The Past Week

This past week has been a difficult one for our family, but there have been some good times, too.
Robert had to work late (yes, that time of year is just beginning again and it has been hard to adjust back), so me and the kids took three roses to Kaylie's headstone just before dark (hence the jammies and slippers)
This week I bought some new nail polish and gave Amy and myself pedicures. She hated every minute of it, but now we are both ready for flip-flop weather :)
Sam being silly
And just some pictures I took of Amy crawling around the kitchen the other day.
He is such a loving brother!
My pretty girl with her ponytail on top. Her hair is FINALLY starting to thicken up and come in! It isn't quite as difficult to get her hair into ponytails, as long as she is entertained by something!
And lastly, I caught her sleeping in the cutest way the other day, I went and grabbed the camera. She is sleeping on top of her hands placed one over the other, adorable!
I do often find her sleeping on her tummy up in this corner of her crib, don't really know why. Or, if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she is down at the other end of the crib sideways - crazy girl moves all over, I guess! :)

3 Years

Today Kaylie would be turning 3 years old. Has it really been that long? So in her honor, I am posting my three favorite pictures we have of our angel baby. This top one was taken the night she passed away by a photographer with Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.
Next is a photo my mother-in-law got during the first week or two that we were at Primary Children's Hospital. One of the few pictures we have of Kaylie with her eyes open. She looks so peaceful.
And lastly, Kaylie on her blessing day in the beautiful dress Robert's aunt purchased for her since we didn't have time to get the family blessing dress to us from Robert's sister. (Robert's mom made her wedding dress and made blessing outfits with the leftover fabric. All the kids and now (most) grandkids have been blessed in them)

Big Girl

Here is a little video of Amy when she first woke up from her nap this afternoon. Now that she has started to really master crawling (see video below), Amy has started pulling herself up on things and loves to stand. One of her favorite things is when I stand her up to the front window and she can hold on and just watch everything that is going on outside. A little about Amy right now. She has finally gotten some teeth up top (3, working on a fourth) so now we are starting to feed her real food. She LOVES books right now, just loves them! I think what she really likes is turning the pages, but she does look at the pictures, too. She loves to wave "bye" still and still sleeps through the night when she isn't sick or teething. She also still watches people very intently. I know it sometimes freaks people out to see a baby staring so seriously at them, but most of the time she will crack a smile. She is our big girl and we are so happy to have her in our family!

Really Crawling!!

As requested, a video to prove that Amy is now truly crawling!

Picture-less

I have been really terrible at taking pictures lately. As demonstrated by this being the only picture from our fun day of St. Patrick's celebrations. So I will just tell you about what we did. For breakfast we had green milk and rainbow waffles. Then for lunch we had this fruit rainbow with gold at the end. For snack we had rainbow jello. Then for dinner we had green eggs and ham with rolls. It was loads of fun and Sam thought it was pretty cool. We ended up going to town, too in order to run a bunch of errands I had been unable to do earlier in the week and I let Sam bring some of his money from his piggy bank so he could buy a new toy at the toy store (Toys R Us). He was quite frustrated that he could not buy many of the cool, big toys he wanted with his four dollars, but we were finally able to find a really cool Superman car that did the trick. Then we had to stop by the animal store (Petco) on our way back to the car. It was a pretty fun day. And since I forgot on Saturday, we did a rainbow with fruit loops today as our activity.
And then there's me and all my little projects that have been going on lately. JoAnn's had a coupon bonaza at the beginning of the month and I made full use of those discounts by buying six different fabrics to make who knows what cuteness for Amy, probably bigger bibs now that she is eating real food and will be moving into the really messy eating stage soon. I made a dress (and no, I didn't get a pic of this one, either) for my niece for her birthday. I've been working on some new headbands and hairbows for Amy (as seen above). I also decided to try combining two ideas I saw on Pinterest for some decor in our guest bedroom and my craft room. I bought $! store vases, painted them on the inside so it looks like they came already painted and then I made cutesy flowers out of buttons with floral wire attached to sticks that I will place in the vases. It turned out pretty cute, hopefully I will remember to post pictures of those sometime, but I wouldn't count on it. And now my current project is making seat cushions for Robert's sandrail. I bought some leather-like stuff, some 2 inch foam and am going to attempt to cover the foam with the leather and stitch some good solid pieces of velcro to the undersides to hold them on the stiff seat shells. They need to be able to come off so Robert can access the engine, otherwise this project would be much simpler. Hopefully I can pull this off without it looking too terrible. Wish me luck!

