Lots of baby showers!

I feel like the whole world around me is pregnant or just recently had their babies. That means that I've had LOTS of fun baby showers lately! Our friends throw showers for each other even when it's their 2nd or 3rd baby. It's a great excuse to get together without kids, celebrate the mom and baby, create new and fun party themes, and eat yummy food. I've helped with some and there are still a couple coming up in the next few months. Here are some pictures from a few recent ones...

Paige's shower was so cute and so well put-together. The theme was "She's about to POP" so the food and decorations all tied in somehow to "pop"ping. Very clever and coordinated.

Alisha, Melanie, Robyn, Melynda, Rachele, Erica, Marci, Paige, Casie,

Emily, Kirsten, Natalie, Laura, me.

For Erica's shower, we had a rubber ducky theme. We served a brunch of fruit and caramel french toast, and gave luffas and duck-shaped sugar cookies as favors. It turned out so cute!

Me, Rachele, Alisha, Melanie,

Emily, Erica (mommy-of-3-to-be), Paige & Max

Next is Melanie's shower (who is expecting her baby girl at any moment at this point).

I made that blow/clip holder which matches her room decor.

We played a pudding-feeding game where everyone's eyes were closed and we had to feed/eat pudding blindly. I was not excited at first but we all laughed through the whole thing!

The theme was Sugar&Spice. They served cookies, milk, and a crepe bar (oh so good!).

Emily, Erica, Jenny, Lindsay, Kirsten, me,

Robyn, Alisha, Melanie, Casie, Rachele, Marci.

I sure love these girls.

Whitney's shower was super cute with lots of fun girls! We were lucky to even fit a shower in for her a few days before she was to have her sweet baby Paisley. :)

The "Amandas" (shown below on either side of Whitney) threw the shower for Whitney and did a great job.

Amanda H., Megan, Amanda L., Lindsay, Whitney's mom, Whitney, Ashlee,

Kristin, Jamie, Kirsten, Kelsey, Sarah.

Seventeen Months Old

Grace turned 17 months old yesterday! Where has the time gone?! The only number I have to share right now is Grace's weight: 24 pounds this month. I'm not sure how tall she is, but I know she's a bit of a shorty. Her tummy may be very large and round but the rest of her is still pretty little overall. Strangers will guess at how old she is, and they always guess younger, saying that she looks like their 15 month old daughter, or something along those lines. It just shows me (after a few times of this happening) that she is a bit small for her age. I don't know the percentile at the moment, and don't want to research it out of laziness - but we'll know next month at her check-up. But honestly I love that she's still a bit "little". :) No rush to grow up and get big!

Grace can say quite a few words now! She's learning new ones everyday. Here is a list of what I can think of off the top of my head (not including the few I already mentioned last month):

-car seat (ka-kee)

-cookie (kuh-kee)

-cracker (kah-koo)

-lovey (uh-vee)

-movie (boo-dee)

-book (buh)

-shoe (eeeeee) - this is one of my favorites! no matter how hard we try to fix it, she always says "eeee".

-toe (doe)

-school (koo)

-book (bah)

-banana (bala-blah)

-pajamas (pidoh-pidoh-pidoh)

-castle - can't remember how she pronounces this one at the moment

-brush (bwuh)

-hair (haaaah)

-ham (ham)

-home (ham)

-strawberry (taw-baw)

-milk (mmmm)

-snack (nah)

-bow (bow-oooh)

-I love you (I-eee)

-poo AND Pooh (poo)

-Jesus (js-zzz)

-cheese (t-zzz)

-goodbye (buh-bieee)

-stuck (kuh)

-turkey (kuh-kee)

-bread (bweh)

-duck/quack (kuh)

-ball (bah)

-Elmo (bubboh)

-binkie (bah)

-pizza (tee-suh)

-go go go (go go go) - she says this when she's "running" around, or when we've washed her hands and she is drying them on a towel. I always say "dry dry dry" at that point, but for her it's just "go go go" for some reason. Or she'll say "bye" and "go" when Ryan is about to leave for work or to study. haha As if she's trying to push him out the door.

