Crawling

Since we were unprepared and had no camera, our good friends snapped a picture of this momentous occasion. Thanks, Soren!!

Emma's first "crawl."

Adoption Run/Walk

Anyone want to run with me?

Not Far From the Tree

I come from a family that bleeds blue. All 8 kids in my family attended BYU, as did both parents. Matt also grew up in a true blue household. And that's a good thing, so we don't have to cheer against each other on game day.

With parents like that, it's a wonder that Emma hasn't had a BYU shirt before now.

One Man's Trash...

I recently decided that we needed to find a couple of dressers and/or chests of drawers for Emma's room and the guest room. After shopping around a little, I decided to try my luck at yard sales. So I spent an hour or so driving around checking out the local yard sale scene. And I feel like I held my own! I found three dressers/drawers for a total of $35 and had a matching mirror thrown in. Then I spent a day sanding and painting my treasures. Here are the "before" pictures. I forgot to take the "after" photos, so those will have to come a little later. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with my loot!

My New Favorite Toy

My husband knows me pretty well. So, in his quest for the perfect birthday gift for me (I'm just SURE he spent weeks in this endeavor), he hit a homerun! He got me a Kindle. A what?

A Kindle.

It's like an electronic book, but without the pages. You can download books onto it and read them anytime. Plus, all of the classics (AKA "the ones without copyrights") are free to download. So now I've got all of Jane Austen's books, plus books like Little Women and Oliver Twist and lots more. And the best part is that I didn't have to buy them. I wouldn't say they were free. After all, you had to buy the Kindle in the first place. But it still felt like I was getting away with something as I was downloading book after book without paying a penny. I think I even giggled.

Now I just have to make myself put it down long enough to get other things done, like feeding Emma. She's so demanding! I guess I'll have to start reading under the covers with a flashlight again.

Crawler!!

We now officially have a crawler in the family! I guess there wasn't anything in the house worth crawling toward. We just needed to take her outside and point her toward the gravel and dirt!

Grandparents

We are so lucky to live close to Matt's parents. We love going over and visiting. Matt and I don't even mind that everyone really just wants to see Emma. We love that Emma has another place to go where she is just loved unconditionally.

Splat!

Since I have SOOOO much to catch up on, I'm posting this blog splat--a little smattering of everything.

This was taken at the temple after Emma was sealed to us. Her grandma made her the most beautiful temple dress and shoes for the occasion and her grandpa sealed us!! Does it get any better than that?!

Every year I run a local 10K. This year I recruited a couple of neighbors to run it with me. It's always more fun running with other people.

This is part of our team from the 2010 Wasatch Back. We're hanging out at the finish line waiting for our last runner. I didn't actually get to run this year, because we were in Florida finalizing our adoption (yes, WAAAY more important) at the time the race started. But I'm excited for next year!

Emma is now a pro at camping (in a 5th wheel). We went camping a few times this summer--with friends and for a family reunion--and Emma took it all in stride. It certainly helps that she's so easy going and that she LOVES being outside.

We've got a water-baby on our hands. Emma loves splashing, whether it be in the tub, or in the pool.

On July 4th, we went to Matt's parents' house to watch fireworks. We weren't sure how Emma would take them, but she did a great job.

Carrot-Tomato. 'nuff said.

"Yes, mother? Did you need something?"

What is it about babies and mirrors? We love to watch Emma giggle at herself.

As I was posting this, I realized that since Emma has come along, Matt and I don't have nearly as many pictures with us in them. We'll have to do something about that!

Dear Santa,

Dear Santa,

Thank you for the WiiFit. It has been quite amusing watching my friends box each other. I'm not sure what to think about my balance board that exclaims, "OH!" every time I step onto the board.

Sincerely,

Andrea

Laryngitis

My voice has been hiding from me for about 5 days now.

Each winter, I'll go through two or three days where by voice gets a little scratchy and it sounds funny when I try to sing. But I've never had it go COMPLETELY away. This was crazy. Last Monday at school my voice began its usual winter scratchiness. But by Friday, it hadn't gone away and had, in fact, gotten much worse. It's been interesting trying to command the attention of a room full of middle school students without being able to speak above a whisper. Luckily I have great students who were very thoughtful and tried to stay quiet. But though I could handle middle schoolers with a bell, clapping, and a white-board. I wasn't sure how I would manage speaking in church on Sunday.

So I called my bishop. When he kept telling me he couldn't understand what I was saying, we both knew that I wouldn't be able to speak, at least not effectively. Since I was supposed to speak about the new changes to the Personal Progress program in the Young Women's, the task fell to my fabulous secretary and Personal Progress leader, Xazmin. I went to her house (so she could actually understand what I was whispering) to break the good news! She accepted graciously and gave a FABULOUS talk yesterday. I felt it was very insightful and definitely different than the route I was taking.

Maybe that's why my laryngitis stayed so long this time. =)

(But now I'm ready to have my voice back...)

How long has THAT been there?

Hey, stop looking at me.

The Ten Virgins

Just before Christmas, I was fortunate to be part of a group that performed a musical retelling of the story of the Ten Virgins. The songs were amazing and although our background fell down during the second song, I felt a great spirit in the room--a sense of peace. I'm grateful for opportunities like this one to help me slow down and think about the important things in life.

We had a wonderful group of ladies in the cast. It was a lot of memorizing (at least to me it was a lot!), but well worth the effort!

Only Sissies Cook on Low

For Christmas, my friend made me a little sign that says, "Only sissies cook on low." I love that she knows me well enough to know how appropriate that is!

Day 1

Today marks the first day of the new year. I've been wanting to make some new goals for myself for a while now, but I guess I needed the date to show that it really is a new beginning. I'm excited to welcome in a new year and start being the new and improved me. Time to climb out of that rut. We'll see how long that lasts...

