Silly Pictures of Lydia

This is Lydia watching the 3-D preview of the movie Monsters vs. Aliens during the halftime show of the Superbowl. I love this picture of her. It's a classic!!

I took this picture on Saturday. I have no idea why she's wearing her bike helmet while vacuuming. Go figure! She cracks me up!

Camping on Valentines Day

Since we haven't been camping in like a year, we wanted to start going again. So, since it was a long weekend over Valentine's Day, we packed up our trailer and headed down toward Lincoln City on the coast. It rained part of the time, but it wasn't too bad. They have an indoor pool that is usually heated, so Garrett took the girls swimming a couple of times. Turns out though that the heater for the pool had just broken the day before we got there, so it was a little colder than usual, but the girls didn't mind a bit. I personally think they are crazy, because I think it's cold even when the heater is working. So, I stayed behind in the trailer while Bella napped.

Sunday was a beautiful day, so we went down to the beach. No matter how hard we try to keep them dry, inevitably our girls always end up wet at the beach. Even if the water is freezing. They don't mind, though. It's so fun to watch them play in the water and run from the waves and "try" to not get wet. This was Bella's first time at the beach. We sat her in the sand for a little while and she quite liked it. We just love the beach, it is really beautiful and peaceful!

It is so nice to get away for a few days from everyday life. Not to have to worry about things you worry about everyday. We love just hanging out together and playing games. This trip we made Valentines Day Cookies and the girls made Valentines. I also surprised them with the movie Madagascar 2 and we watched that together. In this video, I was trying to get Bella dancing to the song from Madagascar, "She likes to move it, move it...". I missed her, but got Paige dancing and doing some of Alex's tricks. It was cute.

So we had a great time, and hope to be able to get in a lot more camping this year!

Bella

I thought I'd do a quick post about Bella and how she's growing and crawling and eating table food. She's changed a lot in the past couple of months, so I thought our families would enjoy some videos/pictures of her. She started crawling around the end of December and kind of took her time in "perfecting" her crawl. She's gotten pretty fast lately, and now she's getting ready to pull up to standing. She does what we call the "Bear Walk" where she starts off crawling, then straightens her legs so she's crawling on her toes, with her bum up in the air. She likes to stand at the couch, but she can't get up or down without some help.

She has started eating some table food now. Her favorite is cheerios, but she also likes breads and fruits and those nasty little meat sticks. She does really well with picking them up herself and getting the food into her mouth. She eats all the time it seems. I guess she needs the nourishment to keep fueling her growing body. She just had her 9 month check-up and she's 22 lbs 4 oz.and 30 1/4" tall. Lydia, our biggest baby was 22 lbs. 9 oz. at 9 months, so they are pretty close.

This video is a bit long, but I'm not sure how to edit the videos.

Bella's hair is also a lot longer than any of the other girls' at this stage. It sticks straight up like Maggie's did when Maggie had hair at about 1 1/2. It's really cute and we get so many comments about her hair. I could gel it down I suppose, but I think it adds personality and makes her "Bella".
I'm trying to show how the hair goes over the headband--that's a big deal for me!

Her cute personality is really coming out and she is really such a good, happy baby.

12 Years

Yesterday, February 7th was mine and Garrett's 12 year anniversary. Wow! We can't believe that it's been 12 years. They have been wonderful years, though. Full of adventure, excitement, happy times, sad times, births, deaths, ups and downs...you name it.

Garrett and I met in Provo while we were going to BYU. We were both living in the same apartment complex, Southridge, so we were also in the same ward. He actually didn't move in until Jan. of 1996 because he had gotten off his mission in October of 1995. He was assigned as my hometeacher, but his friends and my friends started hanging out together.

The first thing we did together as a group was go to see "Vocal Point" (an acapella group) at the end of February. Then he asked me out and we went on a group date to see the "Lamanite Generation" which was on March 8th and the next night, we went on our first "alone" date to see the play "The Glass Menagerie". It was fun and after that we started spending all our time together until the end of the semester.

He went home to Alaska and I went home to Texas for the summer. We wrote and talked on the phone a lot, and by then he was pretty serious. I was still up in the air because by this point he was talking marriage and I was a little overwhelmed. At the end of the summer, I flew up to Alaska to meet his family and hang out for a week. It was fun and being with him again made me realize how great he was and how much I did love him.

We flew back to Provo together and hung out every second we could. We even had a couple of classes together. Then at the end of September, he took me horse back riding in Idaho and asked me to marry him. It was pretty surreal to be engaged, but by then I knew he was the one for me. We got married in the Salt Lake Temple and honeymooned in Salt Lake for the weekend and got back to school on Monday. But at the end of the semester, we were able to go to Mexico for a real honeymoon!

And twelve years, a few pounds heavier and four kids later...here we are. Best friends and still very much in love. Garrett is the best husband and father I could have hoped for. He is always there to help out and when I am stressed and frustrated he can always make me laugh and realize that things are okay. I love him more today than the day we got married!

And now for the pictures...

April 1996 Garrett and I when we were first dating.

In Alaska--what a handsome guy!

Coming back to Provo in Fall 1996. In my apartment.

Wedding Day--February 7, 1997