.....Together Forever.....

Ava Brianna Prince

2011-12-08T18:04:00.003-07:00

She is 5 months old now, but here are some pics on her birthday.

June 26, 2011
9 lbs, 5 oz
20 in long

L to R: Grandma Wendy, Granny & Papa

Here is one of her very first pictures after delivery

Here she is with big Sister Savannah. She really was so excited to see her sister. She kept telling everyone, "do you wanna see my baby sister?" "Come see my baby sister"
We must've caught her off guard in this picture!

Here's our first family picture....not the best one, in hindsight, I should've done a close up of our faces together....Oh well. We had about 5 cameras going off from different directions.

I was so excited to have her come out, I was in pain for the last 2 months of my pregnancy with her. It was so nice when they put in the epidural....man, when they moved my legs back up onto the table, it didn't hurt and I was ecstatic...that was the first time they didn't hurt since being pregnant! She has a good set of lungs, when they pulled her out, she cried good and loud! It was wonderful to hear that this time around. I missed Savannah's birth because I was put under for the emergency C-section.

We are so blessed to have her in our lives. Savannah is a wonderful big sister and we've adjusted pretty well to this new addition. She is such a happy baby, and we love her so!

My Pregnancy with Ava

2011-08-10T08:35:00.002-07:00

6.25.11 and 6.26.11
I had wanted to do monthly pictures of my pregnancy with Ava, but alas, it didn't happen. Well, for one, I'm not skinny enough to have that tiny baby bump at the 2nd/3rd month of pregnancy, I don't start showing until about 5 months, even though I'm already wearing maternity pants and shirts!! Oh well.

Anyway, so once I started showing, I did want those monthly pics, but just didn't get to it. With Jason's crazy work schedule and me being so tired, and ending up wearing my PJ's all day on many days, I just wasn't up for pictures on most days.
Apparently, my body doesn't handle pregnancies well. My first indication that I was pregnant was the way my hip joints/ligaments hurt when I got out of bed-not a pregnancy test! From that day on, I had those aches and they only got worse, it got so bad by the 8th/9th month, I couldn't move without being in pain. Having stairs in our house didn't help me either! I started making piles at the stairs to take up, so that I would only have to take 1 trip up-when I went to bed.

I wanted to get one last family picture of the three of us before we had Ava, but alas, that didn't happen either! Jason had left for work on Saturday before I remembered, and so I was only able to get a pic with Savannah, before she left with her Aunt Lottie for the night.

Here is a picture of Jason and I, right before we left for the Hospital early Sunday morning.

Hair cuts!

2011-08-09T14:51:00.003-07:00

6.3.11
We got our haircuts done by my sister, Mattie Jo. Savannah was not being very good about keeping her hair in ponytails/clips or such, and she was always complaining about her hair being in her way.
I asked her if she wanted to get her haircut and she would tell me no, because she wanted her hair like Tangled Rapunzel. I kept asking though every once in a while and she finally said, "yes"! So I immediately called Mattie Jo, and set up appointments for us. (I was ready for a haircut myself too)

Here's the "BEFORE" pictureShe's sitting so good and being still for the haircut, I was really surprised!! She would look down or lean her head to one side if Mattie Jo needed her to. I was very impressed! I was expecting her, a 3.5 yr old, to be squirmy during a haircut, but she wasn't.

Here's the "AFTER" picture. She loves it! And it's SSSOOOO much easier to wash her hair now! And faster too! I love it too!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of me BEFORE and AFTER, but oh well.

The only thing with these short haircuts, is that we need our hair trimmed every couple of months or so. Today we just got our hair trimmed, which made me think of posting these pictures.

Our House

2011-07-28T10:45:00.003-07:00

Here are some recent pics of our new house, with our furniture in it. Jason has dreamed of putting up our TV on the wall, and it has finally come to fruition, when we moved into this house. Eventually though, he wants to get a projector! Men and their "toys"!!

As you can see, we finally got rid of that old blue plaid. lopsided couch that we've had forever!! We figured, we should get a new couch to go with our new house. We love the ottoman especially because it's got storage underneath it! Yay!

We repainted the kitchen from that dark red color, to white. Any of you that know me, know that I LOVE the color red, but it just didn't work for me in the kitchen.

The front room we made into Savannah's playroom....since we don't have any additional furniture to make it a formal Living Room (a.k.a the Visiting Teaching/ Home Teaching room)
We also bought a new dining room set, since that little round drop leaf table we had was pretty small and would look dwarfed in the eat-in dining room.
We love our house and the space that we have now. It's amazing how we managed to fit all the "stuff" we have now, in the little apartment that we had before.....it was just all in the patio storage apparently!!

Dance class

2011-07-24T18:36:00.002-07:00

3.8.11

This was suppose to be her 1st day of dance class, but about 10 min before we left, we got a call that the class was cancelled for that day. She was so excited for the class too!

3.15.11

Here she is ready for her 1st day of dance class!!
I braided her hair, to keep it out of her way. I couldn't believe she sat still long enough for me to braid it!!

Unfortunately, the videos we had of her during her last dance class, somehow got deleted from the SD card, so we don't have those....BUMMER!! They were cute videos of her sonersaulting, and doing different moves. I'm so bummed about that. Guess I should be better about uploading the pics from the camera sooner than later.

She loved her dance class and wished we could've done another class, oh well. Another time maybe.

Phx Zoo

2011-06-03T16:15:00.005-07:00

2.25.11
So one day we got to tag along on a field trip to the Zoo with a Pre-school group. Savannah really enjoyed it and had fun with her cousins.

Jackson and Savannah

Brooklynn & Savannah

Feeling for Stingrays

Pics of Savannah's 3rd Birthday

2011-06-03T14:52:00.002-07:00

1/10/11 (though her birthday is actually 1/12/08)
So, here are some pics of Savannah's birthday party we had for her. She was so excited for her friends (she calls her cousins her "friends" too) to come over and celebrate with her.
We were excited to have an event/excuse to invite people over to our new house too!!

Been too long...

2011-01-28T18:22:00.000-07:00

So it's been FOREVER since I posted.....

I'll try to just post the interesting things that has happened to us these last few months.

FIRST being, buying our new HUGE house! (well, anything would be HUGE compared to the little 800 sq ft 2 BD apartment we lived in for 3 years, right?)
-The home buying process was a headache in itself!
-Home Buying Assistance program: Ran out of funds by the time we were ready to purchase.
-Student Loans: too high, so to defer them, I went back to school.
-Close of Escrow: extended twice! (needed Student loans in "In School Deferment" status)
We were REALLY hoping to get the keys before Christmas, since we signed papers on Thurs the 23rd......but it didn't happen. Apparently the Title agency wanted 72 business hours to review file before accepting payment and then recording all the paperwork-and Friday the 24th was Christmas Eve, so they were closed that day!
Wednesday, Dec 29th we FINALLY got the keys!!
So needless to say, we did nothing to celebrate the New Years!! Oh, except we let Savannah go to her first sleep over at her Aunt's house with all the other cousins! SHE LOVED IT!! So we had a quiet house New Years eve, and we all went to bed at around 8 or 9 or so!!!! How sad is that??

NEXT moving in. We underestimated how much stuff we had.....we thought we could do it without the use of renting a truck....well, it ended up taking all day Friday, and 3 trips (this is not including 2 other trips on Wed and Thurs). Oh well. We had family that helped us out, which was really nice.

Painting, carpet cleaning, appliance buying, couch buying, and about a month later, we are adjusting to life in our much bigger house. I'll have to get some recent pics with our furniture and new paint job posted soon.

We got to celebrate Savannah's 3rd birthday early, on Monday, the 10th. Jason works evenings Tues-Sat, and Jason's mom, who has been down helping us with the move, would be leaving early on the next day, Tuesday, so we wanted to celebrate it with them. She got a Princess bike, and can ride it in the house, cuz it's big enough!

Other News:
If you haven't heard the news from Facebook, or family.....we are having baby # 2 in early July-the 2nd to be exact. So as of today, I am 18 wks along. I have not had an appointment yet since moving, but am in the process of getting one. So to answer the next question I'm sure is on your mind....I don't know yet if we are having a boy or a girl.
When we finally told Savannah, around late-December, I would ask her if she wanted a baby brother or a baby sister...she would say one then the next she would say the other. Lately though when I ask her she wants a baby sister.....hmmm...(tho I just asked her again, and of course she proves me wrong and says, "mmmm....baby brother"

Savannah's latest antics:
She LOVES to dance! I missed the enrollment for a local dance class here in Buckeye, but hope to get her in on the next one. Anytime there is music on she goes into the kitchen and will dance. Then she does a bow! It's so cute...I really need to video it because it's too hard to describe.
When I ask her to do something she's not totally thrilled about, for example, picking up her toys, she goes, "oohhh-kaaay" in her most bored tone. Again, I would have to video it because it's hard to type the description of it!
When she gets something she really likes (example: HUGE princess spiral bound coloring book-she can't carry it herself it's so big) she declares excitedly, " I LOVE IT SO MUCH!"
It's so cute when she is loving to me or Jason, and it just melts my heart! She has recently started telling us, without us saying it first, "I love you mommy/daddy" or "I love you so much". I love those moments! One night, she was sitting next to me, watching a show with me, and she took my face in both her hands, turned my face to her and said, " I love you mommy". Out of the blue!
When she gets needy/tired, she says, (in her whiney voice and waving both arms to be held), "I want you, I want you". I don't know how she's going to handle a newborn baby being in the house and taking all the attention away...
When we ask her a question, she'll "think" about it, and go, "mmm....(while tapping her index finger to her mouth a few times and looking to the side!)......" then give us her answer! It's so cute to watch her!
She LOVES, LOVES, LOVES, being around other kids, and is very gentle with those younger than her, I noticed. I don't know if that's natural for all young girls. But she kicks and cries, whenever we have to leave playgroup, or the park when there's other kids still there. If she could she would stay at the park ALL DAY LONG, as long as there were other kids there.

So those are the MAJOR things that have happened in the last couple of months....I should be posting some pics of random things from October to recent just to be up-to-date (for the analytical side of me)

NEW HOUSE!!

2010-12-21T07:52:00.006-07:00

This is our new House!!!

We will be having a hectic Christmas this year, because we will be moving over the weekend. We will be getting our keys maybe as early as Thurs. morning, or as late as Friday morning!!! So we may just move over the bare necessities, toiletries, some clothes, the Christmas decor, gifts, and such on Friday, then Sat, Sun, and Mon we'll have to move more stuff over.

Front of house

Back yard (which is pretty large! Yay!) with fully covered patio (Yay!), and extended patio-for Savannah to ride her bike....whenever she gets one....

Garage with Cabinets (we loved this feature!!)

Eat-in Kitchen (no Formal Dining Room)

Family Room, opposite kitchen (we WILL be re-painting this yellowish wall)

Front room from front doorway (try saying that a few times!!)
This room is gonna be empty for a while, or we'll temporarily use it for some of Savannah's toys, because we only have ONE couch-we've never had room for more than that!!
We loved the staircase as well.

View from opposite corner of house (family room) as above picture. The kitchen has an island (another feature we loved). That hallway goes to a small BD (w/ walk-in closet), and full Bath

Bikers

2010-12-07T10:22:00.005-07:00

Saturday Oct. 9th, our street, Hardy Dr. was closed off, for this bike parade. This happens every year, (at least all the years that we've lived here in Tempe, which is 3!) We decided to sit out and enjoy the bike riders riding by

Here's Savannah, she decided to play outside on the patio for a while, and brought out some of her toys to have a little tea party.

Birthday

2010-11-15T11:54:00.004-07:00

So I celebrated a birthday in October, on the 8th to be exact. Not much of a celebration though, when you get to be my age......nope, not telling. (hint: I'm well into my 30's)

First of all, it was on a Friday, so that meant Jason had the day off--YAY!!! He let me sleep in and when I got up, he showed me what he made for me. It was the video I posted a few postings ago.

My mom came up to visit with me and took me shopping for some Temple clothes and items needed, since I've lost mine. She even bought me a cake. It was so nice to have a little visit. I'm excited to be moving closer to them in Buckeye and hope that we can have much time together to spend. Especially so that Savannah can get to know her Granny and Papa. Since Jason's mom, is so far away, it'd be nice for her to have one of her set of grandparents close by to get to know.

Anyway, we had pizza for dinner and then headed out for our Ward Game night. We ended the night with David Griffin coming over to take pictures of us with my cake.

All in all, it was a pretty darn good day!

Spilled Milk

2010-11-03T19:53:00.001-07:00

(this is a picture off of the internet)

So yesterday, I gave Savannah a cup of chocolate milk. It had a lid on it. I was still in the kitchen, when I hear a little clunk. I just figured it was her playing with some toys on the tile in our Living Room entryway. Several seconds later Savannah calls out to me. I come around the corner, and lo and behold, there's the cup--on the floor. The lid had come off and so the milk was spilled out. Savannah started to explain to me what happened. I'm not mad, cuz I figured she was trying to put it on the table and it's so tall that it tipped over on her and fell. Anyway, so she starts explaining this to me, and then she starts crying!! She felt so bad about it, (or she was so afraid of me being mad about it) that she was crying!! It was all I could do to keep myself from chuckling and crying at the same time! I took her in my arms immediately and tried to console her, telling her, "It's okay, I'm not mad." And she still looks at me questioningly, with big teardrops on her cheeks. So I had to hold her for a little bit longer to convince her it was okay.

Big Changes

2010-10-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

1. Back to School
So I decided to go back to school. This time I'm going for an MA in Psychology. It sounds the most interesting to me and the most beneficial/useful for right now, when I am not planning to be employed for the next few years or so.

I initially thought of UOP, my Alumn, since I am already familiar with their online system. I applied online and got started. But then I figured, it wouldn't hurt if I researched some other universities. So I found out Grand Canyon University was less expensive! Since I've already got a boatload of Student Loans, the less I need to take out for this round-the better. At GCU, the grand total of tuition costs, is what one yr of the program at UOP would cost!!! So I opted for that one. So I applied online for their Psych program. Then a friend let me know about another Univ, American Public Univ. I'd never heard of it before, but I looked into it. Found out that their whole tuition cost the same as one yr at CGU!!! AND that it was less than half what it would cost at UOP!!!! Wowza! So in the end I applied to three Universities!!! LOL! Oh well.

The only thing about APU, is in order to enroll into the MA in Psych, I have to have an UG degree in Psych. If you don't then you need to take 3 pre-req courses to continue into the MA in Psych program. This means, I need to take these courses. Even then, all three of these (9 credits total) courses will cost the same as 1 (3 credit) course at UOP!!

Wow! I would only take courses again at UOP if I had a job at UOP, which would pay for my tuition.

So here I come APU!! Go...(whatever your mascot is!)

2. Moving to Buckeye, AZ

We are in the process of getting a house out in Buckeye. This is the final reason that led to me going back to school. I had thought of doing so, but I just hemmed and hawed at the idea. WELL, in order for our finances to handle the mortgage, we had to put one of our student loans in deferrment. Jason couldn't do it, cuz he's so close to being done wit his UG program, it was the best option for me to enroll for my Grad program.

I grew up in Buckeye, AZ and that's where most of my family is from. Of all 6 of us kids, my brother Mark and I are the only ones that live more than 15 min away from Buckeye. So moving back would be a great option for us, to be closer to family. Though, it'll be weird because it's been a long time since I lived near them. For most of my adult life (which is almost 2 decades!) I've lived out here, Mesa/Chandler/Tempe.

Once things get finalized with the house, I'll post pics of it. We've seen MANY MANY houses! We wanted to be sure that this house we picked out was the one we really liked and suited our needs the best.

