Happy Halloween!

This week has been FULL of halloween activities! Thank goodness it's fiiiiinally feeling more like fall, with temps in the high 60s and mid 70s.

We visited the pumpkin patch up the street.

Some of our little buddies: Will, Holden, Chad, Amelia & Grace.

Ryan wrapped Grace up like a mummy during a game at our friends' party. She was not too thrilled.

We carved pumpkins together on friday (Ryan had the day off!) and made sure Grace got in on some of the action. Just touching the 'punkin' guts was enough for her.

Didn't Ryan do a great job with Gracie's jack-o-lantern?! He even carved a little bow in the corner, of course. :)

Caught being silly.

Friday night was our ward chili cook-off and trunk-or-treat. This is my 3rd year in a row on the activities committee and this was by far the best one yet! Our ward is just way too big to fit inside the small cultural hall, so we tried it outside this time.

Not only did we all fit, everyone had a seat, the sunset was GORGEOUS, there were more pots of chili than any of the past years, and the weather was perfect.

Ryan dressed up as Clark Kent (genius... he literally figured it out 5 mins before the party) and Grace was the cutest lady bug on the block. I... was lazy.

We had another fun party last night with some friends, watched the Utah game, and ate some yummy food. What more do ya need?!

The costumes were so clever: yoda, princess peach, and a skeleton. Unfortunately after 2 previous nights of wearing costumes, Grace's was very dirty in the knees and we were too lazy to wash it for the last party of the week.

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and ate lots and lots of candy!!

Walking?!

Silly Girl

Just some funny and adorable things I wanted to share/record. I swear this girl keeps me laughing all day long!

-Grace says "oh-pah" a lot. Don't know what that one means in her world but we usually say it right back to her like we're Greek.

-She says "bah" all the time and it now means "baby" (she has two little baby dolls) or "binkie" or "ball". It's so fun to know that when she says "bah" I can actually get her one of those things or say the correct word back like we're actually communicating.

-She says "hi-dah" all the time. We pretend like she's actually saying "Hi Dad". But who knows? Maybe she is. :)

-Lately Grace has been yawning in the middle of crying. She'll be crying really loud with her mouth wide open, and then yaaaaaaawn... sigh... and then keep crying. It's the funniest thing!

-Grace is so darn dramatic these days! She tries to inhale and choke on her juice. She'll drink a little from the sippy cup and then slowly inhale through her mouth with this wide-eyed look that says "I'm gonna choke Mom - you just wait and be ready."

-Another thing with her sippy cup is that she'll take a swig and then slowly let it trickle out of her mouth and down her chin and neck. Such a trouble-maker.

-She likes to vibrates her lips really fast and really high pitched. Sometimes we'll "compete" with her, and seriously she always wins. I've never heard another baby do that kind of lip-vibrating like she does. Crazy.

-She mimics sounds other kids are making around her. We'll be walking through a store and pass a screaming child, and she'll copy the sound but be really calm about it. It's as if she's just thinking about the sound out loud.

-If I say "sleepy girl", she puts her head down on whatever is closest. Sometimes it's a pillow on the ground, my shoulder, the piano bench, or sometimes it's the handle to her little push-along stroller...

-Turns the pages of her board books all by herself and it's always such a quick, hard motion. Almost like she's mad at it and just wants the next darn page!

-Pushes things around in her push-along-stroller. I'll put her baby dolls in it, turn away for a minute, and before I know it she has a shoe, a burp cloth, or whatever else is lying around that's not an actual toy.

-Likes to be in the tub while it's filling up so she can laugh and stare at the water coming out of the faucet. She knows she can put a cup underneath the stream of water and fill it up.

-If she's awake in her crib and I haven't gone to get her yet, she'll stand there and bang her binkie against the bars.

-She LOVES smiling at strangers. She's such a little flirt. That's why she's usually pretty good while we're out running errands, or anywhere really... as long as there are people to look at her.

One new major accomplishment!:

-Over the last week I have been teaching her where her toes are, and that I have toes too. Tonight in the tub I said "Grace, where are your toes?" She looked down at her feet and grabbed her big toe!!! Yay! Of course, when I said "Yay Grace! Good job!" she clapped for herself. :)

These are just precious moments:

-The other day I was preparing for visiting teaching with the October Ensign and Grace really wanted to see what I was looking at. I sat her on my lap and opened the first few pages. When I turned to the page with a big picture of Christ, I said "Look, it's Jesus." She immediately leaned forward and gave the picture a big slobbery kiss. :) It warmed my heart.

