Lily's First Christmas

Well Merry Christmas and almost Happy New Year all rolled into one! Lily's first Christmas was very fun. We spent Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the day after Christmas with my parents in Enumclaw, and Lily really enjoyed being with her grandparents and Aunt Anna and Uncle Josh, like she always does. Ben and I really enjoyed it too, and it was nice to be with family for the holidays. Ok, well I figure that pictures are going to tell you how everything went better than just writing it out, so here goes!

Ben and I in front of our Christmas tree at home. The bottom is kind of bare so Lily wouldn't mess with it as much. It kind of worked.

Lily in her sailor outfit! There's a cute hat that goes with it too, but she wouldn't keep it on long enough to get a good picture. My mom got this outfit for her awhile ago, and she's just getting big enough to fit in it.

Contemplating her first snow. She wasn't too excited about it one way or another, though she did start crying a minute after she sat down. I tried to bundle her up good, but we could only stay out there for about 10 minutes anyway - it was just too cold for her. This was just after the first time it snowed, and it was only about 2 or 3 inches at the time, but by the very last time it snowed, we had probably 8 inches, which is crazy for western Washington.

Christmas morning!! My family has a tradition where we read the Book of Mormon together every night through out the year, and we read the last chapter Christmas morning before we can open any presents. We also always take a picture with our BOM's after we're done. This was right after we'd finished reading, but still getting ready for the picture. Lol :)

Pretty family picture.

Trying to figure out what her stocking was. By the middle of all the unwrapping she was definitely understanding that if she tore the paper off, she got something cool. :)

Daddy helping her unwrap. I think she was getting a little distracted by the paper.

Seeing her baby doll for the first (ok, she saw me pick it out at the store) time. She was very excited. I had been very excited to give it to her.

She really likes it. She carries it around and pats it on the back and likes to point out the baby's nose and eyes. So cute!!

But she got tired of everything after awhile. She has such a cute sad face. :)

Hehe, My mom probably won't be too happy with me, but I had to include this on here. Lol, she had just gotten a new cell phone from my Daddy and it's a fancy touch screen one, and she was a little overwhelmed by how to control it.

One of Ben's family traditions is that his Mom always makes red and green pancakes Christmas morning. Since we weren't with them this year, Ben wanted to make them for everyone. Fun stuff!

 
My new apron! Ben and my Mom are apparently trying to domesticate me, since I unwrapped such items as this apron, an ironing board and iron, spatulas, a sewing machine... are they trying to tell me something?? I thought I was a good little housewife! :)

Lily had way too much fun with the stairs. Only problem is she still hasn't figured out how to go down, and we haven't found any gates that will fit across my parents stairwell here. So we were constantly running after her and pulling her off the third or fourth step.

So proud of herself!

Having fun with Daddy.

We tried to get a cute picture in Christmas hats, but Lily wasn't super cooperative. Ah well.

 
I like this one of Ben and I. :) I think we're pretty darn cute. (You can see where Lily gets it!)

Dressed up in her new clothes from Grandma. I can't believe she actually kept the hat on long enough to get a picture. How cute is she?!?

 

This was Sunday after Christmas, back in our house. Lily really likes playing Peek-a-Boo, and she'll do it all by herself with blankets or cloth diapers or just her hands. She's a doll.

I see you!

So, that's been our Christmas shenanigans this year. It is definitely lots of fun having a child to give gifts to in addition to Ben and I. It just brings out a whole other side of giving in each other, and it's tons of fun to watch Lily's face light up when she realizes she has a new fun toy. Her favorite present was definitely her baby doll we got her, and she really likes all the books she got too. Mommy enjoys that Lily received a bunch of new clothes! :) Ben and I really enjoyed all our presents, and hanging out with family, and taking a mini vacation away from Bothell. We also really loved singing in the choir at Church. It was a beautiful program. Well, see you next year!

Nine...

Teeth. That is, Lily has 9 teeth now! Which seems like way too many for an 11 month old, but we noticed yesterday that a molar on her bottom left side had popped through. We hadn't even noticed that she was teething! I had the thought that maybe she would start teething, mostly because she had been drooling excessively for the last two days, but it seemed too soon to start teething again since she already had her first 8 front teeth. She's a chomper!

