Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter with my Family

Easter celebrations this year have been such fun! Back in late February, my parents had planned on flying into town right after we moved into our new house. Due to some business related reasons, they had to postpone their trip for a month and it just so happened that they re-booked their trip for this Easter weekend! It was so much fun to do all of our traditions together for the first time since 2005 (before I left for college)! We were also glad that my brother Mike and his sweet, fun girlfriend AshLynn could make it down from Rexburg for the weekend.

One tradition we have is that we all must take a picture after church in our Easter attire. Here's the whole gang:
And here's one of my family (minus AshLynn... she wanted us to make sure we'd snap one without her since she's not related).
Of course, another Easter tradition is that the Easter Bunny comes and leaves us baskets full of candy and eggs (and a little hopping bunny toy for Charlie!):
As with years past, we also continued the tradition of making the bunny cake:
Here's an excellent depiction of my concentration face. It takes a lot of focus to ice a very soft cake without getting crumbs mixed all in the frosting:
AshLynn tried her hand at frosting the bow tie!
Mike even got involved with decorating the cake. He added spots to the bow tie using a frosting bag. He looked so natural in the kitchen, we all agreed we could see him on Cupcake Wars as one of those hipster cupcake bakers. :)
Mike's handywork:
Master Baker Mike and his signature frosting "M":
And now a look at the finished cake!
Another tradition we started this year was letting Charlie hunt for Easter eggs.
I accidentally spaced the neighborhood egg hunt on the Thursday before Easter, so to make up for it, we let Charlie practice finding and picking up eggs in my front yard. He had a blast! Until he discovered the mulch... then he got distracted and wasn't too interested in the eggs anymore. (Boys WILL be boys!)
We ran out of time to dye eggs, although we did hard boil the eggs and had a dyeing kit ready. Maybe we'll do it tomorrow... just a day late, right?

We also had a traditional Easter lunch/dinner of ham, sweet potatoes, rolls, and asparagus (instead of green beans). It was absolutely delicious. Holiday comfort food at its finest! :)

Finally, we all had the opportunity this morning of going to church together as a family. Our Bishop gave a two-hour lesson for the last two hours of church that walked us through the scriptures leading up to the Savior's crucifixion and then his death and resurrection. The Bishop provided maps and wonderful videos to help immerse us in the story and the spirit of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for all mankind. More-so than candy, eggs, bunnies, and cakes, I am grateful for the TRUE meaning of Easter. I am so humbled and so grateful that Jesus Christ suffered for all of our sins and infirmities, and then died so I may live again with Him someday. I am in awe that he rose again on the third day so that I, too, may be resurrected. I am so grateful that, because of all of His sacrifices, I can repent of my sins and shortcomings and strive daily to become more like He wants me to be. I know HE LIVES. I know he loves me and my family and every other person on this earth. How grateful I am for the knowledge of His gospel and for the peace it brings to my life each day.

Happy Easter <3

Monday, March 25, 2013

Trent's Mission Call

Last Friday, March 22nd, we got news that Trev's youngest brother Trent got his mission call in the mail and was wanting the whole family there to open it that night! We were SO excited for him, so we traveled south to Elk Ridge that evening.

Here are my boys before the big reveal! You can see Charlie's new handsome haircut and also get a glimpse of my husband's amazing smile. Just one of the many reasons why I married him :)
Here's Trent, finally getting to open his mission call after waiting all day!
Reading that he has been called to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to the Mexico, Veracruz mission (Spanish speaking)! He is so excited and told us that he had wanted to speak another language and go foreign! We are so proud of him! He reports to the MTC on August 7th, 2013! Congratulations, Trent!
Click here to see the full YouTube video of him opening his call! And click here to find out more about what Trent will be up to for the next couple years as a missionary spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

Charlie Randoms from March

Just a couple photos off my Canon camera from the last couple of weeks.
Can I just say that nap time is divine? Charlie looks like an angel when he sleeps, and I get a much-needed midday break :) I'm always very happy to see his cheery face after he's woken up!
And these other three are a few I snapped at the park on March 11th. I really can't believe how big he is getting. Maybe I need to just take a step out of the land of denial and deal with it ;) I just love his little squinty grimace/smile face (hahaha) and his sweet little hands:
I think it's safe to say he had fun that day. :)
I'm just so grateful for my husband and his fabulous job, which affords me the opportunity to stay home with this sweet boy every day. I live a very blessed life.

