out really well. Grandma Jean won the game. Grandpa Queed lost.

It was so much fun to celebrate Hannah’s first year. Thanks to all that came and helped make it special. We love our little Hannah Jean and are excited for the many years to come.

Hannah doesn’t like…

2011-05-04T15:44:00.001-07:00

Hannah does OK with mannequins dressed up to be something.

But when it comes to HUMANS dressed up to be something…she is NOT alright with that.

Easter Celebrations

2011-04-25T09:10:00.001-07:00

I was so excited for Easter this year as this was my first Easter with a child and I really wanted to do all the fun Easter things you do with kids (even though Hannah is still do young to care or know what’s going on or eat candy and can’t even crawl to an egg, let alone hunt). We had a wonderful Easter celebration.

The fun started Saturday morning with a neighborhood Easter Egg hunt. There were hundreds of kids, thousands of eggs, and it lasted all of about 7 minutes. Hannah managed to reach for a few eggs around her and we came home with a couple of Snickers and Reeses eggs.

Sunday, of course, was the main event. Hannah got a new Easter outfit for church.

This is her latest thing – she leans her head far to one side to look at people, as if checking them out from all angles.

(Hannah looking off at her Nana saying…”aren’t we done yet?”)

After church we changed Hannah into her Easter “day” outfit (which were really jammies), gave her a quick nap and then the party began. Jonathan’s parents were in town for the weekend and we also invited Jonathan’s sister Cherilyn and her family over for dinner. My parents and sister were going to be a party of just 3 that day with nowhere else to go so they came and joined the party as well. There were 18 of us gathered for dinner.

Before dinner though, Hannah got to "find” her basket. She got summer flip-flops, bubbles, a bible board book, a ball and some treats. Grandpa Weiler tossed in some chocolate eggs, suckers, taffy, and KitKats at the last minute. The first thing that went in Hannah’s mouth was a chocolate egg that I got to fish out as it was way to big for her mouth and babies aren’t supposed to have chocolate. Oh Grandpa.

After Hannah got her basket the Burr’s (Cherilyn’s family) arrived. We ate a delicious dinner of ham, potatoes, fruit, salad, rolls, and pastel rainbow jello (maybe next year I’ll dedicate a post just to the pastel rainbow jello seeing as I LOVE rainbow jello and figured out how to make it appropriate for Easter – however it needs some tweaking for next year as this year I added WAY to much water and it was very jiggly. Still delicious and a big hit, but not blog worthy yet). We sat at tables decorated with adorable bunnies, fake grass, cookie jars filled with Easter eggs, and jelly beans scattered around. Unfortunately, I always forget to take pictures of the food spread and tables as I’m too focused on getting everything ready and everyone fed.

After dinner we visited for a little bit. Lisa was awesome and did all the dishes while I put leftovers away. Then, the Burr’s organized their traditional Easter egg hunt. Everyone had a big “name egg” that was just for them and then they could collect 14 other eggs which were filled with candy. No one really wanted those eggs though. The real hunt was for the coveted “money egg” which had cash in it. Rule was, once you picked up, kicked, or examined an egg it was yours to keep. And when you had 14, you were done.

Preparing for the hunt

Lisa took Hannah around and they gathered their eggs together.

After the egg hunt it was time for dessert. I decided to make sugar cookies and have the kids decorate them. I had about 4 dozen cookies and 6 colors of homemade frosting that I put in piping bags. This activity turned out even better than I was hoping. Everyone from the youngest to the oldest had fun. It didn’t get super messy, tasted delicious, got everyone involved, and we got to see the decorating talents of all the Burr kids.

That’s right – nothing like 2 cookies LOADED with frosting, smushed together to make a sandwich.

Jonathan’s parents were in town because Natalie, the oldest grandchild (pictured above sitting at the head of the table by the window) graduated from BYU this weekend. So, after cookies it was time for presents. Hannah enjoyed watching Natalie open up her new BOSCH mixer with her cousin.

Speaking of her cousins, the Burr’s are absolutely adorable with Hannah. Maybe it’s because she’s still little and immobile so she doesn’t really get in their way, but they always have her sit right in the middle of things and play with her and give her toys and keep her entertained and happy.

We had a wonderful Easter as it was filled with family. We’re so blessed to have family living nearby. Happy Easter!

Easter

2011-04-24T11:37:00.001-07:00

Easter is typically a time when we think about Christ’s life, ministry, death, and most importantly his resurrection. After he was crucified upon the cross, he was buried in a tomb on the hillside which was guarded day and night. After three days, the tomb was empty and he had risen. He was resurrected just has he promised he would be. His resurrection makes it possible for us to live with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ again. When we are resurrected we will be restored to a perfect state. All our imperfections and flaws, handicaps and weaknesses will be gone and we will be made perfect. Alma 40:23 reads, “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.” Easter is a time for me to reflect on that doctrine on a very personal level.