This will be a very big change for all of us, as we've got LOTS and LOTS of friends we'll miss and won't get to see as often as we'd like. I'm sure though that we will make new friends and be able to spend more time with my family will be well worth it too!

Chocolate Milk

2010-10-21T14:37:00.008-07:00

.....or just chocolate in general......

I must've been on the computer or something when I realized it was quiet-too quiet!

(8/31/10)

Above: You can see her tear on her cheek, after I'd spanked her!

This was NOT one of my "good" days!!!

Below: she's trying to put it back, which ends up not helping at ALL!!!

Video Mix

2010-10-14T10:57:00.005-07:00

Jason stayed up all night making this for me (for my birthday last Friday) !!
Savannah LOVES to watch it over and over too!

He said....She said....

2010-10-13T18:09:00.003-07:00

Daddy and Savannah one night, while he's "encouraging" her to eat (cuz she has the darnedest time eating-she won't sit still and takes forever to eat.)

D: Okay, make it go down to your tummy.

S: No, my neck (shaking her head vehemently)
Then, my tummy.
Then, my bottom!!

Another UT trip

2010-10-08T13:50:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's true, we went up to UT again!!!!

We just couldn't get enough of UT.

A friend, Shari, invited Savannah and I to ride with her to UT. She didn't want to drive by herself with her two little girls, so we came along!! We left on Tuesday the 17th of August.

Savannah is so funny! We hadn't even gotten to Flagstaff (or Prescott for that matter) and she's already whimpering, "back Mommy, Daddy, & nana's house!!" She did that for about 10-15 minutes, and we decided to go ahead and make use of the DVD Player! After that, she was fine for pretty much the rest of the trip.

And, it was her first trip going as a potty-trained tot!! (though I had diapers for accidents and night times) I was so nervous!! But she did AWESOME!!! No accidents in the car(seat)!! Yay!

My MIL picked us up in Mt Timpanogas & took us to Aunt Launa's house for the night and the next morning, she drove us to our friends', the Paynes up in Clearfield. That's where we stayed for the week.

Mostly, we just let the kids play around the house and outside a bit. I got to meet Silvia's new baby girl, Leslie!! She was born the day we got home from our trip to UT back in June!! Go figure! But I got to see her in August. She was so tiny and adorable!! I could tell Nicholas and Alex adored her. Savannah LOVED waking up to find her friends were right there!!

Friday and Saturday were eventful days. On Friday, we rode the train to Downtown SLC to go to the Children Museum. And on Saturday we went to the fair.

The Children Museum was HUGE!! Nicholas and Savannah hardly saw each other while in there. There were just SO MANY things to see and play with! I had to practically drag Savannah away from the 1st floor, to go up to the 2nd floor, because she had so much fun playing in the playhouse, full of dolls, strollers, kitchen, food, and all that stuff.

We had to rush to catch the train home, because Steve was gonna catch it at the next stop. Well, we caught the train and all, but found out that he got a flat tire on his bike!! So we got off at his stop and waited for him to get it fixed and meet up at the station. Savannah decided to use that time to have a short nap-only about 30 -40 min or so. Then Steve made it to the station, and we got on to go home.

Savannah wanted to go swimming, so we go and she decides she doesn't want me to hold her anymore and pushes me away!! (she's in a swimmy tube) I couldn't believe it! She's growing up so fast and is more independent. Some days I like it, some days I don't!

Then we went out to eat at Red Robin's that night. Both Nicholas and Savannah fell asleep while there! They were SSOOOO EXHAUSTED!!! That was fine with us, cuz when we got back to the apartment, Silvia and I got to play some Halo!!

Saturday, we got things packed up and headed out. We went to the County Fair and the kids loved being around all those animals and they LOVED going on the little ride, the race cars going around and around!!!

Saturday night we had dinner with some friends. They're from Mesa AZ, but moved to UT a couple years ago. We didn't get to see them in June when we went up to UT, so we made plans this time around. They have 3 boys, 2 of them are older, I think 7 and 10. Their youngest though was a little over a year. He seemed to like Savannah, because when we got done with dinner, we were walking out to the car and Logan (the little boy) wanted to hold her hand and started crying when Savannah had to leave!! It was so cute!!

Here are some pictures:

Train ride

The Children Museum

Every now and then, Savannah will tell me that she wants to go to Nicholas's house! Awww... and then I have to tell her, that we can't go there for a little while and try to distract her!

I think the next time I ride with someone, I might do better at getting our own transportation once we arrive. Either borrow a car or rent one. I felt bad about having to get rides from all these people-most especially on Saturday. Remember, I had all of our "stuff": bags, her toys, food, and a car cooler. So when we met my friends at Pirate Pizza, we transported our "stuff" to their car, went inside, played and ate. When Shari (the friend we rode down with) got done with her family reunion, then she came and picked us up from the Pizza place. So we transported our "stuff" to her van from my friend's car. I just felt bad at having to ask so much of all these friends.

To end the trip, I ended up feeling stuffy and having a sore throat. I could hardly talk through the dinner. Needless to say, I was not much company for Shari, on the drive home. I tried to help out with the girls in the back as best I could.

We had fun otherwise, enjoyed the somewhat cooler weather (apparently, it's not usually that warm in UT-even in the summer!! Go figure that we were there when that was happening!!), going swimming, Silvia and I visiting, watching chick flicks, laughing and all that fun stuff! I'm glad we were able to go!

What's in a name?

2010-10-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

Jason started watching the TV show, Terminator, the Sara Connor Chronicles. In some of the episodes there's a little red-headed girl and her name is Savannah.

Savannah was sitting on the couch with us and I pointed out to her that the little girl had the name "Savannah" too! She looked at her, then at me, with this expression of, I think, confusion. Then after a minute or two, she started to cry, shaking her head, and pointing to the TV, she says, "no Sanannah". Then she pats her chest and says, "me, Sanannah". At that point she starts crying like her little heart is broken!!! Apparently, she didn't like the idea of another girl with the name Savannah!!! I got to hold her and pat her back to try to calm her down. It took almost 10 min. of her crying to get down to whimpers!

I had to stifle my laughs, and boy I tell you that was hard!!

June Road Trip Part 3

2010-10-05T19:42:00.006-07:00

Days 7, 8, 9 and 10

There were a couple of days of just traveling...

But when we got to our destinations, we had some fun!

Day 6
We left Salt Lake City and headed over to Grand Junction CO. What a beautiful drive it was for me. I was the one that drove and I enjoyed it.
Grand Junction is where Jason's Aunt Linda lives. His cousin, Ayme, also lives nearby and she has a a son, Tyson who's just a bit older than Savannah. After dinner we all went outside to play baseball and ride trikes. Tyson was so sweet and let Savannah ride on the back with him, so that she could get a ride and she LOVED it!!!!! They went around and around in a circle on the back patio (which was pretty huge by the way). We had to stop only because it was getting dark, and we were all being eaten alive with mosquito bites!!! We had a great time visiting with them all and Jason's mom, even met up with us there too-cuz she was on her way to Denver as well.

Here are some pics of Tyson Zortman and Savannah on the trike!

Day 7 (Thursday)

We had a lazy start leaving Grand Junction to head to Denver....we figured it was only a 4.5 hour drive. We had to stop by the Walmart on the way out but we had a hard time finding it!! Go figure! Again I did a lot of driving in the beginning, and we switched off. Jason got to drive through Denver traffic-during traffic hour!! Fun fun for him--I'm glad I wasn't the one driving through it! I was the map guide. I told him where to go to get to his sister, Jackie's house.
We got to Jackie's house and we just visited with everyone there. Savannah made a new friend. Before I start into that, I need to preface it with some information. Jackie was married before. She is not in touch with her ex, but she still considers her in-laws from that marriage her family. Her MIL is still very much a part of her life. Her FIL and MIL were in Denver too, to celebrate her Temple Marriage to her new husband. When they came down, they brought some of their granddaughters. I can't remember their names, but the youngest one is about 6? She LOVED being around Savannah and they became playmates. I didn't have to worry about Savannah much while there, cuz her new little friend would be with her!! It was nice!!

Day 8 (Friday)

The next morning we all got ready to go to the Temple. Jackie and Caleb were being sealed in the Temple! Savannah was perfectly fine being left in the Visitor Center while we went into the Temple. It was beautiful! We are so blessed to have these beautiful Temples available to us. To be sealed for Time and All Eternity. It made me think back to Jason and my wedding day, and how calming it was for us (after my hectic morning getting to the Temple) to be kneeling across from one another and be sealed to one another forever. It's AWESOME!!!!

Here's Savannah with her cousins, Rayden and Mackenzie Sinema.

Family picture in front of the Denver Temple.

Savannah with her cousins, and new friend.

The rest of the day consisted of a picnic lunch at the park for everyone and then relaxing at the house afterward.
Caleb and Jackie went on a date that night, and when they got back, Jason and I got to visit with the two of them. It was nice to finally have a chance to catch up on each others lives. With so many family members around, there wasn't much chance to sit and talk, so we took this opportunity when it came!!

Day 9 and 10 (Saturday & Sunday)

Saturday morning we left kinda early (8-9-ish I think) in the morning. It was gonna be a long drive to Albuquerque NM! Pretty much all of Saturday was driving to Albuquerque. We had a little break when we stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Other than that, the day wasn't super exciting....! We found a hotel to stay at for the night and it had an indoor pool, and Savannah wanted to so swimming so bad!!! We didn't have any swimmy diapers for her though and we hemmed and hawed at whether we would go to the store to buy some....in the end we just distracted her with movies and walking around (avoiding the pool area). We had enough of being in the car!!

Sunday morning, we checked out and headed out toward home. I was hoping to get a hold of my cousin, Trisha Foote, who lives in Snowflake AZ. I wanted to see if we could stop for a visit and a break. We went ahead and turned off the Highway and headed toward Snowflake, because I wanted to see the Snowflake Temple. She got my message and called me back and we made arrangements for us to come over after we see the Snowflake Temple.

Here's a couple of pictures of us in front of the Snowflake Temple.

We went to my cousin's house and visited with her family. Her and her husband have 4 kids. Their youngest, was their only daughter. She was not much older than Savannah, I think she was 4 yrs old. Savannah had such fun playing with her and her toys! It was a nice break from being in the car. Though, we had a hard time pulling her away from the house to get back into the car! Other than a stop in Payson, we went straight home!

It was nice to be back home! It wasn't so late that we felt like going straight to bed, we got everything brought in, and then just relaxed and I think watched a movie!!

We got to visit with LOTS and LOTS of people!!! I counted up 6 friends and 10 family members we got to see!!! Out of the family members, only 2 of them were mine (Mandy)!!! But out of the friends, 4 of them were mine!!! Jason has lots of family up in UT!!

I really enjoy traveling. I think it stems from my growing up. I remember many summers that we went traveling. Yellowstone National Park one summer. Redwood Forest-Circus Circus-Knott's Berry Farm and Sea World another summer. A few road trips to FL. Such great memories. I hope that we can have memories for our kids as we/they get older.

June Road Trip Part 2

2010-09-15T10:19:00.006-07:00

Days 4, 5, & 6

So Sunday evening (technically it's day 3 still) we headed over to our friends house, the Paynes. They'd moved from Mesa AZ up to Clearfield UT, in early May. Their oldest boy, Nicholas, was Savannah's really good friend. They missed us terribly : ) and begged us to come visit them!! What were we to do? Go and visit them of course! So we went over for dinner and visit. We ended up staying way too late, and stayed the night!
Here's Savannah, bundled up with her buds, Nicholas and Alex. They are watching Dora, or Diego, on the Wii! Nicholas was shy when we first got there and it took him a good 30 minutes, I think, before he would come out from Steve's (his dad) leg, or Silvia's leg and play! Alex, however, had no problem playing with Savannah from the get-go!!

Day 4

Steve had to go to work (he had a short, last-minute, family trip to take to TX later in the week) so he couldn't take Monday off to spend with us. So instead, as we headed out to go to Aunt Launa's house in Taylorsville UT, we followed Silvia to Steve's work and got to have lunch with him. At his office there's a room with a massage chair. After I sat in it for a while, then Savannah wanted to sit in it, then Nicholas, so we got a picture of them sitting in the chair together!!

But of course, Alex didn't want to be left behind in all the fuss, so he came over and joined in on some more pics!!!

We got to Aunt Launa's house that afternoon, let Savannah finish her nap, and then we had dinner plans with some more of our friends, the Householders. They had moved up to UT from AZ a few years ago and they have a daughter that's almost a year older than Savannah. And I didn't think to get any pictures of them! Bummer! Jason and Dean have been great friends for many many years, and they are computer geeks, so when they get together, they start talking computers and other geeky stuff!! I had to pull Jason away to go, so that we could put Savannah to sleep!

Day 5 (Tuesday)

After I graduated high school, I went to college at Chandler-Gilber CC, way back when it was just 2 1/2 buildings!!! The 2 main buildings, and then one small building North of that! It was only a few years old, I think. Anyway, I made a few good friends from there, and one of them has lived in WA and UT for a long time, and I hadn't seen her in YEARS!!! Thanks to FB, we re-connected and made plans to meet up while we were in UT.
Karen Pellet was able to meet us at a Park in Murray, which is just down the road from where Jason's dad lived, so it wasn't far at all for us. She has 2 beautiful children and Becka, her oldest is about the same age as Savannah, I think she's a couple months younger? So Savannah got to play in the park and meet Becka. Karen and I got caught up on the latest things happening in our lives--it was GREAT! So nice to visit with friends from long ago!!

After the park, I had another friend that we visited with. In my previous post, I mentioned one of my friends that moved to Las Vegas recently, Amy Holly. Well, we met up with Tiffany Hunt, who is Amy's sister, and she's such joy to have in your life. Boisterous and full of life! Anyway, so we met for lunch and had a chance to catch up. She has 2 great kids! Again, forgot to take pictures! I don't know why I can't seem to remember to take pictures!!!

That night, for dinner, my cousin and his wife invited us over for dinner, when they found out we were in Taylorsville!! Brice and Joann make us a nice dinner and we visited. That's where Savannah had her first Otter Pop and she LOVED them! She kept getting into their freezer (fridge with freezer at bottom) and getting one out. One time, she snuck one out, and I found her still in the kitchen, trying to hide, and when I got closer to her, she threw the O.P. up onto the counter!!!!

It was so nice to get the opportunity to meet up with these great people and I know there are more that live up in the SLC area, that we didn't get to see--maybe next time we can catch them all!

Day 6 (Wed)

So for our last day in SLC, we picked up Clark (Jason's dad) and went to tour the Conference Center. We hadn't seen it yet! It is a beautiful building!

From here, we said good-bye to Clark, and headed on out toward Grand Junction, CO. That's where another one of Jason's aunts live.

I'm so glad we were able to do this road trip! It was wonderful to see everyone and to travel to all these different places (even though we didn't really do much sightseeing). We saved a lot of money by being able to stay with family and friends, and also with all those dinner invites.

June Road Trip

2010-08-24T15:37:00.003-07:00

DAYS 1, 2, & 3

So Jason and I have been married for 5 years now!! Wow! It hardly seems that long, yet it feels like we've been together forever!!! (though having dated for almost 4 yrs beforehand, might attribute to that feeling!)

June 18, 2005 was when we were married.

Friday, June 18, 2010 was when we embarked on a 10 day road trip!! What a way to celebrate our anniversary huh?

