4 Months

Today Lilybelle is four months. We took our standard monthly picture, and it's so much fun to see how she has changed. It's so much easier to get her to smile now when we take the photo. I swear she was hamming it up for the camera. She's a hoot.

Also eventful in our life was the first big snow storm that came our way yesterday. I took me an hour and a half to get home when my normal commute time is around a half hour. My Subaru was a champ though. It handled the commute very well and only slipped getting up my street. Lilybelle didn't seem to care that it was bad outside. We would have taken her outside to see the snow, but she's currently recovering from a cold and I didn't want to make it worse. In typical weather, the snow is gone today, but it was fun while it lasted.

Because I can

This post is just because I can and because my baby is cute. Lilybelle has started to talk, and she likes to take very opportunity to talk. When she wakes up in the morning she talks, when she is in her swing she talks, and when she wants your attention she talks. She is so happy when she talks. I'm sure that in a few years when she is talking my ear off I will get annoyed of her talking, but right now I can't get enough of her talking. Right now for example, she is talking her to her zebra hand puppet. I wonder what she is telling it. Maybe she tells it,"you taste good" or "don't mind me, I'm just trying to eat your nose." Whatever she is saying it amuses her very much. This is a video that Tim took today of her talking. It's kinda hard to watch with the swing moving I know, but if you can get over that her talking is hilarious.

The tutu Nana got her for Christmas

Hanging out this morning

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone! We had a good Christmas Morning at our house that started a little later than is traditional. I usually wake up at six on Christmas Morning and wake anyone else that I am spending Christmas with at this hour too. But since I had Lilybelle, I didn't want to wake her up until she woke herself up (it just seems so wrong to wake a sleeping baby). I didn't have to wait too long, just an extra hour, but it was so hard! After we got her up, changed, and fed; we opened presents. Lilybelle was very interested in her presents and the dogs enjoyed their treats.

Tim feeding Lilybelle before we opened presents

Sunny after his Christmas treat

Sophie begging for her Christmas treat

Lilybelle opening her presents

Lilybelle playing with her toy from Santa

Busy Weekend and a leaky pipe

Our little family had a busy weekend. It started on Saturday with Tim's Grandpa's family holiday gathering. In order to get ready for being gone for a few hours, Tim took Sophie and Lilybelle over to play with Darby and I took Sunny for a walk. When I got back from my walk, I needed to pump. So I started pumping when we got a knock at the door. I almost ignored the knock, but I decided that I should look to see who it is in case it was Tim and he needed help in with the baby. It wasn't Tim instead it was a police officer who asked me to open the door. So I quickly put Sunny in the bedroom and remove my pump accessories (although it would have been a little funny to open the door with them still on, I just wasn't feeling it). He asked me if that was my car parked on the street in front of our house and I said yes. He then started talking about the street leaking and I assumed that he meant Tim's car is leaking, but when he started talking about a sinkhole I really look at the street, and realized it was leaking water; water was shooting out of the street.

  I couldn't believe it, I had never seen anything like this. I called Tim and let him know about it. By the time he came home he had to park around the block because they had our part of the street blocked off. We went to Tim's Grandpa's party, and when we came home the utility workers were working on it. I then started getting ready for our Ward's Christmas Party by making my first ever batch of funeral potatoes that turned out good if I do say so myself.

By this time, we still had water. When Tim let the dogs outside one of the workers stopped him and let him know that they were going to have to turn our water off in order to fix it because it was our connection to the water main that was leaking. In the picture below is a sandbag over our connection to help slow down the small stream in the hole in the street. So we went to our party, and when we came home we had no water, but it was back on before we went to bed. When we went to bed that night, they were still working on it, but by the next morning everything was fine.

So that was our adventure over the weekend. Two parties and a broken pipe in one day.

30th Birthday Party

Saturday was amazing! Tim gave me the best 30th birthday that a girl could ask for. Now I know that I still have a few days until I am officially thirty, but you can't have a party on your birthday when your birthday is five days before Christmas and expect people to show up. Tim took care of the food, decorations, and invitations. All I had to do was create the Pinterest board (Thank you Pinterest) and show up. It was a really nice party with just close friends and family. When it came time to blow out the candles, Tim got those kind that never blow out so that proved to be really funny. At least I didn't have to try to blow out thirty of them.

Hot Chocolate Bar, Cupcakes, & Drinks

The Food

My Birthday Tiara (it has a 30 on it)

Another picture of the Cupcakes, Hot Chocolate, and Drinks

My pretty Princess in her cupcake outfit

Today is three months! I can't believe how the time has flown by. It really seems like just yesterday that I was still pregnant with her. She has been so much fun to play with and hold. For example, this evening she slept in my arms. It was so nice. I love snuggling with her, and I don't feel I get to do that enough with me back at work. She's also getting more animated as seen by her smile in the photo. When we took it we had a  bunch of smiley photos to choose from. I continue to be amazed by everything she does.

First Thanksgiving

This was Lilybelle's first Thanksgiving. I know that everything that we do for the next year is going to be her first, but it's still so exciting to me. This year we went down to my parents' house for some turkey and fixings. It was quite a chore to load everyone up. We had to load up two dogs, their food, Lilybelle, her diaper bag, bouncy seat, blankets, and the pumpkin cheesecake that I made. Once the car was loaded we were off to spend the day with Nana and Grandpa. Nana and Grandpa were excited to see Lilybelle, and she promptly spent most of her day in one of their arms.

My mom out did herself with dinner. It was amazing. The turkey was super moist, the rolls fluffy, the asparagus yummy, and on and on. Once we were done stuffing our face with food, we broke out the pumpkin cheesecake which was a compromise on my part. See I hate pumpkin pie, but everyone else likes it, and I wasn't going to make an apple and pumpkin pie for four people. I found out that I kinda like pumpkin cheesecake; not enough to eat it all the time, but enough to eat it once a year. This is the sole picture that I remembered to take that day. Poor Lilybelle.

After all the food, Nana, Lilybelle, and I went to Michaels for a little after turkey shopping. It was okay, not great, but not bad either as far as deals went. It was Lilybelle's first Black Friday shopping (shocking another first!) and the only store that she went to. I didn't want to take her out in the crowds so Tim and I alternated who went and who stayed home between shopping on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (I really wish they would go back to just one day, but it's because people like me go all three days that they do it that way).

Also on Black Friday, we went Christmas Tree looking/cutting with Tim's family. I say looking because Tim and I have a fake tree at home. We have a hard time agreeing on a tree to cut down, and our house isn't really big enough for a big tree from the woods. It requires what is termed a pencil tree which works out really great in our house. We had a good time hanging out and eating lunch with family after everyone had found a tree. The dogs enjoyed their time out too. Sophie found some deer poop and rolled all over it. Fun for Tim who got to clean it up since I was feeding Lilybelle. When we got home Tim set up our tree and the next day we put all the ornaments on the tree. We're getting ready for Lilybelle's first Christmas.

2 Months Old

Today Lilybelle is 2 months old; I can hardly believe it! We took our 2 month old photo today. It will be fun to compare the monthly photo shoots when she is one year old. This is also my last week of maternity leave. Time has definitely flown, but as the saying goes time flies by when you are having fun. She's had a very eventful second month of life. She saw her Uncle Matthew get married, celebrated her first Halloween by attending many parties, and enjoyed many an outing out and around Reno. I can't believe that I have to leave my baby and go back to work next week. Tomorrow her Grandpa is coming up to visit her, and she has her shots on Friday.