When I was 6 years old my family moved from Utah to Iowa. Shortly after the move my mom took me to an eye doctor because while in Utah my kindergarten teacher mentioned I might need glasses. The eye doctor took a look at my eyes and said he had never seen anything like them before and he didn’t know what to do. He referred us to another doctor. We got the same response. After 3 or 4 doctors we were finally sent to Iowa City to see Dr. Scott. He was the doctor of all doctors. He worked at the University of Iowa and was an expert in his field. My mom, dad and I made the 2 hour drive to Iowa City. When we finally got in to see Dr. Scott he examined my eyes and then explained the situation. I didn’t just have one problem; I had several problems. I had a combination of problems he had never seen. The biggest of them being sever Amblyopia in my left eye. He said he wished he could take pictures of my eyes and put them in text books for others to study. He wished he could dissect my eye because the medical world could learn so much. My right eye was bad. My left eye was worse. Dr. Scott told my parents there was a good chance I would never be able to read or drive a car. He also said we had a small window of time to work with. He couldn’t guarantee anything but he wanted to take me on as a patient.

This is when my biweekly trips to Iowa City began. Every other week I would get checked out of first grade and my mom and I would drive the 2 hours to see Dr. Scott. We referred to him as the “Wizard of Oz”. Because he was at the University of Iowa we always met with residents first. It was an all day event as we made our way in and out of different rooms. Each resident checked a different thing and did and different test. We would eventually make our way to Dr. Scott where he would give the final evaluation. Every two weeks I got a new prescription. Dr. Scott had a very calculated schedule of tweaking and adjusting my prescription ever so slightly to work my eyes and train them to see differently.

We did this for several months. Then, Dr. Scott said the next step was patching my right eye. He wanted me to wear a patch over my right eye so he could work exclusively on my left eye and really make it work. He wanted me to wear a patch for a designated amount of time, 3 months. That was the window of opportunity for this to work. I continued to go to Iowa City every two weeks and get a new prescription. Each visit Dr. Scott was hopeful that progress was being made. Each visit Dr. Scott was discouraged when it wasn’t.

After the 3 months Dr. Scott broke the news that it had not worked. He wasn’t sure what to try next. We asked if I could continue wearing the patch but he said if nothing happened in the 3 months it was very unlikely anything would happen at all. He left it up to us though.

I distinctly remember going home and deciding whether or not I should keep wearing the patch. I was 6 years old. I didn’t like wearing it. Once I had asked my family to each wear a patch all day so they could know what it was like. My mom thought that was a good idea, but said it would have to be a day when we weren’t going anywhere or doing anything. It was embarrassing to wear it. It itched. It was hard to see. I remember saying a prayer to my Heavenly Father and asking him what I should do. I remember sitting on my parent’s oversized chair in their room and telling my mom I wanted to wear the patch for another month. She said that was a good idea.

While all of this was going on, my sweet Grandma Jean was worried sick over this whole situation. Grandmas are good at that. One day while spending time with her good friend Joan she unloaded all the details of what was going on. Joan was the Primary President of her ward in Utah and had been looking for an opportunity to teach her primary kids about praying with a purpose and asked if she could tell her primary about me.

Joan went back to her primary and told them the story of “Allison’s eyes”. She told them about a little girl who lived far away in Iowa who was having hard time seeing. Easter Sunday was coming up and that year it was also fast Sunday. She challenged her primary kids to not eat their Easter candy right away but instead fast and fast with a purpose. She challenged her entire primary to fast and pray for Allison, a little girl they didn’t know. Easter came and not only did the primary fast and pray for me, but their families did too. Not only did they fast and pray for me on Easter Sunday, but they continued to pray for me every day.

It was the month of Easter that I decided to wear my patch a month longer. This was the month that nothing was supposed to happen, but it was worth a shot.

At the end of the month I returned to Iowa City. Dr. Scott took a look at my eyes and his jaw dropped. He was shocked. Not only was he shocked that my eye changed during this fourth month, he was shocked that it had changed so much. My eye made more progress than it should have in the original three months, let alone the fourth month when nothing was supposed to happen.

From here, there was nothing but improvement. I still continued to go to Iowa City every other week and get a new prescription. After awhile, that changed to only once a month, then every other month, every six months, and by the time I was in high school it was at once a year. Just as things were under control my family moved back to Utah. It was in Utah, 6 years later that I met with Dr. Phil Hoops, one of Dr. Scott’s former students, and received 2 rounds Lasik eye surgery. Now, the little girl in Iowa who would never be able to read or drive a car has perfect vision. I don’t have to wear glasses or contacts and I have perfect vision.

