September - October 8, 2017

Another month has come and gone. After a long summer Fall is finally here and all that comes with it! It is most definitely my favorite time of year. Here's what has been going on for us since I last wrote.

Luke has been quite difficult lately. He is still our sweet boy but he's definitely pushing his limits and having a hard time listening to us. All totally normal for this age but still frustrating for us (and him, sure). I think a lot of the issues stem from a desire for more attention, as it has definitely been divided with having a new (ish...) baby at home. I'm trying to implement some mom and Luke time each day during Penny's first nap and I hope that will help. Another thing he's started is a weekly playgroup with a few friends around here. We switch off who hosts and it's already noticeable how he's becoming more comfortable at friends houses without me and it's also helped with his socialization a lot.

Little stinker drew all over himself. 

Hiding from brother during a tantrum...

Penny is growing up so much. She is now eight months old! She's still not crawling because every time she flips over onto her tummy she cries and cries. It makes me so sad-- and also it's not something I was expecting since Luke crawled around this time. She is sitting up on her own so well, though. She also can stand holding onto things and I think she is even trying to pull herself up to things. She has found more of her voice and babbles mamamama, dadadada, babababa but more lately she has been growling and it's pretty funny. The other day she was eating some meat and I said, "Do you like that, baby?" and she promptly growled.

I love this sweet sitting girl.

Another adventure we went on was to SeaQuest with Grandma Sandi, Aunt Shelley and cousins. This place is so neat because you can actually interact with all the animals/fish/birds there.

Play hard, crash hard, 

We have also been enjoying some family park time and frequent Lodestone Park. We pack a picnic dinner and then play until time to put the kids to bed. It's been fun!

Standing up to her toy, as mentioned above.

A big thing that happened this month was General Conference. Every six months we have the opportunity to hear inspiring messages from our church leaders. I always come away wanting to do and be better. Now that my parents live here it has really become a family event, whereas when we lived in Boise we just watched out our own. Now we spend one of the conference days with them and the other with Bryan's family.

Another fun thing I did with the kids was to take them to Gardner Village to find witches. Really it's just a fun excuse to get out and enjoy the fall festivities with some of our neighborhood friends.

Last Friday was the day before my birthday and Luke decided he wanted to take me to McDonald's for lunch. That was fine by me and a nice little treat for both of us.

That evening we went to a Harry Potter Fall Festival at cousins Ava and Sylvie's school and while it wasn't the most authentically Harry Potter event I've ever been to, we still had a lot of fun with family. In particular, Luke, who got to ride a train, a pony and jump in a bounce house!

The next day was my actual birthday. Bryan let me sleep in, made me breakfast and then later that day we went out to lunch with my parents and Lindsay and her girls. I just love having some of my family here. Later we went out to a pumpkin patch and had fun picking out pumpkins, riding tractors, eating donuts, exploring corn mazes and riding on a hayride.

Luke exploring pumpkins with his cousins

Penny loving on Ava

Penny loving on Sylvie

My adorable, goofy boy!

Whitneys at the Pumpkin Patch take 2-- with a new family member!

Other than these things we've been busy working on a project in our basement (more details when it's done after Christmas!) and I've been making all kinds of crafts.

August (and a little July) 2017

You guys, I'm serious about this monthly blog post thing. I made a reminder in my Google calendar to do it on the first Sunday of the month and here I am! Mostly this month I've been sewing and crafting-- for myself, for a charity, for friends. I like to keep busy, apparently.

Here's where we were at the end of the last blog post. Look how big Penny is there! She's even bigger now. She officially turned 6 months and we have started giving her foods. She still doesn't ingest a ton of it it but little by little she is eating more. And she tries all kinds of things. Tonight she ate some olives and seemed to like it! The banana below is the first thing I ever offered her.

At the end of July we went to my niece Sylvie's birthday party at my parents' house. I just love having family nearby! Luke got his face painted and also got to ride a horse!

Of course we had to celebrate Harry Potter's birthday on July 30. It was pretty tame for me but still we had Fish 'n Chips, Butterbeer, Chocolate Frogs and an FHE lesson that actually tied in to Harry Potter.

The two pictures below are now a common occurrence. Luke loves being a big helper so he usually likes to turn Penny's white noise on before her nap and off after. And he usually stops by to say hi to her for a little bit before I feed her. She just adores him.

We found a sweet new park with zip lines that is less than ten minutes from our house and we've had picnics there twice now. I hate summer, though. Even in the early evening it is sooo hot and I question my bright idea to go to the park. Luke loves it, though, and who am I to deny him? I hope I get out the door to go to the park a lot more frequently once fall officially arrives. Hopefully now that it is September it will start to cool down a little. Though, I was reminded yesterday that the first day of fall is not until September 20th. Summer.... why must you be so long???

