Whatever it takes to make him laugh...

The things that make Brady laugh are always random, but when he laughs, you gotta just keep doing whatever made him laugh, cause he doesn't laugh at much. Anyway I don't think I've ever heard him laugh this hard. Thanks for giving Brady the bowling set for Christmas Aunt Wendy:)

Homemade Stockings

I'm so excited about our first Christmas staying home with just our little family, and so I made stockings for us cause we didn't have any. This is also our first year getting a Christmas tree (it's fake, but it was free from our Neighbor:) Robert insisted that our stockings have our names on them, (so Santa knows), so I embroided them on with my limited skills:) Robert's has snowflakes on it; Brady's says "Jingle Bells" hence the bells on the toes; and mine is just different patterns. This was such a fun project for me and it felt great to accomplish somthing on the sewing machine!

Happy Hollidays

Here is our Christmas card! We wish we could've sent one to everyone but we only had a few to send. So if you didn't get one here it is! Merry Christmas! We will be staying here in Provo at home for Christmas. It will be Brady's first Christmas. Robert's sister Wendy and her husband Lance will be visiting us for Christmas day and I will be cookin! I'm way excited. This is the first year we have gotten our own tree and everything. I'm excited to start our own family traditions. I'm especiallly excited to give gifts!! I have been loving all the Christmas movies on TV, making snowflakes:) and watching ELF. We will be getting together with our neighbors this week to have a Hot Chocolate party, make gingerbread men and make more snowflakes. Happy Hollidays!

Santa's Chair

Instead of actually waiting in the crazy lines to sit with Santa, we just like to get pictures in his chair when he's gone:) he he. I think this is has become a Christmas tradition. Me and Robert did it last year too:) Merry Christmas!

Crawling Brady Tornado

Before crawling = Brady sitting nicely playing with his toys;

everything contained on his play blanket.

Crawling....

Crawling = Brady tornado/disaster/constant mess

New Head Shakin Trick

Pumpkin Carving CHAMPION!

Robert carved this pumkin for our ward contest, it was supposed to be a Turkey, but everyone thought it was a Penguin, prolly cause of the scarf. Anyway he won first place!! I'm so proud of my Papa Pavo:)

Ward Halloween Party-Worm eating contest!

Five Gummy Worms in chocolate/oreo pudding. The first one to find all five, pass them to thier partner and they have to eat them -WINS! There was so much pudding I couldn't keep track of how many worms I had in my mouth, especially after chewing them up and Robert was passing me two at a time! We almost got first place, but I guess we got second place by a hair!

The guys next to us...were just friends, the guy dressed as Shrek, his wife wouldn't do it with him, so his friend did, and obviously they didn't want to pass the worms from mouth to mouth, so he had to take them out of his mouth and give it to the other guy to eat, it was funny cause they were so sicked out by it, ha ha!

Happy Halloween!

For Halloween we dressed up as Brett Favre, Robert was a Packer, I was a Jet and Brady the Viking! It was Robert's idea and everyone loved it. But this little Viking has a lot of good years left in him and won't be retiring any time soon:) Robert was also very happy that Favre won against the Packers on Sunday at the Packers' Lambeau field. Robert also won the Pumpkin carving contest at our Ward party...I'll post a picture up soon of his pumpkin. Happy Halloween!!

Brady's Portraits 9 months

We finally got professional pictures taken of Brady! It only took us 9 months! I sure wish I would've done it when he was younger too, but oh well. He is so cute with his two bottom teeth in too and now his top teeth are coming in! Pretty soon he's gonna be walkin and talkin- we're not that far off. Holy moly kids grow up fast.

Brady is crawling

Brady crawled for the first time on Sunday October 18th! It was so exciting cause he's been working on it now for a few weeks! Now he is crawling all over and its time to Baby proof!

I LOVE being a MOM!