As I reflect on what Easter means to me, I can’t help but be reminded of what happened 20 years ago, this Easter season. I had a need. My family, friends, ward members, and primary children who didn’t know me, all put their faith in our Heavenly Father. Through many prayers and much fasting, my eyes were made whole. It wasn’t a quick answer to prayers. My eyes weren’t restored to a perfect state immediately. It took years of constant faith and prayers to get where I am today. Many months after the Easter Sunday fast, my family went to Utah for vacation. My parents and I visited the primary that had fasted for me. They didn’t know I was going to be there. We sat in the back and listened as a young sunbeam stood to say the opening prayer. “Please bless Allison’s eyes that they will get better” were words she spoke.

The Lord works by his own time table and in his own way. He loves each of us very much. I am grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ. I am grateful for his life. I am grateful for his example and teachings, I am grateful that he took upon himself the sins of the world so that someday I can live with my Savior and my family again. I am grateful for this Easter season in which we celebrate not only His life but His death and resurrection. We celebrate that through Him, we can be made whole and we too can be resurrected. I am grateful for the miracle I started experiencing 20 years ago this Easter season and what it has taught me about trusting in the Lord in all I do and having faith that with his help, things will work out. It’s not always easy, but with His help, we can have strength to face any challenge.

Grandma’s Day

2011-03-25T13:27:00.001-07:00

Grandma’s Day started many years ago with Grandma Jean…She would watch all the grandkids while their moms had a day to themselves.

My mom decided she wanted to continue this. Once a week I bring Hannah to my parents and it’s “Grandma’s Day”. Well, seeing as Hannah is the only grandchild close enough to participate it’s pretty casual and flexible. Usually I stay and hang out too because I rarely have errands I can’t run with Hannah.

Like I said..it’s very flexible. Typically it’s on Tuesday but if for some reason I have something going on, or my mom has something going on, or I just don’t feel like getting dressed, Grandma’s day gets postponed or canceled. That’s, however, upsetting to Grandpa. If for whatever reason we don’t show up on Tuesday the next time I talk to my dad I usually hear, “How come you didn’t come up for Grandpa’s Day? I waited all day and you never showed up. I really need to see Hannah. Are you going to come today?”

This week I didn’t come on Tuesday so we rescheduled for yesterday. I must say, it was a GREAT Grandpa’s Day. Papa was very cute with Hannah and played with her most of the time. Hannah and I had great time.

Hannah ate lots of new foods like avocado, corn flakes, and fiber one.

Hannah learned how to play ball…

She even learned to play ball like her older, boy cousins…

We even went to the park and played on the swings. It’s a little cold but Hannah loved it!

And wait….What’s this???

Did she learn how to crawl???

AND WALK???

No.

These were just great timing pictures where she was forced into crawling and standing positions. Both pictures were immediately followed by collapsing to the floor and crying. She’s still perfectly “content” to sit all day long.

Thanks for a fun Grandpa’s Day!

Someday Hannah will appreciate

2011-03-17T20:50:00.001-07:00

I wanted to make something festive for St. Patrick’s Day…so I did.

RAINBOW CUPCAKES

Sometimes around holidays I feel like making a treat. Let’s be honest, every Sunday I feel like making a treat – this week I just waited until the holiday. Here’s how it went down…

The ingredients: (Please note that while I’m making these cupcakes I am also watching The Biggest Loser)

Next the batter gets colored:

Then you pour the batter one layer at a time:

Next bake and cool:

Finally frost and enjoy :)

I was going to take these around to neighbors but the frosting was a little thin so they didn’t turn out as pretty as I was hoping. Also, I realized I used canola oil instead of vegetable oil so they taste a little different….still good, but different. So instead, Jonathan took a bunch to work today and his fellow employee’s were thrilled. Someday Hannah will get excited when I do stuff like this. For now, she’s “content” to just watch and eat dehydrated fruit.

Remodel

2011-01-13T18:51:00.001-08:00

***Please read this in Internet Explorer. For some reason it shows up weird in Firefox – Thanks!***

It all started when my mom was walking through her dining room, looked at the carpet and thought, “No matter what I do this carpet is never going to get clean. I’d really like to put hardwood in here.”

That thought dominoed into a “remodel” binder, dozens of workers, hundreds of hours, a lot of noise, furniture shuffling, home improvement store after home improvement store, “the picture lady”, dust, fumes, crowded spaces, a trip to St. George, and a totally updated, fabulous looking house.

Nov. 8 – the floor guy came to give my mom a bid. While there, the contractor that the floor guy brought with him said, “Even if you don’t redo your whole kitchen, granite would really do a lot for updating your house.”

That’s when it got stressful. My mom would go out looking for granite in the morning and by 3:00 she was overwhelmed and stressed and everything was off. After about a week of going back and forth deciding whether or not to do anything she decided she would do it, do it well, and enjoy the experience. That’s when I came into play. I spent several days each week going to Home Depot, Arizona Tile, Lowes, lighting stores, and RC Willey validating my mom’s decisions. She really did a great job playing decorator, manager, and contractor through this whole thing. I’m not sure she had any idea how big this thing would get, and I know she didn’t enjoy every moment, but in the end the house looks great and she’s so pleased with the results.

