Lindy's 1st Birthday

**I've been waiting to post this until I had all my pictures loaded. Sadly, all the pictures on my camera were somehow wiped out. I have no pictures or videos of Lindy's first birthday. I'm devastated. Tears have been shed over it. If any of you readers have some, please, please, please send them to me.

Lindy's first birthday was so much fun! We only invited family over so it was fairly small, but still a blast. It was rubber duck themed since Lindy LOVES rubber ducks. Chelsea and Jackson went to town with the decorating and my mom got some darling duck balloons. I had no idea they were going to do all that, it was awsome!

We did a potato bar for the adults and then watched Lindy tear into her cake. I made two - one for Lindy to destroy and one for everyone to eat. She was a little bit hesitant at first, but after Allan took her hand and smashed it into the cake, she was good to go. She did exactly what I hoped she would- mutilate it and get it everywhere. It was all over her hands, legs, torso, feet and hair. Fantastic!

I decided to play around with fondant for the cake for everybody to eat. I'm really excited about how it turned out. Not too bad for my first, eh? The ducks are the only thing that isn't edible. I got real ones for Lindy to play with after.


It actually tasted really good. Usually fondant is not so great, but this stuff was. Woo hoo!

Lindy then opened presents. It was fun to watch. She was actually more interested in the presents than the wrapping paper. I've heard that's rare. :) She got some clothes and lots of new toys.

Christmas 2010

This Christmas was a lot of fun for us. I think it was mainly because it was Lindy's first Christmas. I thought she'd be far more interested in the wrapping and tissue paper than her own gifts but that wasn't the case. She loved her gifts. It was so fun to watch her play with them. Santa brought her a full lenth mirror for her room. There's one at my parents' house that she loves and always goes straight for so she needed one for her own room. She also got a monster bowling set from us. I figured she can play with the textures for now and when she gets older she can actually bowl with it. She also got new binkies, puffs to eat and some Hot Wheels cars. She really enjoys pushing them around the kitchen. She was happy all day. It was great!

I think this was my best Christmas ever because not only did I get to celebrate Lindy's first Christmas but got the best gift in the entire world! Allan got me a piano. A real piano! It's beautiful! I've wanted one for so long. I would've loved to have forgone a bed for a piano when we got married but Allan wouldn't have it. I cried when I saw it. I also cried everytime I thought about it and tried to tell people what Allan got me. I'm now past the tears so I can blog about it. Apparently Allan's cousins bought a new grand and so they gave this one to us. How nice is that?! I'm so excited to get it moved to my house (it's currently in my parents' garage) so I can play.

Our Crazy Christmas Season

December rushed in and now it's almost over. I can't believe how quickly time flies! It has truly been a month of great trials and great blessings.

It started with lots of studying for finals. Allan is finally done with school for this semester and is so grateful for the break. He did very, very well in 2 of his classes and well, we'll wait and see about the last one. But hey, it's over!..until January.

Last week I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). It's a form of arthritis that affects your knees, shoulders, heels, pelvis, spine and others and causes random tender spots around your body. The main symptoms are chronic stiffness and pain and fatigue. This is my 4th chronic disease. I'm getting quite the collection here. Haha. This one wasn't a devastation though because I've had symptoms for over 10 years. It just hasn't been advanced enough to be picked up by x-rays and MRIs (they look for sclerosis in the pelvis as the main sign) until now. It's just nice to not be told "We don't know why you hurt. You just do." because that's what I've been told for the last 10 years. At least now that there's a diagnosis they can do things to help me. So it's actually kind of a relief to finally have the official diagnosis.

My singing group, Voices, started to perform and we had 24 performances in just 2 weeks, not including the 6 Christmasgrams we did in just one day. It was a blast, but very tiring. I'm so happy to have a whole week off. We perform at the North Visitors Center at Temple Square on Thursday and then have one last performance just for family and friends on the 26th and then are done...until we start practicing for our singing Valentines in January. :)

I'm amazed I made it to every performance because like I said, a huge part of AS is fatigue. I was truly being sustained by the Lord. In fact, the day after our crazy 2 weeks, I crashed pretty hard. I didn't get out of bed much for about 2 days. Luckily though, I didn't actually get sick. It was a HUGE blessing.

Our last trial was that Allan lost his job last week. Needless to say, we are pretty stressed. It's also been a great blessing because it's truly brought Allan and I closer together and closer to the Lord. We've felt a constant feeling of peace both with each other and in general. It's so nice! But if anyone knows of job openings, please let us know! We so appreciate everyone's prayers.