One of Grace's favorites toys is her magnetic drawing board (we've gone through 2, and I can never leave home to run errands or go to church without it).

She loves "drawing pictures"! She also loves building things: big duplo-type of plastic blocks, boxes of bar soap in our bathroom, connecting markers from tip to tip to make a long pole, among other things. She just loves building and stacking things!

She'll totally build and stack on her own, but she also enjoys letting Dad do all the work.

She also loves her baby doll, her lovey (the lamb), and pushing her little toy strollers around all day long. One of my favorite things to catch her doing is looking at books. Quite often I'll realize she's being really quiet, I expect to find her doing something bad. But then I'll catch her sitting quietly on the ground looking through a stack of books. I love that!

Lately Grace has been obsessed with walking around in our shoes - especially my flats that are usually hanging out by the door. I think I've mentioned this before... but she is always looking for my shoes, especially if she's walking around the house pushing her toy stroller. Just like mom does, I guess. :) Plus, if she finds our keys she'll try to go "unlock" the door.

I love seeing her chubby little legs and feet as she goes up on her tip-toes to reach the door knob! Oh and she just learned this month how to open the doors in our house that have the handles instead of knobs. Darn. Now we're not safe in the bathroom anymore. ;)

Bath time is still one of her favorite things and Daddy showed her how to put her head under the running water. She does that and laughs and laughs!
She also like it when I recite the "Bubbles Bubbles" book with baby sesame street characters (from memory... I've read it so many times) while I wash her. It helps keep her happy while I do that part of bath time.

When Grace needs to get her energy out and get outside for a bit, I let her run around right outside our front door. There's a tiny bit of grass and some rocks and dirt where she likes to play around. I don't mind that she plays in the rocks and tosses them all over the side walk. Maybe the grounds-keepers mind - but it keeps her happy while we get a little sun and get out of the house. We usually go out there once a day these days.

Grace loves loves LOVES playing with her friends (when she's in a good mood - occasionally she's not fun to be around). We hosted our babysitting exchange night at our house a few weeks ago and I could tell Grace loved to be sitting up on the couch with all her bigger friends while watching a movie.

If a friend of ours stops by for just a second at the door and then leaves a couple minutes later, Grace will cry because she thought they were coming to play. She knows all of her friends' names now, and can point to them if I ask her to by their names. Recently she said her friend Honor's name, and pronounced it clear as a bell: "Honow". She has tried to say "Anderson's" name a few times, getting all 3 syllables in there, but it's not nearly as clear. I'm proud of how quickly she is learning to say real words and names.

Grace still is in between 2 naps and 1. It depends on the day and when she went to bed the night before/woke up that morning. For example, if I put her to bed at 9 or 9:30 (because we were away from home until late), she will sleep in until 9 or 9:30am, which means she'll have 1 longer nap at 1pm. If I put her to bed between 7:30 and 8:30pm, then she'll wake up around 7:30am and then take 2 short naps: one at 10:30am and one at 2:30. It's so nice that she's so flexible! We just haven't figured out which one is better for her and her mood. It totally depends on the day and what her night was like the night before. I'm sure that's pretty much the same for most toddlers. I'm grateful for our good sleeper though! I can't remember the last time she woke up in the middle of the night. It's been months and it's so great!

Uncle Thomas sent Grace this fun Argentina tshirt from his mission. :) We can't WAIT for Grace to final meet her uncle.

Sidewalk chalk is our newest discovery. She loves it!

