Fall Time

It finally is starting to feel like summer might be over down here. It's been nice in the mornings and not too hot in the afternoons. Megan and I have been going for walks on the bayou trail almost every day. I'm really enjoying getting more time out of the house.
And we still swim occasionally but it's getting a little chilly (you know, when the water is only 80). We swam between conference sessions last Saturday. Megan didn't mind the cold water at all. What she did mind was that I wouldn't let her just walk wherever she wanted in the pool. She just wants to be independent!
The past four days Megan has suddenly returned to longer napping! Yay! I don't know how long it will last but I am loving it.
Well, we are enjoying October so far and are looking forward to Dan's and Megan's birthdays in a few weeks. We can't believe our little girl is almost one. She's quite the cruiser and crawler but isn't taking steps yet. She has such a happy and silly personality and she makes us laugh every day. She's an easygoing and fun kid. What can we way--we like her!
I hope all of you are enjoying your fall time as well!

Megan likes feeling dizzy.

Cute leggings...


New PJs. I love how her legs and arms look so skinny and then her belly just sticks out.


A preview of her Halloween costume. Look familiar? Yes, it IS the same thing she wore last year. But this year it fits.


Her Halloween outfit from Granny. I love the polka dots.

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

I tend to be consumed when I have a project to do. I can work on something for hours at a time and not worry about eating or cleaning or anything else. I've learned to be a little less focused since Megan was born--she doesn't take kindly to being ignored for an entire day.
So, this project took me TWO afternoons instead of just one (and neither Megan nor Dan missed any meals). I printed these pictures a couple of months ago and wanted to do something cute with them to put up in Megan's room. After spending the morning at a mall play place with my mom, sister-in-law Amy, Amy's 3 kids, and Megan, I stopped by Hobby Lobby to get a frame and scrapbook paper for the background.
My sister-in-law Ali is a fantastic digital scrapbooker and has done some cute pages that have a similar vintage black and white feel so I decided to go with it.
I downloaded the font for the sayings from dafont.com (my new favorite site)and looked at some vinyl lettering sites to find a saying I liked.
In all, the paper, glue, and frame cost less than $9. Pretty cheap for a cute project. The frame was marked down because of a dent (good luck finding it!) so that helped keep the cost extra low.
Anyway. I love (LOVE) how it turned out. And I'm kind of sad to be done already. I think I need to do projects more often; I really enjoy them.

The finished product:


What Megan does while Mom is consumed:

Amber and Dan's Excellent Adventure

So we originally planned to leave for Utah on Sep. 13 at 10 am. As the week wore on and Ike bore down on Houston, we started to get a little nervous. Nervous enough that on Wednesday morning, Dan asked his boss if he could leave a day early and I changed our flight from Sat to Fri.

Then on Thursday morning, mandatory evacuations were issued for many coastal areas. We were not in an evacuation zone but during Hurricane Rita 3 years ago, evacuation orders led to thousands of people getting stranded in terrible freeway traffic. So I began to worry that we wouldn't be able to get to the airport on Friday. So I changed our flight to Thursday night, packed for Dan, and we got to the airport 6 hours early just to be safe. Thankfully Bush IAH airport is huge and we had plenty of shops to walk around in and lots of options for dinner. The time passed quickly and we got off just fine. Megan slept most of the flight.

Friday and Saturday we just hung around Bountiful, helped Dan's parents get ready for the farewell, and spent time with family. Saturday morning we did a 5K walk/run (for us it was a walk!) with Dan's home stake. Saturday afternoon we cheered on our Cougs to an awesome shutout. Sunday was Ben's farewell and he gave a great talk. He is quite the popular kid and there were more than 600 people in sacrament meeting. Many people (around 150-200) came over after the meeting for a little luncheon put on by Jane. She is amazing and graciously fed and chatted with the hordes of people who came to wish Ben well.

At the beginning of the walk--notice the temple in the background:



The temple was about the half way point:


Megan after church on Sunday:


Uncle Ben with the littlest grandkids, Alonzo and Megan


Monday we saw Heather and kids and recently almost-finished basement in Tooele, Maren, Brigham and new baby Benjamin and almost-finished upstairs in Riverton, and Josh, Lisa, and kids for dinner in West Jordan. It was a long but very fun day.

Megan, Jakey, and Tyler in Tooele


Maren, Brigham, Amber, Benjamin, Megan in Riverton


Tuesday, Jane and Ben joined us for a little drive up to Logan. We saw Ali's home and Amberly's new apartment and then we had lunch and went to the Logan zoo. The weather was so nice and Megan really enjoyed all the ducks. Ben was set apart Tuesday night and we really enjoyed being there for it.