Well, she's not exactly happy here, but she has such a cute crying face! Plus you can see her four bottom teeth if you look really closely.

See? The tooth on the right is the least through and only barely visible. Also, on the left you can see the white area where her molar is about to pop through. This was taken about a week ago.

I'm just glad that the molar coming through didn't seem to cause her too much pain. Considering we basically completely missed that it was coming! I don't mind. If only all teething was that easy! :)

Pictures!

So I said I would post pictures of the Thanksgiving trip and then I got busy doing other things. So here's the post.

The four girl cousins that were there! Bethany's the oldest, Savannah is her sister and is 14 months (she's left), Lily in the middle, and Rachel on the right is 12 months. The three babies had a lot of fun playing together, it was really cute to watch them all week.

So Fun! Rachel, Savannah, Lily. There were bubbles in there at one point, but they were in there for awhile and most of them are gone by the time this picture was taken.

Lily was squatting almost the whole time. She didn't like to sit completely down. Silly.

I love Savannah's smile! Adorable!

One night Lily fell asleep on Grandpa's lap. It made him pretty happy (really! even though you can't tell in this picture! lol). It was really cute!

I tried to get a good picture of all the girl babies playing together, but they didn't like to pose for the camera nicely for some reason! ;) So this is the best I got.

Cute Nathan - he loves Superman, and wore his Superman cape, or a superman shirt almost everyday! Cutie! Nathan is Bethany and Savannah's brother.

The only picture I got of Thanksgiving dinner! Sad. Eric carving the turkey, and Debbie setting the food out.

A picture with all four babies! Again, I couldn't get one where they're all sitting nicely together, or anything like that. Way too active! Colton, along with Natalie and Ted, didn't get there until Thursday evening, so it wasn't four babies until Friday and later. Colton was the youngest at 8 months, but he was pretty mobile and held his own with all the girls. :) It was really fun to have so many babies around!

Look at those beautiful animals!! We really loved seeing the lions.

Family picture at the zoo.

Lily checking out the Komodo dragon. This was tropical area, and Lily really liked walking around, checking out the lizards, fish, etc. She was kind of a handful because she just wanted to walk around, not be held very often.

Lily got really tired at the end and zonked out about 20 minutes before we left. What a Cutie-pie.

My sweet husband putting my candles on my pie, a whole 23 of them.

Happy Birthday Me! I had a Lemon Meringue Pie. Yum!

Well, that's about it for now. I still need to put the pictures from my birthday at my parents on the computer, so they will be forthcoming!

Thanksgiving in Colorado

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful! We just got back from Colorado a few days ago. We were visiting Ben's parents who live there, and the rest of the family that came up to visit them as well, namely David and Debbie, who live in Utah, Natalie and Ted, who live in Utah also, Eric and Monica who live in Colorado, and Daniel and Andy (who live here in WA) were there too. It was really great to see so many of Ben's family all together and hang out and have fun. The highlights of the week, for me, were Thanksgiving dinner (of course), going to the Zoo, playing racquetball, and celebrating my birthday. Ben says his highlights were also the zoo and racquetball. So I'll start with those.

Thanksgiving was a feast, naturally, and the most fun part, for me, was all the women in the kitchen trying to get everything ready at the last minute. I know it kind of stressed Ben's mom out, but to me that's always a part of Thanksgiving, is cooking together, hurrying to finish the food on time, and sneaking bites of everything as you make it and put it on the table! Ben's mom makes really really yummy rolls (dipped in butter!) and mashed potatoes, and a really yummy jello dessert that everyone looks forward to, and those were probably my favorites. I made the deviled eggs (which we forgot about, so they weren't on the table, lol), the green bean casserole, and the stuffing. I was really proud of myself for making the stuffing. It's my mom's recipe, and she couldn't tell me exact measurements for things because she's been making it so long she just throws it together. So I was a little nervous, but it turned out really good, and everyone said they liked it. Yummy stuff. I like Thanksgiving!

