Mele Kalikimaka

No, we definitely weren't in Hawaii for Christmas, but I found that song stuck in my head a lot over our Christmas break... probably because we spent lots of time at the beach in short sleeves and sunshine. It was a fabulous trip to LA and we loved being with family in the warm weather. The only downside? We all passed around the flu (why does that ALWAYS happen on Christmas?) and that was no fun. Luckily Michael and Matthew seem to have avoided it, but most people (including me) spent a good portion of Christmas and the couple days following sicker than a dog. Still- the trip was awesome and I'm thrilled that we went and had such a good time.

Matthew's first time to the beach.....


He loved his feet in the sand......


......but HATED his feet in the water. Can't really blame him I guess- the Pacific Ocean in December doesn't exactly feel like a warm bath.... ;-)


Christmas Eve at the temple.... I did this every year growing up and I'm glad I got to show Michael and Matthew a bit of our old traditions- especially since Matthew loves lights.


And Christmas morning was a blast. I didn't expect Matthew to be very interested in anything that was going on, but he seemed mesmerized by his presents and it was so fun to watch.



With all the grandparents, cousins, aunt, and uncles around, Matthew wasn't bored for a second.


The drive home wasn't as fun.... when Matthew wasn't asleep, he looked like this-

Poor kid hates road trips, like his mom. Hopefully we can brave another one sooner rather than later so we can see family again soon!

Future Suns Fan?

I think that one of Michael's proudest moments was when we took Matthew downtown to the Phoenix Suns arena tonight. Even I, an LA fan, thought it was cute how excited Michael was to show Matthew one of his favorite places in the whole world. Matthew thoroughly enjoyed it too. Maybe it was just the lights, but hey, maybe he's already a Suns fan too. :-) (And thank goodness there will be an NBA season so that Michael can root for his home team).

Motherhood

Being a mom is the hardest and most amazing and wonderful adventure I've taken in life. I'm lucky to have learned a ton about being a mom from all the amazing women in my family and life, but I owe it to Matthew for teaching me the most. He has taught me more than I can say about love, laughing, and appreciating all the little moments in life. I have no idea how I ever lived without this little man, and I'm so thankful that I'm sealed to him and Michael forever. Earlier today I was thinking about all my favorite things about being a mom, and I thought I'd share some.... (in no particular order)....

- I love that Matthew inspires me to be my best self. He is such a motivation to keep learning and build my patience, compassion, and relationship with the Lord.

-I love his smiles and giggles. They literally make my day, every day.

- I love how much he learns every day. It's amazing to see such major progress so fast!

- I love that he looks just like his dad, and I love watching those two together.

- I love that he has helped me and Michael grow even closer.

- I love those little baby hands and baby feet. Everything is just so dang cute.

- I love the little life lessons he teaches me.

- I love being able to comfort him when he is sad.

- I love knowing that I am fulfilling my most important calling in life.

- I love kissing those cheeks!

- I love teaching him things.

- I love his pouty face. Even though it usually means a tantrum is about 2 seconds away, it's just so dang cute.

- I love watching him get excited about new tricks or toys.

- I love how much I still have to learn! Matthew is only 3 1/2 months old for goodness sakes- I'm not exactly the most experienced mother out there. :-)

I am so lucky I get to spend my days hanging out with him!

Thanksgiving 2011

It has been easy for me to be extra excited about the holidays this year. Matthew is getting to experience everything for the first time! And yes, I know that he obviously won't remember anything, and he pretty much has no idea about anything that's going on, but still. Kids make things extra exciting. :-)

Thanksgiving was a blast. Something really nice about having married a guy from Vegas is that I also have tons of family from Vegas, so we get to see lots of people from both sides of the family whenever we go there. An extra bonus of this trip was that we got to have two delicious Thanksgiving dinners with family, plus we visited some friends, went to my Grandpa's 80th birthday party, ate more pie than our stomachs could handle, and went to some fun places. It's no wonder Matthew slept the entire way home! (We weren't so lucky on the way there.... Matthew was NOT happy about that road trip).

My parents and little brother were also in Vegas for Thanksgiving, and it was really nice to be able to spend the holiday with them along with extended family. Dinner was awesome, and the company was even better. We even let Matthew try some mashed potatoes. That was probably a mistake, because I think that he liked it too much and now he wants grown-up food more often. :-)

My mom seems to still be the best at getting Matthew to smile, and my dad was the only one who really got Matthew laughing. I guess he's the most fun. :-)

Michael enjoyed playing basketball, although it has been a bit too long since he has played and he was a bit out of shape. That, combined with his broken tooth, made him a pretty easy target for teasing. :-) Poor guy.

