If you're here, welcome! We blog for us as our journal, but we are glad to share out lives with you.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Elder Matthew Walker

Two years ago this January - my little brother Matthew left on his mission to Morristown, New Jersey. On his way to the MTC, my family stopped by Westlake High School where I just happened to be on my lunch break. I was very pregnant and sad that I couldn't go with my family to drop him off, but I knew that he was going to make an awesome missionary. Fast forward to today. Elder Walker was set to return home at 4:30 p.m. in the Salt Lake City Airport.  It'a amazing how quickly time seems to have flown, while at the same time - thinking about the fact that Lydia wasn't even born when he left makes it seems like lifetimes ago.

Lydia is 20 months old and was SO excited to meet her uncle Matthew for the first time. (Okay I might be projecting how excited I was onto her.)  We picked up David early from work and headed to the airport with my family to greet Elder Walker and welcome him home.

We were all so excited (which I expected) and nervous (which I didn't expect). The weather was pretty snowy and his plane had been delayed for a couple of minutes. I feel like we waited for him for hours - because it seemed to take so long!  Melissa kept Lydia occupied while we waited. Melis was a good sport and let Lydia drag her up and down the escalator like a million times. Up and down and up and down. I think Lydia would have been happy to do that for the rest of the day. She loved it! 

 

We were waiting with four other families whose sons were all coming home from the Morristown, New Jersey Mission. It was fun to talk to them and find several connections we had with them. We kept seeing men in business suits coming down the stairs and it was killing us. When he finally came down those stairs - we (and the other families greeting their boys) basically exploded. Then we had to wait for them to walk all the way down the stairs before we could run to hug them. 


He looked so good - and we were so happy to have him back. I don't know that he felt the same way. He loved his mission and over Christmas had expressed that he wasn't really ready to come home. Regardless, we were excited enough for him. I was so excited for him to finally meet Lydia - and they seemed to hit it off quite swimmingly. (I was worried for a little bit that all of the noise and excitement was going to scare Lydia - but she was smiling and laughing the whole time. She loved it.)






Welcome Home Elder Walker. We are so proud of you and your example and testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You've done a great work, and we are excited to see what else your future brings!

Monday, January 6, 2014

Lydia Elise: 19-20 Months

This little girl is 20 months old! She's happy, energetic, adventurous, and so darn cute. 

Stats: Absolutely grown out of every 12 month piece of clothing that she has and a few of her 18 month clothes are starting to get a little tight. The outfit above is actually 24 months - but it's the only one that she has right now. You can tell it's a little big - but it's not SO huge. She's still in size 3 diapers and wears size 4 and 5 shoes. I don't know how much she weighs - but she is definitely starting to get heavy. She is finally breaking through another tooth (she's had the four on top and four on bottom for months now with no sign of any other teeth). It's on the top next to her already-in teeth. No molars yet. Her hair is FINALLY long enough to put in pigtails. She is absolutely darling and we love her.

Some things that we want to remember about this month:

--We went to the Alpine Live Nativity on her 19 month birthday. She loved to see all of the animals, but her favorite were the sheep. She was pretty good at making the animal noises we asked her to ("What does the cow say?" -- "Moooooo"), but after a while she responded to every animal with "Baaaa".

--She loves Bees. I don't know exactly where she learned it - but she will point out each and every bee in every book we read. (There are a surprising amount of bees just hanging out in the illustrations of books that are not about bees. Sitting on flowers, flying through the air...) I'll be reading about Curly the Pig and all the sudden she's pointing and saying "Beee". It's really darling.

--She also loves Lions. Everytime she sees a lion she says "Raaarrr". (We have several books with lions in them and she loves them). We often play "little lions" and crawl around on the floor growling at each other. She makes the sweetest little lion.

--Jumps on the trampoline and loves it.


--So many new words! Some of her favorites are book, read, tiger, Elsie, tree, Y (we point out the letters when spelling her name and she loves saying "Wyyyyyy"), baby, Grandpa (papa), water (wawa), milk, cereal (cera), treat, up, down, upstairs, downstairs, outside, coat, mommy, daddy, bear, fox, potty, poop, pee, orange (peach), tower, ball, and many many others.

--Loves both of her grandpas. We spent a lot of time with family over this last month and Lydia was always asking about Grandpa. Whether we were at home, at a grandparents house, or in the car - her most common word was "Grandpa?" Once, she even brought me the ipad to Facetime with my parents (we had just finishing talking to them a bit before - but when she came up holding the ipad saying "papa, papa" I couldn't resist and called them back). She's lucky to have such great grandpas. (She loved playing foosball with my dad over Christmas.


--She loves her babies! My mom gave her twin babies (one that looks like Elsie and one that looks like Lydia) and David's mom gave her a little baby as well. She loves all three of them and often tries to carry all three of them around at the same time. She is such a good little caretaker - she feeds them and helps them drink and loves to have them with her. 


--When she sees the camera she says "cheese!" The first time I heard her - I was so surprised. But I think her Aunt Amy says "Say Cheese." Regardless, it's so cute. 

--She had a great Christmas. She liked to climb on the boxes, but if you could catch her attention she loved to pull off the paper. She was also so in love with all her toys and frequently wanted to stop and play with what she had just opened. She sure is a loved little girl! 
 

--She is showing all sorts of interest in potty training. She acknowledges when she has a poopy diaper, and will even lay down (occasionally) if you ask her if she wants to get her diaper changed. She says "potty" all the time and sits on it almost every night. 