Wednesday we went to breakfast with the family before going with Ken, Jane, Ali, and Alonzo to drop Ben off at the MTC. I didn't do that with Carrie or Shad so it was a neat experience. Ben was more excited than sad and Ken and Jane held up well. After he went in, we headed over to say hi to Stephanie and baby William (but did I take any pics there? of course I forgot). Dan and I spent the afternoon wandering around campus with Megan and met a big group of friends for dinner at the Brick Oven. It was fun to see so many people and spend some time in good ol' Provo. We had dessert with Nate and Steph and headed back to Bountiful.

Thursday we visited with my Grandfather and his wife. I loved watching my almost 88 year old Grandfather get on the floor to play with Megan. After that, we headed back to Bountiful, gathered our stuff, and went to the airport.




Megan got a chance to wear some outfits that are just too hot for Houston--this is one of my favorites. She quickly mastered tugging the hat off.


There was an empty seat on our flight back--it was so nice!


We were glad to know our apartment already had the power back on and were interested to see what Houston would look like when we got back. We'll post more on that later.

For All Posterity

Megan has a...unique cry when she's really angry. It probably is louder than it sounds except that it leaves the range of human hearing. I thought I better get it recorded to someday prove to her how loud her little cry was.

We're still here!

Just a quick post to let all of you know we are alive and well! In fact, we are great. Thanks to some flight switching, we made it to Utah last Thursday night and had a great trip. We'll post more later. Thanks to everyone who was worried about us.

Tis The Season

For BYU football that is. We have been excitedly anticipating the start of the Cougs 2008 season and were not disappointed. Since we're the only ones with DirecTV plus the sports pack (the only way to get the Mtn here), we had a little party to watch the game. My parents and Tyler, Shad and Amy and their kids, and another friend from their ward came to enjoy.
Megan, Dan, and I were all dressed in our cougar blue to celebrate. The Cougars pulled off the win and remain undefeated in Megan's lifetime!! Hopefully they'll do more of the same in the upcoming weeks. Gooooooooo Cougars!

Our little cheerleader

Napping

So in the past few weeks, Megan has decided to graduate herself from the taking of any nap longer than 30 minutes.
The downsides of this are that I suddenly have only 1 hour of baby-free time to do things during the day AND Megan is pretty cranky by dinner time.
A few upsides--we can go to more activities because they won't interrupt her nap times anymore AND she now goes to sleep around 7 pm instead of 8 but still sleeps til 6:30 or so.
So I'm learning to involve Megan in all the things I used to do while she was napping and I'm trying to enjoy that involvement :). Like yesterday when I vacuumed with her in the front pack carrier--otherwise she was trying to climb all over the vacuum and eat the cord.
She's quite the speedy crawler now and is slowly but surely getting better at climbing and cruising. Her new thing is to place herself in your path and as you walk by she'll stick both arms up and smile at you--how can I resist that? I can't--I usually immediately pick her up.

I've been letting her whine until she falls asleep (I'm just not ready to abandon naps all together), and sometimes it looks like she finally just falls over from where she was sitting.


This is not Megan blinking as the flash goes off--this is Megan fully falling asleep between bites at lunch the other day. This little girl plays hard--and such short naps sometimes catch up with her!


Megan's first pedicure--I painted my and Megan's toenails to match last Saturday. I LOVE her painted toes; they are so cute.


Here is our crazy Megan last night after bath time. She now has a silly hour from 6 to 7 where everything makes her giggle and squeal and then suddenly she's tired and passes out.

Rainy Days

It's been kind of a slow week. Rainy during the days--the kind of rain that makes you want to sit curled up with a book. Megan and I have been reading lots of books, trying to get some organizing done, and doing some projects that had been neglected.
Mostly to preserve my sanity, we've gone on little outings every day as well--Walmart, Granny's house, the grocery store, etc.

We got Megan some really cute shoes at Walmart. They are brown suede and have flowers. They're a little big, but she'll grow. Her favorite thing to do with them is eat them.


She had one shoe off about 5 seconds after taking this picture--it's easier to chew on when it's not attached to your foot.


I finally got around to the throw pillows. I did the round one a few weeks ago...it looks ok, I may do some adjusting on it later. I did them all just eye-balling things (no pattern), so they were kind of an adventure. I really like both the square pillows. The one with the panel of floral in the middle is my favorite.


