Vivian is Three Months!

 

I’m so glad I tried having baby number two!  I had thought that I couldn’t stand another three months with a newborn…but after my first baptism by fire it was much better the second time around!  Vivian is now officially in the “Gerber” stage and she is a darling!  I need to figure out her nap routine now that she’s not falling asleep at any given moment so that’s my new challenge for the coming month.

Here’s Vivian interacting with Jared one night.  She likes to imitate him when he sticks out his tongue…It’s pretty cute!

She’s a little more nervous about being passed around than Christian was but it’s nice to know that she likes me.  She is really liking Christian too and it’s so fun to see him interact with her.  I think it’s so adorable that when he plays prince he makes her his damsel in distress…I’m just wondering if by the time she wants to play princess if he will still want to play with her!

 

I love these kids so much and they are such fun I may decide to have even more!

Vivian’s Blessing Day

Part of our reasons for going to Utah was to have Vivian blessed in my parent’s ward that I grew up in so that the majority of the family could be present and stand in the circle.  This is Vivian in the dress I made for her.  I’m so glad that it worked out! 

Here is Jared right before church showing off the dress, bracelet and headband I made for her.    

A close-up on the headband…it’s a little difficult to tell that I pleated the headband as well (Christian was a little upset that he wasn’t in all the photos).     

It was a beautiful blessing and she slept right until the end when Jared held her up and she woke up wondering why she was being forced out of her comfortable position.  Thank you to all of you who made the effort to come out and see her blessing, it was a little more memorable because my brother Michael spoke in church and reported on his mission.  I’m so thankful we were able to work out all of the details!  It was a beautiful day and I was so happy to get pictures of her with various family members afterwards! Here she is with her Maternal Great-Grandma!  Vivian and Cousin Shaun…     Vivian and Cousin Autumn…     Vivian with aunt April…

I’m so grateful that this beautiful daughter has come into our family.  She is a Joy!

Christian’s Beloved

Last year in the beginning of February when we first moved, I met Brooke who just happened to live two stories above us at the time.  She had a darling baby girl about six months old named Emma. Christian LOVES Emma… he did from the moment he met her which is really great because her mom and I are great buddies and Jared gets along well with her dad too so it’s a great situation.  I was sad to leave Utah this past August and the main reason was because I had to leave our great friends! 

In a way it was probably good that we moved further from Brooke, Alan, and Emma in a way though because when we got together we had so much fun chatting that we didn’t get much done.  Brooke and I always would have the brilliant(?) idea to make dinner together and it would take at least two hours because we were so distracted by each other!  It was really a great blessing to have them nearby since we could both rely on each other if we needed someone to watch our kids or help us out with a problem (like the time Brooke flooded her apartment or I had my appendectomy).

I was so happy this past week to have had the time to spend with their family again before Brooke has her new baby boy.  Christian and Emma play so well we really do joke about them getting married someday so that we don’t have to worry about the in-laws!

     

Here are Christian and Emma playing together at their house.

This video is of them playing with Emma’s grandpa and laughing hysterically which is so cute.

Brooke’s baby boy is due any day and I’m so excited for her!  I feel like we’re practically sisters (though we don’t look at all alike).  She is such a sweetheart!

I was really pleased that they made it to Vivian’s baby blessing though Christian was having difficulty staying reverent because of Emma.  She’s such a doll!

Caught on Camera: Family Antics

During our stay in Utah I had a pretty fun time watching different family members playing, goofing off and just plain being cute.  Some of these things I caught on film (if you can call it that anymore…) so I thought I’d share a few videos.

One of the most adorable things was watching Christian play with his cousin Sandy.  I realized that he actually has a very strong sense of “fairness” in that he wants everyone to have their fair share and such.  One example is when grandma made him a whole sandwich and Sandy a half a sandwich.  She had cut his into fourths and Sandy’s in half and he was pretty persistent that Sandy should have the fourth of his sandwich so that things would be even.  Here’s a video of them dancing around in the spare room.

 

This one is a few days later when they were using their imaginations and my diaper bag pretending it was the bridle of a horse (that they were riding side-by-side on—don’t ask me how that works).