I'm hoping to post a Christmas card on our blog soon as we just didn't have the time nor energy to get them made and mailed out to people. In the meantime, happy holidays to all!

Halloween 2010

I love Halloween. I love dressing up, I love trick-or-treating (I went until I was a senior in high school and cannot wait to take Lindy next year!) and I absolutely LOVE candy! Seriously, whoever came up with the whole idea of Halloween was brilliant. I usually go all out for costumes, but this year, I just didn't have the energy. I did try though. We dressed up for Allan's work party and I was going to finish the costumes for the next day, but never did. Because our costumes weren't completely finished for the work party, I didn't take pictures and then didn't dress up after. On the 30th (Halloween in UT when the 31st is on Sunday), I ended up having problems with my pump and my blood sugar skyrocketed. I couldn't get it down for several hours. When it finally did come down, I couldn't get it back up. So like I said, I was just too tired for dressing everybody up. But I'll tell you about our costumes since I don't have pictures.

We went as Earth, Wind & Fire, one of my favorite bands ever! Lindy was earth. I put her in a green dress with brown pants and brown boots. I glued flowers all over her dress and made her a headdress with little leaves and berries all over it. She looked darling! Sadly, she didn't like the head piece much and kept pulling it off. Oh well.

I was wind. I wore a long, sparkly silver skirt with a short-sleeved, shimmery silver top and a light blue, long-sleeved shirt underneath. I also had silver and light blue streamers hanging from my arms. I also had blue eyeshadow that went past my eyes and almost to my hairline (going sideways). I drew wind bursts coming from the sides of my eyes. It actually looked pretty cool and I had someone guess what I was just by the makeup because I didn't have my costume on at the time.

Allan was fire. He had a bright orange shirt on. Our newspaper bags come in red, orange and yellow so I cut them up and attached them to his shirt. He was supposed to wear a bright orange leisure suit (ya know, disco style to matche the times of Earth, Wind and Fire), but it didn't come in time. I was sad about that.

To top it all off, Allan and I had fro wigs and all 3 of us had microphones that I made from a paper towel roll and tin foil. So we dressed as the elements with some 70's disco flair thrown in to authenticate it. It was a blast! I just wish we had pictures!

We did go to my parents' house for chili and cinnamon rolls (a Halloween tradition) and it was delicious! My mom even got me gluten free cinnamon rolls so I wouldn't be left out. She's so awesome!

Every year, my brother, Jackson, makes a haunted house. Due to the high winds this year and everything getting blown down, he couldn't do it. Instead, he built an amazing enclosure going up the stairs to the front porch with walls, caskets, freaky clowns, trees, motion sensored psycho man, black lights, etc. Some kids were too scared to come to the door and just passed by. One little girl screamed hysterically when the psycho man went off and couldn't stop crying. It was sad, but funny. He did a great job. Once again, I wish I had pictures!!

It's not her costume, butBrad did send me this picture of Lindy. How cute is she?! Miranda put her in it when they came to carve pumpkins.

After dinner, we went to Seth & Cindy's house in Provo for games.

Pumpkin Carving

Until this year, I hadn't carved pumpkins in SO long. I'm not sure why. I love doing it. This year we invited Brad and Miranda over for dinner and pumpkin carving. Brad was hysterical (as usual) and brought his bag of pumpkin carving tools. Basically, it was all of his power tools. What's even more funny is that he and Allan used them for their pumpkins!

I was lame and *didn't get pictures of the pumpkins when they were done, but got pics of Brad and Allan having fun with their "pumpkin carving tools." Our pumpkins were awesome though! We used the stencil things from the carving books and they turned out great! I did an owl in a tree, Allan did three skulls and Brad did a spider in a web. Miranda decided she didn't want to use the stencil and did an awesome mummy face. She didn't like it, but I loved it.

Brad's "Pumpkin Carving Kit" and the boys looking manly.

Brad's, Mine and Miranda's. I don't know why we don't have a closeup of Allan's. His was pretty dang cool, too.

All the pumpkins finished (Allan's is front and center)

*Brad sent me these pics of our pumpkins! YAY!

4th of July Weekend

You've gotta love it when the 4th of July is on a Sunday because instead of just one day of the holiday, it becomes a whole weekend. And we certainly enjoyed ours. We went to the Riverton parade on Friday night with my family. What made the parade so fun was that it was all the adults who went crazy for the candy and were yelling for it and running out in the street to get it. After the parade we had a BBQ and played volleyball at my parents' house. We also did that on Saturday & Sunday too. While we played, Lindy sat in her Bumbo on the porch & cheered us on.