-Also the other day... Grace had her baby doll and was playing with it. I said "Give your baby loves" and she put its' head on her shoulder... and then gave it kisses. I tell ya, she's an affectionate kid!

Giving Daddy loves.

Kissing her "lovey" the Lamb.

Grace's first real experience with rain, and she thought getting drenched was hilarious!

Laying her head on the handle of her toy stroller when I said "Sleepy girl".

Ryan's mom and sister stopped in for a few hours last weekend and dropped off a birthday present for Grace. She got these cute little bug cars and kept handing them to whoever was close enough to roll them across the ground, over and over.

3rd time's the charm!

Yesterday, Ryan competed in his 3rd triathlon, which was put on by students at his school. It was a service project/sprint triathlon, where they do a small service project during the transitions between each leg of the race. I've never heard of such a thing, and didn't know how they could make it work, but it did in fact prove to work out and made it a two-fold success! The Ronald McDonald house was given a load of small hygiene and toy kits that the participants put together during the race.

Ryan was in the second heat and started the race with a GREAT swim! (distance: 500 meters)

He jumped out of the water, put a kit together, and headed off to his bike to start the next leg.

Getting dressed for the bike.

Headed out!

The biking leg was the best and easiest part for Ryan, and he did so well! (distance: 12.5 miles) We cheered him on as he headed back to the transition area before heading out on the run, and final leg.

During that transition, the racers had to draw a quick picture on the front of the hygiene kits.

Grace clapped for her daddy too!

Running, and final leg of the tri. (distance: 3.1 miles)

Home stretch!! The racers each picked up a kit about 50 yards from the end so they could each take one over the finish line ... Honestly, I don't know why. Just to finish up the service part of it I guess. :)

DONE!! I'm so proud of him.

Ryan's time was a personal best, at 1:44:09 (the clock above Ryan says differently because they started the race one at a time).

Grace was excited too!

Ryan with a few of our ward and school buddies who also competed: Jordan, Landon, Evan, and Amanda. They all did such a great job! Plus, having friends there made it fun to compete with/against each other and fun for us spouses to cheer them all on.

GOOD JOB, BUD!! I'm so proud of you.

Picture Stories

A few days ago my sister and her husband stayed in Planet Hollywood for a couple of nights. We met them over there one evening and spent a little time with them. Grace was being hilariously cute and so affectionate. She gave my sister "loves" when we were saying goodbye. She usually doesn't do that to anyone other than Ryan or me.

The other day I got my 100 cookie cutter bucket out to use a couple. I let Grace go wild dumping them out and playing with them. She somehow got the bucket stuck on her head and it was too cute not to grab my camera and capture it! I know, I'm a bad mom. But here is her story in pictures.

... next thing I know it's on my head and I'm stuck! ...

... I sure was frustrated! ...

... Mom felt guilty and helped get it off.

I was so mad at it that I kept hitting it until it was far away from me.

So, today this happened.

Apparently some teenagers were driving in this white truck, and were going too fast. The driver lost control and slammed into the wall of our complex, right between the buildings where we live. Our street has a limit of 45, and I'm sure he was going at least that fast, based on the damage! He even took out a big metal box protecting a meter of some sort. Usually kids play right there on our side of the wall and people stand there with their dogs. LUCKILY nobody was standing there at the time!

This is just the view from right outside our door looking south at the gaping hole in the wall. The poor apartment maintenance dude had to clean up all the rubble.

Poor kid was probably pretty shaken up! In fact you can see him in the first picture on the very right, just above the wall. He looked like he was ready to cry. :( And I was the mean on-looker taking pictures...

Ramblings

I just felt like writing out all the stuff in my head tonight. Nothing too exciting...

Have I mentioned how impressed I am of Ryan's OMT skills? I must explain one more time how much of a blessing it is. Sorry if this is a little T.M.I. ... Last night I was having one of those bad hormonal headaches. Ya know, the kind that only come around once a month, but they wreak havoc when they do. Well, this headache was the worst I have felt probably ever. It was making me feel nauseated, faint, and sweaty. Anyway, I asked Ryan to come home early to fix me, which he willingly did. After just a few minutes of working on my neck and loosening all the tension there, I was feeling PERFECT. Seriously, good as new. Yay for Osteopathic Manipulative Therapy!! :) I'm so glad that Ryan decided to schedule a rotation with Dr. Galin at the school's clinic so he can learn everything from one of the best OMM docs. He's only really doing it so he can use his skills on me and our family, since he most likely wouldn't use it in his future practice (not many do).