We purposely went by way of Las Vegas to UT. We had a couple of friends along the way, and a family member to visit too! Though I didn't get any pics while we were there---don't know why I didn't think to get pictures of them! Guess was just too busy visiting and enjoying the short stay (and making sure Vannah was doing okay and not getting into trouble).

DAY ONE
1st stop, was Las Vegas NV. When I got returned from my mission, I was anxious to move out and get back into the Mesa valley, for social reasons. (Buckeye AZ is NOT much of a place for LDS socializing-at least not back in 1998!) One of my cousins, Melanie Huggins, was living in Mesa and knew of a couple of gals looking for a roommate. Amy Lou Price (now Holly), and Ginee Butler (now Scarborough) were my 1st roommates after mission life. Amy and I got along fabulously-though she is such a great person, I doubt there's anybody that thinks ill of her anyway!! Love ya Amy!! So she had married, moved away to Virginia-until just 1 week before our trip.......she moved to Las Vegas!!!!!!! So that was stop # 1, to see my dear friend, Amy! We had a good, but quick visit, as we had lots of place to go before the night! Amy has 5 daughters, so there were plenty of things for Savannah to see and plenty of playmates to spend time with. After about 4 or 5 minutes, she warmed up to the girls and went and played with them. We had to pull her away to leave, and she wasn't very happy!

2nd stop was Bunkerville (near Mesquite) NV. While on my mission to Hawaii (I know-you're all jealous that I got to go to Hawaii for 18 months!) I had many companions, and my first one-my trainer, became one of my greatest friends!! We got along so well. She is who we visited in Bunkerville NV. She had 3 kids and was pregnant with the 4th (who was born in July), so Savannah-again-had playmates during our visit! It's great to visit these dear friends of mine!

3rd stop--mind you this was all on day 1-Friday!!
We stayed the night at Jason's aunt Bonnie's house in Washington UT (just outside of St. George)

DAY TWO
Since we got in so late that night, we visited in the morning and didn't leave for SLC until around noon!! We planned to go to Murray UT, where Jason's dad lives, so that we could visit him on Sat. evening and go to church with him in the morning. Alas, that didn't happen! We discovered that Jason's mom was in Alpine, and wanted to see Savannah too! So we made an impromptu stop in Alpine. There I met one of Jason's aunts. Found out, she grew up in Hawaii!!! So we got along fabulously!! We ended up staying for dinner and the night too!

Savannah had no desire to continue with her potty-training during this time...she was too busy having fun with everything and everybody!! I figured this would be the case, thus I didn't push to have her completely potty-trained before we left! But I had hoped that she would do a little bit-not so! Oh well......

Here's Savannah with her Grandma Wendy.

While in Alpine, I discovered that my favorite LDS author (Anita Stansfield) lives just down the road from Aunt Chris!!!! And Chris knew her well, since they were in the same ward and everything......so she called and asked if it was okay for us to come for a little visit. So we took a walk down the road to visit her, get a picture taken with her, and I bought a book and she signed it for me!! How cool is that! She is so nice, though I would've expected that anyway.

Here I am, with Anita Stansfield!

DAY THREE
So we had to leave Sunday morning early enough to get to Murray, and pick up Jason's dad for church. We thought it'd be nice to go to church, on Father's Day with Jason's dad. We were saying goodbye's to Wendy, and she gave Savannah a juice box.....which didn't work out well, because I discovered (after we got Jason's dad and were walking to the church building) that she squeezed out the juice onto her clothes!!! We were already late, so I didn't do anything about it!
Savannah was so tired out, that she fell asleep at the end of the Sacrament meeting, and slept through the rest of church (another 2 hrs). Since I'm in the Primary, I don't get to sit in Relief Society, and since Savannah was sleeping, Jason was sitting with her, visiting with his dad--I got to go to Relief Society! How nice!

Here is Savannah with her Daddy, and Grandpa

We stayed and visited with him for an hour after church, and then we went on to Jason's Aunt Launa's house. That's where we were gonna be staying while in UT for a few days.
We also got to see Jason's Grandma Mallene for a few minutes on Sunday too.

There are so many people that we know in UT, we could live there and still be surrounded by family and friends....

Long Overdue post

2010-08-12T07:35:00.005-07:00

So my 2nd to last post was way back in MAY!!! Wow!! Not a lot has happened in that time....but still...

May: Got to go to a Phx Suns playoff game!!!

June: Road Trip to NV, UT, CO, and NM. We got to see so many family & friends!! It was great fun!
Started Savannah potty-training more.

July: Couple of Savannah's friends had birthday parties
Quick trip to York (Duncan) AZ
Halo LAN party
Savannah's pretty much potty trained.
Savannah's first Dance class.

Here are some pics from the Suns game we went to! It's been so long since we went, I can't remember who we played and which game in the series it was. But I DO remember that we WON!!!! It was so fun to go. I had been watching the games on TV and Jason surprised me with tickets to a game for the next night!!! We got them for REALLY cheap on Craigslist. It was so fun!!

Also, that day, since we had tickets for the game, you can ride the Light Rail for free that night!! So we got to ride it for out first time!! Funny, we didn't see where to "show" our ticket when we got on though....

About a week or two later, Jason did an overnight sleep study in Phoenix. I had to drop him off at around 10 pm! Pretty late, but he was supposed to be there till afternoon the next day-or so we thought.
When they got him started on his sleep, it only took a couple of hours for them to realize that he DOES in fact have Sleep Apnea (where he stops breathing frequently throughout his sleep). They didn't need him to stay much longer, so because I was still asleep and didn't hear his phone calls or texting, he ended up taking the Light Rail home. He said that again, even thought he did pay for his ticket, there was no one to "show" it to. Hmmm....Oh well.

And now...it's "Paatty" Time!!!

2010-08-11T15:26:00.002-07:00

That's right....I said "Paatty" time.....

as in this:

So I introduced Savannah to the potty soon after she turned 2, back in January. I figured I would just let her sit on it whenever she told me she needed to go potty, even though I knew she didn't quite know what to do yet. After a couple of months, I put panties on her for the 1st time and we stayed in the bathroom. When she p'd in her panties, she made a face and walked funny, cuz it was trickling down her legs!!! It was so funny!! I had hoped that it would help in the process of potty training. It didn't quite do it. She had her Dora panties and a Dora potty seat, so she was all set!
I used M&M's for rewarding her whenever she went. She would sometimes tell me she needed to go "p", and sit on the potty, and wouldn't do anything, then exclaim, "ah done!" and be expecting m&m's!!

By end of May, she was getting to where she was recognizing her body signals but was still figuring things out. I didn't really push it at that point because in mid-June, we took a 10 day road trip to NV, UT, CO, and NM, and I REALLY didn't want to worry about it during that time, though I did take her Dora potty seat with us. Of course she wanted nothing to do with the potty while on the trip-go figure!!

So by the end of July, she's pretty much got it down pat! She's been telling us she needs to "go" and we take her and she does "go"!!! YAY!! So nice to not have to worry about running out of diapers as much (though we still need to use them for night time).

Now, I've got to figure a way to wean her from the M&M's every time she goes!!!

She has only had a handful of accidents in the last 3 weeks!!

Now I hope she does okay next week when she and I hitch a ride, with a friend, to UT. That's a LONG trip!

I don't have any pics of her sitting on the potty. I didn't figure anyone would REALLY want to see that, and I'm certain, that later in her life Savannah would not appreciate it!!!

Dream

2010-05-25T12:13:00.003-07:00

So I had a dream this morning..........

I could swear that what I saw was absolutely true!!!

I dreamt that I was sleeping sideways, facing the wall. I had opened my eyes and saw a silhouette of Jason standing over me. I turned and there he was, telling me he'd called in sick today. He was just gonna go into the LR to read more of his trading book. He was already dressed down. After he walked away, I glanced at the clock and saw that it was 6:08 am. I thought, "huh? I guess he left (cause I remember him kissing me & telling me goodbye) and then decided he was too tired to go to work and called in and turned around and came back home." Then I laid my head back down and went back to sleep. It seemed so real to me, that when Savannah tried to wake me up, I told her he was in the LR!!!! She came back in nodding her head no, so I came out and realized, "wow, that was a dream??!!?"

So funny!!!!

Easter

2010-05-11T19:18:00.008-07:00

This year we spent Easter with our good friends, the Payne family, before they moved to UT.

But first we started out the celebration with an Easter Egg Hunt in our playgroup on Thursday. The kids had fun and really enjoyed the goodies and treats inside the eggs!

Here are some of Savannah's little friends from playgroup:

Tommy, Alex, Annie, Nicholas, and Indie there in the very front.

On Saturday, we went to the Railroad Park in Scottsdale, where Savannah rode the carousel. She'd ridden it before when she was 13 month old, so I thought she'd like the ride this time around---nope!! She clung to Jason with all her might, luckily Silvia was able to catch this good picture of her-even though it's without Jason's face.

Easter Sunday morning!

Bubbles!!! Savannah LOVES bubbles--but then again, what kid doesn't?

We went to a brunch at another friend's house between conference sessions on Sunday, the kids had a blast outside being pulled around by the wagon.

These are some photos that Silvia took later in the evening at the park near their house.

And here's a silly one, Steve caught Jason by surprise by jumping into his arms!!!

Day at the Park

2010-04-19T14:33:00.003-07:00

In March, the weather is beautiful and wonderful for days at the park, thus our playgroup spends time at the park.

When she was younger, I would repeatedly keep putting her hat back on her, because she would take them off all the time. Lately though, she has been wanting to wear them and will leave them on. This particular hat, I bought at the thrift store, Savers, it was too cute for me to resist. I think she looks absolutely adorable in it--I may be biased, but oh well!!!

So when I told her we were going to the park for playgroup she ran into her room and grabbed this hat and put it on!! She wore it for most of playgroup.

Here are some of those pics of Savannah.

Guess what????

2010-04-14T09:56:00.009-07:00

If you haven't already been able to tell by Savannah's picture, or the lilypie.com due date ticker we are having our 2nd baby!

We are so excited! Baby is due Dec 3rd this year.

I wanted to surprise Jason with the news, though he was always asking me, if I was pregnant yet, and I kept trying to brush it off with, "I won't know until the next couple of days...."

My friend, Silvia, helped me with this, as we only have one car. She was so sweet, made the note and the footprints while I was at the doctor apptmt, watched Savannah too, and drove all the way out to J's work, so that we could drop off the car and she took me home.

We dropped off the car back at Jason's work, so he could come home. The pictures below kinda tell the story....

He knew after reading this that we were gonna have a baby!!

January--Savannah's 2nd Birthday!!!

2010-04-13T13:52:00.001-07:00

Need I say more?? She really enjoyed her birthday this year, she had LOTS of stuff going on!!

First, it started off with Playgroup. We went to the park and all her friends came out! We had cupcakes and rice krispie treats.

Alice, Tommy, & Nicholas

Kylee, Lucy, and Annie

After her nap, we rode the bus to downtown Mill Ave, and walked and she got an M&M cookie!!! That's a Special Treat for her!!! She loved it!! Can you tell?

One of her favorite things to do is whenever we come across flowers, she wants to put one behind her ear! I taught her that a long time ago and ever since, she always wants one in her hair!!! It's so cute though!!

Later that night, we wanted to celebrate some more and went out to dinner at Olive Garden. We invited Savannah's good fried, Nicholas, and his family to come too! While waiting outside for a table, she found some flowers and again, wanted them in her hair!!

Here's Savannah with Nicholas.

December 2009

2010-04-08T15:42:00.003-07:00

Here are some random pics that were taken in this month:

This was after Christmas, she got the Dora doll for Christmas and she has loved having her! She's been a sleeping buddy and reading buddy!!
Having fun with Daddy!!
New Years Eve party at the Paynes house. By the way, I had some dental work done in October, and it left me toothless. Even though I have a retainer with pretend teeth, it wasn't very comfortable for me to wear, so I often forgot about it, and I also forgot that I was toothless when I was having pictures taken-or else I wouldn't have smiled so big!!
Savannah found this big pot and thought it would be fun to get into it and play!!!
This was at Savannah's friend's birthday party, Nicholas. They have tons of fun together and love to play together!!
Savannah and me at our Ward's Christmas Party!

Say, "Cheese!!"

2010-03-17T16:22:00.005-07:00

So we had our annual photography shoot in November, by our good friend. You can check out her photography blog, Sweetly Cherished Photography.

She does a great job. It was cloudy, and I was a bit worried about the weather, but she did a great job, even though we had to pause to let the sprinkling rain and blowing wind die down!!

Thanks Silvia!!

Miss Curly

2010-03-17T16:04:00.004-07:00

So Savannah doesn't have naturally curly hair-what a surprise!!! So I have to come up with ways to do her hair.....

I use velcro curlers, and sometimes, even, a curling iron!!

Here she is, Ta-Da!!

She LOVES to be a helper.....she's trying to help her daddy with the car!!!

This was back in August

This one was on Dec 12th.

LOTS of POSTS coming!!!!!!!!!

2010-02-23T15:56:00.002-07:00

So I've still been playing "catch-up"!!!

Below will have numerous events that took place in October and November. I shall soon put up posts for December/Christmas and January.

Happy Day!!

NOVEMBER 2009

2010-02-23T14:08:00.009-07:00

So there were a few things that happened this month-some not so exciting, others a bit scary.

One day we had some little friends over to babysit (Trey and Ivy Jones) and we went outside to wait for their daddy to come. Savannah was running around in her tennis shoe on the concrete and her shoes skipped and made her trip and fall. She caught herself with her hands, but she was going pretty fast her arms buckled and she conked her noggin on the ground! Oh, that was pretty scary for me. Boy she had a good-sized goose egg on her forehead for a while! If you look really close at the very last picture in this post, you could barely see above her left eye, that it's started healing. We had to postpone our Family Picture we planned for that wkd and move it to the Thanksgiving wkd!

BUBBLE BATH TIME

I think this was her first bubble bath....Jason was real excited for her and did her "hairdo"!! Savannah LOVED it!

NAP TIME
One day during her naptime, I went to check in on her and she wasn't in her bed! I keep my LR dark, because she has glass french doors (as well as a regular door) to her bedroom and the light shines into it from the LR. So I went back into the LR to be sure I didn't miss her, and she wasn't there. I found her in our bed! She climbed up onto our bed and fell back asleep!! I thought this was so cute!
DRESSING HERSELF
I had changed her diaper and didn't put her PJ's back on cuz I went to get some play clothes for her. I came back into the LR and found her on the couch trying to put on her PJ bottoms!!! She's kinda got the idea!OUTSIDE
Savannah LOVES to be outside and go for walk. She still will sit and play with rocks wherever they are. She gets a handful and puts them in her pockets! I'm so excited to get a house with a backyard for her to run around and play in while I can get some things done in the house.

BIG HELPER
Jason loves to make some banana peanut butter chocolate shakes. He freezes his bananas, and so one day Savannah saw and wanted to help. Jason would do the cutting and after that, he'd let her peel the banana and put in the freezer bags. She loved doing that! She thought she was neat stuff!!! Lately she's getting to be a good helper and wants to help out. I hope she keeps that!! : )

THANKSGIVING
We had Thanksgiving over at my parent's house in Buckeye. We just get together for a big lunch and then everyone goes their separate ways. Here's some pics of Savannah with a couple of her cousins.
With Lucy Baysinger. (Lucy's daddy is my nephew)
With Jackson, who is only 9 days older than she is. (His mommy is my niece)

Nursery

2010-02-23T13:53:00.005-07:00

So Savannah started going to Nursery back in July, but I just didn't remember to bring the camera to take pictures--until October!! What is it with me? I just can't seem to get things down about Savannah and the events in her life until way later!!