At the parade w/ Grandma

Lindy, Uncle Brock & Grandpa

Brock had this thing for the cows at the parade & so I had to take a picture of him with them. It was actually fairly entertaining. He also tried & tried to get a t-shirt but nobody would throw him one. It took a long time, but when he finally got one, it was WAY too small. He put it on anyway & it was a total belly shirt. It was pretty dang funny.

I had some really cute patriotic outfits for Lindy. Sadly, the only picture I got of any of them was her headband that my brother put on. He struggled to keep a straight face and we struggled with keeping the camera still enough while laughing to take the picture. It was well worth all the tries though.


On Monday we went swimming at my cousins' pool. Of course Lindy loved it. She was all the entertainment we needed. She was squealing and splashing like crazy. I told my mom to video it, but it didn't work so well. I'll just have to settle for the pictures this time. Videos to come later. Unfortunately we didn't get to see fireworks, so we'll definitely take Lindy to those for the 24th.

Spoiled

This past weekend Lindy was completely spoiled. It was quite fun for me though. My mom took me shopping on Friday for new clothes for her and we had so much fun. We probably spent 15 minutes looking at the clothes we did buy and well over an hour looking at the rest. Baby clothes are just so dang cute and fun to look at!

Then on Saturday my grandparents (they are SO excited to be great-grandparents) took us shopping for her again. This time Allan got to pick out some clothes, which I think he thoroughly enjoyed. He picked a purple set, of course. He loves her in purple. I think he's getting sick of all the pink. Haha! So now Lindy has a brand new wardrobe with lots of purple included (although there's still lots of pink).

With all the new clothes, I love playing dress up with her. It's like she's my little doll. I never get upset when she spits up or has a blowout diaper because it just means I get to dress her in a new outfit. It's silly, but at least I don't get upset, right?

Luckily Allan and I got spoiled too. We went to Texas Roadhouse for lunch. It was amazing. Then my grandma got me an Easter dress. I can't remember the last time I got one. It was so much fun! I've decided that every female, no matter what age, should get a new dress at Easter. If it's the only new thing they get the whole year, they should get a new Easter dress each year. :)

But clothes and food wasn't all we were spoiled with. We didn't forget about the real holiday and loved listening to conference this weekend. It was such a great reminder of what our Savior did for us. I can't wait for the May Ensign so I can go over them again. I love the feeling of peace I feel when listening to our leaders speak.

Lindy & me showing off her Easter dress from Grandma Arnell

Lindy with her new Easter basket

(We'll use it the next few years for treats. This year it's just for pics.)

Allan's favorite new purple outfit

Complete with bunny beanie (try saying that 10 times fast)

Another new dress (from Whitney). She really looks like a doll in this picture.

St. Patrick's Day

Growing up my mom always did a lot for holidays. Although St. Patrick's Day is a small one, she still celebrated. She would dye our food green for the day. I decided to carry on this fun tradition. For breakfast I made green eggs & ham and cream of wheat. For dinner it was ham with a mustard brown sugar glaze and mashed potatoes. And then of course there was milk for both meals.

Cream of wheat

Green eggs & ham

The completed meal

Mustard brown sugar glaze on ham w/ mashed potatoes

While these all look absolutely disgusting, they were all very delicious! Allan thought it was pretty cool. I love food coloring!

Goodbye 2009!

December came and went in a flash! I can't believe how time flies. Our holiday season was full of family, parties, Christmas lights at Temple Square and fun. We got to go to my family Christmas party which was a blast. My extended family is HUGE (my dad is 9 of 10 kids)! Allan is still working on getting names down, but is getting better. We always eat and play games and one specific tradition is playing Seven On The Line at the end of the party. It's a game where you all get in a line and shoot once from the free throw line. However many people in a row make it is how many points there are on the line. If you miss, you subtract that many points from your original 7. When you're out of points, you're out of the game. Allan doesn't play sports, but I was SO impressed with his shooting skills! He managed to stay in for a long time, even under my little brother's constant heckling of "NO PRESSURE!" He even stayed in longer than Chelsea, who is on a basketball scholarship! Who knew?! My dad won this year (and last) so I was proud. :)

It was a blast to have Chelsea home for the holidays. We got to meet her boyfriend, Andrew and we all love him. He's really patient with her and takes all our teasing in stride. He started to tease us about getting Baby U of U clothing but we told him we'd get him Yankees apparel in return (he's a die hard Red Sox fan). He got the point pretty quickly. Ha ha! It was nice for me to have someone to hang out with during the day as I'm home all day by myself. She even went to a doctor appt with me and got to see an ultrasound of Baby for the first time. I think she's about as excited for Baby to come as we are. She likes to use my belly button as a microphone and talk to her. She also like to get after her and tell her to be nice when she was kicking me. I loved watching. I'm excited for Chelsea to come back home right after Baby is born.