Thanksgiving with Michael's mom was amazing too. She pretty much cooked it all by herself and it turned out perfect!
I think the turkey was bigger than Matthew.... :-)

We also went to the Bellagio garden (one of my favorite places to go in Vegas) and that was a huge hit with Matthew. I stupidly put him in his carrier facing in because I thought he was going to sleep, (he was sleeping on the way there) so it was harder for him to see, but he figured it out.


Bring on all the Christmas festivities!

Things I'm Loving Right Now

We have the loudest neighbors ever upstairs. And when I say loud, I mean LOUD. There are seriously about 14 people that live there, including a bunch of kids. The kids stomp and jump constantly. A man yells at people and paces over our bedroom ALL THE TIME... including at 2 a.m. (He's had the cops called on him, although we didn't do it). They drop things a lot. And the dog is usually running all over the place. They wake up Matthew from his naps at least twice a day, and he's not that light of a sleeper. I complain to Michael about it at least 10 times a day. Even though he always lets me vent about it and makes me feel better, I'm sure it gets old to him because the other day even I got sick of hearing myself complain about it. I figured it was time to start remembering all the things I'm loving right now, especially when it's so close to Thanksgiving. So, now that I've vented to the blogging world, it's time to end things on a better note. :-) Here's what I'm loving right now:

1. Créme brulée hot chocolate. My friend wrote about it as her Facebook status and I just had to try it. I'm now addicted. In case you're interested, make regular hot chocolate and then add créme brulée creamer. Delicious.

2. The weather! It's still in the upper 70's and I'm loving it. It has been way too long since I've lived somewhere where it's still warm at this time of year.

3. Running. Thanks to SPD, (not serious, but quite painful) I was unable to really exercise from about 24 weeks on during my pregnancy, and then for several weeks after I had Matthew. Even walking was too much a lot of the time. This resulted in gaining a bit too much weight.... not cool! However, the pain has been totally gone for several weeks now and I'm once again able to run to my heart's content. It feels awesome.

4. All the Christmas decor up in stores. It makes me so happy and excited for Christmas, plus Matthew LOVES lights, and he could stare at the Christmas lights for hours. I can't wait to get our tree up!

5. Our new ward. Everyone is so friendly and we already feel so welcome. We also got called back into Primary, which will be fun. Michael is extra excited - he (not being a member yet) never went to Primary growing up and he thinks it's a blast.

6. Pinterest. I don't need to explain this one. Everyone is obsessed right now, including me.

7. Michael's job. We know we are blessed that he's employed during this hard economic time. Also, he gets home every day by 4. I love it.

8. My boys!
Michael is so supportive and great, and Matthew is so much fun. I love the age he's at right now - he's still little enough for me not to get too depressed about how big he's getting, (that sounded weird, but you know what I mean) but he's SO interactive and learning so much every day. He's got the cutest laugh, but he sure is a tough crowd. I guess he already thinks his parents aren't funny. At least he still smiles at us all the time.

Happy Thanksgiving! (in a couple weeks....)

Happy Halloween!

Thank goodness for work and ward Halloween parties so that I had a reason to dress up Matthew even though he's too young to Trick or Treat! :-)

Matthew's Blessing Day

Matthew was blessed this past Sunday, Oct. 16 in Las Vegas. It was a busy weekend but ended up being wonderful. Matthew's blessing was absolutely perfect and we are so thankful for all the friends and family that took the time out of their busy schedules to come support us. Matthew has so many awesome family members that I can't wait for him to really get to know.

Doesn't he look so handsome??? His smile melts my heart.

After Vegas me and Matthew were able to drive to LA with my parents and spend a day there. It was so fun and we can't wait to go back at Christmas. My dad was able to get some really awesome pictures of Matthew (of him smiling! yay!) and my mom seemed to have the magic touch. She could always get him smiling so big and at one point when Matthew was having a small temper tantrum :) she gave him a bubble bath in the sink and he calmed right down and looked so content.


Matthew is perfecting both his smile and his pouty face, and is learning how to use them to get what he wants. Uh-oh. I better learn to not be such a softy. I can't believe he is almost two months old!!! Time sure flies.

Our Move To Phoenix and Life Here So Far (based off of the pictures of Matthew on my phone)

So ever since we packed up our apartment in Nashville I haven't been good about taking pictures with my nice camera. I have, however, taken lots of pictures of Matthew with my phone. Even though the quality of these pictures isn't great, they're still pretty cute... and I figured I'd tell the story of the move using them.

We loaded up the moving truck and Michael left for Phoenix with the truck and our car on a Friday around noon. Me and Matthew stayed in the almost empty apartment until Monday. It was a long few days.... all I had was a suitcase, a laptop, a phone, an air mattress, (borrowed from our friends) and Matthew. Thank heavens Matthew kept me entertained! :-) This is what our living room looked like:
Matthew took lots of short naps on my pillow, but I didn't let him sleep there at night when I couldn't keep an eye on him. He loved those pillow naps though.