Here's a picture of Miss Amy with her hair clipped back. We have been experimenting with different ways to do the little wisps of hair she that has. Currently my favorite is to do two little ponytails on the bottom (probably because that is where she has the most hair, thus being easiest to do) but I love using this ity-bity clips, too! Today for church I did a ponytail right on top with a clip helping hold the hair in and then one of the hairbows I made for her clipped in front - a fun look for Sunday.I peeked in on Amy the other day during her nap to make sure she was really sleeping and found out just how effective the mesh bumper pads are :)
And this weekend was our little open house for people to come see our house/basement. I tried a couple ideas from Pinterest I have been dying to have a reason to make.
First was these, called Slutty Brownies, which surprisingly ended up being almost too much goodness in one treat. That is serious coming from someone like me who can pound down more than just a few cookies or brownies in one sitting. I don't know why, but the combination of chocolate chip cookie, Oreo, AND brownie all in one bar was just a little too much. I really only wanted one and was satisfied - crazy!
The other thing I tried were these strawberry cream cheese cookies. They were pretty good, but I like strawberry alot so it isn't hard to please. Basically they are a strawberry cake mix made into cookies with a simple (and not my favorite) cream cheese icing. Good to try, but I think I like my Ande mint cookies better. Thanks to all those who came to see the place, enjoy our goodies and just chat - it was so fun to catch up with you!!

Little Projects

We have finally gotten around to finishing off a few of our little projects around the house! It is always such a good feeling to check a few more things off the list. One that has been around the longest is putting up this picture and vinyl over the stairs. The main reason is because we haven't had a ladder that could reach. But we had a light put in when we finished the basement and Robert borrowed a ladder from someone at work, so we got the picture and the vinyl up. This hallway is complete - or at least for now! :) We also got the rods in the closets cut and put in and the handles on the drawers in the downstairs bathroom installed. But of course the kind of handles we have upstairs (and had to special order for the downstairs bathroom) stick out too far, so we are deciding whether to buy different handles or to notch the door just a titch so it will work. Annoying.
We were so excited to host the family dinner this month that Robert's aunt and uncle instigated. It involves Robert's other aunt and Grandma (when she is here) and any kids in the family that are at BYU-Idaho going to school. We had 17 or 18 people this time - it was a little crazy! But it was a ton of fun to have so many together and enjoying good food we all contributed to.

Now with that overwith we are ready to do our house party!! It is set for this coming Friday and Saturday, March 2nd and 3rd. Anyone in the area who would like to come see our house, our basement, or just us is welcome to stop by any time Friday afternoon/evening or Saturday morning. We will have some yummy munchies, giving the grand tour, and just chatting it up. (kids are welcome) Can't wait to see any of you this weekend that can squeeze it in!

Little of This, Little of That

So not a whole lot has been going on lately, just the usual run-of-the-mill stuff. Amy is really working hard on learning how to crawl.
Right now she does a mixture of army crawl/scooting and rolling to get to where she wants to go. One of the funniest things she does is when she is sitting up, she will use her legs to slowly spin herself around. She will stay in the same spot, just turning 180 degrees - very cute (but also very hard to capture on camera)

A picture of some fun Sam had the other day. I taped a big piece of contact paper to the table and let him use sprinkles to decorate. Problem was he likes to just dump the entire bottle on the picture (kinda like when we have the kids do cupcakes, right Julie? :)
And then last week we decided to make a quick trip to see our good friends the Southwicks at their home in Meridian, Idaho (right next to Boise and where they are also building a new temple!) I went to nursing school with Ashlee and we were also some of the first ones to get married, so we hung out alot. We really miss having them close and doing late night games like Mega Monopoly, Settlers of Zarahemla and The Farming Game :)
The kiddos both fell asleep in the car on the way down, but Amy woke up fairly early and started to scream, waking Sam up. And she proceeded to scream for the last hour and a half of the drive. Same for the drive home. We probably won't be going on any road trips for a while, that back seat is NOT big enough for an adult between the carseats.
We had a blast with our friends and Sam and Ian learned to be friends as well. They both really liked going bowling and then visiting an aquarium where you could touch just about every fish in the place (it wasn't THAT big, but still pretty cool to be able to touch so many!)
Silly boys!
And the girls, Amy and Lilia. Thanks to the Southwicks for having us for the weekend, it was a great quick trip!!

Short-Lived

Need I say anything more? In the family room of all places.

(no, it wasn't Sam - I just wanted him there so you can get a feel for how large this hole is)

Completion Feels Wonderful

The family room just as you enter it from the stairs. The tile in the corner is for the pellet stove which will be our secondary heat source.
And a quick gander at the rest of the family room with the wiring for surround sound
The craft room all ready to go
Under the stairs area (where Sam wants his new room to be ;)
Craft room looking on the mechanical room and the hallway leading to the two bedrooms and bathroom
Bigger bedroom
Sorry this one is kind of blurry. Two hall linen closets, bathroom and other (much smaller) bedroom.
Shelves in one of the linen closets (the other one has them, too)
And the bathroom with the granite countertop with undermount sink. I had to special order the drawer pulls, but other than that everything is done! It began to feel like it would never be finished, but here we are three weeks later with the size of our house doubled! Robert just has to weld some escape ladders for the other two windows and then we can have our final inspection, but I am planning on getting started on cleaning and moving stuff downstairs today!