Merry Christmas to all!

Happy Holidays!!

Merry Christmas! Oh what a year, it has been a very busy one full of changes, mostly good. We hope that this Christmas season find you all healthy, happy and well. As the year comes to an end, we wanted to update everyone on the last year of our lives and all the changes that have occured in our little family. It has surely been a year of change, mostly good, with lots of fun in between!

Jason has spent the year working, both at his job and on the many ideas he comes up with. He has had lots of ups and downs at his job, and still seems to mostly enjoy it there. He works with a lot of great people who he really likes and who really seem to like having him there. He's also started a couple new side projects working with friends to reach his goal of retiring by 26. That time is quickly approaching and he is working hard to make every attempt to reach his goal. We'll see. We love every second we get with him at home and Mia has quickly become very selfish with her daddy. He is her daddy and no one elses, she is a daddies girl through and through.

I have spent the year at home with my sweet baby girl and love every minute of it. We were able to move in May to a bigger place, our 1st home! We love it and love our new neighborhood. I spend my free time redecorating and trying to get our house just how I want it. The house shopping process was a little overwhelming and one that we were glad to have over with. I've also been spending a lot of time with my mom and my sister and her kids this last year. It is so wonderful to have them close. Mia loves her cousin and I love being able to spend the time with my mom and sister. Beyond that, all my time is spent on my sweet baby girl who is grwoing up WAY to fast.

Mia will be turning 2 in a couple of weeks and has been in the 'terrible 2's' for quite a while now. She is such a smart girl and amazes me more and more every day. She loves to talk and is quite good at it, she gets better and better every day at communicating and putting sentances together. She is turning in to quite the little girly girl, she loves princesses and tinkerbell, loves putting on mom's makeup and loves helping mom cook all the time. Any princess or doll, other than the disney princesses, she calls princess Mia, including herself. She loves our new house and loves having so many friends her age in our ward. Nursery has never been hard for her, she loves to go and hates to leave, which has made church so much more pleasant. She is such a sweet girl, always sure to say 'please' , 'thank you' and 'bless you' at every chance she gets.

We also found out soon after moving to our new home, that we'll be expecting baby #2 in the start of this next year. We found out in the start of November that it'll be another little girl. I'm so excited for Mia to have a little friend and another little girl to cover in pink, and Jason's excited at the prospect of already having everything we need for a baby girl. We can't wait to see her and meet her and hope and pray things continue to go well with her. Mia is so excited and loves to talk to 'baby lilly by rubbing my belly and saying hi to her. She is so sweet to her already and thought she found her when she met my cousin's newborn daughter. She is so sweet with babies and will be a sweet big sister.

Beyond that we've just enjoyed spending all the time we can with each other, family and friends. We were lucky to be able to head down to Arizona in March to spend a week with Jason's family and some time with my for my older brothers wedding. We've also had Jason's family here to visit a few times and love the time for Mia to get to know them better. In September we were even able to take a vacation for a week up to Seattle to visit my brother and his cute family there. Mia loved spending time with her cousin's and we loved being shown around the city. It's so pretty and so fun there, we really enjoyed it.

We are looking forward to 2 weeks in AZ for Christmas and can't wait to spend some time there with friends and family we aren't able to see often. Mia is so excited for Christmas and loves to tell everyone about 'beautiful Christmas trees', sitting on santa's lap and getting candy, snowmen, and loves to carry her presents from room to room. She will be so fun this year once she figures out there's stuff inside those presents.

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season full of joy and love. We feel so blessed this holiday season for everything that we have, for our beautiful home and our growing family. We thank the Lord every chance we get for the many blessings in our lives. We are so thankful for the Savior and the gospel and think of them even more at this time of the year. He is our source of hope and strength and I am so so thankful everyday for all that he has brought to my life. We love you all and wish you the best in the year to come. Happy Holidays!!

1/2 way there!!

Well, I've made it and so far so good. The worst is over. The sickenss is mostly gone, the baby is growing fast (me too), and we finally know we're going to have a sweet baby girl! The 20 week appointment went really well. Unlike Mia, this baby is measuring right on track! Mia was enough behind they could have changed my due date, but luckily didn't. This baby measured at 20 weeks 3 days, so just a little ahead of schedule. Everything looked good, except that she was way to much of a little wiggly worm, which now means I get another ultrasound at my next appointment. The radiologist didn't get the best look at her heart and although she sees no reason to worry, she said she didn't want to just assume things were fine. So I'll get to see my sweet baby girl and her progress again in a few more weeks!