2 1/2 months later on Dec 22 the final worker finished. Enjoy the before, during and after shots.

FRONT DOOR – believe it or not, this was one of the hardest decisions.
Front Door Before Front Door After

INSIDE DOORS – note the new hinges, handles, and molding around the door. Also, notice the molding. In the before picture, the molding is removed, but you can see how thick it was. In the after picture you can see it’s about twice as thick at the base and all around the door. The doors however are the same with a fresh coat of paint.
Inside Door Before Inside Door After

DINING ROOM – Notable changes – obviously the hard wood floors (I apologize for the messy room in the picture but the wood had already been delivered). Note the wall color, photos and light fixture.
Dining Room Before Dining Room After

STAIRS – note the banister rods are now painted black, the carpet is new and the paint is darker. Also, in the lower pictures you notice the paint goes all the way to the floor instead of having white on the bottom 1/3 of the wall.
Stairs Before Stairs After

KITCHEN – note the granite counter tops, new appliances, sink, backsplash and stools.
Kitchen Before Kitchen After

BUTLER’S PANTRY – note the new counter and sink
(also notice the hardwood going into the dining room)
Butler’s Pantry Before Butler’s Pantry After

FIREPLACE – new tile both around the fireplace and on the ground
Fireplace Before Fireplace After

LIGHT FIXTURES – my mom had a lot of gold in her house which was dating it. She switched out all the hardware and fixtures for oil rubbed bronze.
Front Entry Chandelier Before Front Entry Chandelier After

Dining Room Chandelier Before Dining Room Chandelier After

Wall Sconces Before Wall Sconces After

Hallway Before Hallway After

Bathroom After – unfortunately I didn’t get a bathroom light fixture before picture, but you’ll be able to see them in the bathroom pictures

BATHROOMS – here my mom updated everything from brass to oil-rubbed bronze (lights, doors, shower head, drain, toilet paper holder, towel racks, etc.), and took down the shower doors.
Upstairs (pink) Bathroom Before Upstairs (pink) Bathroom After

Upstairs Pink Bathroom After Main Floor Guest Bath After

LIVING ROOM – Here there is new carper and new paint
Living Room Before Living Room After

Now it wasn’t all beautiful before and after shots. This was no 30 minutes HGTV show where projects take a mere 25 seconds from start to finish. This got messy. This took a LONG time. It was stressful. Paint doesn’t arrive in the perfect shade and it takes a lot longer than an afternoon to get the room done. There isn’t a crew of 25 helpers to move furniture in and out and store in the meantime. Tom and Dad were the movers – 4 times as everything went into the living room while the floors were being done and the family room was being painted…out of the living room and into the family room while the living room was being painted, back into the living room while the floors were getting their final coat, and then finally back into place. My dad even left town to get away from the madness. He needed a place where he could “hold his head”. Now that it’s finally over, we can enjoy the during pictures.

California Christmas

2011-01-05T13:11:00.001-08:00

Jonathan and I have been married for 3 1/2 years and up until this year we were 3 for 3 for all holidays with my side of the family. It just happens that way for one reason or another so this year we were going to California for Christmas.

We got all packed up with luggage, high chairs, and presents. I don’t know how we will do it with more children because we were packed full. We were fortunate enough to have my Grandparents home in St. George to stay at to help us break up the drive for Hannah. However, because we didn’t have much car space we left the pack and play behind. Jonathan’s parents had one for us in California but in St. George we improvised.

Christmas was great with the Snow’s. His mom had made all sorts of treats and a delicious Christmas Eve dinner. That evening we did a program and acted out the nativity with what children we had. Hannah got to be Baby Jesus.

She did better once she got a toy to play with.

After the nativity we sang Christmas songs.

Then opened up Christmas Eve jammies.

Christmas morning we did the traditional stair line up

Then opened presents. Hannah mostly got stuff that we got for free and saved until Christmas. She doesn’t know the difference…right? She got rattles, books, a singing caterpillar, a laughing penguin, and an outfit. From her Snow grandparents she got some books and from her Weiler grandparents she got an umbrella stroller.

Thanks GG and GQ!

Sunday evening we went to the LA Temple to see the lights there.

Monday morning we drove down to San Diego to see the Mormon Battalion museum. I was quite impressed with visitors center. The church always does a good job. It was much better than I expected as it had talking picture frames, themed rooms, and interactive activities.

Panning for gold

Then we out to lunch at a yummy Mexican restaurant and toured Old Town San Diego. Hannah was a trooper the whole day but as soon as she could relax in her new stroller she was out.

