Come On Down!

I mentioned that David surprised me with an impromptu game of The Price is Right on Friday night. Here are the promised pictures. He was so cute and so funny. I wasn't sure what to expect (all I knew is that he wanted to open presents on Friday instead of Saturday and that he was inviting Melissa and Blake to come and join us). David had to work late that night so he didn't get home until after ten o'clock. However, as soon as he got home, he got right to work setting everything up. I was a little nervous because I had no clue what was happening - but as soon as he had us sit down at the table I heard the words (amid a realistic cheering crowd): 

"Shantel Peaden - Come on down!" 

I was quickly followed by Melissa and Blake and the three of us contestants sat on the couch and were given the chance to bid on our first items, which were a garden trowel and gardening gloves (both of which I asked for, for my birthday). David was speaking in the best game show host voice, complete with written script, and it was awesome. He had prepped Melissa and Blake with dollar amount answers so that I was sure to come close to the actual retail price. Because I "won" I got to come up "on stage" to compete in The Grocery Game.

(At this point, I realized that this was going to be awesome and so I grabbed my camera and handed it to Melissa. Pictures start from here on.) 

David instructed me that there were five grocery items (five of my favorite treats) and I had to organize them using as many as I needed of each item in order to hit between $19 and $21. I masterfully gave my answer (with only a little help) and won a prize! (Blake was the tally keeper for how much I spent.) It helped that these are my favorite treats that I always ogle while I'm grocery shopping and after looking at the price, usually end up passing on. So I knew pretty close to exactly how much everything was. David knew that so he bought tortilla chips that I never buy and he bought the large can of Salsa Con Queso.

We were all having so much fun. It was so well put together. My prize for winning The Grocery Game? New Yellow dish towels! 

Yay! Lets also take a moment to admire my pretty yellow cardigan. I found it while shopping the other day and knew that I needed it. I called my mom right after I left the store and told her about the pretty purchase that I had just made, followed by the question "Do you want to give it to me for my birthday?" Haha. I just loved it so much. (You can also see the new yellow pillow on our chaise. Unpictured are our new yellow-striped curtains. Update on that later this week.) I think it's safe to say yellow is my new favorite color. 

After I won my prize, Melissa and Blake competed for a box of Mike and Ike's (also complete with clever game-show-host introduction). Melissa was closer to the actual retail price and so she got to compete for... A NEW CAR! (Which apparently was one of our cars - so I'm sure glad that she didn't win.) She had to organize four digits to get closest to the actual retail price of our car. 

We used dice to "Spin the Wheel" and whoever was closest to 12 without going over got to go to the showcase showdown! Melissa and I came out on top - and David explained: "Each of you will have a beautiful showcase to bid on. Whoever is the closest without going over will win their showcase. If you come within $5 of the actual retail price of your showcase, you will win both showcases." I was first up and got to unwrap four presents to discover my showcase. 

My showcase consisted of a beautiful mirror, a pretty navy shirt, yellow earrings (that just happened to match my cardigan perfectly... I may or may not have pointed them out at the store with the statement "I have a birthday coming up" and hoped he picked up the hint), and a day-trip to historic Logan, UT - complete with Aggie Ice Cream, Mini Gold at Willow Creek, and dinner at the restaurant of my choice (probably Formosa - it's my favorite!).  I was so surprised and excited! I guessed $80.58 (which in of itself is significantly more than our birthday budget.)  

Melissa learned about her showcase package - A close-to-home party extravaganza complete with mini-golf, dinner, and tickets to Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters at the Megaplex theatre. David prepped Melissa to bid over $80 - so under the pressure, she also bid $80.58. 

Because Melissa went over, I was closest to the actual retail price - which meant that I won my showcase. Even though I was $25 off (actual retail value is significantly different than how much we would spend), David informed me that I had performed so well that I won both showcases and that I could choose which one I wanted to do the following day.

It was such a creative and fun thing for my birthday. I'm so grateful for David and how much he cares about me and my birthday. I can't believe the preparation that went into making this special adventure/game. Funny story: the night before I was sitting at the computer and he was sitting on the couch "watching sports" on his computer. At one point I turned and asked him if he was watching the Price is Right. He looked at me like I was crazy and said that no, he was listening to a sports podcast. I laughed and told him that it sounded like the price is right and thought about how funny it was that my brain interpreted the small amount of noise coming from his headphones as the Price is Right music. Clever boy. 

