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!

Spring- Summer 2015

Okay, skipping right from Christmas to Summer and doing so in November... pretty much par for the course with me. Though you can probably already tell what we are up to at any given time with a glance at my Facebook page, I  like to have things written out for our family to look back on so I try (not well) to record our adventures. I wish I was better at doing this more often because now I'm reaching back alllll the way to Easter and trying to remember what even happened.

Easter, as it often does, landed on a Conference weekend this year. We had a pretty simple holiday but I was excited to play the Easter bunny more so than last year now that Luke is more little boy than baby. On Saturday I took Luke to a neighborhood Easter Egg hunt during Priesthood session. I think I got there maybe five minutes late (if that) and all the eggs were already gone! I've learned for next year that kids are voracious when it comes to Easter Egg hunts! A friend let me use some of her daughter's empty eggs to set around and let Luke pick them up, so that was nice. The next day was simple. We got up and had cinnamon rolls (trying to make that a conference tradition) and let Luke find his basket. We gave him a little candy and some simple toys. We watched Conference and then had Ham and Cheesy Potatoes for dinner-- my Easter classic dinner.

Luke "hunting" for eggs.

A week or so later we had such a treat to have our friends David and Weston come and stay with us for a weekend. Bryan grew up with these guys and then they all lived together in college. In fact, before Bryan and I were Bryan and I we were all just good friends. I've written about them before. It was a pretty relaxing weekend of playing games and just hanging out. We went out to eat at The Counter (drool) and they got to meet Luke, which was really neat.

Luke and his new buddy Weston playing on the computer.

A few days before Easter our niece Ella called us multiple times begging us to come visit them in Utah for the weekend. It was pretty last minute so we didn't go but we promised we would visit over Memorial Day weekend so that was our next trip! Road trips are hard with kids. But we had fun and mostly just relaxed and played games. My favorite kind of vacation!

Luke helping Ethan play at the park near Grandma Sandi's house

A couple posts ago I wrote about our sweet Callie and how she died. I was really not sure when I'd be ready to have another cat because I didn't want to feel like we were replacing her. However, it just so happened that a family in our ward/neighborhood had two cats that had a litter of kittens each right around the same time. They had twelve kittens to find homes for! We wanted to help them out and we love kittens so we decided to go for it... we got two! Just after memorial day we were finally able to bring them home. We named them Clara (after Clara the companion from Doctor Who) and Watson (From Sherlock).

Clara and Watson join the family

In June Luke and I had Mommy & Me swim lessons from a family in our stake. For two weeks we got up and out the door by 9 with our friends Jennifer and Tyson. Luke had fun in the water but was also pretty independent and didn't want to do the things we were trying to learn a lot of the time. Still, he did learn a lot. One thing he loved to do was jump in the pool into my arms. We had fun showing off his skills to dad over the summer.

Also in July I cut my hair to my chin, updated my Etsy shop, we had Father's day and Luke went to nursery! He... did not like it at first. He cried a lot the first few times and then for several Sundays we was just kind of sober but now I drop him off and he runs off to play without so much as a goodbye when I'm trying to smother him with kisses.

We invited Bryan's mom and his brother Mike to come visit us for the 4th of July and again we had a nice relaxing time. We had delicious food and set off poppers in the street. Luke LOVED those! Then after Luke went to bed Grandma stayed home with him while the rest of us checked out fireworks all around the neighborhood. It was a lot of fun!

4th of July Spread

Luke didn't want to let me take a picture of him in his Captain America shirt

Sandi had to go back to Utah after the weekend but Mike was able to stay with us for a week. We are pretty chill so we didn't have a lot of activities planned or anything but on Saturday we all went to the World Center for Birds of Prey that happens to be, oh, a 10 minute drive from our house. It was seriously awesome too!

We also went to Bryan's company (Clearwater Analytics) party. They decided to host at the zoo, which was so fun! We didn't get to be there too long because I'm kind of strict about Luke's bed time but we did get to do some fun things-- like feed a giraffe! Luke was in awe.

Just a little bit later than that a few friends and I decided to check out a petting zoo in Caldwell, ID. it was a lot of fun but also like 45 minutes away waaay out in the country. We had fun but man, was that a hot day. My cousin Melissa came and she was super pregnant with twins-- poor girl.

We also had a fun Stake pancake breakfast celebrating pioneer day. We had a pie baking contest and then got together later with friends for swimming and a barbecue.

Climbing trees at the pioneer day celebration!