While there, Jonathan’s parents watched Hannah so we could go to Knott’s Berry Farm where we learned the Jonathan is getting old and no longer has a stomach of steel. I’m saddened to say it was my first time at an amusement park where I rode the train around the park. To his credit, he did much better in the afternoon and we went on all the roller coaters I wanted to.

Of course, the best part of the whole trip was seeing family that we rarely get to see. Hannah has a cousin in Arizona that’s just 4 months older than her and it was great to see her and her parents. It was so cute to watch them interact. Four months is a big difference as Shalya is much more mobile and coordinated. They spent most of their play time stealing toys and poking at one another's eyes but they were really cute in their high chairs. They couldn’t touch each other or go anywhere and they were at the same level. They would talk and talk and it was so cute.

Santa Claus

2010-12-20T15:54:00.001-08:00

Everyone needs a picture like this.

Books

2010-11-24T14:02:00.001-08:00

As a teacher I never felt like I had enough books. I would compare my empty shelves to other teachers who had been teaching for 30+ years and I felt like my collection was inadequate. I did my best to gain a collection…going to garage sales, ordering with book order points, grabbing what I could when the library cleaned out its shelves, etc. I still felt like I didn’t have very many children’s books.

Then I stopped teaching and brought my collection home. My books have been sitting in the garage for 6 months. I haven’t had book shelves to put them on.

The other night I decided I was going to pull those books out and make room for them. After all, before I know it Hannah will be more and more interested in books and I need them to be easily accessible.

About 5 years before I got married my mom was on a furniture kick. She would seek out great, cheap/free finds and store them in her basement…knowing that someday her kids would be married and need furniture. I believe I got the biggest hook up when I scored this beautiful piece.

In our apartment, it housed our TV. In our home, it housed…..well, whatever I didn’t have a home for. I had organized games and movies in the bottom, but the top had a broken CD player, baskets, exercise bands, our camera case, flashlights, etc. I decided this would be the new home of my books.

Behold…

NOTE: The baskets on the top shelf in this last picture are 2 deep…

I feel like I have enough books for now. I estimated about 750.

Now, don’t ask me where a certain book is. Organizing them is a project for another day (or possibly never because correct me if I”m wrong…but little kids love to dump things out so what’s the point?) I know where Christmas books and Math books are and that’s it…and Magic Tree House. At the beginning of every school year I would start to organize them, get about half way through, and give up because it’s just too hard….by author? genre? theme? writing style? plot? type of illustration? reading level? subject? I have never come up with a great system. For now, at least they are out of the garage.

Now I just need to find a home for the random stuff I was storing in there before.

Bad Hair Day

2010-11-21T21:17:00.001-08:00

When Hannah was born she had amazing hair. There was a ton of it and it was dark with blonde tips. Everyone asked me if I took her somewhere to get her hair highlighted….seriously?

As she got a little older her hair got a little longer and the tips stayed. I LOVED them.

She had so much hair all over her head.

Then, as with most babies, she started to wiggle more and her hair started to fall out. She started with one bald spot in the back.

That got larger and soon wrapped from ear to ear.

Now, I don’t know what to do. Her hair is SO long on top…what other 6 month old do you know that has long enough hair to put it in curlers?

But it’s SO short/non-existent around the bottom. It always looks bad. Do I cut off the top? Do I leave it alone?

I do think I need to trim the long whispies around her ears

So many babies are bald and I feel so lucky to have a baby with so much hair and I don’t want to cut her down to nothing. When will it start to grow back? Because for now – she’s always having a bad hair day.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T19:44:00.001-07:00

Event One:
BARNETT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL – Watching the school parade.

Event Two:
ATRIA TRICK-OR-TREATING – Trick-or-treated to the residents.

Event Three:
CARDIN WITH TOM – We missed the trick-or-treating but we still made an appearance.

Event Four:
WARD HALLOWEEN PARTY – Changed costumes to fit family theme.

Event Five:
NEIGHBORHOOD TRICK-OR-TREATING – We were going to go but it was raining and she fell asleep.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM OUR LITTLE BUG!

Neighborly

2010-10-25T20:17:00.001-07:00

We’ve lived here for just over a year now. There are still many people in our neighborhood/ward that we don’t know that well and would like to know better. So, I decided to be domestic and make a Halloween treat to take around to our neighbors. We probably should have done this last year when we first moved in but better late than never….right?

I made Witches Brooms and Hats. Here’s how it went down.

WITCHES BROOMS

THE INGREDIENTS: Flour, Brown Sugar, Butter, Vanilla, Salt, Pretzel Rods, Shortening, Water, Chocolate and Butterscotch chips.

MAKE THE DOUGH: Mix the butter, brown sugar, flour, salt, water and vanilla together.