Since I've been a blogging SLUG for the past 6 months, I thought I'd briefly post about some of the bigger events since July. I have about a million and one pictures, but I want to finish this post before NEXT year, so I'm just adding a few at a time. I knew that would be appreciated!

First off was Girls' Camp. These are the leaders that were there all week. What amazing women! Camp went well--without any girl drama! The food was awesome (thanks, Kiirstin), snipe hunting was, well, highly entertaining (did you know they took the word "gullible" out of the dictionary?), and glitter toes were a big hit!

Soon after camp, a group of friends got together for "Christmas in July." Kiirstin put up her Christmas tree and I added a blow-up snow family to her front yard. We drank hot chocolate and watched Christmas movies and had a white elephant gift exchange. I think I have the best group of friends EVER!

The middle of August brought a family reunion for my side of the family. We had 7 of the 8 siblings there with their families. We stayed in cabins and went 4-wheeling and made icecream and played lots of games (of course). And what is a family reunion without a growling match between Julie and Tanner. Good times.

I started school at the end of August and that effectively killed my social life. I couldn't be in Voices, which makes me very sad. I was still tutoring and teaching piano and I'm still in YW, so my life was a little crazy. I ended up stopping almost all of the tutoring. Life sure gets busier when you add a full-time job into the mix!

In September I celebrated my birthday, and I had to share these cute little cupcakes by friend Xazmin made for me. She's amazing! They were almost too cute to eat...almost.

Road Trip?

My life has been a little hectic lately. Math tutoring, piano lessons, voice lessons (for me--I'm not teaching them), Girls Camp (this week!), the Wasatch Back, Youth Conference, two family reunions, two college math classes (I have to take those to renew my teaching license), and trying to plan for teaching next year. I'm supposed to be running the St. George Marathon in October also, but I'm falling sadly behind in my training. Blah.

With all this...shall we call it resposibility?...I've decided that I'm ready for a break! I want to go somewhere. Somewhere I won't have to do laundry, or clean bathrooms, or even make the bed if I don't feel like it. But I'm not sure where to go.

So who out there has the perfect weekend getaway spot? I'm open for suggestions!

My Green(ish) Thumb

In the last couple of days, I've started getting veggies from my garden. The first to produce were the peas, followed by the wax beans. I've had a lovely time snacking on fresh peas, so much that I haven't actually cooked any yet. But I thought I'd give a garden update. I posted pictures from when my garden was pretty much just dirt, and here are two more sets...

My zucchini plants--which the birds promptly ate. So I planted more. The birds ate those also. So I bought a slingshot and some jelly beans. I actually hit a couple of birds, but I still have birds in my garden. The zucchini and summer squash plants are pretty much gone, but everything else survived.

Baby peas.

Itsy-bisty corn stalks. (Side note: I'm not sure why this picture is sideways. It's not like that on my computer.)
These are my mini pumpkin plants and the wax beans.

Corn. Although Kiirstin's corn is about a foot taller. Grr...

Peas. They look kinda scraggly. Are they supposed to look like that? They were definitely cuter when they were smaller. =)

Wasatch Back 2009

Okay, so I'm a little behind in my posts. But I had to share some pictures from our 31-hour, 187.5 mile relay from Logan to Park City. Our start time was 12:45 pm, Friday, June 19th. We ran through heat, rain, dark, animal sightings, hail, and cold. We had 12 people on our team, with 3 drivers. We lived out of our 2 vans, and catnapped when we could. It was a great experience and I can't wait to do it again next year!

Our Fearless Driver, Matt

Mark after our 2 hour nap at Marcie's parents house.

Bill running like a mad man.

Cannon snoozing in the van. Believe me, he EARNED this nap!

Brent and me doing our chip commercial right after my second run. You gotta entertain yourself any way you can, right?

Stretching and waiting for the handoff before my 2nd run.

Mark handing the baton (slap bracelet) off to Cannon at 5:30 in the morning. We had to wear reflective vests and carry a flashlight or wear a headlamp during the dark hours. They were stylin'!

Brent and Cannon ran the "Ragnar Hill" which was in Wasatch Mountain State Park. It was a dirt road with about an 8% uphill grade if I remember right. Pictures just don't show how hard these two runs were. And it started raining during Brent's run. This picture was obviously before Brent started.

The handoff. These two definitely earned my respect!

Just before Brent handed off to me for my last run, it started hailing! And I must say that hail hurts bare legs! I passed this little snowman someone had made from the hail and made Matt go back and take a picture of it. It rained pretty hard for all of my 7.3 mile run. I was a popsicle by the time I finished. Then I handed off to Bill, who was our last runner, and we headed to the finish line to wait for him.

This is most of our team huddled at the finish line. It was still raining and cold, but at least we were finished running, right? Except that they have your entire team run the last few hundred yards to the finish line. So you wait for your runner and then join them so that they can take official pictures, etc.

Our team sporting our Wasatch Back 2009 medals. Don't we look tough?

Normal is Relative

Occassionally, I post pictures of me and/or Matt that are a little...well...creative. You may wonder why we take pictures like that. Here's your answer. All of the following were taken at a recent family barbeque at our house. None were posed. This is just what my family does when faced with a camera.

My brother Rodney.

My sister Valerie.

My niece Sydney.

My brother Brent.

Either Jackson or Jordan. I can't tell.

My nephew Tanner. ( I might add that this is pretty normal for him, but I had to add the popsicle shot because he's a MOOCHER. Whenever there's food around, he mooches from anyone who'll share. It's kind of like grazing.)

My nephew Eli. Yep, we start 'em young.

Matt, the King of odd camera shots. (Also notice Eli in the background.)