At the end of the month my sister Natalie came to visit for a couple days with her kids. She lives overseas most of the year but they set up camp in Utah for the summer and, since Boise is not too bad of a road trip, I begged convinced her to come. It just so happened to land on a little family holiday we celebrate-- Harry Potter's birthday! So, since we all love Harry Potter I decided to throw a simple party.

Pin the scar on the wizard

Mixing potions

Drawing our Patronuses

Last of all, Butterbeer!

Just a week or so later we took our second road trip to Utah for the summer for my nephews Elijah and Tyler's baptism! We had a lot of fun with almost all of our family together, playing games and hanging out. One day we had the chance to go down to BYU and check things out and that was neat to see. We met up with my old roomie Alicia and caught up. A lot of stuff has drastically changed there since I was in school. Sigh, I'm old. The baptisms themselves were so neat and the spirit was really strong there. I'm so so glad that I got to be a part of it. That evening I even got to see my long lost best friend Ashley who I hadn't seen in over four years! I miss my friends!

Hanging out at BYU

After we got back to Boise, we had yet another fun time when Bryan's cousin Brynn and her family came to stay. They have a daughter about two weeks younger than Luke so those two had fun romping around together. We got to go to the zoo again but this time we spent a lot more time looking at every exhibit and it was so fun! But... then it got hot. We also went to Brynn's sister's wedding open house, played games and hit up H&M (a must when Brynn comes to town).

Lastly, we finally got a new oven. I haven't written about it on here but we were dealing with a horrible mouse situation where the mice had peed on the insulation of the old oven and taken some out, which made it unusable. It smelled like mouse pee every time I turned it on and the safety of it's use was compromised. We tried to get our builder to pay for it since the mice got in through a hole they hadn't sealed but they wouldn't So, we relented and just bought a new one over labor day when we thought the mice were all gone, Spoiler: they weren't actually >:( but we are working hard on that issue now and they haven't done anything to the new oven so far. The oven is covered under a 3 year warranty that would cover situations like that, though. That is making a veeeery long story short. But we were without the use of an oven for over 6 months. Stove top, Slow cooker, Grill. At least it was summer time!

Well anyway, we sure did a lot this summer but I loved giving Luke all of these new experiences! Next up, Halloween... which will be much more timely!

Christmas 2014...

I literally cringed as I wrote that title. I feel incapable of moving forward and writing more blog posts until I acknowledge and account for our Christmas.

This should be short, as we didn't go anywhere this year and hadn't just barely had a baby.

The Sunday before Christmas I got food poisoning. 😷 It was seriously not fun and I think it'll be a while before I can look at, much less eat, Thai food again. I'm sorry, Bryan. He served his mission there and loves the food. Well anyway, luckily for me Bryan took the whole week off so I had the help I needed with Luke. Unluckily for Bryan (and me) our Christmas break week wasn't all we hoped for. In fact, I was determined to have Luke see Santa and get a picture on his lap but was unable to. I was feeling better but not great so we went to The Village a couple days before to find a TWO HOUR WAIT... in the winter cold!! Horrible. So we left and it was an altogether miserable experience.

I was feeling like 95% myself on Christmas Eve and our friends invited us over to enjoy a little dinner and Christ centered program. That was so nice, especially since we don't have any family in town. It really made the evening special and we even got some Christmas Eve snow!

The next morning we got up and opened presents with our one year old little boy! He didn't really get what was going on but it was still fun. We had our traditional Eggs Benedict breakfast followed by a lazy day enjoying new presents and resting. We then had our traditional Ham dinner... and that was that!

So now that St. Patrick's Day is upon us... Woops. Anyway, at least now I'll feel resolved about that. Here are some Christmas videos we took (I totally forgot about pictures! Uh oh!) I hope the YouTube links work. Enjoy!

Goodbye Sweet Callie Cat

I had meant for my next blog post to be about our Christmas... and it's February, of course. However. we've had a bit of drama in our family this week. Our lovely and loving Callie died over the weekend and we've been pretty upset. Writing about it is cathartic and I'd be remiss to not pay her tribute, so here goes.