We spent Christmas with Allan's family this year up in Smithfield (Logan). From what I understand, it was the first time all 4 siblings were there for Christmas in about 8 years or so. We taught them how to play Nertz and played it a lot! It was a lot of fun to watch them learn and get mad at each other when they beat them to a card. But we're definitely up for a rematch anytime! (Hint to Liz & Isaac)

For New Year's we went dancing (of course!) and had a great time. I'm surprised I had the energy to dance AND stay up until midnight, but somehow managed. We're so glad to have dancing in common. It really brings us together.

HAPPY 2010!

The True Spirit of Christmas

I've been so overwhelmed with these feelings recently that I decided to post them. Maybe it's due to pregnancy, maybe it's not. Either way, this is what's going on.

Every year my family goes all out for Christmas. They always have. We have always had a Christmas tree (or two) and lights up on our house. In addition to this, we have tons and tons of other Christmas decorations around the house. I noticed this year that they even spilled into the bathroom. Yes, there are Christmas decorations in my family's bathroom. I couldn't help but chuckle at that. I must say, it's been impossible to not catch this spirit. I LOVE decorating for Christmas and putting up lights, etc.

This year, we don't have enough $ for a tree so we are going without. I think this is the first time in my life I've not had a tree. At first this was incredibly upsetting to me. I looked and looked for a tree we might afford without much luck. We don't have ornaments either or lights so I'm not exactly sure what we would've done with the tree, but still, we would have one. I was thinking I'd string popcorn. :) We also are not getting each other any presents for the same reason. My favorite part of Christmas is definitely GIVING the presents. So this has been hard as well. 

I recently realized that this doesn't have to be hard. I was the one who was making it so. I just had to choose to be happy and grateful for everything that we do have, because it really is a lot. First and foremost, we have each other. Even if I had a more lights and decorations than anyone in the neighborhood or if I was able to give hundreds of presents, it would not be one of my best Christmases if Allan was not with me. In fact, it would probably be one of the worst.

We have a roof over our heads, a running car and our health. Good health is not something I've known throughout my life so this is a really big one, especially during pregnancy! We also have our families and our friends and a wonderful bishop and fellow ward members who are doing so much to help us make ends meet. I know that a lot of people do not have a lot of people they can turn to in times of need. We do. We have been extended a helping hand by so many people that it has been overwhelming. Things are still hard, but we know that we will make it because of these other people. The Lord truly does help us through the service of others. 

I've realized that even without lights, trees, presents or other Christmas decor, I have felt the true spirit of Christmas more this year than I ever have before. Even without a lot of the simple luxuries of life, I am genuinely happy. How grateful I am for wonderful people in our lives and for the gospel of Christ that enables us to experience and know the true happiness in life that the world cannot offer.

Happy holidays to all! We hope you are enjoying them as much as we are.

Thanksgiving

Ok, I've stalled long enough. I'm going to add a quick Thanksgiving update. I was really nervous about Thanksgiving and the holidays because they seem to be centered around food. This wouldn't be a problem except that I have a very limited diet due to Celiac. However, it's been great so far. We spent Thanksgiving with my family this year. My mom made everything gluten free from grave to pies. It was wonderful! And my breadsticks were even better than their rolls! It was so encouraging to know that I wouldn't just have to miss out on all the good stuff. I've been SO discouraged lately about everything I can't eat. I've gotten to the point where I just want to avoid all events that include food. So this was a good experience. I don't know what I'd do without my mom and her dedication to keeping me gluten free! She's done so much research on all the common holiday foods and is helping me find a way to enjoy treats like everybody else but still stay healthy.

We then spent the weekend with Allan's family and had a Thanksgiving dinner up there. I took my pies and breadsticks with me (I left the stuffing out and it went bad :( ) and once again, I didn't miss out on anything. Hopefully the Christmas season will go just as well.

Halloween Fun

I love Halloween! It's so much fun. Whoever thought of creating a night where kids can dress up as anything they want and then go knock on doors for free candy is brilliant! While I no longer go trick-or-treating, I still love to dress up. Allan isn't as gung ho about it as I am, but he humors me and plays along.