Tonight we had the yummiest dinner! It was incredible, and I'm excited about our left-overs for tomorrow. We had Slow Cooker Italian Beef Sandwiches and potatoes au gratin. I highly recommend it. You will fall in love. :)

My beloved digital SLR, my Canon Rebel xt, is dying. It may already be dead. :( It has been acting up the last couple of weeks by not wanting to auto-focus, which means it won't allow me to even take pictures (unless I use manual focus, which is ridiculously hard to get right). I took it to a Ritz Camera to get their opinion, and the dude there said it was my main lens causing the issues, not the camera, and it's cheaper to just buy a new lens. He said if it happens again, to pop the battery out and pop it back in, which resets the camera, and should fix itself. As I've tried to take pictures over the last couple weeks, it only works 50% of the time, even when I try to use the tip he gave me and use different lenses. I'm 99% sure he was wrong about the lens being the problem. It's the camera. Today as I tried to use it, it completely died on me. Both our fully-charged batteries won't even turn it on anymore. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up in the morning and find it was just possessed and will work just fine again. But I'm thinking we're at the end. It's not under warranty with Canon so we either pay $$$ to send it in to get fixed or pay pretty much the same amount of $$$ and buy a new one and possibly the step up. Not a fun decision to make right now but we both know I can't live without a digital SLR. I hope that doesn't make me sound selfish... It's a really important hobby to me and I can never go back to just a point-and-shoot after 4+ years with this one.

p.s. That camera has taken over 11,500 photos. Here is one that I don't think I ever posted. I love these two!!

Grace has one more week before she visits the ophthalmologist again (ha, I spelled it correctly on the first try this time!). If her right eye is still tearing and not draining through the tear duct, we will be referred to a plastic surgeon. :( We don't know what's going to happen, but we're hoping and praying it won't come to an actual surgery. They would have to build a new path from her eye to her nose in order to drain her tears correctly. Yuck. It does not sound appealing... but from what I've read online, if you just leave it and it still doesn't drain throughout her life, she could have pain and have a lot of problems with eye infections. We'll of course do whatever we feel is best and see how things go as time goes on. We're still hoping for good news though.

With Grace turning one year old in a few more weeks, I'm gearing up for weaning her off of nursing. I find that I'm mostly extremely excited about it, but there is a part of me that will be sad. She won't be my baby anymore! I won't get those snuggley moments anymore. It's been such a blessing that my milk production has been so reliable and she has been so good at nursing. I have thanked Heavenly Father for those things over and over again. It has saved us so much money and made life easy in some aspects. But not having to stop everything for 10 minutes, 4 times a day, and having my body back to myself for the first time in ... 21 months? ... is so exciting! I look forward to it and sort of dread it all in the same breath.

Ok, enough of my ramblings. Thanks for hanging in there with me if you read it all. :) Just for fun, here is another photo from Grace's 11 month shoot. Gosh, I love her.

Eleven Months

Happy 11 months to Grace today! Yet again, I find myself thinking "Where has the time gone?! Where is my baby?" I'm realizing more and more each day and each week that passes that we're that much closer to having a walking, talking TODDLER. It's just around the corner and it's bitter sweet for me. But I admit I've loved every new stage Grace has gone through over the last 11 months.

Here are some photos we took today.

(You can see her one little tooth on the bottom)

Grace is so affectionate. She gives "loves" (leaning into us and resting her head on our shoulder, or putting her arms around our necks) and gives lots of kisses when we ask for them. She'll even kiss her dolls or a picture on a page if I prompt her to. They are just big slobber marks on your cheek but we know she is showing her love, and we give her lots of kisses right back.

Grace says "muh" for "more" and mostly says it while eating if we're not handing her food fast enough. She knows what I mean when I say "milk" (I still nurse her). All I have to do is ask "Milk?" (while doing the ASL sign) and she'll crawl over to me on the couch ready to be picked up, and whining a little until I do. Her newest trick is my FAVORITE thing so far. I started to rock my head side to side and say "ding dong ding dong" and she learned to copy me right away. Now she does it whenever, wherever and I say "ding dong ding dong" back to her. Such a fun game! But the funniest part is that when she does it, she looks like Stevie Wonder. It always makes us laugh.