Some of you may remember when we brought Callie home. We were in love and obsessed pretty much from the get go and that's how it continued on up until her dying day. I feel guilty because she got quite a lot less attention once Luke was born but that's just the way of things. She was always skittish of the outdoors but in recent months she would tentatively go outside if we left the door open. Usually we were very aware of her doing so and would herd her back in when we were done being out. A few months ago I let her out without realizing it and panicked for 24 hours until she made it home the next night. I hugged her tightly and kissed her a lot and swore to be more careful. Well, last Friday she made another escape without our knowing it. On Saturday Bryan and I started noticing she hadn't been around so we searched the house and she was nowhere to be seen. I posted a picture of her on our neighborhood Facebook page and told everyone to keep an eye out. When I checked it again a neighbor had commented to call her. It was 11 PM by then and too late to call so we waited until the next day. I had a weird feeling about it so I made Bryan do the calling. The neighbor said she'd seen a run over cat that could be her. We checked the area she mentioned and found nothing. All the while we left food and water out on our porch and hoped she was just having an adventure and would come home soon. The next day I set about trying to find out who cleaned up road kill-- hoping to rule out that possibility. I called one place who said they didn't do it and to call the Fish and Game Department, who told me they didn't do it and to call the Highway District, who told me they didn't do it and to call the Humane Society. I called and they said we'd need to come in to see if she was there and that they had a book of deceased pets to look through. About this same time I reported her lost through her microchip company. If an animal is brought in by animal control they are scanned for a microchip and if something comes up they call the company the microchip is through who then call you. When she had escaped months ago I reported it as well but had forgotten to withdraw the report when she returned. This time the company almost immediately called me but told me that I hadn't actually registered so I'd need to do that and pay the fee for me to use their services. I had really thought I'd registered and thought it was odd that they'd call me this time and not the first time I had reported her as lost. Bryan got home from work and we headed out to the Humane Society. I looked through all the cats that had been brought in while Bryan looked through the book of deceased animals. She didn't show up in either one so, with some hope, we went to the front desk to fill out a lost report. Bryan left to go change Luke's diaper while the girl behind the counter asked me for our contact information, etc. She then asked me for Callie's microchip number and I was distracted waiting for her to ask me more that I didn't notice she'd gone kind of quiet. A moment later another girl came by the counter and shocked me from my reverie by gently saying, "So we do have the cat. Her microchip number came up. She was hit by a car. I can take you to see her if you'd like." At this point I got up looking for Bryan and my emotions really started bubbling to the surface. They took us to a small room where something lay on a table beneath a towel. They lifted the towel corner for all of 15 seconds to show us Callie's face and paws before covering her back up. They started talking to us about cremation or taking her home while I stood there crying and all I could say was, "Can't I see her again?" So they unveiled her face again for the remainder of our time there. That image is seared into my mind forever and has been the source of a lot of my emotional outbursts since. She lay there, her ears shrunken back and quite obviously a shell of her former self. I had the urge to reach out and touch her paws one last time but I didn't. We decided not to take her body or her ashes home. It felt weird to bury her here in our subdivision which lacks a sense of permanence for us. We asked them if they could make an imprint of her paw for us but that is a service they do not offer. I wish we could have had more of a service for her. So we drove home feeling hollow-- like we were missing a member of our family who would never return. That night was fraught with tears but the following days have been mostly better, save a few emotional moments. Everything reminds me of her. I keep expecting her to walk around the corner or to jump in my lap. How can she really just not be here anymore?

I'm no stranger to pets dying. A few months after Bryan and I got married my childhood cat, Libby, got stomach cancer and was put to sleep. That was an incredibly hard thing to go through because she was also a very special cat which is why we felt so lucky to have found a cat like Callie. It felt like we had her forever while she was with us but now that's she's gone I realize how short it was. She didn't get the long life she deserved. Libby had a good long life-- 13 years. She was an outdoor cat and had many adventures. On Callie's only second escape into the outside world she met her end. It doesn't feel very fair. Luke will soon forget her. Our other kids will never know her. I'm certain we will get another cat but I'm not sure it will live up to her. How could we get so lucky a third time? She had such a sweet personality. She was warm, loving. If our laps were available it seemed like she was always sleeping on one of them. When we came home she would come running to greet us and she always wanted to be in the room we were in rather than on her own. She was such a low maintenance cat and never ever once had an accident in either of the houses she lived in with us. She was so beautiful, with her calico coloring and bunny soft fur. She loved to tease Luke. She'd let him get right up to her before running away a few feet and letting him catch up and then running again. When she came into my life I was in desperate need of something to nurture. We'd been trying for a baby for some time and it had been breaking my heart. She happily allowed me to nurture her and by so doing she nurtured me in return. I hope that she and Libby have found each other and are romping around happily. I'm grateful to know I'll see her again and I'm grateful for the time we had with her. Callie, we love you and we'll miss you. So much. 