 

This next one was taken on Sunday of my niece Beatrix was she was looking over a book and singing…it’s a little difficult to hear over the background noise but it’s still pretty darling.

 

This next one is a little freakish as Christian ran around the house in this Hilary Clinton mask that Michael brought back from Tennessee.  I had a couple of pictures taken in this myself but they are way too scary to share!

 

This last one is difficult to see what’s going on but Michael had these disgusting looking pretend teeth (that looked like the local Tennessean’s or so I’m told).

So that’s just a glimpse into my some of the behaviors of my family members.  Got to love them!

The Aunt and Uncle Influence…

I’ve been so blessed in my life to not only have many great friends but also a larger sized family full of aunts and uncles.  Even though aunts and uncles don’t generally have a responsibility over their nieces and nephews when compared with parents they really can be influences for good values.  For instance, I always knew growing up that my aunts and uncles valued education.  I also felt their support for the nieces and nephews (including myself) for various ordinances such as baby blessings, baptisms, and weddings.  It just became apparent to me one day as I sat in church with my aunts, uncles, and cousins, for a baby blessing, that our collective extended family valued the same things for the most part.  Of course there are those who have fallen away from the church and such but for the most part even those people still taught me similar values (like my aunt who let me sit on her lap and showed me the baby Jesus figurine in her purse who asked her records to be removed).  Aunts and Uncles are one reason why I want my children to be close to my family because of the profound influences they can have.  They can have so much power as examples of truth and error and they have the ability to persuade children of things that maybe parents have tried many times to teach. Children listen better at times to outside influences rather than parents and what better influence than an aunt or uncle who actually care about a child and want what’s best for them!  Here are some glimpses of the aunts and uncles that invested some interest in Vivian this past week.

 

Here’s my sister April resting with Vivian after picking up uncle Michael from the airport.

    This is Uncle Jake (my sister Julie’s husband), Kate and Vivian chilling on the sofa.

       Jake with Vivian showing his humorous side.  

 

Michael trying to persuade Vivian to smile.

 

I also enjoyed spending time with my nieces and nephews as well.  Here is a picture of Sandy on Saturday when she came for a visit with her daddy (my brother Bill) and she wanted me to hold her the majority of the time I was there.  Very fun.

   

Sandy and Me… I’m so thrilled she likes me now, the last few times I’ve come up she didn’t want me near her but now she seems to want me all the time.  It’s great!

Here are a couple of my niece Elizabeth (Jared’s sister’s daughter).  It was her birthday that week and she turned the awkward age of eleven so I took her shopping and this is what she picked out…kind of wizards of Waverly Place-ish in my opinion.  Now I really can hardly wait for Vivian to grow up and go shopping with me…it was really fun to look at things with her and chat about things with her.

Playing with our “Baby Dolls”

My sister Julie had a baby girl 25 days before I did so we spent a large majority of our time together playing with our girls like they were baby dolls.  It was pretty fun!  We have designs on our daughters to make them friends.  I only hope that we’ll be able to move back to Utah so that they can play together a lot more than every few months or so.

Of course I had to take some pictures that I thought I’d share…

 

Here they are sharing Vivian’s play gym        

Look they’re holding arms and hands! 

Here we have an eye line-up…  

On Sunday we dressed them in their dresses that were similar in colors and had a “photo shoot”…       

They weren’t quite sure what to think with our shenanigans!

Jennifer’s Wedding

We spent the last week in Utah Visiting family.  One of the events we went up for was my cousin Jennifer’s Wedding.  What a beautiful bride she made.  I’m so happy for her!

Here’s a glimpse of the back of her dress….so beautiful! 

Jared and I were so blessed to get my cousin Elise to watch Christian and Vivian while we were at the temple… Elise is a working girl so her days are cram-packed with things to do. I am so grateful to her that I could attend because she made it possible!

   

Here are Jared and I all bundled up!

It was a pretty chilly morning from what we’ve been used to in Arizona but it was totally worth the effort especially to listen to the ceremony.  There is almost nothing more beautiful to me than a wedding ceremony in the temple!