SHAPE THE DOUGH: Roll out 20 balls. Attach the balls to the pretzel rods. Shape the dough into desired shape and press with a fork to make broom bristles.

BAKE: at 350 for about 9 minutes.

COOL: Cool completely on wire rack

CHOCOLATE: Melt together chocolate and shortening over low heat. Spoon over brooms. Top with a drizzle of melted butterscotch chips. Let cool completely.

THEN…I made some WITCHES HATS to go along with them.

THE INGREDIENTS: Fudge stripes cookies, Heresy’s Kisses and Frosting (I got lazy and used store bought)

PRESENTATION: Wrap up with a cute bow and hand deliver

Happy Halloween Everyone!

How does she do it?

2010-10-10T21:13:00.001-07:00

Hannah has been rolling for almost 2 months now. I’ve written about this. We thought we found the solution by tucking a rolled up burp rag along her side. That lasted about 3 weeks.

Then we moved onto something bigger…stuffing a blanket up next to her. That lasted about a week.

We knew we needed a bigger barrier. We rolled up a bath towel with part of it unrolled so she could lay on it and not kick it away. This worked for about a week.

Today we put her down for a nap. We put her down un-swaddled (which we’re trying to transition her to).

(Notice how Jonathan positions her in the crib…and notice the green towel)

We laid her down around 1:45. At 2:20 she was still making noise. She wasn’t crying, just talking to herself, so we let her be. For ten minutes I didn’t hear anything so I went into check on her and see if she finally fell asleep. I found her like this:

When we went in to check on her she was still fighting it a little…she’d lift her body up, move her head, then collapse back down. She was just so tired she didn’t care. She slept for 3 hours.

Surprise!

2010-09-27T14:40:00.001-07:00

May 13, 2010 – This gal was born:

June 27, 2010 – This chunk was born:

September 1, 2010 – This kiddo was born:

We call them the triplets.

It all started right after Sawyer was born. There were 2 new babies that my dad and I had not met. 1 that we had not seen in a 3 months, and another that we had not seen since last Christmas. My mom was getting ready to fly to Pittsburgh to help Cheryl with Sawyer. We knew Wendy would be heading to Pittsburgh to see Cheryl/Sawyer/my mom the last weekend my mom would be there and she would be bringing her two kids with her. The only grandchild missing would be Hannah. So, my dad and I decided to surprise both Cheryl and Wendy and just show up in Pittsburgh.

It was tough to keep the great news a surprise…but totally worth it for good reactions.

We flew out Thursday, September 17th. Our flight got in around 4:30 and around 6:00 we rang Cheryl’s doorbell.

The plan was to have Wendy be there as well. However, it didn’t work out. So, that night we got to have another surprise when she got there around 1:30 AM

It was SO fun to all be together (although we missed T & L who weren’t with us). It was a little chaotic with 5 babies 2 and under (3 of which being 4 months and under). I think twice the entire time we were there we had all five kids quiet and napping….and even then it only lasted about an hour.

The week was filled with fabulous fun. Some days we spent hanging out at Cheryl’s just watching Anderson and Lincoln play while other days we tackled going out. Grandpa Mike finally had his dream come true and took his grandkids to the zoo. Anderson was really the only one who appreciated it, but Lincoln loved showing off his new skill and had a great time walking all over the place. The triplets mostly slept in their strollers.

(Anderson LOVED the petting portion of the zoo)

The zoo had this great playground that Anderson loved. We spent hours watching Anderson RUN all over the place.

(Note: Max – asleep. Mellow Max was like this the entire trip. Relaxed no matter what was going on. I spent 5 days with the kid and I have yet to hear him cry.)

Max and Hannah gladly played with Papa and Grammy while Anderson got his energy out on the playgrounds.

Grammy was always counting strollers to make sure we didn’t leave a child behind somewhere.

One evening we went downtown and rode “The Incline”. It was a trollyesque ride that took you up a steep hill for a view of the city.

Another day went went for a beautiful walk along the river.

Strollers on Parade

We attempted a photo shoot with all the kiddos in matching PJ’s…

But it ended up going like this:

Some of the cute pictures we got:

THE TRIPLETS
Max (2.5 months), Hannah (4 months), Sawyer (2.5 weeks)

BROTHERS
Lincoln (1 year 2.5 months), Sawyer (2.5 weeks)

COUSINS
Sawyer (2.5 weeks), Max (2.5 months)

COUSINS
Lincoln (1 year, 2.5 months), Anderson (2 years, 5 months)

BROTHERS
Max (2.5 months), Anderson (2 years, 5 months)

COUSINS

Long Nights

2010-09-03T09:40:00.001-07:00

Hannah’s latest trick is that she rolls over. She’s been doing it for a while now. She can only go over the left shoulder from her back to her tummy. Lately, she’s getting better at getting her arm unstuck.

