Landon's Blessing

On the street where my parents live all the trees have either pink or white blossoms. It was so pretty to be outside. I decided to go outside and take a few shots. I'm loving my new camera!
I was trying to focus in on a fly that was on one of the buds, but I wasn't tall enough. You can see it's blurred body on one of the flowers in the middle.
My dad had invited one of his good friends over to make tennis ball launchers and he saw me with my camera. He asked if I was interested in photography and then he went to his car and pulled this out!! I couldn't believe my eyes. He had the whole set up for nikon. This lense was out of control. It was heavy  and had this handle to hold on to. I guess he went to South Africa to pick his son up from his mission and he took this along. He showed us some of the shots he took and they were so amazing...like something you'd see in a National Geographic magazine. 
Here are the guys assembling the many launchers. I think it added up to about seven in total. One for Nate an I, one for each the boys, two for Kim (Dad's friend), and one for our neighbor, Ken.
Yes, that's the guys doing their camo paint job. It was funny watching Kim and Dad going back and forth layering color. "This one needs a little more black accenting" my dad would say.

Here's Uncle Kevin holding Landon. Landon is all decked out in the tuxedo that Melissa's mom made. It was so cool!

Cute cousins sharing some yummy Cheetos. Grandma loves the Cheetos too.

Nate and I kept fighting over who got to hold Landon. I held him for a little bit and then Nate said he had set the timer and my time was up. Joking of course. But, he sure does look natural with that little guy.
Rylie is such a big girl these days. She was so good at holding Landon. He would start to move and his pacifier would pop out and she was right there putting it back in. She would rock back and forth and then hold he pacifier in his mouth (not forcefully either). She'll be a great big sister some day!
We had given a Fresno State blanket to Landon and I wanted a picture of him sporting the Fresno pride. He looks good in blue and red. Go Bulldogs!!!
This was when I got my turn. I just kept looking at his little face and fingers. He was just so tiny and perfect. I'm not even a mom yet, but babies are such little miracles that are truly sent from Heaven. I'm excited to be a mom some day. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that he and I were matching. If you look close you can see we're both wearing stripes. Auntie Erin was wearing blue stripes too. I guess the cool people got the memo about stripes.

Rylie and I were talking to Landon trying to get him to keep his eyes open. He started smiling at my mom in church at his blessing and it was so precious.

Four generations of Birds.

Grandma and Papa with the baby bird blanket and the super cool Landon in his tux.

We tried forever to get this picture. We turned around and Hailey had run off to nursery and it was not fun having to pull her out...as you can plainly see. It's all good though. Memories!

Valentine's Day

Nate and I spent Friday waiting at a restaurant to eat dinner. It was a great dinner, but we had to wolf it down to make it to the movie and I was already feeling kind of lousy. I was just so tired and I had a headache that would just not go away. After dinner at Ruby River we headed across the street to the Jordan Commons to see "Taken". That was a good movie! Who knew Liam Neeson could kick trash?! After the movie we headed home and hit the hay. I was so tired. Saturday Nate woke up and I was feeling way crappy. I was so weak and tired I wanted to call someone to take my prescription to Target to be filled for me. It took a lot of effort to leave that day, but I did it. Well I pretty much spent the day on the couch snuggled in a blanket waiting for Nate to come home. When he came home he walked through the door with the items below. I wasn't expecting him to get me anything, but a card so I was so excited! I was so happy just to have him home. What a sweetheart!!

Draper Temple

While we were waiting to get on buses that would take us back to our cars another bus pulled up and out stepped our local Fox 13 morning news anchor, Dan Evans. I was so pumped. I'm sure I looked a little odd snapping pictures, but I thought it was cool.
The Draper temple open house was really a cool experience. It was so beautiful inside and so peaceful. It was great getting to spend time with Nate just walking through the temple. I'm looking forward to attending a session after it's been dedicated.

Check out the HAIR

So, I've pretty much been a virgin to dying my hair. I did a little bit for my wedding but it was very subtle. I decided this time around to go all out and get dramatic. I also decided that shorter can be more fun. Long hair is beautiful and you can do a whole lot more with it, which I do miss, but the short style is sassy. We'll see how long it lasts. It's definitely not super cheap to get your hair colored and cut. Good thing I live in Utah. If I needed to I could always hit up the beauty college...I don't know if I'm that brave...maybe not.

PuPpIEs!!!!

I want a puppy SO bad! I go to to the classified section on KSL pretty much every day to look at puppies. They're all so stinkin' cute. Maybe I'll quit teaching and just breed dogs for cash j/k. It's interesting to see all the different breeds of dogs people have created over the years. It's funny though because people are essentially created mutts. We're not too excited about paying major bucks for a mutt. Nate has agreed that we can have a puppy but he has some conditions. We'll see what happens with that. He's mostly concerned about a dog shedding and leaving hair all over the place. I don't blame him, nobody wants pet hair all over the place. I hate going to someone's house, sitting down, and then leaving with pet hair all over my clothes. GROSS! 