And last but not least...A recipe!
White Chocolate Raspberry Cake from Karen

Ingredients-
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
6-1 ounce squares white chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup hot water
1 cup butter (softened)
1 1/2 cups white sugar
3 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla

Instructions-
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, soda, powder, & salt. Set aside.
Melt together the chocolate and ho water in a saucepan over low heat. Stir until smooth. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs to butter/sugar mixture one at a time, beating well between each.
Then alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk to the sugar/butter/eggs.
Last, mix in the white chocolate and the vanilla.
Pour batter into 2-9 inch greased and floured cake pans. (you can cover the bottom of the pans with parchment paper if desired). Bake for 30-35 minutes (til toothpick comes out clean.
*you can use 1 cup milk plus 1 tsp. vinegar that has sat for at least 5 minutes if you don't have buttermilk.
Frosting-
2 cups powd. sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 TB milk, 2 to 3 TB smuckers raspberry syrup.
Yummy!!

"Stay-cation" Time

Unfortunately, a big summer vacation just wasn't in the cards for us this year...ok, ok, we did go to Mexico for a week, but that was WAY back in May--it wasn't even summer yet :)
We've been itching for a little adventure, so to celebrate my birthday, we hopped in the car on Saturday and headed out west to good old San Antonio.
In our ideal world, we wanted to be on the road at 7 am...but Megan must not have gotten the memo because she was up from 12 am to 1 am and was up AGAIN at 5:45 am. So her tired, tired parents (how did we survive the newborn stage?) dragged themselves out of bed at 8. We were on our way at 8:55 am.
Starting just outside of Houston, we began to see billboards for this gas station/rest stop called "Buc-ee's". The billboards are pretty funny and definitely worked. It's about an hour from San Antonio (2 hours from Houston) so it was the perfect place to stop and let Megan stretch for a while. They sell all sorts of things, including pillows, purses, and clocks made of cow-hide. We had fun looking around at everything.

Megan chilling in the stroller at the Alamo...


We got to San Antonio at noon, just in time to learn that we needed cash to park...darn. So we parked at the mall near the Alamo, found an ATM, fed Megan some lunch, and finally headed over to the Alamo around 12:45 pm. Incidentally, if any of you are going to San Antonio, the mall is NOT the cheapest place to park unless you are planning on staying for less than 3 hours. If it's gonna be more than 3 hours, you're better off to park at one of the flat-rate lots. Most we saw were $10 for the day (cash only). Oh well, live and learn.

Dan and the six flags of Texas (Spain, France, Mexico, Texas, Confederacy, U.S.A.)


It was hot, hot, HOT but we still enjoyed walking around the Alamo site. We saw a long line out one gate so we headed to the next one (this meant that we went to all of the other buildings before ending up back in that very same long line to go into the Alamo itself). In the "long barracks" there is a free 20 min. movie that tells highlights of the battle (and is air-conditioned-yay). The Alamo building itself is not too thrilling. We got pics of the famous facade, but inside you can't take any pics and there's not much you'd want pics of anyway. The gift shop was busy and when we walked in, I realized that what I'd always remembered as the inside of the Alamo--was actually the gift shop (was I nine or was I nine?). But anyway. The story of the Alamo siege IS pretty incredible and we left full of some good Texas history spirit.

Dan and the famous facade...


Megan and I in the same spot...


We then reclined the stroller so Megan could nap, found the Hilton, and used their elevator to take us down to the Riverwalk. Megan slept pretty much the entire time we walked around. We learned that the Riverwalk is NOT made for strollers--we got to lift it up and down stairs many times, but it wasn't too terrible. It is shaded and breezy and was a really nice place to walk around. Many of the restaurants have been there for a LONG time and the whole thing feels really old-timey. We were big fans. We made a loop of the whole trail and then ate at a Mexican place near our starting point. It was pretty good, Dan liked it more than I did but we both enjoyed it. Megan woke up as our meals were served so she got some baby food too. By then it was about 5 pm and we headed back to the car.

Enjoying our walk


Some bridge (maybe if we had spent the $7.75 each for a river boat tour, I'd know)


We drove over to the San Antonio temple; unfortunately, it was closed. We still appreciated the view. It is beautiful and has some amazing stained-glass. By 6:30 p.m. we were on the road back. We stopped around 7:30 so Megan could nurse and go to sleep (which she did!). She slept the rest of the way home and we were back around 10 pm. We were exhausted but had a great day. Road trips are still one of our favorite things to do as a family. Thank goodness Megan is such a good little traveler.