I must admit I was really really shocked to find out this baby is a girl. I am still thrilled to be having another baby and am thrilled that it's a girl now that it's sunk in a little bit. This pregnancy has so different than it was with Mia, some symptoms have been worse, some not nearly as bad. Mainly I haven't been nearly as sick as I was with Mia and the sickness has gone away a lot sooner than it did the 1st time around, luckily. As much as I would love to have a sweet baby boy, It'll be so so fun to see Mia with a baby sister and I have high hopes that they'll always be really close and always have each other. My sister is a bit older than me with siblings between us and I grew up always wishing for a sister close to my age, so I'm so glad for Mia that she'll have that. I guess it just means we'll have to have 1 more baby in a few years or so. Definately not doing this again anytime soon.

Those of you in AZ, get ready for next month!! We'll be there for 2 weeks during Christmas and would LOVE to see you all. Can't wait to get away and have a vacation with my loves and visit friends and family and to get warm weather back for a couple weeks! YAY! Can't wait to see everyone!!

Halloween and happenings...

Well, I got a little ambitions this year and decided I was going to make Mia's halloween costume, even though I had an adorable costume that fit her my sister gave me. I wanted her to have something that she'd like and actually want to wear, so we went with a cute lady bug and I am SO glad I did it! I love how it turned out and she just loves her 'buggy clothes'. My amazing photographer sister in law Melissa offered an exchange with me while she was here, I do her hair she takes some pictures for me, so she took a few of my cute little miss lady bug. She does an amazing job, especially considering how much Mia does not want to cooperate and refuses to smile with the camera around, she's a nut. But, there are some really cute ones. These are just a few of the ones I really love.

In other news... everything is going pretty good. I am now 18 weeks pregnant and have my ulltrasound all scheduled in 2 weeks to make sure all is going well and to finally find out what we're having, I can't wait! Sometimes I think I'm even more anxious to find out what this one is than I was to find out what Mia was, although with her I was certain from the beginning it was a girl. I am glad to report I am feeling TONS better and get a little better every day. Just starving lately and eating all I can get my hands on. I LOVE potato chips and pickles lots lately, but will eat about anything.

Mia is doing WONDERFUL! She is such a smart girl and besides her terrible 2 moments, she is so sweet. She LOVES to talk to my 'baby' and does so often. She lifts my shirt just til she can see my belly then just lays on her belly with her head close to my belly and will rub it and say 'hi baby' over and over and occasionally has to give the 'baby' a kiss. Then she'll put my shirt back and tell the baby bye and goodnight. I think she'll be a sweet big sister and I'm sure talking to my belly won't quit when the baby is here. She is getting so good at putting words together and making sentances or little phrases. She knows most the words to twinkle little star and itsy bitsy spider and sings often. Just yesterday I picked up her new dress and asked her if I could have it and she turned and looked at me and said 'put it back now'. Funny girl, but oh so smart. She never fails to impress us every day.

Beyond all that, everything is going pretty good. Jason is as busy as can be as usual with work and all the other project he has and I stay busy reorganizing every corner of our house. I'm excited for Halloween to see how Mia does this year and even more excited for Christmas, hoping I can get her in to all the fun this year. She's just more fun every day, I just love her to pieces.

Recipes!

My mother in law just sent me the link to this blog and the few recipes I've looked through look AMAZING! Just thought I'd pass the link along. I think tomorrow night I'll be making her broccoli cheese soup and this weekend I might try the 'magic in the middle cookies'. SO yummy! Anyways, here it is. Look through and let me know if you try anything amazing!

http://mykitchencafe.blogspot.com

Seattle

I know it's about time I finally got all of our pictures and everything up from our trip, considering we've been home for like 2 weeks now. Anyways, we were lucky enough to find a great flight and finally made it up to visit my brother Chris and his wife Melissa and kids for an entire week in the start of september. SO glad we finally did it! Seattle is beautiful and it was so nice to see everything there and hang out with the fam for a bit.