Ok so all my life I have always heard mom's say "I Love being a mom", "Being a mom is the best!", "There is nothing better than motherhood." etc. So now I am a mom and sometimes people ask me how mother hood is. I am working on optimism but I also consider myself a 'realist' rather than pessimistic. I don't usually sugar coat things, I tell it like it is.

So what I usually say when asked this question is, "..Uh...It's good," and proceed to talk about the challenges of my new life as a stay-at-home-mom. You mom's probably know what challenges I'm talking about: changing diapers and feeding all day; milk stains on all your shirts; nothing fits unless you are fortunate enough to fit into your pre-preggie clothes; showers....maybe and if so never before noon; personal time...pretty slim; hobbies...they went from rock climbing and backpacking to sewing and bread making or anything you can do during nap time; sleep....you don't need an alarm clock anymore cause your kid(s) do a great job; dating...you're lucky if you can get a babysitter for a couple hours; sex....let's just say things have changed, especially your body; and your social life...mommy groups if your lucky.

Like I said I'm a realist right.

Ok so if I were better at optimism I'd say, "Being a mom is the best and most rewarding job on earth!" It's so exciting watching your kid(s) grow and learn and develop; there is nothing better than making them laugh; you get to dress them in such cute clothes (even though they end up with all sorts of bodily fluids on them); greeting them in the morning is the best cause you both actually miss each other; they are SO cute and you love them like crazy; you feel so great serving someone all day every day other than yourself...let's just say it helps keep you humble; and one day when the kid(s) are older and can verbally say how much they love you and how grateful they are for you...then... it will have been all worth it.

I'll keep trying to be more optimistic:)

My first time Canning!

My mom got me all the Canning gear for my birthday, so I decided to work on my food storage. I started with 49 Utah peaches (0.47 cents/lb.). Not alot I know, but it's a start for my first time and I only had 12 pint jars.

Blanching the peaches 3 at a time:) Soaking in cold water after blanching

Pit, Peel, Cut and sitting in the Fruit Fresh water ready to be jarred. I got about 2 peaches in each jar (less than I estimated).

I got about 14 jars and two didn't seal quite right. I did it all by myself while Brady was taking a nap within 2-3 hours and all cleaned up by the time my husband got home from his job interview. It felt great and I made my mom so proud:) I just wish I could've done more peaches for all that work. Next year I'll get canning crazy! I can't wait!

"Millions of Peaches, Peaches for me." :) Member that song?

Last visit to Grandma Lucy's before we moved

Brady riding the donkey at Grandma Lucy's

Four Generation picture (from left to right: Robert's Mom Dianne,

her mom Lucille, Robert, and Brady).

Me and Robert taking the same picture 2 years later

2 years earlier in the same spot on our 3rd date:)

Lake Roosevelt trip

Robert and Brady's first time at Grand Coulee Dam.

We stopped at Dry Falls on the way home from Lake Roosevelt which is what would be even bigger than Niagra falls and the biggest in North America if it still had water running over it .

More pics of the Ward Campout at Lake Roosevelt. Me and Robert on the big tube behind the 'Party boat', I'm standing up "surfing" and Robert with no hands. This was so much fun!

Hold on to your life jacket!

This is a video from our ward campout at Lake Roosevelt. We rode down the river like over an hour on Bro. Tree's party boat to these cliffs and everyone and their dog was throwing themselves off of it. I thought they were all crazy, at least I didn't wanna do it. I jumped off the little one to the left:) Robert got up there and got all the way on the ledge balancing by holding on to Taylor's hand:) He didn't think about hitting the water straight like a pencil, all he kept thinking was, "Just hold on to your life jacket!" But he did it and made the BIGGEST SPLASH! Good job Rob:)

Happy Valley??