Bridge to Terabithia

I never read the book when I was in school, but the movie is quite inspiring. I found myself on the verge of tears watching this movie. When we're kids we have no trouble playing make-believe, but as we get older we lose that innocence. We forget how to pretend. I really enjoyed being transported to another land through Leslie's and Jess' imagination. If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. 

Getting Domestic

I've been wanting to get my new nephew something, but couldn't decide what to get. I decided to use my handy sewing skills to make something for him and his mommy. Here I'm modeling the nursing cover I made.
This is the super cute fabric I found at JoAnn's. I had so much fun looking through all the isles of fabric. I started getting all these fun ideas for things I could sew. This picture doesn't do the pattern justice. It's so much cuter in person.
I decided to line it with Melissa's favorite color...pink! I wanted to do hot pink, but I didn't want it showing through and ruining the pattern of the fabric on the other side.

I'm being a dork and pretending I actually have a little one under there that I'm feeding. 

GuNs VS. hOsES

Our friend John is a firefighter and every year he and other firefighters do a charity hockey game against the police officers in the area. Hence the name guns vs. hoses. We got to see some pretty good fights during their game, but even better were the fights at the Grizzly game later that night. At the bottom is a picture of a Grizzly pounding an Idaho Steelhead. Take that Idaho! I never thought I'd like hockey but the game we watched was so good. We had the lead going into the third period, then they came out of nowhere and scored a goal. All the players got really aggressive and started checking each other into the walls left and right. It was very entertaining. Then the clock started winding down and a few seconds before the buzzer they scored again, tying the score up 6-6. We went in to overtime, but we stayed tied. So then we had to do a shoot out. Our first guy scored no problem. So did theirs. Then we scored again, so did theirs. Well, ended up beating us 2 to 4. It really stunk. I was pulling for the Grizzly's but I guess it wasn't their night. All in all I had a great time hanging out at the game. I had even more fun taking pictures with my new camera. 

My Birthday!

I'm 25! Crazy that I'm in my mid-twenties. I'm still really just a big kid at heart. Which my birthday present is proof of. Yes, this is a picture of a Nintendo DS. 

I kept telling Nate that I wanted one for Christmas and instead a got a super duper cool Nikon D60 Gold Edition camera. Yeah, I can't complain. So then when he got me a DS for my b-day I was even more stoaked. That's the great thing about having your b-day right after Christmas. It's a blessing and a curse, believe me.This super awesome gift wouldn't have been possible without some donations from my big brothers and their fabulous wives. Thank you Matt and Melissa for the DS  donation. Muchas Gracias Chris and Erin for the BrainAge game. I also have to preface these big gifts by saying that poor Nate totally botched Christmas and the b-day last year. He just had a bunch of unfortunate things happen and he couldn't seem to get back on his game. He TOTALLY made up for it this year and gets the husband of the year award. Oh, that makes me sound so superficial. Truly I love Nathan regardless of gifts. I know he tried so hard last year. It just made me laugh though because for my b-day last year he took me to a motocross show at the ESA (Energy Solutions Arena AKA Delta Center). Yeah, that seemed more like a gift for him but he really did have the best intentions. Bless his heart! 

Pitty Party

So, Nate's been working night shifts for quite some time now and I've gotten used to the whole schedule of him not being around at night, but I think it's starting to bum me out. I found out last week that he's doing a new training at AmEx that will require him to work 72 hour weeks. This is a benefit because it allows Nate's paychecks to be larger however, it leaves his super cute wife at home all by her lonesome. Pathetic I know. The good news is that the 72 weeks will only last for 30 days. I can do anything for 30 days right? Right! So, with that said, feel free to email me or call or any of that good stuff because between me, myself, and I the conversations can only last so long.

Nate and I are so pumped! We bought our first big appliance. We are frequent KSL classified visitors and a couple of weeks ago Nate stumbled upon a year old washer and dryer set.

He was checking some out and before he closed the window he was looking on he refreshed the page. When he did a lady had just posted a listing. she was getting rid of them because her husband surprised her with a new set for Christmas. I guess she was remodeling their laundry room. 

Nate called on it as soon as he saw it and the woman was shocked to receive a response so quickly. He told her he'd buy it but he needed to talk with me about a time to go pick it up .He called her back ten minutes later and the lady said she had gotten 7 other calls in between our first and second call to her. We knew we had scored a great deal. We paid $190 for a GE matching set and love them already!!

This picture was taken to capture the fabulous fashion sense of Rylie. I think this is a pretty cute outfit and so I had to take a picture. I can't believe how grown up she's becoming. CRAZY!
This is little miss Rylie. She's focusing so hard on her drawing I think this is a cool picture.
This is such an awesome picture. I used a special filter that has grid lines on it. When the lines of the filter intersect it creates this really cool twinkle star effect. I think Nate took this one on New Year's when we were at a friend's house. I'm loving my new camera. I can't wait to get outside and take some more!
I got a new camera for Christmas and I had fun taking pictures around the house. It's amazing how the pictures turned out. I took this one of my mom's tile from across the room.