And then there were four …

Yep that is right ... our family is growing by one. Next April we will be a family of four. J We get to find out if the baby is a boy or girl next month. It will be interesting to see how Sammy does with a baby around.

For those of you who have spent any time around Sammy lately, you know that she loves to push babies down. She comes up to me with a little smirk on her face and says, “I push that baby down.” And sure enough, next chance she gets, she is trying to tackle the “baby” to the floor (usually it is one-year-olds she beats up on, people just a little smaller than she is).

I hope it is just a phase she will grow out of, but for right now I am at a loss as to what to do with her. We have tried putting her in time out, talking to her and showing her how she hurt someone, making her say sorry, ignoring her when she says it hoping she won't actually do it, etc., but nothing has worked. So if anyone has any helpful tips, please share.

Although Sammy is a stinker on occasions like this, she is the cutest thing at times too. She has recently “memorized” several of her favorite books and likes to read them to herself for fun. I am going to try and catch it on video one of these days so you all can see how cute it is.

Other than new baby and crazy Sammy, there isn't a whole lot going on around here. We aren’t even planning to dress Sammy up for Halloween because we have nowhere to take her. Good thing she is too little to know she is missing out on a bunch of candy. Most likely I wouldn’t let her have any of it anyway and would end up eating it myself.

Just because I feel like every post needs a picture. This is the sign we helped Sammy make for Travis' birthday. Yeah, he only got this picture of it, not the actual sign. Since taking this picture she pealed off the pizza stickers and has kept them in her "oven," which is actually the drawer in her bathroom. She pulls them out every morning when she brushes her teeth to check on them and then puts them back in the oven. 

Fall is Here

Man, I feel like summer sure left in a hurry. I swear it went from being 90 degrees to 60 degrees overnight. Now that summer is over, I don’t know that I have anything too exciting to write about, if anything I wrote about before was even exciting at all. We have happened upon a few great things I will share that have kept us fairly busy and happy the last month or so.

For starters, it is football season, so we always have something to do on the weekends. Drew’s dad has season tickets to the Boise State games, and we have been lucky enough to go to all the home games so far. We took Sammy to the first game and she did surprisingly well, but I don’t think we will take her to another one this season.   

We also took her to a game at Drew’s old high school (also where his mom teaches, so we can get in for free if we go with her) and Sammy loved it. She was dancing, cheering and having a great time. She loves watching the fireworks when the home team scores and eating popcorn for a treat. I think she pays better attention to the actual game than I do. She is always saying, “He throw the ball,” “He fall down, and that’s another “first down.”

Drew’s work has season tickets to the Boise State games as well, so each employee gets to take all six tickets for one game of the season. We got to use the tickets last weekend for the Southern Miss game. They are pretty good seats, at about the 40 yard line, three rows up. We were lucky enough to have two of my best friends and their husband’s come with us to the game. It was fun having a little triple date with two of my old roommates.

On to other things besides football … Sammy and I do a music and movement class at the library each week, which she LOVES! Last week when we went to the class, they announced an early literacy class that was starting up where you come to the class for an hour and they teach you skills and give you tips on how to prepare your young ones to read. The best part, you get a free book. I decided to sign us up for the six week course, and we get a free book every single week. I am pretty excited about that. This week we got Llama Llama Red Pajama and Sammy loves it. She also got a CD with like 45 different kid songs, and a little pack of Play-Doh. I think we get cool treats like this every week, so I am excited for the next five weeks. 

Besides this class, I am also taking a Positive Parenting class. The class is two semesters long, and I took one part in the winter and am now taking the other half this fall. It is a 10 week class where we learn about a variety of topics, all related to parenting and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Here is a link to the instructor’s site. If you live in Nampa or the surrounding area, I would highly recommend it. I am so grateful my mom is willing to watch the little girl for me so I can go each week. Some of the topics we cover are kind of hard to implement with such a young kid with no siblings, which is why I am grateful for the class syllabus with all Sister Tanner’s notes and references, so I can review it and implement it as time goes.