She is starting to take little steps but only if we bribe her with something. The best yet has been popsicles and it's usually just for Ryan. The most steps she's taken before falling is 2-3. It's ok though - I'm not in any rush to get her walking! It's just fun to make her try. Grace likes to point at everything and Ryan has made a game out of it. When she points her finger when he's around, he'll touch his finger to hers and "blow it up" (pull his finger away and making the blasting sound... haha incase you didn't know what the meant). She thinks it's entertaining. She also says "dah!" all the time. Everything is "dah", unless she wants me or is really upset, in which case she'll yell "MAAaaah... maaamaaaahhh".

Sometimes if I'm cooking or if I really don't want her in the kitchen eating crumbs off the floor or opening cupboards, I'll blog the way with her exersaucer. But that smart little thing figured out how to crawl UNDER and through to get to the kitchen. Little trouble maker.

Grace still hasn't cut another tooth since the one last month but I feel like it will pop up any time now. She's constantly drooling everywhere, whining, grabbing at both of her ears, and has her moments quite often these days where I can't be further than a foot or two away from her without her flipping out. Oh and speaking of flipping out, apparently she's terrified of the vacuum and the broom. Vacuum I understand, but the broom? Funny.

I absolutely LOVE these pjs. They're the first pajama set she's had that doesn't involve a onesie. Another reminder to me that she's turning into a big girl! No more baby clothes.

Grace loves her new walk-and-push-along toy stroller and the two baby dolls that fit in it. She also loves to try and play the piano when I'm practicing. She's just barely tall enough to reach her arms up and push on the keys. Bath time is definitely a favorite nightly routine and she especially loves to sit in the tub while it's filling up so she can feel and watch the watch coming from the faucet. It absolutely fascinates her! Grace still loves being outside and being pushed around in the stroller. We haven't been to the pool in a few weeks, and I'm sure that was the last time we'll go this year. Sometimes if we're both dying of boredom I'll go and let her stand in the water and we'll wade in the super shallow part. She loves it and tries so hard to sit down and play in it.

As far as eating, she really loves cheese. I shouldn't have introduced it so early... I feel like I should have kept going with pieces of fruit for a lot longer. She doesn't even waste her time with the fruit I try to give her when she used to love peaches, nectarines, cantaloupe, watermelon, pears, etc. Now I give her pieces of bread, tortilla, quesadilla, cheese, puffs, yogurt melts, pizza, pasta noodles with some spaghetti sauce on it, cheerios, and that's about it that I've found so far. I still make her eat some baby food but I feel like our days are numbered with baby food from a jar. She is starting to refuse any and all veggies so I have to mix it in with fruits... which she still sometimes refuses. I can still count on her to take some oatmeal in the morning and I'll mix stuff in so she'll get at least some veggies that way.

One more month and we'll be celebrating with balloons, cake, and a single candle!

There's just something about it

Something about crafting, I mean. It makes me feel so productive and happy. It's when I'm between projects, or when I am too lazy to pull out something to work on, that I feel bored, down, and frustrated more easily. Interesting how that works.

Lately, I've had a renewed desire to learn new things and finish projects around the house I've been meaning to get around to. I FINALLY put Grace's name up on her wall which I had meant to do over a year ago. I'm so happy with how it turned out! It's so girly and perfect for her.

Here are different views of her whole room. I know I've posted some in the past before, but now it's finally how I like it.

I also finally hung up some frames in our bedroom that I painted a few months ago. I just found unfinished wood frames at the craft store, painted them, and stenciled some little white flower petals to match the quilt Ryan's aunt made for us. In the frames I put some art from the last couple years Greg Olsen wall calendars.

And lastly, the part of our wall above our kitchen cabinets is boring and empty with nothing hanging there. I never could decide what I wanted there because my kitchen really doesn't have set colors or a theme to it. I finally decided to hang up the letters for each season (because let's be honest, the seasons aren't quite the same here and we need a reminder based on the yearly calendar and not based on our climate). I must say that mod podge is the best invention! This was made of wood letters, scrapbook paper, a little paint, and mod podge. It's so fun to make! Here are photos of the "Autumn" letters I've done so far. I figured I would do all the seasons with 6 letters (winter, spring, summer, autumn) so that I can keep roughly the same nails in the wall.

That's an attractive vent, eh?