My absolute favorite times of the whole day with her is our bed time routine. After bathing, eating a snack, cleaning up toys, and brushing her teeth, we take her into her room and sing a song. Usually a hymn or a primary song. Then we ask her to sing us a song and she actually does! She sings these adorable little songs that sometimes have words like "dada" or "gah-gah-gah", and sometimes are just simple "Aww"s. I can't even describe the feelings that wash over me when I hear sweet little voice singing in her own way. She knows that it's a special moment right before bed when we're quiet and take a minute sing about Jesus or about families or our Prophet. I believe she can feel those special feelings and wants so badly to be included as we sing together. :) When we finish singing, she gives us hugs with her sweet little arms around our necks. Then we lay her in bed, put her blanket on her, make sure she has her piggie, elephant, and lovey the lamb, wind up her mobile, say "I love you" (which she says back), turn on her fan, turn off the light, and close the door. I just love the nighttime routine! It makes me want to get up again the next morning to deal with our crazy toddler once again. :)

Since I haven't posted any videos in awhile, here are two.

On A Whim

Last friday morning Ryan went in to work (his first day of a new rotation) at 7:45am. He walked back in the door at 8:30am, totally freaking me out because I couldn't figure out who would be unlocking my door and coming in! He walks in and says "I have the day off! Let's go to Salt Lake!" Anyone who knows us knows that we are pretty much NEVER spontaneous. Especially Ryan. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He just likes a plan, a routine, normalcy. :) Well we're all like that, I guess. So this was a big deal for us! And ya know what? It felt amazing to just pick up and go like that.

By 10:30 we were packed, fed, showered, car gassed up, and headed out of town. The drive wasn't bad at all. We stopped in St. George for a picnic lunch and to let Grace run around at a park. She was refusing to nap so we needed to get her energy out. It was a perfect temperature and beautiful there. We made another stop in Fillmore, which is what we always do. They have a little park there too, which we love when we stop there. Grace enjoyed watching all the doggies running around and played around in the small rocks on the playground. We hit HORRIBLE traffic around Springville ... with a very unhappy child, and a mommy with a full bladder. It took us an extra hour than it would have if it hadn't been friday night on conference weekend, let alone the darn construction. We watched Tangled from Springville to Salt Lake, and it saved us some tantrums.

The whole weekend was so perfect. We loved being able to relax and watch conference, catch up with our family, eat at Scaddy's for lunch, bake cookies with my mom during Priesthood session, have girl-talk, stay up late chatting and laughing with Kyle, Katelyn, and Tori while my parents put Grace to bed, eat sticky buns and drink hot chocolate on sunday morning (my favorite!!), meet our new niece (Nora Turner) before heading back home on sunday afternoon, and catching a quick visit with Ryan's parents in Fillmore as they drove home from Leeds, UT. We honestly had such a good time and it was just what we needed. In more ways than one! After coming off of the rough month that we did (I mentioned this in the last post), we all needed to reconnect. We needed to play, laugh, and relax together. On such a quick trip like this one, it's important to make the drive part of the trip - and not just a means to an end. So we did just that and had a great time. :)

Sunday morning we woke up to a few inches of snow! It made our yummy sticky-bun and hot chocolate breakfast taste that much better, all cozy inside. The General Conference sessions were wonderful, as always. Even Grace played quietly during the sessions (ok, so maybe there was a point where she was unhappy and whiney). I completely spaced bringing my camera on this trip which bugged me a lot, (you know me) so we took a couple with Ryan's phone.

We were totally unprepared for snow. None of us brought coats - just little sweatshirts. But after driving up from 90 degrees and being hot and uncomfortable the whole drive up, it was actually nice to have our heat on and overcast skies on the way home while we listened to the last session of conference.

Thank you to my parents who let us crash on their weekend so last minute! Thanks to our siblings who let us stop and visit for a little bit. It was great to see you all! That was the main reason we wanted to go up - Ryan won't be able to go up again until possibly September, if even then. We just missed everyone since Christmas. We love you, and look forward to having Ryan's sister come stay in a couple weeks and then Grace's and my longer trip to Salt Lake for Easter. :)