Other than that, we have just been hanging out enjoying life. We were able to go work at the orchard this week and pick apples, which was fun. We picked peaches during the summer and did apples this go around. Since the fruit is used for the Church Welfare System, we were only allowed to take apples that had touched the ground. I guess if it touches the ground it is no good to them, so I brought home two WalMart sacks full of “flawed” apples.  I attempted making apple sauce in the crock-pot this morning, and I think it turned out pretty well.

Anyway, we are excited to relax and listen to General Conference this weekend. I have spent some time trying to create some activities for Sammy to help her learn, and keep her busy so I can listen to the prophet and apostles who will be sharing messages this weekend.  

If you made it to the end of this long and probably boring post, thanks and have a great weekend!

 

Shane Gets Married

“The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan … Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”

– The Family: A Proclamation to the World

It has taken me a couple weeks to get to this post, but here is a little about the adventures we had on our trip to Utah for Shane (my little brother) and Amber’s wedding.

We headed for Utah Thursday morning and decided to take a bit more scenic route since we didn’t need to be to Ogden until later that afternoon. It was just a small detour off the freeway, on to the old highway, where we got to see waterfalls, canyons, and lots of birds. (Don’t pretend like you didn’t like bird watching in Mr. Gates class in high school, if only I had my field guide so I knew what the birds actually were.)

The best part of this little scenic trip was that we got to stop and have lunch with one of my bffs . The day before we left I was chatting with her on FB and found out she moved and that our little scenic drive we had planned took us right through the little town she moved to. Lucky, right?

Cutest Girl in the World

So on Thursday night, the family went to the Brigham City Temple with Amber for her endowment. In this post I might use some jargon that may be unfamiliar, so check out this link for a little more info about LDS temples, and what happens there. Other than doing baptisms, most LDS members attend the temple for the first time just prior to getting married in the temple or leaving to serve a mission. Courtney was kind enough to watch Sammy and Ashley’s girls for us while we went. Thanks Court, love you.

Since the wedding was not until Saturday morning, we had time to kill on Friday so we headed south to Provo to visit Drew’s little brother, Eric, and take a look around our old stomping ground.  We toured the new Heritage Halls at BYU where Eric is an RA, went to eat at Brick Oven, drove past our old apartment and let Sammy play at the park we went to almost every day when we lived there. On our way to Provo, we stopped at Drew’s old work so he could say hi to his friends there too. 

There aren't a lot of things I miss about living in Utah, but these mountains sure are beautiful.

My mom’s cousin was out of town for the weekend and was kind enough to let Mom, Dad, Shane, Courtney, Drew, Sammy, my second mom from Prineville, and I crash at her place in Kaysville.  It was fun staying up Saturday night reminiscing with Sue about all our good times in Prineville. Oh how I miss all you Prineville peeps. 

I guess this brings us to Saturday. Shane and Amber’s sealing was at 9:30 a.m., which meant we were up early getting ready and headed to the Bountiful, Utah Temple. The ceremony was beautiful. The sealer gave them, and the rest of us there, some great advice. There probably aren’t many things in this world more awesome than witnessing a couple be sealed for time and all eternity, and seeing a new little family formed.

 

Drew and I got to go help setup for the reception while everyone else finished taking pictures at the temple. It was great being able to see so many friends and family come to support Shane and Amber, especially seeing friends from Prineville. 

Eating the cake is definitely one of our favorite parts about weddings, so we were pretty excited when they decided to cut the cake and serve it. They did the traditional cutting of the cake and smashing it in each other’s faces, but the funny part was that it scared Sammy half to death. She started screaming when she saw Shane and Amber “get all dirty.” It was pretty funny. She talked about it for days, and even made up a song about it. It is the only song she has ever made up, but it went like this: “Cake Song, Cake song, Shane and Amber get all dirty, cake song.” It was pretty cute listening to her sing it. 

Saturday night Boise State had a football game, so we left the reception a little early and headed home to catch it. For months, Drew hasn’t been able to figure out why anyone would schedule a wedding on the opening weekend of college football season, and had to make sure we didn’t miss the game.

Since Sammy didn’t get a nap with all the day’s festivities, she fell asleep after just five minutes in the car. She only slept for about an hour but then listened to Pink Floyd on her head phones the rest of the way home.

Food, Drink, Book, Baby, and Pink Floyd was all it took to keep this girl happy for another five and a half hour car ride home.