She started out being a little bit shy for a few weeks, which I was surprised about, because I thought for sure she would be excited to be going there. Savannah's not shy and typically is not clingy to me, so I figured she'd be okay. She cried a little bit the first couple of times and Jason had to stay with her for a bit-though I think it was more for HIS sake than hers!! : )

Now, Savannah practically does run to Nursery and leaves J in the dust following behind!!

OCTOBER 2009

2010-02-23T13:20:00.002-07:00

So there were a few more things that happened in October---my birthday wasn't the ONLY event that went on!!!

These two photos were taken at a Indian Fry Bread place in East Mesa, called Cafe Laguna
This pose was ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE!!! I don't know where she picked up crossing her feet and leaning on the chair (or the couch at home)??
This was Savannah's first time eating Fry Bread! She loved it! It's one of my favorites to eat, though I don't get to eat it much.
One of my Uncle's on my mom's side decided to have his funeral while he was alive!! How fun! It was over in Duncan AZ (Eastern AZ border) and he has 9 kids--8 of them girls!! Can you imagine growing up the only brother in the family? Anyway, so my Uncle Son, wanted to celebrate his birthday and have his funeral at the same time. He figured that he wanted to hear all the wonderful things that would be said about him! How funny!!

Here's a pic of the remaining siblings:

L to R: Aunt Pat (who is actually standing in for my Aunt Jessie-the oldest, she couldn't make it cuz she was too weak for travel), Aunt Louise, Uncle Son, my mom, Sally, Uncle Charles, and my Aunt Suggie-the youngest.
I thought this was a really cute pic of Savannah with my mom!!
In October, we went on a double date with our friends, Steven and Silvia. It was actually her birthday and she wanted to go to a Haunted House! So we did! But first, we went to Chili's for dinner and got Silvia sung to by the waiters! Here's Silvia with her Birthday Ice Cream!

For Playgroup we had a little Halloween party at the church for all the kids! Tiffany did a great job with having little games and activities for the kiddies!! They had LOTS of fun! We thought since Savannah LOVES Dora, we'd have her dress up as her for Halloween. I wanted to make a costume for her, but just didn't get too, and ended up buying one. Savannah wouldn't wear the wig that came with it. Oh well!
I found this Halloween PJ and had to get it for her! It says, "Under my Spell"
Here's Savannah with her best buddy, Nicholas. They have great times together, and she gets so excited when she finds out we're gonna go see him, either at playgroup, or their house, or they're coming over to our house!!
Me, as a punk rocker, Jason, as himself : ), and Savannah as Dora, the Explorer!

Lesson in Gratitude (12/17/09)

2010-02-23T12:30:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I won't have any pictures in this post because this is just gonna be me sharing some of my thoughts.

Today I had a little playgroup with 2 other moms and their kids. One of them asked me if I knew who Stephanie Nielson was. I didn't know who she was. Tiffany told me that she was a mother who was in a plane crash here in AZ and got severely burned and was in a coma for 3 months. She's alive and well now. I'm not sure how the topic came up, and it really didn't get much further than that because--well you know how kids are-one thing happens and it gets chaotic, interrupted and crazy!! So I didn't give much more thought on that.

Savannah is napping and I've got the TV on Ch 3 listening to some shows. Commercial for Oprah comes on and it shows a couple of stories that will be on her show today. One of them was about a mom, who was in a plane crash and was severely burned and was in a coma. Of course they didn't say who it was-so to lure you in to watch the show, but instantly I was reminded of Stephanie Nielson, and wondered if it could've been her.

I watched Oprah and when they came to this story, it was about Stephanie Nielson!! So I got to learn more about her incident and was amazed at her strength, courage, and diligence in survival and motherhood. They had a viewer who wrote to Oprah saying, "..playing Play-doh makes me want to kill myself.." and that she didn't like being a stay-at-home mom. Oprah decided to have that viewer go spend that day with Stephanie. After that experience, she realized how she was taking so many of the simple things for granted and made some changes in her home.

I realized that I, too, had been itching for a change from Stay-At-Home mom. When we thought Jason would lose his job, I entertained the thought of him staying at home and me going to work. It actually seemed appealing to me at times (especially those times when it seemed Savannah was into EVERYTHING!). Thank goodness we don't have to worry about that anymore-he's still working at UOP.

There are times I just feel lazy and don't want to do anything. This story has helped me to realize that I should be grateful for what I have and to not take things for granted.

One of the things that I feel I've been better at is cooking. I use to hardly ever cook. If I did, it was Mac N Cheese, Top Ramen, or boxed meals. Definitely nothing from scratch. For the last month or so, I've been focusing on finding menus and getting them ready for when Jason comes home from work. At first I just started out with Crockpot meals, cuz those are pretty simple and easy. I started making homemade rolls (using my breadmaker) and Savannah LOVES those! When she hears the machine going, she immediately goes, "ah (really surprised-like) ....ROLLS!!" and I find joy in seeing her delight!

Anyway, I am really grateful to be able to stay at home with Savannah and spend time with her. The hard part is remembering this when she is being difficult.

How blessed we are to be mothers!

Little climber

2009-12-10T07:59:00.004-07:00

So Savannah has a lot of good friends that she likes to play with. I think one of the reason she loves to play with Tommy is because he's older and he teaches her neat tricks like this one:

One time David (Tommy's dad) comes over to play Halo 3 or Halo Wars and brings Tommy over to play with Savannah. They are having a grand ole time and on one of the times I peeked in on them, here's what I found!! The both of them in her crib.

And as I watch them, I see how they got in! Here's a few photos

Now since this time, during naps and nighttime, she would climb out and fall back asleep at the door (cause we'd keep it close & she wouldn't climb back into bed). So I mentioned this to my good friend and neighbor (Roshelle Moore) and she told me that they were gonna throw away the toddler bed her daughter used, but we could have it. That was so nice of her, so I got it all set up and she's been sleeping in it all by herself! We've had to keep the door open a crack, just so she doesn't freak out. Well at least this way we're not awakened by cries anymore, just her patting on our bed in the middle of the night, or wandering out into the Living Room during her nap times!!!!

I can't believe how grown up she is getting to be!!! She'll be 2 yrs next month! Wow, time goes so fast!

She totes around either her pink Little Tikes chair, or our little wooden stepstool so that she can climb up on it and get to things on the counter or the light switches or anything that is out of reach. She starts to throw little tantrums when she doesn't get her way. She imitates us and she wants to help me out so much with dishes, sweeping, picking up. But one thing that I don't want to EVER go away is how she loves to be cuddled in my arms. That's my favorite part of being a mom!!

Can't wait.....

2009-12-07T16:41:00.003-07:00

for lots of things.....

.....a house-probably out in the direction of Buckeye.......

....where I can have a desk for my laptop/computer (which means I can post more often)......

.....for J to be done with school--but that won't be until later next year.....

....then hopefully a better job, that he likes, that is closer to Buckeye......

....to watch Savannah at Christmas this year! I'm so excited for that.....

....to have another baby, sometime next year......(no that's not an announcement)

....a 2nd car-a 4runner?......

....for J to go into Currency Trading......

.....to have enough $$$ -but will that ever happen?.....

.....for pantyhose to not be so uncomfortable-or is it just me?......

.......to have Savannah say more words......

Back to the Future.......

2009-11-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

So I've got TONS and TONS of posting to do and it dates back to over a month ago......(not near 30 yrs but still....)

MY BIRTHDAY (October 8th)

Since I LOVE steak, and we don't get to eat it often, we went out to a Steak Restaurant. We'd heard it had great steak and delicious bread. Monti's was wonderful. It is across the street from Tempe Marketplace, on Rio Salado.

Here I am enjoying my juicy, delicious steak. (writing this and seeing this is making me want steak!!)

Savannah was such a good girl when we were in there! I'm so lucky to have a good-natured, fun, funny, little girl in my life!

Here she is up to one of her antics...Peek-A-Boo with Daddy!

After our delicious Steak dinner, we went to Deseret Bookstore. I got the DVD, Errand of Angels, about sister missionaries, and then we got a picture book for Savannah, so that hopefully during Sacrament meetings, she'll sit more quietly.......it works for about 5 minutes!!

Savannah loved sitting at the little table and chair in the childrens section. She'd go find books and then come sit down at the table with them!! It was so darn cute!

QUICK TRIP TO DUNCAN, AZ (Oct 9th & 10th)

So my mom called me, the day we got back from camping. She tells me that she is in Duncan, for her brother's funeral. "WHAT! When did this happen?" I ask her. She assures me that he is actually still alive and well---so why the funeral? He wanted to hear the nice things being said about him, while he was alive!! He wanted to see his family gathered around, while he was still Alive!!! It was a combination of his birthday celebration and funeral! How funny!

My Uncle Son (Warner Foote) and Aunt Ada Mae Foote

So Friday night, (Oct 9th) after J got off of work, we drove to Duncan and stayed at my Aunt Louise's house. Saturday, we have a yummy breakfast of biscuits and gravy!! Thanks to my Aunt Suggie and Aunt Louise. My mom comes from a family of 8 siblings, and four of them are at the breakfast table. As I look around, I notice that they are all wearing these black shirts.

But on the backs of them is written: "I'm Warner Foote's favorite Sister/Brother"

Aunt Pat (representing my Aunt Jessie who couldn't make it), Aunt Louise, Uncle Son, my mom-Sally, Uncle Charles, and Aunt Sandra

Here are all the daughters of my Uncle, he has 9 children, 8 of them were daughters!!!
Bonnie, Deanne, Francie, Chloene, Gwen, Sunny, Fairlene, and Donna Mae
Here's Savannah with her Granny (my mom)

Camping--Part 2

2009-10-15T15:09:00.005-07:00

This time at Airplane Flats was really windy. We had to put up a tarp as a windbreaker for our tent-cuz it kept collapsing. (It's a pop-up tent, which is REALLY easy to put up, but also REALLY easy to take down-by hand or wind!!) Luckily for us, Jason's mom gave us her HUMONGOUS tarp. It was so huge, I don't think they make them this huge anymore. We were able to fold it in half and hang it over a rope and string it around 3 trees. I wish we had our camera to take a picture, and I didn't think of having anyone else (Julie) take one of it to show it.

We had our mattress inflated and laying by the car (had to use the car to plug in the air pump). Savannah was in the car, so I got her out and closed the door-unfortunately the mattress was attacked by the corner of the door and tore a big hole in it! We couldn't fix it then, so Lynn and Roger let us use one of theirs.
Most of the time, it was so windy, we couldn't do too much. We enjoyed walks, swinging on the swing, (where I had a crash landing and a good scare!!! My butt was sore 2 days later!) and Savannah loved being with her cousins, Sammy and Bobbie Jo. We also went to the Fish Hatchery. Since Julie and her kids left on Sunday evening (she had a test at ASU West on Monday she couldn't miss) we didn't have a camera to use.
But on Tuesday, we were packing up to leave and Jason cleaned out the car and he found the missing camera battery!!!!! YAY!!!
We left late morning instead of afternoon, so that we could go to the Sinkhole at another campground. We got lots of pictures that day!!!
So here are some pictures from the last day.

Lynn and Roger's van towing their camper trailer

Here is the front seat of the car. We made it so that I sat in the back with Savannah for 3 reasons. I'm next to her. She can see out a window. I can feed her.

Here's the backseat behind driver. Yes, we did use the trunk too!!

On the walk/hike to the Sinkhole, Savannah wanted to touch these markers on the trees!

Here's me, at the gate

Here's Jason

Here's the whole crew in the Sinkhole!

Back: Roger, Lynn, Mandy, Jason

Front: Marcus, Sammy, Lexi, Bobbie Jo, Dessy, Savannah

Marcus, Lexi, Dessy. Jason, Savannah and I took a short cut out of the Sinkhole. You can see J already halfway up the mountainside with Vannah. At the tree, Roger and Lynn would take the younger girls on the trail out, but I would go left and up the steep side, following Jason out.

Camping again!!! Part 1

2009-10-15T14:33:00.004-07:00

We must be a glutton for punishment.............We wanted to go camping again. This time we went with my cousin and her family (Julie, Sabrina, Frankie, & Ana), as well as with my sister and her family (Lynn & Roger with their 6 kids and grandbaby). My sister and her husband have a little camper trailer, up by Heber, and since they've never been to Airplane Flats, we thought we'd show them that little campground.
The kids had their Fall Break and so we decided to go at the beginning of their Break, which fell on General Conference Weekend. We all left on Saturday morning, though Lynn and Roger (my sis and bro-in-law) left much earlier than we did. Julie and her crew followed us, since they didin't know where we were going.
The last time we came, we used my other sister's van, but this time we didn't-we should've because our car was SSSOOOO PACKED!! {{{here's where our camera could've been useful!}}Poor Savannah had no windows to see out of on either side of her-which could've been a reason that she cried, the whole way to Payson. She'd NEVER cried this long on a long car trip before. We stopped at Walmart and made arrangements to open up a window view for her. She was better, but ended up falling asleep after about 20 min of the ride--go figure!!!
What's funny is that Lynn called and they were leaving Heber to head to the campground, as we were leaving Payson.......when we got to the turnoff to Young, there they were, in the turning lane, from opposite direction, to turn onto the road too!!! How funny that was! But Jason lost them when we made a turn down the road, and had to come back around. We went down a road and were about to give up and started to turn around, when they come around the corner to us, just in time to follow us---AGAIN! None of this was coordinated--amazing!
Our camera battery was dying, so I bought a new one, and charged it before coming. I didn't put it in the camera right away though, so needless to say, it got lost, and so we didn't have any pictures for most of the trip. I've copied my cousin's pictures and put them on my blog--hope you don't mind Julie!!
She took some really good photos of the kids at the swing. My favorite one (and Jason's) is the last one of him and Savannah walking away.

Here's J letting Savannah try out the swing-kinda!

Here's me handing out marshmellows on the first night there. My bro-in-law, Roger, on the left, J behind me, Frankie on the right, the ponytail of Sammy, and Bobbie Jo in the chair enjoying a marshmellow.

Since we're on the subject of birthdays......

2009-10-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures at the little get together I had for Jason on his birthday, Sept 21st. We had RootBeer Floats!!!

In this pic: Lucie, Savannah, Tommy, Kylie, and Alice (standing) they are all enjoying the treat-especially Kylie! In all 4 of the pics, she's either looking in her cup getting a bite, or she's taking a bite!!!! Hilarious! Jason and me

Here are the Guys! David, Jason, Paul, Ben, and Jeremy. Later, we had DJ and Sara Stapley also come over with their little baby boy, Joseph.

I'm just not much of a picture person, so I missed out on some of the important pics, like the RB Floats, or when he opened the one present I got him! I was actually planning to get him another, but didn't get to by this time and was gonna get it for him the next day, but then we decided we'd get a better TV entertainment center, that would keep Savannah from playing with the Xbox/DVD, and getting her fingerprints all over the TV.

The one we wanted, we've seen at Costco, but unfortunately, when we got there the day after his birthday, they've stopped selling them in the stores-we went to 2 Costcos to be sure! Bummer. So we're on the lookout still for a good TV stand/console.

Another favorite

2009-10-07T17:31:00.002-07:00

This month is one of my favorites, though it won't be for very long!!!

Not because of Halloween

Not because the weather cools down

Not because Christmas is just around the corner

b
u
t

b
e
c
a
u
s
e

i
t

i
s

m
y

birthday!!!! (on the 8th--tomorrow)

I figure, since J will most likely NOT announce it for my behalf on the blog, I'd better do it for myself, and since I'm getting up there in age, I won't be able to enjoy it for too much longer!!!
Hope I'm not being to self-absorbing by announcing my own birthday!!!