Well Friends, We are in UTAH. I can't believe i live in Utah now. We found a nice big condo for a pretty good price and are getting settled. We seem to have nice neighbors; we are only about a mile or two from BYU campus; and we have a pool, tennis court, racket ball court, sauna, hot tub, playground, work out room, kids play room, pool table etc. This is gonna be a great place to live. Next step: GET A JOB!! Robert will be taking some night classes and reapply for Dental School in the spring, and work during the day. Unless I can get a better job than him, in that case I may be the bread winner for now so he can play with Brady all day and study for his classes. It's a race. Whoever can get a better job first gets to work:) Anyway life is good and there are a number of reasons why we are excited to live in Utah. Friends, Family and Mountains:) We already miss our friends in Yakima, but we will for sure be back to visit. Ok friends, that's why we haven't updated our blog for a while, and we are working on getting set up with the internet at our place, so till next time....

Toe suckin

First time eating cereal

Before cereal...all clean

After cereal...time for a bath:)

Scooters

Our awesome friends, Saimi and Ken, in our ward let us take out their scooters for the day and they watched Brady! It was the funest date we have had in a long time. We went to the Museum, Applebees, went shopping, got snow cones, and took lots of pictures. It was a blast!! We are totally getting scooters when we grow up:)

35 MPH Max!

Meg looks pretty cute on her scooter!

We got Snow Cones -YUM!!

Robert went through the Car Wash! OK he didn't really get wet:)

Share the Road with us little Scooter guys:)

We went to the Yakima Valley Museum that I've always wanted to go to!

Swimmin!

Brady loves swimmin!

Brady has been swimmin like 5 times and he'll be 6 months on July 5th (adjusted age=4 months).

My favorite is that you can barely see Brady's feet kickin' in the water below the floatie turtle:)

Recycling

So I got really motivated and started recycling this last month. I even went to talk to our apartment managers and ask if they wanted to get the whole complex to start recycing. I basically got a "yeah right, no way" response. That's ok, cause you can only change the world one person at a time starting with yourself (someone once taught me that). So, I went to "cash in" my recycled goods today and it felt great not only to get rid of the three boxes on my deck of cans/cardboard/milk jugs but to 'do my part' to help keep the world a little cleaner and the landfills a little smaller:) I got one cent for every milk jug (I had 11) and about 10 cents for the cans I had. It took all of 2 minutes to drop everything off. And I got a woppin $0.21 cents!! When I first brought my recycling in the guy asked me if I just wanted to drop it off or weigh it. Weighing it means, get paid for what ever it's worth. Of course I wanted to see how much it'd be worth, even though thats not the point or my purpose in recycling. Really twenty one cents doesn't change my life, and I probably won't even cash in next time. I'll just let them keep their twenty one cents and hope that they will pay thier workers more for working in such a stinky place (literally) or put it towards this good cause. So if you don't recycle and want to "go green" in your own way, just put your cans, milk jugs, paper, and cardboard aside instead of throwing them away! Even if your husband doesn't like it, it will feel great! :) Yeah for Recycling!!

Random pictures of Brady lately

Brady is holding onto BOTH remotes for the TV! Ha ha. Don't encourage him Robert!

Hot enough to be naked! he's getting really good with his feet and kicking, but no grabbing quite yet.

One day I put Brady down and realized he was watching the TV!! Aaaaahhhh!!!!

Robert thought this was pretty funny. His glow worm somehow got perfectly wedged between his nose and the edge of his crib; but that didn't phase Brady. Brady is the Cutest.

Waiting patiently for his milk.

Sucking on his fingers always does the trick:)

When Brady first started to suck his thumb. Now it won't do, he has to suck on at least 2-3 fingers at once:)

We discovered this park with a Labrynth! We made it to the middle!

My boys taking a Sunday snooze. Robert loves to nap with Brady. They are both zonked out.

His favorite doggy. It plays music and helps him get to sleep. Baby's best friend. Notice also that Robert put a diaper on the dog too.

Robert likes to take pictures of Brady holding things or in things. Notice it's on his right or 'wrong' hand:) By the way this was at least a month ago.