The first time she rolled over I was so excited for her but nervous for nighttime. What if she rolled over while sleeping? She would get stuck and suffocate. That meant Hannah was demoted back to her parents’ bedroom where we could keep a closer eye on her. I felt like it was the first week again. I was paranoid. And to make it even worse, we didn’t swaddle her. She was kicking and stirring and waking herself (and me) up all night long. My sister Wendy assured me that although she could roll over, Hannah would not be able to roll over while swaddled. Without the use of her arms to get her momentum going, she would be stuck on her back.

Not the case…Hannah, ONCE, rolled over in the swaddle. Luckily it was in the morning as she was waking up so I was right there to flip her back.

I couldn’t handle having her back in my room so she was moved back to the crib, swaddled, with the bumpers removed. Hannah went a few weeks without rolling over while swaddled. Good – her rolling over in the swaddle was just a one time thing.

Wrong. It’s normal to find that Hannah has moved while sleeping.

But the first time I found her like this during a nap…

She was still alive. She wasn’t crying. She was peacefully sleeping. What can you do? Nothing. Now, it’s totally normal to get Hannah from her crib and find her on her tummy.

Typically, if she rolls WHILE sleeping, she’s fine. The problem comes when she rolls before totally asleep. Then she knows she’s on her tummy and she cries and gets herself all worked up. At night, this is especially difficult. We want her to fall asleep on her own and not rely on us rocking her to sleep. But, as shown in the video, what do you do when she’s ALMOST asleep, you put her in the crib, and she rolls?

I guess just keep loving this face…

GO COUGARS!

2010-09-03T08:33:00.001-07:00

We are so excited for football season to start and especially for BYU’s football season to kick off. To celebrate, we went to BYU’s pep rally last night. It was Hannah’s first BYU event.

Hannah did great through the whole thing. We kept her up about 2 hours past her bedtime (not that she actually goes to bed at 8 like we think she should). She didn’t cry when they blasted music with thumping base. She didn’t cry when the marching band started playing or the football players yelled into the microphone and the crowd roared. She didn’t cry when fireworks blasted just across the stadium. She was just wide-eyed and taking it all in.

However, when we met Cosmo….she cried. Oh well.

After the whole thing was over she was tuckered out.

Go Cougars!

Snowmania

2010-08-01T17:55:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we had our annual Snow Family Reunion. Last year I planned it and I was so grateful this year that all I needed to do was attend. When we arrived on Thursday, we played a good game of Rubbers – a Snow Classic.

The next morning we went on a the Pine Creek Nature Trail. The final destination was “Glacial Outwash”. Apparently that means “A Bunch of Rocks”.

After we had lunch, David and Melissa had planned “The Snowmazing Race” – a spin off of “The Amazing Race”. We got into 5 different teams and raced around Heber/Midway from clue to clue completing challenges. Challenges included bobbing for apples, shooting CD’s with rubbers, singing and dancing, and eating massive amounts of ice cream very quickly. Unfortunately I was busy taking videos and not pictures so there is no documentation (unless you want to watch a 3 minutes of us singing “The Lonely Goatherd”.

The next day we headed into Provo to the CLAS Ropes Course. Here we were split into groups and had to complete tasks/challenges – like getting everyone through the spider web without touching the string – or get everyone off the “sinking ship” and safety on the “lifeboat”, and cross the “Grand Canyon” with on 4 pieces of wood. In the afternoon we did the “High Ropes” and rock climbed, did a zip line, and my favorite, the swing…where they lifted you 40 feet in the air and then you dropped. Some in the family handled it better than others.

Rob getting ready to swing

Hoisting someone up to swing.

Rob trying to do a flip

Jonathan doing a flip

David – a little freaked out.

The next morning everyone got up early and drove to Lehi so they could be there for Hannah’s blessing. We are very grateful everyone put in the extra effort to be there.

That evening we threw a surprise 50th Wedding Anniversary party for Sheldon and Patricia. There was cake, decorations, presents, and a movie that Clark put together for them.

Following was a lesson on “teamwork”.

Our team totally won…but at least the other team didn’t break one of the skies.

All in all is was a great reunion. It’s so fun to see everyone at least once a year. A big thank you to Cherilyn for planning the whole thing!

Blessed

2010-08-01T17:24:00.001-07:00

Hannah Jean Snow

was blessed on July 25th, 2010.

Hannah in the heirloom dress she wore – 111 years old.

We feel so blessed that so much family was able to attend and missed those that were unable to.

Swimming

2010-07-15T19:06:00.001-07:00

I took Hannah swimming for the first time on July 2nd. Mostly, I wanted to go swimming with Lincoln, because let’s be honest, Hannah is too little to enjoy the pool and they don’t make swim diapers in her size (probably because they aren’t supposed to go swimming that young). Hannah also had all the swim gear so it was a perfect time to get her dressed up.