The next day, I decided to select the Lehi Prize Package because it was Stake Conference and we wanted to be able to attend the Adult session that night. We got up and headed to Ihop for breakfast. (Thank you Ihop for the free birthday entree!) Ihop is located right across from the Les Shwab in American Fork and they just happened to have a giant blow up polar bear outside of their store. Lydia loved it. She saw it as we walked up, and then all during breakfast she kept pointing to it out of the window (which was slightly awkward as the people sitting by the window thought she was pointing at them). When we left, we decided to snap a picture. The picture doesn't do the size justice. It was huge.

After breakfast we headed to Orem to try out their mini-golf course. (The only thing that I told David that I really wanted to do for my birthday was to go mini-golfing.) It was probably the most fun time minigolfing that we've ever had. David got several holes-in-one and I made a couple of cool trick shots (like the one below where I hit from the grass straight into the hole. Lydia was a champ and hung out in her stroller. She was pretty content to play with her golf ball and eat her cheerios. I'm sad that I didn't get a picture of David, we were just having too much fun that I forgot until it was too late.  

We came home to put Lydia down for her nap, cleaned out my car (I had been case-lot shopping the day before and the car was full of cans of corn, tomatoes, beans, and peaches), and did a few other things on my "to-do" list before dropping Lydia off at David's parents house and heading to dinner. We decided to try out the new Thai place by our house Thai Drift Swift. I got a chicken curry and David got a chicken pad thai. They were both... fine. But, it was our first time having Thai food and neither of us loved it. (Which was fine because we were doing it for the experience and it was actually super-cheap.) We dumped our trays on the way out and headed over to the Del Taco to pick up a few 50 cent tacos. It was perfect. We ate them in the parking lot of our Stake Center and made it into the adult session with a good 3 minutes to spare. After Stake conference we headed to the movie theater (with a quick pit stop at home to change out of our Sunday clothes and then another quick pit stop home after we bought our tickets so I could put in my contacts.) I read a summary of the first movie on our way over because it had been so long since we'd seen it. (We watched Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.) It ended up being really good. It may just have been that we haven't been to a real theatre in over a year (16 months - that's how old Lydia is), it had been some time since we'd had a sans-baby date, and we were still on a happy-high from having such a great day - but I had a seriously great time. (Whoever invented reclining seats and arm rests that pull up so you can cuddle is a genius!)

It was a fabulous birthday celebration. The only thing that could have made it even a tiny bit better would be to have been able to go to the temple together. It was the perfect birthday for me and I feel so lucky to have been able to share it with this man. I love him. 

My Birthday

Today is my birthday.

I love my birthday, and I'm grateful for such a wonderful husband who makes such a huge effort to make the day special for me. We spent the whole weekend celebrating. Friday night, David invited Melissa and Blake up for a little surprise birthday party for me. He had prepared a big production of Price is Right where Melissa and Blake were my fellow contestants and I was able to "win" all of my presents. It was SO so fun. (I have pictures and am going to post more details about that later.) Then on Saturday we went to breakfast at iHop, went mini-golfing at Trafalga, went out to dinner at Thai Drift Swift, went to the adult session of Stake Conference, and finished out the night by going to Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters at the Megaplex in Thanksgiving Point. It was a wonderful day.

I was able to spend today with my parents, my sister Melissa (and Blake), and my brother Jacob. It was so nice and I was spoiled by the very thoughtful gifts and kind expressions. (I also got cards in the mail from my Walker grandparents, my Knowles grandparents, and my brother Elder Matthew Walker. I love getting mail!)

I've been thinking a lot about where I am in life right now and where I want to be in the next year. Here are some of the goals that I want to accomplish in the next year.

- Read my scriptures every night, both personal scriptures and with David.

-Go to the temple every month. No more excuses.

-Have another baby. (We've been ready for a little brother or sister for Lydia for quite some time now, but are learning the lesson of patience and God's timing all over again.)

-Vacuum my house more often.

-Be more active with Lydia. Finding things to do outside of our house and making an effort to expose her to those things.

Here are some other goals that I've been working on: (Taken from my 2013 new years resolutions.)

-Focus on seeing the needs of people around me and then working to fill those needs. This goes hand in hand with continuing to develop an attitude of Charity.

- 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.)

- 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.

I know that there are a ton of goals in this list. But I see a bright future in this coming year. I think that 26 is going to be great. In fact, it may just be my best year yet!

Lydia Elise: 15 - 16 Months

This lovely girl is 16 months old today. 