08.08.08

Not only was 08.08.08 the start of the Olympics--it was also my 24th birthday! I have been looking forward to 08.08.08 for many years since 8 is my favorite number (I bet you can't guess why). Plus--08+08+08=24, my age. How cool is that. Anyway. This post is long-ish, it's more of a journal entry for me so feel free to skip to the pictures whenever you want.

Some b-day memories...
20 years ago: I turned 4. I don't have specific memories of that birthday, I think we were at "the Ranch" (my mom's parents place near St. George). One of the most fun things to do as a 4-year-old there was to ride the tire swing on Grandfather's lap. There were wood planks nailed to this tall, tall tree and it was so scary to climb. I would go first, grandfather would come behind holding the swing and at the top, he'd pull me onto his lap on the swing and then we'd FLY! It would have been scary but I always felt so safe being with Grandfather.

10 years ago: My 14th birthday was the first year (other than the year I was born) that I was in Houston on my actual birthday. My dad took me, Kira, Jenn, Kat, and Kate out to Lake Houston for a day of kneeboarding and tubing. It was SO fun. I was VERY excited about being able to go to my first stake dance and to start high school.

5 years ago: I turned 19. We were in Olympia Nat'l Park camping. I was up all night throwing up, it was terrible. I got to head back to Seattle with Baba. By the afternoon, I was feeling better and Baba took me to a delicious Greek restaurant. I loved having her all to myself for a little while before the rest of the campers returned. We went to Torero's the NEXT night. Torero's is a yummy Mexican place that I've had many a birthday dinner at (and I have the Polaroids in the ridiculously large sombrero to prove it). I didn't know it at the time but I was a few weeks away from going to a ward ice cream social and meeting a guy whose nametag said "Karl" that I would later marry.

1 year ago: I turned 23. Again, we were in Washington. We started the day at Baba's house and then headed out to Orcas Island for some camping with the extended fam (my cousins and my dad's siblings). I was 28 weeks pregnant, feeling good and enjoying the time off work.

08.08.08: It was a nice birthday. Not the most exciting, but not the most boring either. And it involved yummy cake and a lovely little party (thanks Carrie for hostessing and Shad, Amy, and kids and Kat, Glen, and Kaden and Lisa (Carrie's friend) for coming). It's fun to have friends like Kat that have been at my b-days from year 1 to the present.
I'm pretty happy to be 24. I like even numbers better than odd, so I'm more excited to be 24 than I was to be 23. Plus according to that song, "nobody likes you when you're 23", so woo hoo for 24.

Mmmm. White chocolate raspberry cake. Thank you Karen for teaching me to make delicious things to eat. I made it for myself, but I didn't mind too much. Plus it gave me outright possession of the leftovers.


Blowing out the candle with my helpers. The "8" is for 08.08.08; we couldn't find 24 candles at my mom's.


Zach, Hailey, Megan, Kaden, and Kat


Carrie and Lisa and the delicious food

What happened to July? Or 2007?

Wow. It's already a week into August? Megan is going to be 1 in a mere 11 weeks? She's getting big. I know she's not "big" weight-wise compared to some kiddos (ahem, Alonzo and Sydney to name a few :) ) but she seems more grown up. She's a pretty independent little lady, she'll play by herself if she has enough things to explore. Her new favorite things to do are walk around the coffee table while hitting the glass and yelling to herself, rip apart magazines, and climb as high as she can (thankfully, it's not very high at this point). She's sweet and snuggly, especially first thing in the morning and right before bed. She loves anytime she gets to spend in water, especially bath time in the big tub where she can crawl all around. Last night we went to feed ducks at the park by our house (the tropical storm's last clouds were keeping the temperatures to a breezy 90) and near the duck pond is a big splash area. First we went over just so Megan could watch the water falling, but pretty soon she was squirming off my lap and crawling as fast as she could to the fountains. So I stripped her down to a onesie and let her get a little more wet...not as wet as she wanted since I didn't want to soak myself. She did NOT want to leave. She's become a lot more opinionated and is starting to complain if you take away a toy (or dangerous object) that she is interested in. And she's becoming a bit of a drama queen. She whips out that shrill cry for every little stumble, but we know when she's really hurt because if she's not, she immediately stops when she gets attention. Anyway. Enjoy the end of summer!

The view of Edouard's wrath from our balcony...it was a lot of hype for not much show. But we are grateful it wasn't worse and we needed the rain!


Megan's sweet smile!


By the way, I cut my hair about a week and a half ago (approx. 6 inches). I am loving it shorter. So much easier...and cooler!