Blooming

I LOVE SPRING!!! And it is finally here! It seems like it comes later and later every year. I LOVE when the flowers start to blossom and the leaves come back and the grass turns green. I am realistic and realize that you probably don't care to see pictures of all of the flowers in bloom in our yard. But I am sooo excited, and every year I wish I had taken pictures, so this year I did! The beauty only lasts a couple of weeks and I love it when it's here! I really need to learn how to garden so that I can actually have flowers in my yard more than just for a couple of weeks in the spring!

Our apple tree. Last year the apples were barely edible. So hopefully this year they will be better!

Not quite in bloom yet.

And yes, we even have lots of these flowers this year. They're Keira's favorite- a little more attainable.

Keira, Jason, Kena, (the dog and cat) and I enjoyed our first picnic of the year in our backyard. It was wonderful! Maybe something we should do everyday. And maybe one day it will be more appealing to Chris than his video game. ;-)

Eight Months!

The time has come once again. Keira is another month older. I must say, I have LOVED every new stage in her development! I can't even think of my favorite. They've all been so wonderful in different ways. She is becoming so much fun! Her personality is definitely starting to show. And to be completely honest, I'm hoping to shape it a little. I believe parents are a huge influence in rearing and guiding their children. :o) It might be just a stage and not her personality. But lately she has been a girl who knows what she wants and tries to get it. She throws a little fit when you take away something she's not supposed to be playing with. For whatever reason, whenever I lay her down to change her diaper, dress her, or after bathing her she throws a little fit. Laura says that she's becoming a bit "high maintenance." And I agree. It seems like she needs almost constant attention and interaction. She's not happy playing by herself now, or maybe she's just bored and tired of her toys. When we give her something new to explore she loses interest much quicker than she used to. It's like she has a constant eye on me and if she sees me leaving her sight for a moment she starts to cry. But I have realized that even a week from now I'll forget about everything I was "supposed to get done" and will remember and treasure all of the memories with my beautiful baby girl.

Overall though, she's still such a happy and good little girl. I am so thankful for this wonderful blessing in my life. She is becoming so talkative and loves making new noises. She also enjoys making high pitched little squeals. She's starting to imitate us a little, especially with tongue clicking and lip smacking.

We're still working on food. I just started giving her yogurt and cheese, which she LOVES! Actually I think part of the problem is that she realizes how bad of a cook I am. If only Chris would make her food! ;-) As you can see, we're still waiting for teeth. I do think it's pretty funny how I thought she might be starting to cut them when she was like three months old! :o)

Keira loves standing! The above photo was the first time she stood supporting herself without having someone hold on to her.

Leashed

Today there was no doubt that Keira loves her mama. She had me on an arm's length leash all day. She also had this super vision where even if she was happily playing, paying no attention to me, if she saw I was headed more than a few feet from her she would start crying- crying as if she had just broke her arm. Or if she did somehow miss a departure, within seconds she could SENSE I was missing. Whew, hopefully it won't always be like this!

I love my baby girl!

My Sleeping Beauty

The start of Keira's nap.

The end of Keira's nap.

Keira's next nap. I had tried to put her down before Jason's bath but she wouldn't sleep. Before I let him out of the tub, I sat her up in the crib so she wouldn't get all wet and hairy and he wouldn't run her over, and within about five minutes she fell asleep!

Biking!

We've been able to go biking twice so far in the past week and it has been wonderful! And most importantly, Keira agrees! She has been soooooo good!

Last Saturday we went to Bear Creek Lake Park and did a nice seven mile loop. It was a little chillier than we thought, but Keira was nice and toasty in her little bear outfit.

On Monday we thought we'd step it up a notch and did a 29 mile ride from Aspen Grove to REI and back. We bit off more than we could chew. Chris had the trailer on the way to REI and I took it on the way back. It's amazing what a difference the trailer makes! I only made it 10 out of the 15 miles. I was tired but could've kept going but realized it was getting late and thought Chris would get us back faster, plus we were starting to get attacked by bugs. (It was more uphill on the way back and we had a fairly strong headwind at times.) But he was pretty wiped out too.

Keira really did sooooo wonderful! She didn't fuss at all and played and looked around and fell asleep for about 30 minutes on the way back, despite being gone much longer than we had expected. She is now very good at putting the pacifier back in her mouth, which I think is a little bit of a bummer. It's cute that she can now take care of her desires a little more, but now both Daddy and Keira think she needs to have a paci stuffed in her mouth all of the time. ;-) So now she's becoming more reliant on it and she'll wake up some nights and realize she doesn't have it and will cry until I put it back in.

YUCKY!

Keira really doesn't enjoy eating. I think she's getting pickier the older she gets. Here's a long video of Keira (not) eating corn and prunes. Neither were for the first time, but it hadn't been this bad. She loves milk and will tolerate formula when she's starving, but she doesn't like water. She also likes bananas, pears, apples, and sweet potatoes. Hopefully she'll get less picky and I'll find some more food she likes! Today we tried egg yolks and she wasn't a fan. She did better with Cheerios this time though and ate several of them. She'll pick one up and keep it in her hand and won't put it in her mouth herself, unlike everything that isn't food!

Actually I can't get it to upload, so if you want to see it (most of you probably already have) just click here.

Ready for Spring

We are sooooo ready for spring! :o) Keira's going to be a cyclist! She even likes the helmet she was trying on!

Chris said he would bike again this summer! Hurray! Family bike rides, here we come! I just hope Keira enjoys it as much as I do!