We enjoyed each other's company, but I'm pretty sure he missed his dad.... (I did too)

During those few days I gave Matthew a bath using this baby bath thing..... I didn't think I'd ever use it so it didn't make it into the moving truck and ended up getting left behind in Nashville. Bummer, because I actually loved it. It held Matthew up (but still partially in the water) so well. I love this picture, because it shows Matthew's classic 'bath hands'- he hates putting his hands in the water even though he loves his baths.


Anyway, Matthew really started to learn to smile during this time, and I still haven't really gotten a good picture of it! Lame. I did, however, get a picture of the very end of a smile when my friend was about to take us to the airport.... you can kinda tell he'd just been smiling right? ;-)

I was super anxious about the plane ride with Matthew, especially because he was being so fussy in the airport! This picture was taken in the airport just before he woke up angry.... haha.

Luckily, the plane ride wasn't too bad. He cried a little but mostly slept. Woohoo!

It was SO nice to get to Phoenix and have a furnished apartment again. Sitting on the floor really gets old after a couple days. Our new apartment is great, other than the ancient kitchen appliances and the fact that we can hear EVERY STEP (no exaggeration) that our upstairs neighbors take. And every step that their dog takes. Ugh. But this apartment has two bathrooms and an actual dining area and a walk-in closet!! Oh how I love my walk-in closet. However, on my second day here our AC went out. Not okay for 100 degree weather! So Matthew wore this for the afternoon until we got the maintenance guy to come fix it.

So yeah, I like Phoenix a lot so far. The weather is great (I'm sure I'll be humming a different tune come next summer... but this winter will be fabulous) and we live in a nice neighborhood with so much good shopping nearby! Seriously, me and Matthew go window shopping every day to a new store. He loves just looking around from his car seat in the cart at all the shelves.


I put a toy on his car seat the other day thinking he might swat at it, but he's too young I guess because he looked at it like it was going to bite him.

I also decorated our apartment for Halloween before I even got our apartment completely unpacked. I love that I can make Matthew all festive too.

And because this is funny- this is the kind of thing that happens whenever Michael and Matthew are left alone together... :)

As for Matthew's sleeping habits, the shirt he's wearing in this next picture is pretty perfect. He's our alarm clock at 11 p.m., 1 a.m., 3 a.m., 5 a.m., etc.....

Oh, and we celebrated Michael's 26th birthday.... Matthew's present was finding his voice and having a nice conversation with his dad. Pretty cute.

We're glad to be (almost) settled in and so much closer to family. I'm excited to get to know Phoenix better!

Craziness

My life has pretty much been a crazy whirlwind since Matthew was born... mostly in a good way. :-) Here are some of the craziness highlights:

-We found out that we are moving to Phoenix!!! We are super excited to be moving to the West, but also sad to be leaving the place that we started our little family. And even though when I first pictured Phoenix in my head I saw this....


....Michael has helped me start to see it like this:


I hate moving, and we still have so much to do before we leave. Did I mention that we leave this weekend, and we've barely started packing? Yikes. At least I don't have to drive across the country with a newborn- Michael is doing the driving and me and Matthew are flying. Please pray that my baby behaves on the plane! :-)

-Matthew has decided that he just doesn't want to learn how to sleep during the night, no matter what I try. We've had a couple of really rough nights, and one morning after Matthew was crying all night because he had an upset tummy I even said to Michael, "That was the worst night of my life." Thank heavens for a husband that is SO great with Matthew and helps out all the time. And by the way, how does anyone ever sleep if they have more than one kid? I'm only functioning because I can take naps whenever Matthew does.

-Speaking of Matthew, I pretty much LOVE most of the craziness he has brought into my life.... even if his sleeping skills aren't so great. :-) He is so fun and I can't believe how much I love him. He is already growing up way too fast. I am so glad that he is ours forever. Even though I may have had a couple of the worst nights of my life, I have also had several of the best days of my life. My baby is so awesome.


-We had some visitors- Michael's mom and then my sister and niece. I loved having more people around here and my sister even treated me and my niece to a Taylor Swift concert! It was a seriously cool concert and I was incredibly impressed. Oh, and then my sister took some amazing pictures of Matthew that I'm just loving. Plus, I got to enjoy some fabulous girl time. It also didn't hurt to have so many helping hands around here- especially since I still sometimes feel like a deer in the headlights when it comes to taking care of a newborn.


This week will be all kinds of crazy with packing and saying good-bye to friends but I'm so excited for the new adventures that Phoenix will bring. Good-bye Nashville!