Life As My Phone Sees It 2/12/13 - 3/24/13

Holy cow. I have totally neglected my poor blog. Now I have to play catch up. Guess we'll start with my phone photos! :)

2/12 and 2/13 - The basement in our new house was finally complete, with about one week to go until our closing date!!! And little boy was waiting patiently for the pizza to finish baking so he could stuff his face with his favorite food!
2/14 - Valentine's Day! Charlie had his first ever experience with balloons. He thought they were hilarious when he'd shake the strings and they'd all bounce off each other! I also made some divine sugar cookie bites. Yum!!
2/17 - Charlie woke up with a fever on Sunday and we had to take him to the doctor since he was feeling so bad. Turns out one of his ears got an ear infection again, after he had been off the antibiotics for only 10 days. I was so bummed. And Charlie just didn't feel good and slept on and off in the living room all day. Fortunately, the new antibiotics seemed to take care of everything and he's been feeling pretty good ever since. FINALLY. Our family was SO sick in Jan/Feb. It's nice to finally catch a break.
2/20 and 2/21 - Weds & Thurs - Here's a look at our crowded living room in the process of me trying to pack. We were supposed to close on our house on Tuesday the 19th, but didn't end up closing until the evening of the 21st due to a delay in approval for holding money in escrow from the seller. It was craziness, but fortunately everything worked out and we ended up closing at the library at UVU.
And then there's Charlie, still feeling sick from earlier that week, but smiling through it with his cute morning face! :)
2/23 - Saturday! Moving day! We let Charlie drink one more bottle in what was once his very first bedroom.
2/23 - Still moving day. We had a huge snowstorm that day. Right after we got everything packed into the truck, it started to snow hard. I'm pretty sure we got really unlucky and the worst of it happened while we made the drive over to the new house. During the drive I almost slid into a car in front of me that was stopped at a light, one member of our moving crew (Shawn) did a donut in the middle of the road, and no one could stop coming down the hill toward our house. Fortunately, it leveled out right at our house and everybody made it in one piece, but it was horrible. About 15 minutes later, the snowplows came and scraped and threw dirt on the roads, making them much better. Just our luck. :) Well anyway, it made for a spectacular winter view out our back window!
And the second photo is Charlie taking his first bath in our new house! Loving a brand new, clean tub!
2/28 - Thursday - Just modeling and taking pictures. I have much better light in my new house, and I liked my outfit that day! :)
3/2 and 3/3 (Sat & Sun) - After being in our house for about a week, Charlie developed these rashes on his cheeks, poor thing. I too had some pretty rough, dry skin on my lower face. I'm really not sure where it came from, but my guess was an extra dry environment with hard water. Or perhaps it was a type of virus. Who knows? Fortunately, with a lot of moisture, both our faces healed up within a few days!
And then I sneaked a picture in church to document our first day at our new ward: Eagle's Gate 2nd Ward!
3/5 - Tuesday - Charlie ate breakfast at the table off a big boy plate. Bananas, peaches, and cheerios, yum!
He also learned to shoot hoops that day with the hoop we bought off our city's online yard sale page on Facebook! He got so excited every time he made a basket and would come over and give me a hug and sit on my lap after every shot! So cute!
3/8 (Fri) and 3/11 (Mon) - Our living room is slowly coming along! I've since gotten the back installed on the entertainment center (what a fiasco... just ask me about it if you care haha). I do want new sofas eventually, and some pics on the wall, and a coffee table, but it'll do for now ;)
The second picture is just one more example of my little boy learning new things and growing up too fast: He goes down the slide by himself these days! And he just LOVES it and giggles every time.
3/12 - Tuesday - We went with our friends (Heidi and her daughters Kate, and Emma) to Airborne Trampoline Arena in south Salt Lake to let the kids get their wiggles out since it was still a little chilly outside. Charlie absolutely loved it! While he was tentative about the trampolines at first, he had no reservations jumping into the foam pits and crawling around! He also liked to watch the bigger kids playing dodgeball, and if I could read his thoughts, I bet he wished he could play too :)
3/14 - Thursday - It was a gorgeous day! And I was excited to find out that they were starting work on our yard! Hooray! (By the next Thursday all the sod was laid and today, the 25th, they are finishing up the bushes and landscaping in the back yard!) I really LOVE having a yard. The green lawn makes our brown house POP!
It was so beautiful that day that we were able to sit out on the back porch in our new deck chairs (thank you, Walmart) and enjoy a nice spring evening. Charlie even decided to read a book ;)
3/19 - Tuesday - Some of Charlie's new spring/summer clothing arrived in the mail. I seriously love buying new clothes for my toddler. I die inside a little when he walks around looking like a "mini man". Haha
Tuesdays are one of the days that Trev gets home from work a little earlier, so he took Charlie outside to play in the dirt (they had laid our topsoil but hadn't done the sod yet). Charlie LOVES to play in dirt (just like his Daddy!). By the time he was done, he had dirt everywhere and wherever he walked there was a cloud of dust following him, so we nicknamed him "Pig-Pen" (from Charlie Brown) for the day. So cute :)
Well, not much more has happened in the last week. We've just been enjoying our new house and March Madness on TV! Charlie got a haircut last Wednesday and looks so cute again! We got some baby hair gel and we've been working on styling his hair a bit. :) Oh the joys of having a boy!?

Now we're looking forward to my parents getting into town tomorrow afternoon and having a week chocked full of fun! :D
Whew! Updating is very hard work!