She is lovely, and happy, and absolutely not a baby anymore. Although, I still call her my Lydia-baby much of time (so much so that she's started walking around the house saying "baby, baby, baby") she's absolutely her own little toddler-person. However, she is still in size 3 diapers and size 4 shoes. I wish that we had a scale just so I knew how much she weighs. Over 20 lbs, certainly. She still wears 12 months cloths, although her 18 month clothes fit her just fine now. 

Some other details from the month: 

--She sleeps consistently from eight oclock at night to seven fifteen in the morning. It's wonderful. However, she has occasionally started crying in the middle of the night and when I go in I've found her with her sad little foot stuck between the slats of her crib. I don't know if she's always stuck her feet out and only recently they have gotten too big to slip back through or if that's a new thing. I'm hoping that she grows out of it soon because it's so sad. 

--We are still steadily napping two naps. The first nap is from 9ish to 11ish. The second nap is from 3ish to 5ish. My mom keeps telling me that she is ready to transition to one nap, which is probably true, but I'm not ready to transition to one nap yet. So we are still happy with our arrangement. 

--We had a lot of fun this last month. We played with friends, went to a couple of splash pads, had a couple of pool dates, had Aunt Melissa Shaye come stay with us, and other fun things. 

--We are growing up quickly at this house. She copies everything that we do. Including relaxing on the chaise. Everything she does is so darling. 

  

--Lydia is still a great eater. She's stopped eating everything that I put in front of her. She used to be happy with whatever I wanted to feed her, but now she has a definite opinion about what she wants to eat. But I think that has more to do with her desire to assert her independence than it does with actually enjoying the types of food I feed her. She loves grapes, but occasionally she will decide that isn't what she wants at that particular moment and so off the tray they go. (That's another thing that I thought we were past, but has reappeared. If she doesn't want to eat something she tosses it over the edge of her tray.) However, all that aside - she still enjoys a great variety of food. Some of our favorites this month: Melon, grapes, pasta, zucchini, peas, bagels, rice with soy sauce, relish (we serve this when we have hotdogs and she's happy to just eat the relish plain), string cheese, and graham crackers. She hasn't been as impressed with tomatoes as she used to be and she all but refuses to eat animal crackers. I'm grateful that she's such a good eater, because most of the time I just feed her whatever we are eating for dinner. Sometimes she likes things that I wouldn't have even thought to feed her - like this picture. Raw onion. She was sitting on the counter while I was making dinner (Fajitas), and she reached over and started snacking on the onion that I was cutting. She really liked it and kept coming back for more. That's just one example of how good of an eater she is. 

I know I said that she hasn't been eating tomatoes as much as she used to. It may very well be because we canned tomatoes and she ate so many of them. (Don't judge this picture. We had a line of people cutting tomatoes at the counter and no place for our giant pot, so I had it next to the counter where I could dump the diced tomatoes. We didn't think about how it was the perfect location for Lydia to snitch out of. After this picture, we made room for it up on the counter. We really are sanitary people.) 

--She's learning how to problem solve. For a long time if the ball rolled under a table she would cry because she couldn't get it. Then she learned that she could crawl under to get it - but she couldn't ever get back out. Now she's learning how to manipulate her body to get her and the ball out.  

--Two of the things she absolutely adores in this world are her books and her dad. I love to watch them together. It makes me so happy and grateful to be blessed with these two. If Lydia sees a book she will "ooh-ooh", pick it up, and then bring it to you to have you read it to her. Her favorite thing is when her daddy is home and can read her the books. 

--Oh, and dancing. She loves to dance. Which mostly consists of her spinning in circles. If she hears music she automatically starts dancing, but she is sometimes prompted by nothing at all. I often wonder if she just gets a buildup of happiness in her little body and just has to let it out. I certainly know that each time she dances, it brings a smile to my heart. 

 -This month we celebrated two of Lydia's Great-Grandma's Birthdays. Coincidentally, both wonderful women had their birthday's on the same day: August 29th. My Grandma Knowles turned 80 and David's Grandma McAllister turned 88. It was so fun for Lydia to be able to spend some time with her great-grandmas and for them to be able to spend some time with her, too.  

-We did a lot of yard work this month and Lydia was a trooper. She played outside while we dug, raked, planted, and a myriad of other tasks. Most of the time we tried to work while she was napping, but when she was awake she was happy to help us. Here she is helping us to dig a hole for our tree in the backyard. (Good thing we remembered to plant the tree and not her!) 