Favorite

2009-10-07T16:54:00.002-07:00

This is one of Jason's favorite funny pictures.

Women's Conference

2009-09-30T20:47:00.002-07:00

I had the opportunity to attend the Women's Broadcast last weekend with some friends of mine. It was very uplifting and comforting to be there and listen to the messages. One of the biggest things that struck me was a reminder of my calling as a mother, by Sis Thompson.
I didn't know much about her and found out that she had some goals that were not met. When she was a teenager she had some goals about motherhood. The only goal that she has been able to meet, was the goal of being an active member of the church. She hasn't married, thus she hasn't had any kids of her own either.
It made me realize that on those days that Savannah seems to be on my every nerve, and I get exasperated by her, I need to remind myself that this is what I wanted (to be a mother) when I was younger (which wasn't that long ago). I married later in life and I'm finding that I forget that all those years I was single, all I wanted was to be married and have babies. Well here I am, doing just that, so I must remember, this was and is a goal for me.
This week has actually been different for me. I have not let myself get frustrated with Savannah as I might've in the previous days, and find that I'm letting her be explorative and creative, and a tiny bit mischievous-even if it is a little bit at my cost! For example, she has watched me do dishes and has pushed over a little stool to the sink so that she can "help" me. Previously, I would keep her from doing so, cuz I know she'd make a bigger mess for me to clean up. These past few days, I've let her stand next to me playing with the dishes and the "baboos" (bubbles), enjoying the joy it gives her. Water gets all over her, me and the floor-oh well!!
What a huge blessing in our lives she is. She is learning so much each day, and it is marvelous to see the growth in her. I am constantly in amazement at her and in wonderment at how fast she's growing and missing those days when she was a baby in my arms.
What a wonderful opportunity it is for us mothers to spend time with our little ones, to teach them, care for them, and watch the fruits of our labors as they grow. I am so grateful for my husband, Jason, who works hard, and makes it possible for me to stay home with Savannah. He is so loving and patient with me. I love you Jason!!!
I love being a mother!!!! What a great calling we are given, to be mothers! I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for this opportunity. I know He lives and that Jesus Christ is our Savior. It brings me peace and happiness to know this.

What's with the Frogs theme you ask?

2009-09-21T00:11:00.001-07:00

Since it's Jason's birthday on Monday, I figured I'd do a theme of Frogs, since he's taken to favor them, due to his name "PRINCE", and he LOVES the color GREEN too!! So it works out for both of his favorites, do use this theme for a while!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU JASON! I LOVE YOU!!!

Labor Day camping pictures

2009-09-18T23:21:00.005-07:00

So, as I've mentioned in my previous camping post, my family has a tradition of camping every Labor Day weekend at this one obscure place in the mountains between Roosevelt Lake, and Payson-we call it The Apple Orchard.
Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

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Jason's mom, Wendy, has a GMC Denali XL (Suburban) and we loaded it to the hilt! The 3rd row seats were taken out and we filled it clear full-up to the 2nd row seats!!
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When we got off the main road and more than halfway on the dirt road up the mountain, we let Savannah out for a bit. She liked roaming around the SUV more than the scenery!!

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Here are some cousins that found a foam camping pad and started playing on it and having a good ole time at it too! Savannah's with Jackson (one of my Great Nephew's) and he's only 9 days older than Vannah. The other kiddo, who you can't see her face, is Jackson's sister, Brooklyn.

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On Sunday morning, Jason found a tiny frog, and showed it to Savannah. We were expecting a reaction from her, and as you can see in the pic, she's not interested, nor scared by it!!

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Here's a really sweet photo of her with her Daddy! She just got done eating some Chocolate candies, Reese's cups, and Twixes. She was SSOOOO LOVING that!!!! Poor kid, I don't give her candies, if I can help it-so on the rare occasions she gets a hold of some......she devours it!

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This is what she did whenever she got a chance.....she'd go walking off, looking for adventure, or following her older cousins. She LOVED being around other kids the whole weekend!

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When Grandma Wendy got to our house, Savannah was really shy around her, but after spending a couple of days together, she got to where she was pretty comfortable with her and would let her hold her. It's too bad that Jason's parents live so far away, Savannah doesn't get much chance to be around them!

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This is one of my FAVORITIST (is that even a word??) pictures!!! Samantha (Sammy) is one of two cousins that are closest to Savannah's age. Sammy loves to pick up and carry babies, even if they are not so small! Looking at this pic, you can see that Vannah does not mind one bit, and would let Sammy carry her around-considering that she is miss independant and wants to walk/run on her own and not be carried much. I love Savannah's expression in this photo!!

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Her new favorite thing is ZIPPERS. If she sees one, she'll play with it for about 20-25 minutes-which is a long time for a 20 month's old attention span!!! She kept opening, getting inside the screen door, closing, and then opening, getting out, and closing the zipper on our tent. I got this cute pic of her in action!

I get J's lunch together in a zippered pail to take to him sometimes and if I leave it on the floor while I get my purse, glasses and keys in hand, Savannah will get into it and start taking things out and playing with the zipper on it! It gets exasperating because I am usually in a big hurry and putting the lunch back together slows me down!!!

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We left on Monday morning just before 10 am. It's about an hour and a half drive to get out of the mountains and back onto paved roads. The bumpiest part of the ride is closest to the campsite. She was SSOOOOO exhausted from the whole weekend and gettting up at the crack of dawn, that she somehow managed to fall asleep during the bumpiest part of the ride and slept most of the way out of the mountain!!! I was amazed when I looked over at her head bobbing up and down and saw she was sleeping. I got worried about all the bobbing possible straining her neck, and pulled her out and held her in my arms (my favorite part of motherhood-by the way!!!) while she slept.

We actually had a few family memberes who hesitated due to the weather, but it ended up only being a scare because after Friday night and Saturday morning of rain, there wasn't but a drizzle here and there for the rest of the weekend!!! Good thing too, cause it sure would've made for a miserable weekend!!

For most of the weekend, we just relaxed and visited with one another, and followed Savannah around while she ventured off exploring.

I can't say that the trip went uneventful.......

Jackson, a cousin Vannah's age, got burned from climbing up on the Quad before it cooled down. Poor guy, he cried until he fell asleep-but when he awoke, it seemed as if nothing had happened-thank goodness.

I got a sore throat and runny nose, (I think the rain from Friday night and Saturday morning is to blame) so I was a little miserable starting Sunday morning-which is partly why we left so early Monday morning. We might've stayed another hour or so longer.

On the way home, the Denali had a tire blowout on the Beeline HWY. The tire was shredded bad. On the first attempt at jacking the SUV up, it didn't get it up high enough to take the tire off. HWY patrol stopped, and advised to call Tow truck. Using ONstar, Wendy called, but then my Dad and Brother in law came to us and helped get the car jacked up high enough and we got the tire changed out. PHEW!!

MEMORIES MEMORIES MEMORIES!!!

New Favorite TV show

2009-09-16T15:25:00.004-07:00

Savannah has discovered a new favorite TV Show.....She will sit down and watch it, and she has learned to say the name of the TV show--the only TV show name she's learned so far!!

Here she is intently watching it....and she dances to it and mimicks their actions, it's so cute to watch her.I told her to smile and she gives me this cheesy smile!!!

The show's about over and she can tell.....
She also does this look when something is wrong, for example, if an animal is being chased.....she shows empathy....
She gets upset when it's over.....and wants me to start the next one.......
T
The show is none other than "Dora the Explorer". She gets SSSOOOO excited when it comes on, and when she sees products with pictures of Dora (at the stores) she gets excited and repeats, "Da Dora! Da Dora! Da Dora!!!""
We've NEVER seen her get so excited over a show, so quickly. She'd only seen it a few times over a period of 2-3 days....and she got hooked on it!

Now when we turn on the TV, she exlaims, "Da Dora?"

Camping Trip

2009-08-30T00:12:00.005-07:00

So last weekend, we went camping with a bunch of people from our ward! It actually started out to be a trip that was planned with the Payne family and us. There were some people that wanted to go, and then others wanted to join in, and before we knew it, we had 9 families camping together!!! Griffins (David and Tommy), us, the Paynes, Moores, Buchanons, Kamatas, Colins', and on Friday night, the Trexlers and the Whipples joined us too!

It was soo much fun! Savannah LOVED being outdoors and playing with Tommy, Nicholas, Alex, Kylie, Lucy, Alice, Brayden, and Annie. It was like an extended playgroup!

It was nice to get away from the heat of Tempe AZ. It wasn't as cool as I had thought it would be, but it was still way better than 110 degrees!

I was able to trade vehicles with my sister, who had a Dodge Caravan. We had so much more room! We were able to take our good friend and his son, David and Tommy Griffin.

Here are some of the pictures of our experience!

So just before we left, Savannah and Tommy were playing together, but Savannah had not had her nap yet and it was getting late, so she was grumpy and not happy with sharing her toys with Tommy! Here's a photo I got of her in her little tanttrum!!

Here's Tommy, Savannah and me in the car on the way to Airplane Flats! Those two had fun riding in the same car! What better way to enjoy camping than to have the spouse do the cooking??? Today's specialty: Pancakes, bacon, & Orange Juice.
Jason and Savannah hiked with the rest of the group to the Fish Hatchery. Jason wished he had a carrier for her, because she was so exhausted from the walk, she fell asleep on the way back to camp, and Jason had to carry her in his arms for a good while!

You might be asking, where was I? Silvia and I made a run to Heber for supplies. Once those in our camp found out we were making a run to the nearest town, we started taking orders! Shoelaces, ice, slingshot, and more ice!! What our husbands don't know, is that we snuck in a quick stop to Dairy Queen!!! We figured we were missing out on some fun and wanted to have some fun of our own!! he he he!

Oh, what's this on the ground...........

Mmmmm......not sure what this is.....but it seems a bit tasty....... One of her good friends, Nicholas, was so sweet! He got the soccer ball for Savannah when it went rolling down the hill! I happened to catch a picture of it!!

Savannah LOVED having kids to play Ring Around the Rosy with her! Here she's having a blast with Kylie Moore and Nicholas Payne.

On Saturday morning, a game of Frisbee Golf was gonna happen, and since Silvia and I missed it from the day before, we teamed up to be the only GIRL team to play! (I ditched Jason as my teammate) Love ya Jason!! We had so much fun, it was some hiking, climbing, chatting, and fun! Silvia and I got the most points!!!!Here are all the players: Jason and Justin Trexler, Stacy and Luis (they were good), David and Jeremy, (they were good too), Heidi and Dallin (apparently, they escaped the camera), and then us-Silvia and I.

She had SSOOO much fun, that she fell asleep in the car only after 7 to 10 minutes into the ride home!!! Soon after, her little friend, Tommy fell asleep too!

It was a wonderful trip! Thanks to the Payne family for inviting us to go camping with them, and thanks to all those families that joined us and made it memorable!!

I forgot how much I enjoyed camping, since it'd been a few years since I'd gone. The only times though that I have gone in the past, was with my family over Labor Day weekend. It's become tradition to go to the mountains past Roosevelt Lake over Labor Day weekend. My family has been doing this since 1962! One of my sisters was only 1 month old, when they started the tradition. The only problem is, you need 4x4 to go up the mountain to the campsite, that we call, The Apple Orchard. I've always hitched a ride with family, and since Jason and I have been married, we went up in our own 4x4 Jeep Cherokee one year and it was a BLAST! Makes me want my own 4x4 again! Someday.......

Anyway, so this year, it looks like we will be going up with Jason's mom, Wendy. She is coming down to AZ from UT to go camping with us and will let us use her 4x4 Denali Suburban to go up. We are so excited!

I hope to go camping more often, now that I know of some campsites (that don't require 4x4) up by Payson. Jason's not as excited about camping as me, but give it a few more times and maybe it'll grow on him.....you think?

Funny Kitty pictures

2009-08-09T22:03:00.003-07:00

Jason browses websites and has come across this kitty website that is funny. Here are a couple of my favorite ones:

Since I love to ballroom dance, this was pretty funny to me....

I laughed so hard when I saw this one!!!!!

talking and singing

2009-08-07T07:11:00.002-07:00

Savannah's been doing a lot more talking now a days......

"Babu" = bubbles, she sees the bottle and says this. She loves to go outside and have me blow bubbles
"Baba" = she just started to say this, for her bottles, but since she hasn't had one in a while......
"na na" = night night. Since I've been better at her nighttime routine, she recognizes when I read a book to her, that it's night night time and will say this and point toward her crib.
Of course, she says the common, "mama", "dadda", and "uh-oh"

She's also decided she likes to sing!!
When there's some music on and it's slow song, or primary songs I play on the CD, she'll start "singing" along with it! It's so cute! Last Sunday, when we were in Buckeye for my great niece's baby blessing, Savannah was singing during the Opening Song-pretty loud too! Everybody around us could hear her.

Quote

2009-08-05T10:29:00.001-07:00

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately. - Michel de Montaigne

Update

2009-08-01T20:23:00.003-07:00

It seems I managed to get through the whole month of July without posting, so I figured I'd better get on in for August, while it's early!!!

Here are some pictures of Savannah since May.....

Here first pigtails on May 2nd. We had a Ward Chili cookoff that night, so I tried out her pigtails for that...She was very patient for me while I was combing and combing and pulling her hair. (She had a hayday sitting on the bathroom sink playing with stuff from the sliding mirror shelf)

Here's PROOF that I do clean my house!!! How else would Savannah pick up the sweeping action of the broom? It was so cute, every time I pulled it out, or she saw the broom, she wanted it to "sweep" and be my big helper!! It was adorable. I tried to get a video of it, but when she sees the camera, she knows there's pics and so she wants to come to the camera! 5.13.09This was a super sweet picture of Savannah with her daddy. It was taken with my new phone (since my other one got stolen). This is one of my favorite pics of my 2 favorite people!!!
5.19.09Here's another pic of Savannah when I did her hair (what little there is of it) in pigtails again. I think her smile here is sweet and candid.
6.1.09For Father's Day, after church, we drove out to my (Mandy's) parents house out in Buckeye. The last 2 miles or so is down a dirt road, that you can't go very fast on-unless of course you've got a 4x4 truck/SUV-so we put her on my lap and let her "drive"!! She LOVED IT!! And cried when we were there and had to get out!!!
6.21.09We were eating out and Savannah thinks EVERYTHING is a game. When we tell her not to do something, she does it and laughs, thinking it's a game. At times, I'll catch her picking her nose-rather she's fishing for some unknown in her nostrils-and tell her to stop, then pull her arm away, then she reaches for her nose and waits for me to "catch" her and she'll giggle!!! At first it was cute, but now I'm over the "cuteness" of it and it bugs me!!!
6.22.09Before we left my parents house, mom gave me an old ice cream maker, and so I wanted to try it out and thought the Griffins could be our guinea pigs!!! We went over there-since there place is bigger than ours-and played Settlers of Catan and had ice cream. It was Savannah's first time having homemade ice cream. The next time we made it (4th of July) we had friends, the Paynes, over and had Root Beer floats and it was YUMMY!!!
6.22.09Our new neighbors invited us to go to the Phx Zoo one morning-EARLY!!! She had passes and is allowed a guest. Since we wanted to get there early before it got too hot, it was decided to meet up at 6:30. YIKES!! That meant that I-me, Mandy-had to get up at the latest, 5:45 am!!! I try at all costs to not get up early, if possible!! Since this was free and I knew Savannah would LOVE the animals, I figured it would be worth it! She did enjoy it, though she wanted to be out of the stroller more than in it! The last thing we did at the zoo was the water park. Savannah liked playing in the water, and is getting braver and braver around it.
7.28.09

So these are some of the pictures of Savannah-though there are LOTS and LOTS more-and I'll find more to add another day.