Of course Grandpa Mike wouldn’t just let my sun bathing beauty sit by the side of the pool and be adorable…he was the one to dip her toes. The first few times she hated it. But she got a little more used to it. I wouldn’t say she loved it though. We’ll have to try again soon.

What we’ve been up to

2010-05-28T15:38:00.001-07:00

In the first two weeks of Hannah’s life, she’s done a lot of the same thing…SLEEP:

And go to the bathroom…

However, we have done a few other things. She’s had many visitors:

Great Grandpa Queed (G.Q.), Great Grandma Jean (Gigi – also who she’s named after) and Hannah

Grandpa Mike

Aunt Lisa

Aunt Wendy (all the way from D.C.)

She’s been to the doctor 3 times. She’s doing well and gaining weight. She’s now up to 8 lb 4 oz.

Although she’s gaining weight, we still had to buy her all new clothes in “newborn” size because nothing else fit her. This is her in an outfit Grandma bought for her because she was so small…and it still didn’t fit. (Now, I know she’s not really that small…but very average. However, none of my mom’s kids were born at under 8 pounds and both my nephews were born weighing well over 9 lbs, so she seems very small to our family.)

Hannah has had several baths now and does not like them.

She has good awake time…

But loves cuddling and being held the most…

We love you

Hannah!

Hannah Jean Snow

2010-05-17T15:57:00.001-07:00

Introducing…

Hannah Jean Snow

She was born on May 13th, 2010 at Utah Regional Hospital. She was 7 lbs 12 oz and 20.5 inches long. She’s doing so well and we love so much and couldn’t have asked for a more perfect baby.

My Amazing Mother

2010-04-11T12:53:00.001-07:00

Over the years my mom has always been our go to seamstress. Whether we needed dance costumes altered, skirts hemmed, prom dresses made modest, or jeans repaired she's always been able to do it. However, her talents stretch much further than that. One year she made our dance costumes for our quartet tap routine when we couldn't find anything modest enough. I also remember her sewing in twinkle lights to not only my little sister's costume but all the girls’ in her dance class. When Cheryl got married my mom made all the bridesmaid skirts as well.

I feel like her biggest undertaking was 5 years worth of City of Joseph costumes. Now, unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the costumes she actually made because none of those pictures are on my computer; however, I did some looking on facebook albums of friends and have stolen some of their pictures so you can get an idea of the type of costumes she was making.

It was a huge undertaking and she did a fabulous job…5 times.

Her latest projects have been decorating nurseries for her grandchildren. Wendy, Cheryl and I all had a hard time finding bedding that we LOVED so my mom volunteered to make us each our own, unique nursery bedding and then helped decorate our nurseries. Wendy’s nursery was first and it turned out darling. Next came Cheryl’s which was equally as cute not to mention the nursery that she did for her own house.

Next it was my turn. I actually found bedding that I liked but the store didn’t have it in stock. After waiting several weeks for it to come back in stock I got impatient and asked my mom to do it. She jumped on the project and came up with something way cuter than what I originally found.

My mom and I spent my spring break putting it all together and it’s turned out so darling. There’s still a few more things to be added (like the name above the crib and the pictures on the walls), but for the most part we are ready for Baby Snowflake. The nursery is so cute and I love the bedding and all my mom has done to help.

Here are the burp cloths she made to coordinate with the nursery.

I love my nursery and now that I feel more ready for her to come I’m so excited and anxious for her arrival. It’s going to be a long 5 weeks.

Babymoon

2010-03-07T18:56:00.001-08:00

Last week Jonathan and I went on our last big trip before our lives drastically change and it becomes much more stressful and high maintenance to travel. We went on a cruise with a few of Jonathan's siblings to Calica and Cozumel, Mexico. We had a great time and loved spending time with family that we hardly ever get to see. Here are some of the highlights.

Towel Animals each night.

Dressing up for dinner in the dining room.

Karaoke Singing

Going down the waterslide (which after I went down twice I was told I could no longer go because I was pregnant.

And learning swing, cha cha, jazz, and country dancing.

We had two ports of call. The first was in Calica. We got up early and took a 2 1/2 hour bus ride out to Chichen Itza to see the Myan Ruins. It was neater than I thought it would be.

The second was in Cozumel. We all went snorkeling together. Unfortunately Jonathan never quite got the hang of it and spent the majority of the time getting water out of his mask and mouth. After snorkeling we went to a beach where they had kayaking, and water trampolines, slides, and rock climbing.

All in all, it was a great, relaxing vacation which we probably won’t get again for a while.

It's A...

2010-01-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

We found out recently what Jonathan and I are having. To announce it to my family I made a cake which once cut announced what we were having. Here's the cake:

Jonathan and I so excited to be having a....

GIRL!!!

Myself at 21.5 weeks - Wendy at 14 weeks!