Costumes are just too expensive to buy and too cheap to be worth it anyway, so we made ours. This year I decided to use my pregnancy as part of the costume and have some fun with it. So we went as a pregnant nun and a priest. Even Allan loved it. They called him "Father Allan." How fitting.

On Friday we went to the Halloween dance and won the costume contest for the second year in a row! Go us! Then on Halloween night we went to my parents house and I passed out the candy and Allan helped Jackson, my little brother, with his haunted house that he and his friend put together. Allan was the host and just led people through it. For it being done by a couple of teenage boys and a dad, it was quite impressive. I got the grand tour before it opened and I still got scared. They did a great job!

Valentines Surprise

Since Allan & I were going to be driving on Valentine's day this year, Allan decided to celebrate a day early. Friday at 4:30 in the afternoon, the receptionist at my office asked if I could come downstairs because someone was there to see me. I about lost it. It had been a very long week & I was going crazy. Then, somebody has the nerve to come in at 4:30 on Friday afternoon. I really had to work hard to not blow a fuse. Needless to say, I wasn't happy with this person.

However, when I got downstairs and opened the door, there was Allan with a huge bouquet of flowers. They were beautiful! And I was so relieved that I didn't have to deal with a client. Allan was much, much better. 

Below are the pictures of my beautiful bouquet. Yes, they are in a pitcher because I don't have a vase. Hey, it works. The top picture is the bouquet about a week after I got it, all bloomed. Lillies are some of my favorite flowers & in that picture, I can see why.

Christmas

Our first Christmas together and it was great! The plan was to spend Christmas eve and Christmas morning with my family and then drive up to Smithfield to spend Christmas afternoon and night with Allan's family. However, due to the HUGE storm, we stayed with my family and had a lot of fun.

We opened up our presents Christmas morning and played with them for a while. My family got Rock Band so it kept us entertained for a couple of hours. We then bundled up and went outside to shovel and play in the (approx.) 10" of snow we got. It took five people and a tractor to get our car out of the driveway. We had snowball fights, made snow angels and played like little kids. It was a blast!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, Allan and I started off by going to the annual Turkey Bowl. I was so excited for it. It's a bunch of friends (led by Sky & Brandon) playing football. And it is serious business. This year, they made Turkey Bowl 2008 shirts. There were so many people, they ended up getting two games going. I wanted to play so badly but just couldn't. I was way too sick. Allan played though & had a great catch before someone took out his knee. He's still pretty sore from it and has a nice bruise to prove it. I can't wait to see the highlight film.

After the Turkey Bowl we went to my aunt Corinne's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was absolutely delicious! There were all the traditional Thanksgiving foods & my aunt's AMAZING homemade rolls. Allan was especially excited about those. We then played games & watched the newer version of Miracle on 34th Street.

I'm so grateful for Thanksgiving. I'm sad that it's getting lost in all the commercialism of Christmas. How wonderful it is to have a day set aside to give thanks for all that we have. While the article that the link leads to is just a bit long, I ask you to read it. It is so worth it! It's amazing. Lincoln is my favorite president. After reading that, I respect him even more. I love how religious he is. I mean, this country was built on religion! And I'm thankful for it! :)

Halloween Costumes

I finally got my pictures from Halloween! Here is Little Bo Peep and her sheep. It turned out wonderfully. Mine was cute alone, but Allan totally completed it and made it a huge hit! 

Allan's costume ended up taking about 7 hours and a couple thousand cotton balls. Mine was several yards of fabric and one intense pattern. I started it at 9 p.m. the night before Halloween. Luckily, my mom was willing to help me. She stayed up until 3 a.m. to help me and I was up til 5. But look how cute it is! 

The first picture is the two of us at my office. When people saw my costume, they told me it was really cute and asked where my sheep was. I told them he'd be in later. They were all shocked and couldn't believe my husband would actually dress up as a sheep. They said it was only because we're newlyweds. I don't think so, however. I think it's because he's so chill & willing to do anything to make me happy. Isn't he wonderful?

The second picture is a close up of Allan's head. The ears are my absolute favorite so I had to take a better picture. The ears are felt that's glued on. He's so cute!! 

This third picture is the trophy we got for winning the costume contest at the Halloween dance at The Golden Skillet. It cracks me up. It's a soccer trophy with masking tape over it (my favorite part) that they got at DI for $1. HA HA!

Over all, it was a great Halloween. I'm not sure what to do to top it next year, but at least I have a whole year to think about it. I'm definitely going to get started a LOT earlier. If anyone has any great ideas, please share.