Jason is still in school at UOP and is still working there too! Whew. He's been busy in the Elder's Quorum too. A few weeks ago, he started doing some Muay Thai. A guy in our ward is teaching it. I went last night and had fun! Though the first time Jason did it, he was sore for a couple of days. This time he's fared better and isn't hurting, hardly at all.

I am working on being a better stay at home mom. I've never been a homemaker. Hated cooking and cleaning and didn't do it until absolutely necessary. I've been working at a system to keep my kitchen cleaner more often and also, keeping up with laundry, and very soon, I'll be getting Savannah to sleep on her own-I hope. That is going to be VERY HARD, because I LOVE to hold her and she cuddles me and snuggles to me, and that is a wonderful feeling. But she's gotten accustomed to me holding her until she falls asleep-she doesn't know how to go to sleep by herself, nor how to soothe herself when she wakes up. We'll see how that goes!! Wish me luck!

My BSB/A wasn't for nothing

2009-06-20T10:18:00.004-07:00

Did I not tell you that I was a business owner? Since times are a bit tough for us and Jason's job isn't making quite enough for us.....I've decided to open my own clothing boutique! My Grand Opening will be THIS AFTERNOON!!!!

It's located in Scottsdale, McDonald and Scottsdale Rd. The address is 6325 N Scottsdale. Lots of great styles!

Click HERE so that you can get my special coupons!!

Warning....If I miss your call....

2009-06-19T12:13:00.004-07:00

...during the hours of Wednesday 7 pm-9 pm and Thurs 8 pm-9 pm. I am glued to the TV for one of my most favoritist shows EVER!!!!!

If I do answer during these times, I may abruptly end the call when commercial is over.

I just wanted to give you fair warning ahead of time.....

Wedding Anniversary!!

2009-06-18T13:06:00.007-07:00

4 years ago today, Jason and I were married in the Mesa Temple! I can't believe how fast time has flown by. What amazing years they have been! We've moved a few times and have lots of memories of trips together and places we've been to. Probably the most memorable event thus far, is having Savannah in our lives!
Maybe I should try to briefly tell how we met:
Jason and I had a mutual friend-Carrie Hendrix. There was a party for her (she was going to Grad school-East coast), on a Thurs night. I was there, Jason showed up, Carrie introduced us, and we were talking-with a few other people......Math was a topic that came up and I offered to tutor him for his Math Proficiency at MCC and by the end of the next week, we had our first date!
Wedding Day: It was a beautiful day and we were glad to finally be together forever. It was so nice to be surrounded by family and friends when we were sealed as husband and wife.
Jason is a sweet husband and I have lots to learn from him. He is so loving and funny and geeky! I love how he makes me feel beautiful and loved. I look forward to whatever the next few decades bring to us!
I love you Jason!!!
Jason is surprising me with a date tomorrow night and he won't tell me where it is! I'm excited to find out what Jason has in store for me!!
Here are just a few photos from our wedding day

Peek-A-Boo

2009-06-17T12:38:00.008-07:00

Here is a video from back in February, of Savannah playing hide and seek. It is still one of her favorite games to play. She loves to be chased around the house and she loves hiding. And she's good at hiding. When we were in San Diego, she went upstairs at my cousin's house and hid in their master bathroom. Silvia found her behind the door in the bathroom!!

Click here to view this video

San Diego Beach 2

2009-06-10T12:39:00.007-07:00

Here are some pictures of Daddy digging a hole underneath her and getting her to Fall through it.....

Here you can see his hand underneath her.
She doesn't quite know yet what is going on, but she looks a little worried....

She screams in protest at her daddy for doing this!! She did NOT like it when she fell through the sand!!

Here she is, getting help from her Daddy to get up and out of the sandtrap!

San Diego Beach

2009-06-10T12:22:00.005-07:00

Here we are at the beach.....since our camera's card was full, we weren't able to use it, so thanks to our friends, the Paynes, they let us use their camera for some pics and took some of us.

Daddy and Savannah

Savannah getting her hands dirty, which amazingly she LOVED playing in the sand! She does it every chance she gets, since we've come home!

Jason hitting the waves-or rather, the waves hitting him....

It was actually a bit chilly when we got there, and Savannah wasn't too excited about the ocean part of it!!!

Nicholas, our friends' little boy, got to playing in the sand, and Jason played with him-by covering him with sand. Well, Savannah wanted in on the fun and she sat down and started pulling sand over herself!!

This was before she got in the sand, she was content to just be sitting in front of mommy and watching everything else while snacking.

....Workin 8 to 5......

2009-06-02T16:24:00.005-07:00

Jason's work schedule will be changing in 2 wks. Starting Mon June 15th, he'll go from a 3 day weekend, back to a 2 day weekend. Right now, he's working Mon 11:00-10:00 pm, Tues-Thurs 9:30-8:30 pm and has Fri-Sun off. Having the 3day wkd has been really nice, but it's been making his work days really long. He doesn't get much time to be with Savannah on those days. His new work schedule will be Mon-Fri, 8:00-5:00 pm. A more regular schedule. He can do things on the weeknights now, if need be, as well as spend more time with Savannah before she goes to bed, yay! She'll love that, I know!

Memorial Weekend

2009-05-28T12:43:00.004-07:00

I've got Savannah down for a nap, and figured now would be as good of time as any to update the blog with the latest.....

We were invited by our friends, the Paynes, to go to San Diego, and so we DID!! It was such a blast. I've got a cousin who lives there and he offered his home to us, ALL 7 of us, to stay for the weekend. We were able to go to the San Diego Zoo, walk around the San Diego Temple grounds, and then go to the beach. At nights we played Settlers of Catan, and visited with each other. Silvia and I had such a blast, being like giggly teenagers!!!

Savannah went to Nursery for the very first time and was fine, until Nicholas, had to leave for a diaper change. When Steve took him back, they asked if Savannah and Nicholas were bro and sis, because she cried hard when he left!!! I think she realized that she didn't know anybody in there, once he left.

I've got some pics, but because our computer space is full, I can't upload my photos to it, thus I have lots of pics on the camera. Too much, because our camera's SD card got full on Saturday!!! Thanks to Steve and Silvia, they've got photos for us. I got some off of the SD card, they are only of our 1st day, which was at the Zoo.

She LOVED the ducks and did not want to leave!!We waited in line to see the Panda Bear, it's what Silvia and I wanted to see most of all. Savannah liked it, but she liked the Cotton Candy more!And here we are at the end of the day, gotta have that pic in front of the Zoo Entrance!

Been a long time.....

2009-05-02T10:37:00.003-07:00

So I decided to write a quick post today. So much has happened since March, but I won't be able to go into all of it. I'll try to dip into it a little bit here and there....

But for right now, a few things about Savannah:

She's learning to do somersaults! She bends over and lays her head on the floor, waiting for jason or me to "help" her! It's soo cute!!!

She's getting more picky about eating by herself. She won't eat if we try to feed her.

She's learning to throw little balls pretty good and LOVES to play with either Jason or me.

She twirls around in circles to music-it's sooo cute!

Jason's had an opportunity to apply for a different position at Univ. of Phoenix. It required him to have some knowledge of A+ (some computer language), so he spent all last weekend reading up on it. Unfortunately, they didn't hire him for the position. But he realized that he could get his A+ certification anyway and be better prepared for next time.

As for me, I'm trying to figure out a schedule of housecleaning, cooking, and laundry, so that I don't get behind on it. Also trying to work in some playtime, personal time, Primary time, and Jason time.

Anyway, that's a brief wrap up.

Here's some random pictures of Savannah (not so recent)

At the Phx Zoo with Playgroup, back in October

In September, at a birthday party for cousin, Bobbie Jo. In this pic, on the left is Bethany Sedig with Caitlin who is almost one in this pic and on the right is Roni Denny with Jackson, who is only 9 days older than Savannah.Here is Savannah on her 1 year mark(1/12/09).

Uplifted

2009-03-11T12:39:00.002-07:00

So I have a dear friend who lives over in the East coast, she was one of my first roommates after I returned from my mission, Amy Price Holly. She has been a great friend that I love dearly and MISS DEARLY! She has a blog that I LOVE to read, because she not only posts pictures of her kids, but she also shares some of her thoughts, moments, personal events that uplift me when I have an "off" day. Thank you Amy Lou!! Because of her, I've decided to add some of my personal thoughts, "aha" moments, or events in my life on our blog. This would kinda be more like journaling for me.

Scripture reading

So, I have decided to be more diligent in my scripture reading, as I noticed that my days tend to be better, not necessarily that I have no "problems", but that whatever does happpen that isn't "planned" is not such a big deal. Jason and I have picked up a book at the Seagull bookstore called, "Please Pass the Scriptures-from reading to feasting" by John Hilton III. At the end of each chapter, it has assignments, to help us to get the most out of the book. So while Savannah is napping right now, I read out of the BoM, then read a chapter out of the book. My "assignment" is to record some experiences I've had that have taught me the importance of scripture reading. Well, I just realized that I already wrote down one of them, above, about how it makes my day a little better. I must admit though, that I have tended to do my scripture reading more out of duty. I hope that I can utilize my quiet time (Savannah napping time) to read and study and learn from the scriptures. I know that I need to be an anchor in my home to help raise my childeren to know the right from wrong. Also, I need to be an example to them too. How can I expect them to read their scriptures and pray, if I'm not doing it myself? I'm regular with my prayers, I just need to add scripture study to my day.

I am so grateful for the Gospel. I have been strenghthened and comforted this last year, adjusting to motherhood and coping with all those hormones and stuff. I know that these teachings are true. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and that He LIVES! I know that I can be with my Family Forever and what great comfort that gives me!

May your day be peaceful and wonderful!

Some pics of Savannah

2009-02-18T14:36:00.004-07:00

PEEK-A-BOO WITH DADDY AND PILLOW
On a Sunday, the 28th of Dec, Jason had a pillow over his face while he was laying on the floor, hoping to get some rest, but little miss-"cheivous" Savannah saw a game to be played. She pulled the pillow off of Jason's face and he'd go, "boo" at her and she would laugh and laugh!!! It was hilarious! She loves to play, "boo" games!

EATIN' AWAY.....

On Jan 14th, just two days after turning 1 year old, I thought I'd give Savannah a chance at feeding herself and see how she would do. This is what transpired.

She's doing good so far.......... She knew where to put the spoon.....

.....but I guess she wasn't getting enough that way, so she tried it this way.......

In the end she had it ALL OVER HER, even in her hair, cuz she kept rubbing her head, wondering when I was gonna rescue her......

STEPPIN' UP........

One day (Jan 15th to be exact) I was in the kitchen doing some stuff, probably trying to clean or cook something. When I came into the Living Room to check on her, this is what she was doing:

playing with the little step stool-upside down.

Here she's upset because she can't get out!

Our Valentine Day

2009-02-17T16:00:00.004-07:00

On Valentine's Day, Jason and I didn't do anything Valentine-ish Saturday morning, we just did errands. Costco, Famous Footwear, Pioneer books, and Fun City (a costume shop). That night though, our ward had a fabulous party, Valentine's Day in Venice. They had contests for Cupid, and so of course I dressed up Savannah as a little Cupid! She ended up being the only one dressed up! Everyone commented on how cute she looked! I got the bow and arrow from our friend's costume store. I used a cloth diaper as part of the costume-since I didn't have any white bloomers. I think it made it a bit more authentic anyway. I couldn't find any wings anywhere, so I ended up just drawing them on white cardstock and cutting them out. They turned out really well, I was very surprised. I taped the bow and arrow on her back, since she wouldn't hold them. I had her in a onesie and tights b/c it was just too cold to have her in only the cloth diaper!

They also had a dance, where some ward members are ballroom dancers and taught a quick lesson on Salsa. I didn't get any pictures of Jason and I dancing0, -but we did catch a slow dance! There's not very many times that I can get Jason to dance, so it's nice when an opportunity comes! A friend got a picture of me dancing the Hustle to "YMCA" with a friend, Doug Anderson. It was fun.

On Monday, Jason and I went out to lunch at Olive Garden. It was our first time leaving Savannah with a babysitter for longer than 30 minutes. I think Jason has been more nervous about leaving her for long periods of time! I have to admit though, while we were gone, I was thinking of her a lot and wondering if she was okay-she started crying as we left, even though they had her in another room. They told us she was fine once she got to go outside. She LOVES to go outside and see animals, dogs and birds are what she sees mostly.

Since having Savannah in our lives, it has helped us in our relationship to grow stronger and closer together. We are so blessed to have each other, and to know that we can be Together Forever as a family! I love you Jason!

How quickly I forget

2009-02-09T14:54:00.002-07:00

Last night...
......... our Stake had a wonderful Fireside. "Greater Than Us All" and the music is by Kenneth Cope. It was uplifting and rejuvenating-even with Savannah there! If you haven't heard of this, it's about Jesus Christ and his life. I first saw this firside back in my college days, down in Tucson, when my good friend, Karen Sanders (now Karen Pellet), attended Uof A. Her institute was putting it on and another friend, Lisa and I happened to be down there visiting her. When I saw this, I was moved and my testimony of our Savior was strengthened. In fact, it was a great influence on my decision to serve a mission.
I was wanting to see this again, so after Savannah woke up from her nap, we were able to quickly get ready and made it. We were lucky to have gotten great seats, near the front with some friends of ours. I was reminded of how blessed I am and how I could be a better person, wife and mother.
This morning......
.........I slept in (cuz little miss Savannah wouldn't sleep through the night) and guess woke up on the wrong side of the bed, cuz I seemed to be short tempered and easily frustrated. Couldn't seem to remember how blessed I am and enjoy the day with Jason and Savannah

Anyway, this was something I was thinking about today and wanted to write this down so that I could revert back to this another day, when I'm being "forgetful".
I am so grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for the opportunity it gives me to learn and to grow-especially at this time that I'm working with the Primary kids. I have a beautiful daughter who brings joy to my life in a way I didn't think possible. I have a loving, patient, giving husband who is so sweet and kind to me-even when I am not being so nice to him. I love you, Jason!!!

January Update

2009-02-04T18:45:00.004-07:00

COOKING-CROCK POT STYLE

Okay, so if you know me, you know that I DO NOT like the kitchen-cooking and cleaning. We have made do with eating out, mac N cheese, burritos, top ramen, and other simple stuff. Since having Savannah, Jason has stepped up to the plate on cooking more (and cleaning). Well I don't know what got into me, but I started looking up recipes that I could do in the crock pot, for a couple of reasons. I wanted to see if there were simple -meaning 2-4 ingredients - meals, and also to warm up the house with it. Well I found quite a few and have been making meals using my crock pot. To name a few.....

-Spaghetti sauce (this actually has lots of ingredients, needless to say I've only made it once, but plan to make it again, because it makes LOTS of sauce)

-Meat Lasagna (THis is our FAVORITE one, I've already made it 3x's I think and will most definitely make it more) Plus, if you have a specific tupperware set, you can 'brown' the meat in the microwave. Plus, the noodles are UNCOOKED when you layer the lasagna in crock pot-sweet!

-Split Pea Soup (this is another FAVORITE) Savannah even LOVES this too!

-Potato soup (Savannah and I like this, Jason thinks it's okay, not his fave)

-Veggie Lasagna (I just made this last night, it's pretty good, but not as good as the meat one)

-chili

-hamburger soup

There are a few more, but I can't seem to remember them all right now.

