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.

HUGE Savings

Have I mentioned how much I love couponing? I do! I love the thrill of getting a killer deal on stuff. And tonight, I totally scored. I went to WalMart and price matched other ads and then used my coupons. Because I knew I was going to make out like a bandit, I went around WalMart and wrote down their prices for everything I got so I could see just how much I saved. I'm a nerd, I know. Everything in the picture below (all pictures were erased from camera) would've been about $223. After the price matching it was $170. After coupons.....$22!! Granted, I had to pay $11 in sales tax (for the original $170) but it was so awesome!

4 Puffs plus lotion: FREE!

4 Vicks DayQuil/NyQuil: FREE

4 Vicks VapoSprays: FREE

4 Crest Pro-Health Mouthwashes: FREE

10 Nivea Lip Gloss/Chapsticks: FREE

18 Tide Single Loads: FREE

18 Pantene shampoos/conditioners/gels/hairsprays/creme $.75 ea

2 Old Spice Body Sprays: $1.25 ea

2 Colgate toothbrushes: $.49 ea

6 Gillette Proglide razors: $.97 ea! (Normally $9 ea)

4 boxes of Fruity Pebbles $.88 ea

Ok, I confess, it should've been a little bit more, but the coupons weren't going through so they ended up entering them all by hand and I think they entered a few more than they should've. I haven't officially gone over it yet. I'm still enjoying my high of saving over $200! Woot!

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!

Downtown Stomp

As many of you know, Allan and I have been helping to run the local dance scene here for a while. It is with great sadness that I tell you that Downtown Stomp has had it's last dance. I'm truly devastated about it. I have LOVED being a part of this. But between work, school and families, it just got to be too much for all of us to do. So we had one last big event to end with a bang. And what a bang it was! Tons and tons of people came for the "Shark Attack" workshop with Shauna and Mark (hence, Shark) from Denver and we had five teams compete at the dance. It was awesome! What's even more awesome is that the Salt Lake Jitterbugs, Allan's team, won the competition! I tried to upload the video but it's just not working. I think it's too big. You can watch it on my Facebook page though. Good job, Jitterbugs!

First Word

Lindy said her first word last Friday (Oct. 12)! She threw her hands up in the air and said, "Ta-da!" It was so dang cute! She's been clapping for a little while now and recently started throwing her hands up in the air after she would do it (I have no idea where she learned that) so I started saying "Ta-da" when she would. On Friday she mimicked it. She did it over and over and over. Luckily my mom and dad got to see her do it. She's such a ham.

Sadly, she hasn't done it since. She doesn't even raise her arms up anymore. I do it to try to get her to and she just stares at me, although she has started shaking her head. The little punk. I'm hoping I can get her to do it again one of these days so that I can video it and post it.

Trafalga

This week Liz asked me if I wanted to take the kids on a play date to Trafalga. I most definitely did so we packed them all up and went. It was a blast! I got to ride the roller coaster with Benjamin and was even able to take Lindy on the carousel. She just looked confused at first and then decided she loved it. She was squealing with delight!

Sadly, Allan's abuela (grandma) died this week and so he decided that he was too sad to work (after finding out we were all at Trafalga) and left and met us there. I was happy to have him. We started all the rides over again when he got there. It's amazing how much playing at Trafalga helped him feel better. ;)

We were literally the only people there so a worker was assigned to us and just followed us around to do whatever rides we wanted. Luckily, we had a manager who was totally laid back and let the adults go on some of the rides they shouldn't have. It was so funny to watch Allan try to squeeze into the little airplanes. I thought the thing might break. Once again, I wish I had pictures!

This manager also let us take Lindy on the lighthouse ride, which is a little kid version of The Rocket at Lagoon. I couldn't believe he let us! She really enjoyed it though. The one she liked the most was the boat ride. It's just like Tidal Wave at Lagoon, only smaller, once again. Lindy would go crazy when we'd get to the top and start going back down. It was so fun to watch! She's such a little thrill seeker. I can't wait for next summer when she'll be a little bigger and able to do all the rides.