--She idolizes her dad. She points at his coat and shoes when he's gone and says "dad". When she hears the garage go up when he's coming home, she giggles and runs to the door. And when he watches football, she joins right in. 


--Pigtails! I've attempted to do a little ponytail on the very top of her head a couple of times over her little life and never had any success. Finally, I realized that there was more hair in the back than on the top and put her hair in little pigtails and it. is. so. cute. The first time I ever made it happen - there were many tears shed. But it's gotten progressively easier. (I really wanted a good picture of her piggies, but she was still mad at me for messing with her hair and these were the best I got.) 


--She's so athletic and energetic. She climbs all over our couches, side tables, coffee table, and chaise. People frequently ask me if she falls down and gets bruises all the time because of how active she is - but she really doesn't. She's really coordinated, and has an excellent sense of balance. Some of the things she does make me a little nervous - but she's actually very capable. She rarely falls down, and even though I stay really close to her when she's being a daredevil, she almost never needs my help to do what she wants to do (like balance beam her way from one side of the sink to the other, or scale the couch and reach her little body to the side table and pull herself over). She can even pull herself up on the coffee table with no assistance from anything. She basically does a pull-up and then gets her leg over the edge. The one thing that I'm really trying to teach her is that she cant go off of things head-first. She likes to slide to the very end of the chaise and use her hands to walk herself off. The other day she started going head-first off the side. I'm really working on it - but everytime I stop her she looks at me like "Mom, I got this!" I don't know what I'm going to do with her. 



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-- She loves oranges but calls them "peach". It's so funny. She'll go to the fridge and ask you to open it (usually with whining but sometimes she'll point and just look really cute), then point to the fruit drawer and say "peach?". Family members know that the way to her heart is by bribing her with little clementines, but she likes the big oranges as well (although she is very impatient while you peel it). 


--She loves Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. She'll often point to the TV and say "Tiger", or she'll find the Wii remote and bring it to me. She really, really loves him. We try to limit TV, but this month we were a little lax (there was just so much going on). We love it because it's cute and teaches good morals. She loves it because it's so fun. 

--One day while I was making dinner, I was letting her watch an episode of Daniel Tiger. They were playing with a ball and the little song was "Keep trying, you'll get better." I looked over and she had found her ball and was bringing it to me to throw with her. So we threw it back and forth for a minute. Then a little later in the same episode - Daniel and O the Owl were trying to build a tower and I watched her pull out her blocks and start to build a tower with them. It was the neatest thing! It makes me glad that we have her watch good educational shows instead of just junk - because she's obviously soaking it all in. 

--She loves to build towers. One day when we had the trampoline upstairs, she started building her tower on the tramp. She was being very careful and holding very still while stacking her tower, but when she finished it - she would start bouncing on her knees to knock it over. I was so impressed with her problem solving ability! 



-- She has lots of cute outfits, but one of my favorites was the orange shirt and purple pants outfit pictured many times here. These were not all taken on the same day. I just must have thought that she looked cute every day that she wore them and always taken pictures on those days. Silly. 

--She found David's gloves and tried to put them on all by herself. She's so smart.

We sure love this girl and are grateful for the happiness that she brings to our lives! 

Friday, January 3, 2014

Two Thousand Fourteen

Happy 2014! Last year was wonderful - but we are so excited as we look forward to this new year. 


Some of the goals we made last year were:

1- Buy and move into our first home.
2- Focus on seeing the needs of people around me and then working to fill those needs.
3- Work hard to meet new people in our new ward/neighborhood. Be friendly, social, inviting, and inclusive. (Along with this: Strive to fulfill my calling the the very fullest.)
4- Continue to grow as a mother and wife. Focus on Lydia and David and finding the things I can do to bless their lives the most. Three things that go under this category: -More quality time (Stop letting other distractions get in the way.), -Healthier eating options , and -Maintain a positive attitude about myself and others (Stop letting little things get me down and frustrated.)

It makes me happy to know that we improved in all of these areas. Sometimes it made us stretch out of our comfort zone, but at the end of everything - I believe that we are better people with happier lives at the beginning of 2014 than we were at 2013. That's what I hope for the start of every year, that I can look back over the past year and know that I have become a little kinder, a little more organized, a little closer to my little family. 

These are some of the goals that David and I talked about together for our family: 
1- Have a monthly family goal that we write on the calendar. Focus on that goal.
2- Go to the temple every month. No excuses. 
3- Do something social at least every other month. Focus on inviting members of the ward into our home as a way to begin/sustain friendships and to reach out to others. 
4- Family prayer every morning. (To go along with our Scripture/Song/Prayer at night.) 

Some personal goals that I have this year: 
1- Be more aware of what I'm saying to others and about others.
2- Read my scriptures in the morning instead of putting it off until night. 
3- Put a priority on visiting teaching, temple attendance, and cheerfully fulfilling my calling. 
4- Dedicate time for both David and Lydia that is distraction free. Make sure they know they are most important. 

I think it's important to make sure that the goals you set are achievable and focused on the things you really care about most. We also want to be more healthy this year. Healthy meals and more exercise. (And by more exercise, I mean... exercise. period.) We are taking other steps to help make that happen as well - but the things that are the very most important to me are these things. These are the things that I truly believe will bring us the very most happiness this year. I just know that this year is going to be a good one. Here's to you - two thousand fourteen!