Day 1 I was a little sick, getting over a stomach flu from the night before, which I was glad we didn't pass to my brothers family. My older brother Jeremy and his wife Mitzie drove up for the day, they're living in Portland while my brother attends pharmacy school. We spent the day hanging out at my brothers house and ran out to this amazing lake, rattlesnake lake. It was so beautiful and fun to watch all the kids play and have fun with each other. Chris bought a canoe this summer, so it was fun to ride that out to a more secluded point of the lake where the kids had a little more freedom to run and play. The next day we went to this park about 5 mins away from my brothers house that was so fun! You just felt like you were in the middle of the forest, yet the second you walked out of the park, you realize you were basically in someones neighborhood, it was SO nice!

Day 3 Chris and Melissa took us on the water taxi over in to downtown Seattle area to see the waterfront stores and head over to Pikes market. The market was so fun! I was amazed at the amazing flowers and produce they had and for such cheap prices! So yummy. The shops up by the waterfront were tons of fun too, filled with strange things like handerpants or strange flavored mints, shrunken heads and tons of little 'fortune telling' machines and old things like that. It was fun just to walk around and see who could find the strangest things. We also made a stop at the famous 'gum wall' on our walk up to pikes market and got some really yummy seafood at Ivars. Best clam chowder, so so good!

the rest of the trip will come later...

Cabin trip...

So, I totally forgot to ever really post any of the pictures from a trip we took with part of my family. My Aunt owns a condo down on a ski resort in Utah called Brian head and she was nice enough to let us borrow it for a few days. We were able to go along with my parents, my brother Jordan, and my sister Emy and her family. It was TONS of fun and so so beautiful up there, and luckily, we happened to be up there in the mountains for one of the hottest weekends in the valley this year. SO nice! We spent a lot of time there in Brian head and also spent a day down in Bryce canyon which is gorgeous! So fun to see. We also got to go crawl around in some lava tunnel caves that are so short you actually have to army crawl through parts of them. SO cool! Anyways, just wanted to share all our fun pictures!

20 months old!

I can't believe my baby girl is growing up so fast! She'll be 2 before I know it and one of these days, we'll all have to give up calling her 'baby Mia'. I just needed to document somewhere all of the amazing things she's doing now, some not so amazing things. She is such a little fire ball. She very much knows what she wants and works hard to be sure she gets it. At 20 months she some new things she's doing, or just some of the things we love most about her are:

-She is still SO good to say 'Tank you' anytime she is given anything or to remind you to say thank you when she give you something. She also recently starting saying 'your welcome' right after not only you say thank you but usually when she does as well.

-She is starting to put sentances together! Slowly but surely she's getting it. For now, it's usually just to get something. She very careful says things like 'more grapes please'. she says it slowly and tries so hard to be sure to pronounce each word correctly

-She climbs on EVERYTHING! when she's hungry, she doesn't tell us, she climbs on a chair and then on the table, then to her hire chair. Today I caught her climbing up on to our barstools herself. With that, she can reach ANYTHING! it's only a matter of time...

-She can be very helpful when she wants to be. She LOVES to help me put clothes in the drier and hand them to me so I can hang them up. She also loves to throw away garbage and HATES when drawers, doors or the fridge are left open.

- She is such a loving girl. She loves to give lots of hugs and is great at the occasional kiss as long as you don't mind a little slobber. She's learned to say 'love you' and it is always accompanied by her blowing you a kiss.

- She said her own prayer all by herself the other night randomly in the middle of dinner. She folded her arms and shut her eyes as tight as she can and started whispering to herself.

- Ane my most FAVORITE thing ever she just started in the past few weeks, anytime someone sneezes or coughs, she says 'bless you'. It is just the sweetest little thing ever.

She is such a sweetheart! She has been so wonderful since I found out I'm pregnant, which has been great since I haven't been feeling well. She has learned that she can on occasion get away with more, but she's still pretty good. Occasionally the terrible 2's come out, but I know it could be a LOT worse. She is a sweet baby, very thoughtful and loving and just so so sweet.

In other news.... My very best best is coming to town today! YAY! Katie and her husband are on our way to Utah as we speak and will be here til next weekend and I'm SO excited to see them and hang out and have some girl talk time! YAY! Then in Sept, it's off to Seattle to see my brother and his amazing family!