On Friday we went to the Denver Zoo, and it was awesome! Ben had been telling me for awhile that it was a lot better than the Woodland Park Zoo here in Seattle, and I was really looking forward to it. I wasn't disappointed. All the animals were really easy to see, which was great, and they had quite a few different animals too. Lily's favorite was the ducks! :) There was a huge pond with tons of ducks and geese and a few more exotic birds like pelicans too, and when we'd pass it she'd stretch towards it and start chanting "du, du, du, du" (which is how she says duck). It made her happy, and it was cute. She also really liked the fishies. Ben's favorite animals were the lions, and my favorite was probably the lions too. They were so close, and it was really cool to see them so clearly.

I really like racquetball, even though Ben and I don't get too much opportunity to play. But when we hang out with Ben's dad we get a lot of opportunity because he really likes it too. He's the one that first got into it, I think. Anyway, so we played quite a few times with his Dad, and various other members of the family. It was tons of fun. I was probably one of the (if not, the) worst people playing, but I definitely improved between the first and the last times I played. I liked it so much I had Ben go and buy me my own racquet. Ben and I are looking into a place where we can play around here that's not too expensive, so if anyone knows a place, give us a heads up.

This is getting really long, so I'm gonna do another post about my birthday after Sunday, when I celebrate with my family. I haven't even mentioned how adorable Lily and all her cousins were together. I'll do another mainly picture post where I talk about that. Anyway, again, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break. We sure did!

Good Morning Mama!

So I was woken up just about the cutest possible way yesterday morning. Ben had gotten up at 7 with Lily, and let me sleep in. I could hear her every once in awhile, and finally woke up for real about 8:00 because I could hear her and Ben. Then shortly after that I hear a knock on my door, and then another one. I said "Come in," and then Ben opened the door and Lily walked in. I was still lying down, but I sat up so Lily could see me, and Ben says, "Where's Mama?" and she looks up at me with the hugest smile and starts toddling as fast as she can over to me and comes to the side of the bed, still with a huge grin, and reaches up so I can pick her up. :) It was so sweet. But what makes it even cuter is that Ben told me before I heard the knock, Ben had asked Lily, "Where's Mama?" and Lily looked around and got a really sad look on her face when she didn't see me. He asked her again, so she looked around again, and looked even sadder when I wasn't there. AND THEN, she walks over to my bedroom door and she starts knocking on the door! So it was Lily that was knocking on the door, and not only that, but she was able to figure out that I must be in the bedroom, even though she hadn't seen me all morning. We haven't even tried to teach her how to knock, I think she just figured if she banged on the door something would happen. But it seriously made me really happy. I love being a mom!

So the week before last was spent mainly at my parents home. They were able to go to Hawaii (Lucky Ducks!) and Ben and I were helping with Josh and Anna, my 15 year old brother and 10 year old sister. Mainly they just needed help getting to school and their other activities. But it was a lot of fun hanging out with them for a week. Lily really enjoyed it too - she loved having some other people around other than just Mom and Dad to play with, and they were always really sweet and playful with her. Josh worked all week to get her to learn to say his name, and by the end of the week, she said "Dosh" once. He was thrilled. :) Lily also had a really great time playing with Mary, my brothers dog. She loves dogs, and Mary is pretty gentle with her, so it works out great.

Pictures!

Josh and Lily just chilling on the couch.

Lily and Mary playing together. Mary loves her and always wants to lick her face, which Lily just thinks is hilarious (I know, dog spit, I'm a bad mom). But they're really cute together. Mary will drop the ball in front of Lily and expect her to throw it. Lily just laughs. :)

I just love her chubby little legs in her boots!

Swinging with Daddy. She's a fan of swinging.

Jumping on the trampoline with Auntie Anna. Anna's a great aunt, always willing and wanting to help. She even changes diapers!

 
Lily has recently discovered that it is lots of FUN to pull things out of holes one at a time - mainly diaper wipes and tissues. Anna and I were talking in the kitchen, and looked over to see that Lily had emptied half the bag of wipes. The funniest thing about it is that she'll grab a wipe in each hand and run around waving them in circles. It's quite entertaining. We figure it's cheap entertainment for her too, at about 2 cents a wipe. :)

She got all the tissues out before we noticed what she was doing. Still, can't complain too much, she's pretty adorable, even when she's being obnoxious.