Keira, Jason, and I went for our first hike since Keira was about a month old. It was a beautiful day for a hike on Green Mountain! Keira did wonderful and enjoyed it. Jason did too- there were no other dogs!

Keira loved having company in the backseat!

Jason did not!

This afternoon we're going for our first family bike ride! I'm SUPER excited!

Best Buds

Keira loves her little friend Sydney!

Sydney's big brother Cameron.

Beautiful day in the sun while their mommies did some work in the yard.

Hoppy Easter!

Easter couldn't have been better!

Mommy and Keira in their Easter church dresses the week before.

I had a super hard time getting Keira to sit for this picture because she always wants to be on her hands and knees trying to get somewhere like in the above picture. She'll be crawling before we know it!

I came home from work early Easter morning, around 1:30am, to find that the Easter bunny had visited while I was gone! Before I left for work I had prepared baskets for Chris and Keira (knowing that Keira would happily share all of her candy with me). Chris didn't know that so he prepared some for us too! He even went out and bought grass for the baskets and candy! He couldn't find the baskets (since I had already filled them up) so he used bowls. It was cute, we both picked out most of the same candy. It was SOOOOOOOO sweet of him and it couldn't have made me happier!!!

He even dyed Easter eggs so Keira and I could go on a couple of hunts for them!

And the other best thing about Easter was watching General Conference! It was soooooo good! I love and am so thankful for the guidance our prophet and apostles give us today! I loved hearing so much about the importance of families and and dealing with adversity!

Mamamamamom

Keira has been talking like crazy! It went from nana to gaga to dada to ayayay to MAMAMAMAMOM! And boy do I LOVE it! I do realize she has no idea that I'm mama but I love hearing her say it. It wasn't the greatest time to do a video, but it captures her words. She had had enough of her sweet potatoes.

Seven Months!

Keira was very blessed to spend her seven month birthday in Hawaii! She was quite the trooper, especially since she was getting over having a little cold. She loved being loved on by Auntie Wals who spoiled her to death!

Seven months is such a fun age as her personality really starts to stand out. She's still usually pretty happy, but when she's not, she's really not. She will let you know if she's hungry, tired, or bored. She now seems to prefer to be with people who are familiar to her. She's very curious and loves to touch everything. She's always looking around to see what she can explore next. And she sometimes gets upset if you take something away from her. For a while I was thinking she might not crawl. I've definitely changed my mind, she's working on it. She doesn't sit as long now because she's always reaching for something out of her reach, but her left foot gets in her way so she doesn't make it into her knees. I'm not really in a hurry for the crawling stage, she'll really be adventurous and dangerous. So now she spends a lot of her time rocking on her knee and foot trying to reach for something until she slides onto her belly. She's doing much better with tummy time now and does little 180s on her tummy. If she's on tile or hardwood floor, she can scoot herself while seated. In this picture she started off on the brown carpet outside of the bathroom.

She enjoyed her first bath in a real bathtub in Hawaii. She loves splashing!

Eating is still a bit of a struggle but definitely getting better. Some days she'll eat something and enjoy it and next time she'll have a sour face and cough and gag. Although she almost always enjoys fruit, just not such a fan of veggies. Her favorite is bananas. She hasn't realized yet that food is food, milk alone won't cut it anymore. She won't drink water and loves to chew on the spout of a sippie cup, but won't suck from it. I'm still trying to find one that will give her liquid if she chews on it.

FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

March 21, 2010

Another year as flown by! Sometimes I'm in wonder that we've already been married for five years! But then an elderly couple puts it into perspective as they've been married over 50 years, at that time five years isn't that long. I feel so blessed that we were able to spend this special anniversary in Hawaii!

Our cute bundle of joy completes our family (at least for now)!

After flying and lunch with my sister and our little cutie, we went on a sunset dinner cruise. It was delicious and we were so excited to see more whales!

And the sunset was gorgeous!

Flying over the Hawaiian Islands

We celebrated our anniversary morning with a flight around the surrounding Hawaiian Islands! We took a flight instructor with us who was like our own personal tour guide and it also allowed Chris to enjoy the scenery a little more. It was an awesome flight and so fun to see the other islands from an aerial view.

The north shore of Maui

It's nearing the end of humpback whale season in Hawaii and we saw soooo many! I didn't see any breaching, and didn't get very good pictures but here you can see three of them traveling together. We also saw whales on our boat trip to the scuba site and on our sunset cruise. We didn't see any dolphins though.

Just north of Maui is Molokai. It's much less developed without even a stoplight. Here are a couple of pictures of the breathtaking west and north shores. As you can see it's super green with amazing huge cliffs with waterfalls. The pictures really don't do it justice.

To the west of maui is Lanai, where we went scuba diving. Most of the island looks similar to this. In this picture is a resort that was closed in the 1980s. On the south side of the island is another resort where Bill Gates got married I think. I wasn't all that impressed with Lanai, I prefer the tropical islands!

This is a small island called Kahoolawe. Started in WWII they used the island as a training ground and bombing range until 1990. Although a cleanup was attempted, there is still some unexploded bombs and it's against the law to come within two miles of the island. But don't worry, we're not missing anything majestic, it's pretty dry.

Molokini is a tiny uninhabited island about 2.5 miles off the south coast of Maui. It's the tip of an inactive underwater volcanic crater. The crescent shape provides protection from waves and ocean currents making it one of the top ten dive sites in the world. Maybe we should have dove there instead! ;-)

This is Wailea, the south coast of Maui. It's home to several luxurious resorts and golf courses.

I was surprised to see that much of Maui looks like this, sugar cane fields. I thought Hawaii was all tropical rainforest! I should do more research before I go! ;-)