--I mentioned that Lydia loves books, food, and cars/trains/airplanes. However, the thing that she loves the very most in the whole world is shoes. She LOVES shoes. Her own shoes, her mama's shoes, her daddy's shoes, random shoes she finds on the floor, shoes at the store. She loves them. I'm really impressed at her skills in walking around in them. She can put pretty much any shoe on by herself and can walk, turn, and spin in them. Even David's large tennis shoes. She's really very coordinated. 

To illustrate her love of shoes... I thought I'd include some picture of her shenanigans while I was shopping clearance at the Outlets across the freeway. I swear she found every single pair of shoes in each store we went to. She was in heaven! 

-She is SO full of energy. Observe. 

-She has got the saddest sad face in the world. If you try to make her do something that she doesn't want to do - she immediately scrunches up her face and whines. Poor girl. Being a baby is so hard. 

--We are already teaching her about the basics of Utah State fan-ship. We sing the fight song in the car and dressed her up for the kickoff football game last week. I seriously want some more Aggie gear for our little girl. She is the cutest little Aggie fan, ever. (Also, those tennis shoes? We got them as some handme downs and they are easily Lydia's favorite shoes. She loves them. She will chose them over any of her others. I think it's so funny.) 

--Speaking of her really cute Aggie outfit, it's seriously a miracle that we got a picture of her with her USU bow on her head. This is what most of our pictures looked like.  

You may have noticed that the majority of pictures this month are bow-less. I don't know why, but she's recently decided that she hates wearing her bows. I don't know why, because they are so cute. But unless we are going out, I usually don't even try to fight the battle because this is always what happens:

--This month we've started tending our favorite Cooper kiddos on Friday mornings. Lydia has loved playing with Carson and Elsie on such a regular basis. Lydia and Elsie have started  interacting more and have started copying each other's actions. If one of them does something, the other will start doing it as well. Then they look at each other and laugh and keep doing it. It's darling. 

--Lydia still loves her cupboard in our kitchen. She plays in it frequently and has just started sitting down and letting the door shut on her. She will sit there for minutes at a time just jabbering to herself while her legs are sticking out. I love it. 

-First Haircut! I blogged about it here: Lydia's First Haircut. In summary, she did a great job and I love her new little trim. 

--I think I may have mentioned that Lydia only had two teeth until she was almost 15 months and then last month during our Houston, TX trip - she had three teeth come in. She still has only those five teeth and it's so funny. I was under the impression that the top two teeth usually come in together, but Lydia's top left tooth came in along to the one just outside of that. That front tooth is huge. Seriously, at first I was concerned that it was actually two teeth fused together. Then I was worried that the top right tooth hadn't developed and that's why it hadn't come through. But you can now see it getting ready to break the skin and so I'm not worried anymore. I'm just content to smile along with Lydia's toothy grin. 

 --Lydia has SO much energy. She still loves climbing all over anything that she can. She's found that if she pushes the brown ottoman up to the coffee table she can climb up and dance on the top. I have lots of memories of dancing on my parents coffee table and so I love to watch her do this. She's big enough that I don't worry as much about her falling off, although I am very careful while she's up there. But I totally get that standing on the table is way cooler than standing on the floor. She could climb up and down all afternoon if i'd let her. One of my other favorite things is that often as she is climbing up or down, she will pause and sit on the ottoman with her little legs tucked under the table.

-- Even though she's got lots of energy, she actually likes to cuddle more than she ever did when she was little. I'm such a lucky mama. 

--I couldn't get many good pictures of the signs, but Lydia is awesome at signing lots of things now. Some of her favorites are dog, airplane, train (she does this at least 50 times a day), food, milk, and many others. I love that she can communicate with me. She still isn't saying any words continuously. Occasionally she will say Mom, train, amen, Dad, and Baby. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just imagining that she says those words because she doesn't say them all the time - but she's definitely communicating. It's so fun.  (This is her signing car, which looks remarkably like she's doing the Scotsman. Like I said, training her young.) 

-I wanted a good picture of her looking at the camera and smiling while still wearing a bow on her head for the main picture on this post. (I know. It's a lot to ask for.) We dressed her up pretty and over the space of an hour or so I took almost 300 pictures. Approximately two resembled the picture that I wanted. Most of them looked like this: 

But I did get some cute ones that I felt that I needed to include here at the end. They are just too cute.

We love you, our happy-baby Lydia. You bring us so much joy! Happy 16 months.