So the next time you hear from us, we'll have gotten back from Colorado. I'm really excited to go, it's been quite a few months since we've seen Ben's parents and even longer since we've seen some of his brothers and the sister that will be there. It'll be nice. So, Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Enjoy your turkey! (And mashed potatoes, and rolls, and stuffing, and green bean casseroles, and pie, and... man, I'm making myself hungry!)

Hola Amigos!

My mom got this for Lily. Isn't she an adorable little gringa?? :)

She didn't particularly like having it on, so she would lift up her arms, trying to get it off, but it was too tight around her head for her to pull it off, she she just walked around, lifting her arms up and then putting them down, and then lifting her arms up again and running into things. It was really funny.

There's a video of her doing it, but I haven't figured out how to use Soapbox yet, so I'll upload it later.

My life right now

So it's Ben this time. Usually Emily is the one to blog, but I thought I'd take a turn. Life lately has been busy. I've been working extra at work lately and really doing well (if I do say so myself). I'm one of the more productive members of my team, so I think I'll have a favorable review next year. At least that's what I tell myself when I have to work extra. The downside of being so productive at work is that they expect so much sometimes. Emily has been very supportive. Did you know that I don't have to get up in the middle of the night when Lily cries? How lucky am I? Lily's sleeping a lot better at night lately. If we get her to bed on time, she'll usually sleep all through the night, and if she doesn't, it's usually just at 5 or so, so she sleeps most of the way through the night all the time now, and that's nice. (By the way that was just a big run-on sentence, but I'm not going to change it because I don't want to!)

I'm still taking the bus to work every day. It takes about 45 minutes when I could drive it in 25ish, but I get to be on my laptop the whole time, plus we don't need two cars which saves a lot of money too. Oh, and did I mention that not only does Microsoft pay for my bus pass, they sometimes give out gift cards to people who ride the bus. I've already gotten 3 so far. I like having the bus time to work on my laptop and work on whatever project I'd like, but with the rainy Seattle weather, I have to put it away during transfers to keep it from getting rained on.

For those of you who don't know, I started programming when I was about 13 years old. My brother Daniel and his friend were making small programs in QBasic, and I, being the tag-along little brother that I was, learned to so I could fit in. Well it turns out that I'm good at it and I love programming (I actually enjoy going to work every day). So anyway, you can't find a QBasic compiler anymore these days, at least not one that will run on Windows Vista. But they did come out with something similar called Small Basic recently and I've been teaching Emily how to program using that, and she's doing really well. She's working on a Breakout (single player-pong) type game, which is really good for a beginner. Small basic does make things a little easier than they were back in the days of QBasic where all you had was PSET, and that wasn't fast enough, so you had to figure out how to write directly to the screen using PEEK & POKE (I bet Daniel is the only one who understood what I just said there).

Emily's Game. She even made the blocks pink so it would be a girly game.

Me and Emily are on the ball! We're both almost done with Christmas shopping, and birthday shopping which is pretty impressive because I usually wait until the last minute. Now the hard part is keeping everything hidden until Christmas. There's not a lot of places in the condo that we don't use on a regular basis, so we'll have to be creative about hiding spots.

We're going to my parents for Thanksgiving, and I'm really looking forward to it because we don't get to see them very often, and I'm close with my dad. We're spending a whole week there, which means we'll be there for Em's birthday too. I've gotta take Em & Lily to the zoo there because I keep telling her how the Denver zoo is so much cooler than the Woodland park zoo. So look forward to pictures of that in a month or so.

So there it is, my life right now, but the only reason my mom reads this blog is for pictures of Lily. So this next section is dedicated to you mom.

My Lily...so adorable

Lily has been making roaring noises lately, it's so cute!!

Lily all bundled up for a walk outside

Rubber ducky, you're the one!

Lily taking over the computer chair.

Our Halloween costume. Lily's wasn't that creative, but me and Em
liked dressing like babies.