I just need to find a way to them started in the morning now, so that they can be ready for when Jason takes his lunch (around 2 pm).

Needless to say Jason is enjoying this new me!!! A friend of ours (a guy) told me that Jason told him -one night while they were playing Halo 3 online- that he's loving the fact that I've found a way to enjoy cooking.

I'm hoping that this will help us to save on our food bill-since we're down to one income. Making food at home helps us to not eat out near as much anymore.

SAVANNAH'S BIRTHDAY

So Savannah's birthday fell on a Monday, and normally, my family would've done a get together on the Sunday before, and that's what I was gonna do, and I was going to have it at my parent's house - since I have no family that live out in the East Valley. When I called my mom though to ask her, she said they were gonna be out of town that weekend. So we ended up having her party on Wednesday, after her birthday, because that was when Jason had his next day off.

Savannah loves to be around other kids and enjoyed playing with her cousins. Below is a picture of her with Bobbie Jo and Brooklyn playing with this dollhouse. Jason said she really liked that dollhouse. (Hopefully she'll grow out of that stage before long, we can't afford one!!)

Here she is in her Feeding Table, wondering what is going on... while we get a candle for her cupcake.

I wish I could share something funny or cute that she did while we were singing "Happy Birthday"to her, but there isn 't anything to share, all she did was look around at us as we were singing as well as looked at the glowing candle on the cupcake.

She didn't know what the cupcake was-since this was her first one ever- and so at first she just looked at it and when she touched it, she looked like she didn't like that! This is funny because that's like me. I can't stand to have my fingers feel dirty. (One of the reasons cooking is not my favorite thing to do-I have to rinse or wipe my hands off after handling messy foods)

Anyway, so at first it seemed Savannah was gonna need some coaxing to eat her cupcake, but I think she got a lick of her finger and shortly after that, she dug in!!! She found out that she REALLY liked that cupcake!

A picture of her after opening her presents, as you can see she got her first Cabbage Patch Kid-Newborn. She really wanted to play with it right away! Only thing is, the CPK diaper (which is actually a cloth with velcro and elastic on the backside) doesn't stay on her at all. Means I need to make some doll clothes for her, so she's not naked all the time!

It's so cute to see her play with her CPK, whose name is, Britney Nancy, because she'll hold her up to her chest (sometimes upside down, but she doesn't know this yet) and she'll rock side to side while holding her! It's so darn adorable!!!!

Since she's turned one, she all of a sudden decided she didn't want baby food anymore and wants to eat whatever Jason and I happen to be eating! I don't know what brought on this sudden change, but I am finding it harder and harder to get her to finish the food that we have for her. Plus, since I'm not that good on making fruits or veggies, I still buy some of those to feed her a little bit of the green beans, peas, bananas, pears, and sweet potatoes.

JASON'S NEW WORK SCHEDULE

Yay, Jason's new work schedule let's him have Saturdays off now!!!! (as well as Sun and Mon too) AND.....he's home before I go to bed! (Before, he was getting off at 1 am and not getting home until 1:20 or sometimes later.)

PRIMARY CALLING IN WARD

(This actually happened back in late October, but didn't mention it yet) I got called to be in the Primary, as the Secretary. I'm still working on getting things updated and put together. I'm almost there. Jason and I have been in the Primary, as Sunbeams teachers, but it's sure different when you're a Primary leader. I never realized all the stuff that goes on "behind-the-scenes"!!! It's a wonderful opportunity for me to get to know the kids in our ward and hope that I can be a support to my fellow leaders and example to the kids. I feel overwhelmed sometimes at this, but I know that I have an opportunity to learn and grow.

Anyway, that is a little update on us in the Prince household.

She's One Years Old Today!!!

2009-01-12T21:25:00.004-07:00

Happy Birthday To You, Savannah!!!!

1-12-08 9 lb & 2 oz, 8:22 pm, 20 in long.

Here are some of the very first pictures of her in the hospital, when she was only a few hours old. I can't believe it's already been a whole year, since she was born. So much has happened since then. It's gone by so fast.
I remember being so nervous about holding her for the first time, worried that she wouldn't like me, or know me. My worry was heightened when I woke up many hours later, realizing that I didn't get to hold her first thing (because I had to have an emergency C-section-), wondering if she would remember my voice.

Jason was so sweet (and tired-afterward) to take care of her, feeding and changing her while I was still recuperating from the surgery.

*************************************************************************************

We have sometimes been overwhelmed when we realize the importance of our duties as parents, but we remember how sweet and precious she is to us and it's all worth it to us.

We are so grateful to have her in our lives, she's such a happy and delightful baby. We have enjoyed her thus far, and look forward to the next year with her.

Just Jason & me

2009-01-07T16:54:00.003-07:00

I figured I'd post some pictures of just Jason and I, before the star of our family arrived!

I think this was in summer 2005, sometime after we were married and when we lived in Tempe-the first time!
This was before we were married, at a friend's Christmas party in 2002.

This was taken just before we were married, our friends went with us to take our pictures at the Temple grounds. (2005)

This was our picture we used in the Wedding announcements. (2005)

Just chillin...

2009-01-07T16:45:00.003-07:00

We found out that Savannah loves to try to get into the fridge, whenever we open the door. Here she's kinda irritated that the door keeps closing on her!

Sign language & Dancing!!!!

2009-01-07T10:42:00.005-07:00

I've been reading a book by Diane Ryan, titled, "The Complete Idiot's Guide, Baby Sign Language". We've been working on sign language for her. She's learned how to do "more" and we're working on "eat" and "nurse" and then we'll learn "hurt/pain". Most babies are very observant from 9 months and up, so they are able to imitate your actions. We are excited to watch her grow and be able to communicate with us better.

I had to post this video we got of her dancing!! We think it's SO ADORABLE!!! She must've learned it on her own, because I didn't work at trying to teach her. Amazing how little ones pick up on everything we do.

She's our little headbanger, to tunes of Celine Dion-no less!!

Savannah opening a present

2009-01-04T19:00:00.002-07:00

Savannah kinda got the hang of unwrapping, but it took a little bit of coercing, as I'm sure it does with most babies at around 1 year or less!!!

You can tell how excited she is over books! She almost always has one in her hands when she's walking around. She is also always getting into our bookshelves whenever we happen to leave our bedroom door open. Once she sees it open, she hightails it for the bookshelves and pulls out as many books as she can!!

Remember our Christmas Party game?

2009-01-04T18:53:00.002-07:00

Well, here's a video of the winner...

Yes, Dan Petrakovitz was the winner, so he and his wife, Britney, will be able to enjoy a night at the movies on us!

Congratulations Dan and Britney!

Christmas Day Pictures

2008-12-31T10:27:00.003-07:00

Here are some pictures of Savannah on Christmas Day.... It seemed at first, that she was more excited over the paper ripping part than the present!

She's opening a gift from her Grandma Wendy, a cute little pink outfit!

Somehow, after opening the first present, she sat down and got the bow stuck on her PJ's-on her bum no less!!

Here she is with Daddy, who's trying to get her interested in the present.

We got home from Granny & Papa's, and started opening stockings.

Christmas Dress

2008-12-30T22:30:00.003-07:00

This is the dress she wore to church on the Sunday before Christmas. Since Mandy is in the Primary program in church, and there were a lot of people already gone for the holidays, we didn't go to church with Mandy's parents in Buckeye, like we've done in the past. Maybe next year.

She did have on white tights with her black shoes, but they were taken off, so that she could walk around without slipping and sliding on the tile floors.

Christmas Eve

2008-12-30T21:56:00.003-07:00

In Mandy's family, a big family dinner is set for Christmas Eve. When she was growing up, they did name draws for gift exchanges for Christmas Eve, but since the family has grown too big and not everybody is able to come to the dinner (those from far away) it has been done away with. The last couple of years though our cousin has hosted a White Elephant party, separate from Christmas Eve dinner. This year, they weren't able to host a party, so Mandy's brother and sister-in-law, Ralph & Cheryl, hosted the Eve dinner and added White Elephant for the night. It was much fun! There were some pretty good gifts.....Mandy wanted a musical candy dish in the shape of a big Hershey Kiss, but it got stolen from her. Anyway, here are some pictures from that night......Savannah with her Daddy, after the dinner. One of her cousins, A.J., and her Uncle George, are in the background.

Here's Savannah with her 2nd cousin-I think? (it's her cousin, Brian's, baby girl), Caitlin Sedig. It looks like she's ready to run, doesn't it? Caitlin isn't too sure what is going on.

Here's Savannah with Mommy! I think she sees the camera and is trying to reach for it. It's how we got her to start walking, we'd wave the camera from aways and she'd want it....

Christmas Stockings

2008-12-23T22:10:00.003-07:00

I am so excited for this Christmas. It's Savannah's first Christmas! Kids bring a special excitement into the festivities and since I haven't been a kid for a good long while, I've missed that excitement.
I also hope that I can focus my festivities on giving and serving, in observance of Christ's birth and life. Christ is a wonderful exemplar of service and love. How grateful we are for His example and Love.

Merry Christmas to YOU!!

This year, I decided that I was gonna be a little homemaker......I made our stockings and bought enough material to make more, for later. I think they turned out pretty good, if I may say so myself. My mom has an embroidery machine and so she was able to put our names on the cuffs.

Here is a picture of our Christmas tree. You can see that this even has a lining in it......

I didn't think to have Jason take any pictures while I was cutting out the material and stuff, so I only have this picture of my small sewing station set up in the living room. I had to do this while Savannah was sleeping, or else she'd get into it and I wouldn't get much done. She actually was awake part of the time that I had this out, and she was absolutely curious about it-as I'm sure all babies would be.

And here are the finished products!! Green for the "boys" and Red for the "girls"!

I have lots of memories of my mom making clothes for me and my dolls (including Barbies) and costumes for me, and I think it would be great if I am able to do even half of the things she did, for Savannah.

Another video of Gift Scramble game

2008-12-23T01:29:00.003-07:00

Here's a video of Andrew, Steve, and Dave attempting to unwrap this prize.

Other Christmas party pictures

2008-12-23T00:32:00.003-07:00

After the Gift Scramble game, and a "Guess the # of Kisses in a Jar" game, we had the traditional White Elephant Exchange as well. Unfortunately, I didn't specify that it was per person, so a few of the couples only brought one gift, instead of 2. Oh well. Next time I'll be sure to specify!
Dan was one of the first ones, and he had called earlier in the day, asking about what kind of gifts to bring, good or not-so-good.....he took the plunge.....that is, he got the toilet plunger! Ugh! He tried to leave it behind when he left, but I kindly reminded him to take it, only to find out the next morning that he put it on the hood of our car with a sticky note (I already forgot what it said!) Anyway, he got the last "word" on that one!
Jessica started out with the Chocolate Dream gift, but she ended up trading for the label maker.
Here's Tiffany giving it a try in the Gift Scramble game. I heard it was a lot of fun. I missed a lot of it, because I had some friends that were having a hard time finding our place, so I was on the phone with them helping them with directions. I felt bad that they missed this game, but they were able to go home with a pretty nice gift, from Costco.

Christmas Party

2008-12-23T00:20:00.003-07:00

We had a Christmas Party with some of our friends and played the Gift Scramble. It was a fun game that Jason found on the internet. A "Prize" is wrapped in a small box, which is then wrapped in a bigger box, which is also wrapped in a bigger box. We had our prize wrapped in 10 boxes, each individually wrapped! A pair of dice is being rolled by each person, when 7 was rolled, it was time to switch out. Jason got some videos of it, and I got some pictures as well. The following video is of Brenda at her turn at trying to open the gift with oven mitts and then Felice getting her turn too.

M&M's

2008-12-15T17:40:00.004-07:00

I don't know when kids should start having candy/chocolate, but I don't think 11 months is the age to start. However, Savannah seems to think differently!
Anybody who knows me, knows I LOVE chocolate (though I'm not that different from many females, I'm sure) but I'm especially fond of the m&m candies!! I had a little ziploc baggie of some m&m's for a snack while we were out for a walk. We couldn't go today, due to rainy day, so I brought everything back in and knew she would like to play with the diaper bag. (She has this thing about taking things out of purses, bags, boxes, canisters and putting them back in-I think this is normal?) I made sure I took out the little baggie of m&m's so she wouldn't get into it. Apparently, I didn't put them far enough out of her reach, because the next thing I know, I look over and she has found the baggie and the m&m's are in her lap, bursting out of the bag and she's chomping away, with some blue color around her mouth! Luckily I dug it out before it "melts" in her mouth. However, when I gathered the m&m's, she watching me, and as I walked away with the bag, she realized she wasn't getting anymore and proceeded to cry, I mean really cry. She's never done that before when we've had to take something away. She was not happy!

Sleepless Nights

2008-12-15T17:24:00.002-07:00

Yes, she's 11 months old now, but there are still many nights that I have to get up with her. But a couple of nights ago, she was up every hour from 12:30 pm until 3:30 and then she stayed awake until 5:30!!! I finally got to lay down, tired, crying, and irritated, only to be awakened 30 min. later by a demanding Savannah! This time, Jason, sweet and patient that he is, let me get some sleep as he tried to get her down. She didn't go back down until close to 9 am and even then she only slept for 45 minutes. At this time, I decided she was ready to be fed, so I nursed her in bed and she slept for another 2.5 hours in bed with us! My oh my, was I a cranky mama for the rest if the day! When I laid her down for sleep that night, I hoped she would be good and tired to sleep-but an hour later, she was awake and it was enough to bring me to tears, dreading a repeated sleepless night. She did go down though and slept soundly this time for a good many hours. I was very relieved.
My little Savannah loves to be held and cradled to sleep, I think that's part of the culprit. I guess this is the price I pay for wanting to hold her so much, especially while she's sleeping-during the day!

Halloween--Bumble Bee

2008-12-09T16:09:00.003-07:00

I know, I'm so behind in posting our happenings.... I still haven't even finished about our UTAH trip back in October!!!

The weeke before Halloween we went to our friends' Halloween Party out in Queen Creek. It was great to see them and their family!

Then on Halloween night, our ward had a Halloween party, Harry Potter theme! It was great, they did a wonderful job on recreating Diagon Alley.

Vannah was a little Bumble Bee Stinger, I was a Witch, and Jason was Robin Hood.

Watch out, here she comes!

2008-12-09T16:05:00.002-07:00

On Thanksgiving night, we were able to help her gain confidence and start walking back and forth between us. The next day, she realized it was a fun game and once she got to "mom", she'd immediately turn around and head back to "dad"-all on her own, without any coaxing!
Without further ado, here she is........drumroll please..............

Almost Walking!!!

2008-11-27T00:00:00.004-07:00

She started on Thursday 11/20 to take some steps on her own!!! We are so excited! For the past couple of months, she's been holding our hands to go walking. The last few weeks though, she started to reach for and grab our fingers and start going, actually pulling-like she won't even try to walk unless she's got somebody's finger to hold! Well, on Thursday (11/20) we just got done with some family pictures that were being taken at the Mesa Temple. We went inside the Visitor Center, I had to use the bathroom while J and Savannah waited for me. When I came out, Savannah was leaning against a bench facing outward (like she's leanig against the couch in the previous video I posted). When she saw me, she got excited and then, on her own, she leaned forward and actually took 2 steps OF HER OWN FREE WILL. In the past, when we try to get her to walk between the two of us, she won't let go of our hand, or if we do, she immediately sits down, or if she knows we're letting go, she'll lean forward and practically fall on her face to get to whoever is there to "catch" her.
Anyway, later in the day, we were at Best Buy in the DVD section while Jason used the bathroom(Jason wanted to show me the camera that he wants to get-a Cannon 990is or something like that) and Savannah was playing with the DVDs in the aisle and she let go of my hand and took 3 steps toward me!! Yay!