This picture is so Penny right now. She is such a little grabber. Anything she can get her hands on. I have to be so careful what I put within her reach. She will twist all the way around in her Bumbo to get something behind her. She is so, so close to sitting up on her own but I honestly don't think crawling is going to happen for several more months. She abhors tummy time and cries every time I try-- but I do still try, because it's important. We'll just have to see. Also, I could kick myself for writing about what a great sleeper she is in the last post. Honestly it hasn't been horrible but she went through a regression and was waking up in the night for a little while. It could also be that she got her first ever cold and was working through that. The cold is gone but she still has this horrible phlegmy cough that is kind of heartbreaking to hear. Other than that, she is doing so well and growing more every day

Guess who is practically potty trained? Luke! I think he was just ready because once I really decided to just stick with the underwear and I made some rules about him going potty on his own if I wasn't around he just stuck to them. We've had very few accidents and he's been consistently going #2 in the potty. Woohoo! Today we were even brave enough to have him go to church in underwear instead of a pull up and he kept it dry for all three hours and went potty there. We still have him in a pull up at night because I'm not ready to deal with the bed wetting since he wakes up with a full pull up most mornings. We're making great progress, though!

I am just realizing it has been a year since I went through my horrible ordeal with C-Diff. Yuck, guys. Don't look that up. But I felt like maybe I was dying a little bit. Whenever I remember that whole month of what I went through I am so grateful for a healthy body.

Last but not least, yesterday we were able to attend our niece Ella's baptism. It was so nice gathering for such a special occasion and Bryan's dad was even able to come out briefly for it. I'm so grateful for the knowledge of this true gospel and for the peace it brings into my life. It makes me so happy to see Ella choosing to follow in that path. Next week it will be my niece Ava's turn but I'm sure I'll write about that next month. It also made me think about how neat it will be to go through these things with my kids. Still, I'm not ready for them to be that old yet. I hope I can savor these younger years even through the frustration it sometimes brings. They'll only be this little once. It's exciting to think about the future but sad to know I'll never have this again. Kids are the best.

Halloween 2015

Fall is just the best time of year, in my opinion.The weather starts to cool down and the trees turn beautiful shades of red and orange. It's my birthday month and I get to wear boots over my jeans and cardigans. My second favorite holiday also happens to land in the fall and there is the excitement of other holidays around the corner. This year we started off the festivities by going to Linder Farms with our friends the Mannings. Luke had so much fun climbing on hay bales and running through hay bale mazes, riding tractors and Go Karts with dad and playing in the corn pit with his buddy Jackson. We also took a hay ride out to several huge pumpkin patches to choose our pumpkins.

On the hay ride

This pumpkin gets so much bigger every year

We have a tradition of carving pumpkins the Monday before Halloween for FHE. This year Luke wasn't able to carve his own but he was so much more involved in the whole process, which was fun to see. We ran around the driveway and "helped" us scoop out our pumpkins and draw on them. The designs we chose are indicative of our interests.

Yuck, guts!

Bryan: Protoss symbol from Starcraft

Me: Deathly Hallows...

...and a snitch, because I had room

Luke: Daniel Tiger

Also this past weekend we had Bryan's cousin Laura and two guy friends come for a visit (they were the 11th Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory in the last Centurion form.... so awesome). Laura's newlywed sister lives nearby in Nampa and their parents happened to be visiting them that weekend as well so we had a big Halloween party! We had mummy french bread pizza and bone shaped bread sticks. We played a lot of games and they held down the fort and handed out candy while we took Luke trick or treating.

I just love coming up with ideas for costumes. Seriously like five months ago I was like, "Halloween is coming up-- I better think of a good costume for Luke!" Five months ago. To be fair, I had his Link costume picked out for his first Halloween before he was ever born. I've become quite the crafter in the past few years so I love making his costume. Though we don't necessarily always plan to have family costumes, Bryan and I decided to go along with Luke's theme. I decided to go with a Hobbit this year because Bryan got really into the movies this year and watched each other them several times with different commentaries. I would often come downstairs on Saturday morning to find him and Luke watching one of them. And, since Hobbits are short and, lets be honest, kind of cute, I decided that's what Luke should be! Bryan and I decided to be simple version of Gandalf and Arwen (chosen only because I have brown hair like her rather than Galadriel). Someone pressed us on which Hobbit Luke was and I really didn't have one in mind. If I had to choose I'd say he probably most resembles Samwise Gamgee.

Our little Lord of the Rings family

My adorable Hobbit!

Gandalf and a Hobbit on their way to Isengard... er trick or treating

Luke had so much fun trick or treating! We did a big loop around our neighborhood but it wasn't too many houses because a lot of people had their lights off, no doubt trick or treating themselves. He didn't know how to say "trick or treat" yet but he did know how to reach out his hand after someone answered the door. He loved collecting the candy and putting it in his bag and was so well behaved as well. I just love my little family. I hope everyone else had a Happy Halloween too!