A Year in Review

I am now the mother of a toddler. Yep, we made it through a crazy year. I've heard that the celebration of baby's first birthday is as much for mom as it is for him and I feel that is so true. If you've been following our blog for at least a year you should probably know that the beginning was rough. It is for everyone, in different ways. I'm pretty much terrified to have another newborn and deal with sleep and breastfeeding all over again-- but I know I will be very happy for Luke's little brothers and/or sisters to come when they do. I think about it all the time even though I know that is still a little while away. As my dad would say, I'm worrying about crossing bridges I haven't even come to yet. That's just me, I guess. I think I will always feel some degree of guilt over how breastfeeding went down with Luke, even if it works one of these times around. I'm glad the world is educating everyone on the benefits of breastfeeding but I wish there wasn't so much judgement from well-meaning moms regarding formula. I think you all know how I feel about that because I've been pretty open about it on here. I hope that my next baby isn't born in the winter but if that is what I'm given I'll gladly accept it. Hormones + postpartum depression + not wanting to leave the house + inversion made for a very emotional and depressing winter. Around March or April (after we'd gone to exclusively pumping and were able to have some sort of schedule) Luke and I started getting out of the house during the day and that made such a difference. Slowly life started to have a predictable pattern and I'd never realized how comforting predictability could be. Of course everything can't be predictable but overall things settled down. I started getting excited about sewing and crafting projects and that really helped that I could do something creative for me. Everywhere I would go people would gush to me about how cute my baby was and how much hair he had (that part has died down now that he's a year and a lot of babies his age also have a good amount of hair). He is so sweet and loves to laugh and smile. On the rare occasion he comes up to me, crawls into my lap and puts his arms around me I just melt.This is the biggest trial that I've ever been given because it is constant and forces me to focus solely outside myself-- but that is part of why it is also the greatest blessing I've ever been given. I've never felt so much nurturing love before. Just seeing his handsome face makes me smile.


Well, as he's the one who had a birthday I should give him a spotlight. To start, I took a picture for every month of his life (it wasn't always right on his month birthday... :/). Here's a little timeline progression.

He was born 7 lbs 3.7 oz and was 20 in long... now he's 23 lbs 7 oz and 30 in long! Wow! He has seven teeth (four up top and three on the bottom). He has had about 5 trims-full on hair cuts so far! In July I used his dad's clippers and gave him a huge hair cut! He loves to claps his hands and smile. He crawls up to things, pulls himself up and cruises around easy as pie. He has started standing on his own several times a day for a few seconds. He's going to be walking in no time. He likes to open cabinets and drawers and pull things out of it and still loves to put anything he finds in his mouth. He's said mamamamama and dadadadada for a while but its starting to seem like he knows what they mean. He still babbles them indiscriminately but sometimes seems to use them to get one of our attention. One of his favorite games is run from/chase dad around the house, up the stairs, anywhere. I can go up and down the stairs easily. He likes to eat string cheese, bread and cuties (little clementines) but does not like eggs in any form and is still wary of cow's milk. He likes to have books read to him and and turns the pages himself. He seems to like music a lot and seems calmed by it if he's upset. He has so much personality and love and humor and we are so grateful to be his parents! We are still in awe over him-- I can't believe we created him! This big boy once resided in my tummy.

Well celebrating Luke's birthday seemed tricky when I tried planning a bit ago. His birthday was this past Monday, right after Thanksgiving weekend where we'd just gotten home from being on the road and had no groceries in the house. I thought about having a little play date but his 12 month check up was right in the middle of the day and messed with that idea. I decided that we would just celebrate it early with family. We grabbed some pizzas from Costco and I made chocolate coconut cupcakes for everyone and a special little cake for him. We invited Bryan's aunt, uncle and cousins (one with a baby Luke's age) over and of course had Grandma Sandi, Aunt Shelley, Uncle Mike and cousins Ella and Ethan there. It was a lot of fun! We basically ate dinner, opened presents and ate cake. It was simple but that's what we needed.

On Luke's actual birthday he had his 12 month check up and it was fun to show off to Dr. Miller and see how far he's come. Then he and I went out to lunch together and I bought him a cookie that he enjoyed (with a little help...). That night we went out and bought our Christmas tree and then he got to open his present from us-- a cute little scooter. He doesn't quite get it yet but he was smiling so much when his dad put him on and pushed him around.

I can't believe my little baby isn't a baby. Time seems to have gone really slowly but also flown by. I think I say that all the time on here but I always feel that way. I'm so grateful for my little family and so, so grateful for my son who I have wanted to have for my entire life. Happy birthday, Luke! We love you dearly!