Tonight (Wed 11/26), we were at our friends' house playing BINGO and Savannah was standing next to their fridge with no hands, occupied with a letter magnet, for a really long time-the longest she's EVER stood by herself! And throughout the night, she was taking a lot of steps back and forth to people. I think it'll only be days until she's really walking on her own (am I being too confident in my daughter's skills?)
I don't have any pictures/video of her yet on this, but hope to post some soon.

Silly Savannah

2008-11-18T16:37:00.001-07:00

She was happily playing by herself and I hear her squealing and I look over and this is what she's doing:

Sleeping Cutey

2008-11-18T15:58:00.005-07:00

We went to do some errands this afternoon, after Savannah's morning nap. We went to Home Depot, Stapley's, (these first two, we stayed in the car while Daddy went in), Target, Fry's Grocery and lastly, Costco. By the time we got done with Costco, we had just enough time to grab some fast food and drop Jason off to work. Savannah ended up falling asleep before we made it home. I got the wagon out so that I could make one trip from the car to the house and I found a way to put Savannah in it, for the ride home-sleeping!! Above: Savannah sleeping in the wagon with the groceries and other shopping items. The box of Krispy Kremes even fell onto her legs and she didn't even flinch!

Below: Here are a couple of close-ups of her

Aren't babies just the cutest (and quietest) when they are sleeping?!

Below: She stayed asleep even as I unloaded the wagon!!

Thanks to Grandma Wendy, for letting us use this wagon-it's really come in handy!!

I was afraid that when I finally picked her up to put her in her crib, that she might wake up, but she went down just fine-though it was for only another 25 minutes.

Oct 23rd--Daddy got me to Laugh!!

2008-11-15T19:17:00.002-07:00

We thoroughly LOVE to hear Savannah laugh and giggle (who doesn't like to hear children's laughter though?) so we videoed it and wanted to share this with you as well!
This isn't her 1st time laughing, but we were able to get it on video (unlike one of the first attempts-as you can see in the previous video I shared below).
Savannah and I had gone to the Phx Zoo earlier in the day with our Playgroup, and she took a nap when we got home, so when she woke up, Jason wanted to spend some time with her and this is what came to be.....

June 29th-Almost laughing

2008-11-15T15:18:00.001-07:00

Back in June, Daddy was playing with Savannah and was making her laugh, but by the time I got the camera to video it, she wasn't gonna laugh anymore, she'd just smile real big! Oh well!

Sept 15th Standing Up Video

2008-11-15T13:04:00.005-07:00

Here's Savannah shortly after she's started crawling, but she'd been pulling herself up for a little bit and doing rasphberries too!!

Utah Trip Day 4-Oct 4th

2008-11-13T16:36:00.009-07:00

General Conference
We had the opportunity to listen to the morning session of General Conference. I realized, with an active 9 month old, that I had a difficult time focusing on the talks! Elder Neil A. Anderson's talk is titled, "You Know Enough" and he shares a time when he gave a blessing and in it he felt impressed to say, "Faith is not only a feeling; it's a decision. He would need to choose faith." I realized more about how agency-the freedom to choose- affects our lives and those around us. How blessed we are to have these teachings to guide us in this adventurous life!
Savannah played and then had a nap, with her Daddy, as you can see in the below picture. He has a way of getting her to go to sleep-on him, so that he can hold her!! He loves it and I think it is so sweet!!
During the Afternoon Session of Conference, we spent some time with Clark again, going to Walmart (Savannah needed some baby food). We ended up walking around and Clark and Savannah got tired out. We took Clark to his home so he could rest for the night and then Jason got dressed and went to the Priesthood session with his Uncle and Cousins. It's tradition in their family that the sons (those that live close by) will join their dad in attending this session while the wives and family come to the house to visit and get dinner ready. Once the men return, then they eat and there's ice cream for dessert. So below, is a picture of Savannah just before her Daddy left to go with Uncle Carl and cousins, Quinton, Tony, and Craig to Priesthood Session.Savannah missed her Daddy and loved being in his arms!

On occasion she would let me hold her too!

She discovered the joy of balloons on this night! She kept chasing after it and pulling on the balloon, thus making that squeaky noise it makes and she LOVED it!! You can see it in the photo below!

Jason's other cousin, Shauna, came over as well-her husband was away on a business trip-with her kids. Needless to say, there was a small crowd at Uncle Carl and Aunt Launa's house with all the cousins and kids! Yet, you could tell that they thoroughly enjoyed having their family around. We enjoyed being there to share in the happiness and visiting with the cousins. I would be thrilled to have my children and grandchildren around me when we are older. How blessed we are to know that Families can be Together Forever. It gives us a much deeper sense of what families mean to us.

Utah Trip Day 3-Oct 3rd

2008-10-21T15:57:00.005-07:00

GRANDPA CLARK
Today was the day that Savannah was able to see her Grandpa Clark for the first time! Her grandpa was SOO EXCITED to see her!! In fact, he didn't even know that we were in UT, until Jason called him on this morning and asked if he was working today. Lo and behold, he was off, and we announced that we were in UT and asked if we could come over. He was VERY surprised at this news!

Meeting Grandpa Clark outside his place

MISSION REUNION ACTIVITY

The other part of my Mission Reunion was getting together at a church building to visit with one another. It's always a delight to be among fellow missionaries and especially Pres. and Sis. Andersen. There was not a very big turnout this year, compared to a couple of years ago, but still good to be there.

With Pres. and Sis. Andersen

The Mission Reunion made me reminisce of my mission, the people that I served and got to know, as well as, remembering the times with my companions. What a wonderful people that reside in Hawaii. We never had to worry about being fed, the locals took very good care of us missionaries (many a missionary gained weight while serving-thankfully I wasn't one of them!)

Here is Savannah with her Daddy!! She's the twinkle in his eye!! We marvel that we have been blessed with a happy baby, who loves to smile!

Google Reader for bloggers

2008-10-21T15:48:00.003-07:00

Some of you might already know about Google Reader, but there might be some of you who don't use it. So I thought I would post about it for anyone who needs to get with the times.
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All you do is go to www.google.com/reader, click on ADD SUBSCRIPTION, then input all the blogs you love (one at a time).
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It's that easy. Then when you want to check to see if anyone has posted something new all you have to do is go to Google Reader and it tells you who has posted something new on their blog. It saves lots of time, so you don't have to check each blog on your list at a time. Must try it if you are not already addicticed to checking it 5 times a day!!
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If you have any websites that you do regular searches for (Craigslist, amazon, for example) then it can give you updates on those searches as well. (be sure to narrow the search, or else you'll have tons of updates to go through each day)
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Anyway, I hope this was somewhat helpful to you all!!

Being a Mom

2008-10-14T17:37:00.009-07:00

I'm surprised at how much I didn't know about being a mom. I figured with babysitting my nieces and nephews, I would have some kind of idea---NNOOOOOO! I was so wrong. It's so much different when it's your very own baby. I was so excited to be a mom, yet I was anxious too. I hope that that was normal? I'm so blessed that Jason and I were able to make it so that I could stay at home and be with her. I would be missing out on so much otherwise and I would be sad about that. Everyday I wake up to a Happy baby, who's usually playing in her crib, talking (babbling) to herself and perfectly content. When I walk into the room to get her, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to see the huge smile on her face that lets me know she knows me and is excited and happy to see me! How can life be any sweeter than that?

Here are a few pictures of me with her. There are not very many of me with her when she was younger, probably because I was to tired to get dressed or do my hair and makeup, I didn't look good enough for pictures. : )

1.13.08 Phoenix Indian Medical Center-Savannah's 1 day old!
2.17.08 Taking a nap
4.20.08 Savannah's Baby Blessing

6.7.08 Getting ready to go to shopping-FUN FUN FUN!

7.4.08 Up early for Tempe Ward Independance Day Breakfast and matching!

8.24.08

9.20.08 At Gage and Kalauna's house

10.10.08 Sitting outside under the trees, enjoying the beautiful weather!

Random photos

2008-10-14T17:14:00.004-07:00

LOOK AT ME!

9.24.08 She ALWAYS crawled to this place and would play with the VHS tapes (in their sleeves) and started standing up under the desk. This pic is when she decided to lean against the leg and let go of the crate. She thought she was neat stuff and tricky do!!

ROLLING

9.27.08 She is trying to figure out this toy! She loves the roller at the top of it, so she's always playing with that, more than "walking" with the toy.

Stand 9.28.08 The first time she stood all by herself for more than 1 second. I was able to grab the camera and click a picture before she "plopped" down on the floor! You can see how much she's concentrating on this feat!! I was so excited for her!!

Utah Trip Day 2-Oct 2

2008-10-14T16:29:00.006-07:00

-PREYED UPON-

We stayed the night with Jason's Aunt Bonnie on Wednesday night. As I was bringing in some luggage (I shoulda had Jason do this....but....) I walked in the door and felt something on my leg, by my left knee, and it kinda scared me. It kinda hurt, but not really bad. I'm not the type of girl that is "afraid" of bugs, so I wasn't freaking out or screaming or anything. I walked downstairs to the bathroom and pulled off my pants. I didn't see any bitemarks or bugs on my leg, so I sighed with relief. I peeked into my pant leg though and lo and behold, a Prey Mantis was in there!!!! That made me start to freak out!! I called out to Jason to rescue me and I stepped out of the bathrOom, while he went to work on taking care of my problem. Wow-I've never had anything like that happen before. Of course in the rush of things, I didn't get any pictures of this tale of mine, so you're gonna have to trust sweet little me that I'm telling the absolute truth of it! : )

-AUNT BONNIE-

We had a wonderful visit with Bonnie and then Christopher showed us all of his music and DVD collections. Bonnie is Jason's aunt on his mom's side.

Here's Savannah with her Great Aunt Bonnie. She does a lot of scrapbooking for her sisters and has kept the family contact list up-to-date, as well as keeping the family history too! Very impressive woman!
Here's Savannah and Dad with cousin Christopher. He was very shy and had to be convinced to be in the picture. Thank you Christopher! He loves music (80's--which is the best kind of course!) and DVD's.

The Mission Reunion consisted of 2 activities. Thursday night was a Temple trip to the Mt Timpanogas Temple. So we headed out to SLC for this and had a late start leaving Washington UT. Savannah slept most of the 4.5 hour trip to Taylorsville. When she was awake though, she was happy!

-TEMPLE TRIP-

I rushed to change my clothes and leave for American Fork. I ended up being too late to do the same session with all the other Elders & Sisters of the Mission, but was able to join in the last part of President's talk he gave in a reserved room. It was wonderful to see the Elders and Sisters, that I recognized, in the Temple. Of course in the rush of things, I was not able to get any pictures while at the Temple either-though I didn't have time anyway. (I just don't think to take pictures)

Jason stayed with Savannah, since she didn't know her Aunt Launa and Uncle Carl, to stay with them by herself.

Utah Trip Day 1-Oct 1st

2008-10-12T21:54:00.007-07:00

So I found out that I was having a Mission Reunion this year. Of course, I wanted to go, but we weren't sure our budget would be accomodating. The other reason for going was to visit family members, namely Jason's father-as he had not seen Savannah yet. It was at the last minute (on Monday evening) that we decided we would be able to go-driving. So Day One was Wed Oct the 1st.

Here she is with her hand on the plaque as though saying, "This is where we're at!"

We drove Flagstaff way and went through a canyon and stopped at the sightseeing stop (just before Jacob Lake) and let Savannah out to wriggle a little bit. There were a few puppy dogs that their owners let out to stretch and Savannah was watching them. She got to "pet" them too.

You can see that she's enjoying them in this picture.

Savannah did really well on this travel and even though we had a late start (we got out of N Phoenix at around 12:15 pm when I had wanted to leave at 9 am!!) it was a good trip up to St George-or rather Washington where one of Jason's aunts lives. We visited and stayed the night there.

Her face is a little bit dirty because I think I'd just fed her in the car!

This trip, she cried just about every time she was put back into the car seat. Now that she is mobile, apparently she realized how constricting the car seat is now! She didn't do that when we went to Texas a couple months ago.

(I'm a little late for blogging about this trip because I (we) have been playing catch up since arriving back home late Wed night-or rather early morning Thursday. Just today I was able to upload the pictures from our camera)

Saturday with family

2008-09-25T12:36:00.005-07:00

I found out from my mom that my aunt and uncle from New Mexico were coming to Buckeye. Also, one of my cousins, George, and his little family were coming over from San Diego. George's brother, Gage, lives in Buckeye with his wife, Kalauna, and new son, Brody. So I invited ourselves over for a visit! How nice of me huh?
Savannah meets some cousins for the first time. The newest to the family is Brody Gibson, he's 5 months old. His dad, Gage, is my cousin.
Savannah has taken to yelling out at random times, usually when she's excited. She meets Brody and does of couple of yells at him, and poor Brody, didn't know what to think, it scared him! I felt so bad! In this picture, it looks like Savannah's tongue is sticking out, but it's not. It's actually my aunt Suggie's finger. She is holding Savannah's hands and her index finger is poking out. That's George's son, Joshua in the background looking on.
This is Kalauna holding Brody as Savannah and him meet.They let us stay for dinner and afterward we played dominoes. That's Jason with Gage, my cousin, in blue and a side view of my uncle Gerald.

I didn't get any pictures of George and his family, Nora, Joshua and Natalia. My Aunt Suggie went to bed pretty early, so I don't have any pictures of her either! I didn't do a very good job at photoing everybody. Good thing Photography is not a hobby of mine, cuz I'd be terrible at it!

When I was younger, my aunt and uncle lived in Yuma, so I spent lots of summers in Yuma with their youngest daughter, Sariah. We were best pals all growing up (not to fret-we're still best pals!). I have memories of swimming in their pool and my uncle playing on his guitar and singing.

Anyway, it was great to see them again and to see Brody now. What a cutie pie! He has the sweetest smiles! Savannah kept making him cry by yelling and squealing! Poor little guy!

TA-DA! (Tommy's somersault)

2008-09-25T11:13:00.003-07:00

Tommy Griffin is our neighbor boy, his dad, Dave is one of Jason's roommates from before we got married and has been a great friend since. Dave likes to come over to visit and play Halo 3 with Jason, so on last Saturday he came over, Tommy came too. Tommy "played" with Savannah. Afterward Tommy found our boppy and somehow it started him on doing somersaults!

Here he is: (it's a little shaky because Jason is holding both Savannah and the camera and Savannah wanted to "help"!!)

Sept 21---Jason's Birthday!!!

2008-09-22T23:28:00.006-07:00

Jason turned 31 this year! Unfortunately Savannah and I were not feeling well come Sunday, so we weren't much company for him. On Saturday, we got to see some of my family in Buckeye, and we had cheesecake, which is Jason's favorite kind of dessert.

Needless to say, this year went by without much fanfare. He appreciated the phone calls he got from his family.

He did get to spend some time with his friend, Dave, playing Halo 3 on Saturday and Sunday.

Tommy came over with Dave, on Saturday, and played with Savannah-kind of-as much as a 16 month old boy can "play" with an 8 month old girl! It was kinda cute.

Before they left, Tommy got the Boppy out and started to entertain us with his somersaults! It was so cute to watch him. He would stand right inside the curve of the Boppy, put his hands up and then bend over and he'd fall over onto the floor and then he'd clap!! I have a video of him, I'll have to add it tomorrow!