Gotta love Mimi's

One of our favorite places to eat is Mimi's Cafe and this last time I went with my aunt and sister we decided to let Shad join in the fun, little did we know that he ended up being the funnest part of lunch, Im sure all parents have found that everything is more fun with little ones. Shad has now learned to sit up on his own so he could finally sit in a high chair while out in a restaurant which is really nice. When we got there and sat down the waitress gave us our menus including a children's menu, really, a children's menu he is only 7 months old and hardly eats baby food let alone mac n cheese or corn dogs, but I didnt say anything just laughed about it. Well then when she brought our drinks she brought this for Shad to "hold him over" as she put it. I wonder what it is exactly that we are holding him over for, this is a freaking meal, that is if he will eat it. Well to our surprise he did eat some of it. He really loved the orange and pretty much devoured it. The Cheerios on the other hand were not such a big hit but his reaction to them was priceless. We were also thoroughly entertained by the bib fail that was displayed when Shad showed us just how useless (and dangarous I must add) plastic bibs are.

Separation Anxiety :(

Lately Shad has been showing signs of separation anxiety. At first it was just when Dan or I would leave the house and leave Shad with a sitter. He would cry and look around wondering where we went. Then it would start up again when we got home and didnt pick him up fast enough. Well now it is full blown to where he cries every time one of us walks out of the room even if the other one is still in there with him. He looks so pathetic when he cries too, it is so sad, and I feel bad that he is so upset but I need to get things done around the house so I just go about my business and sometimes he stops crying because he sees that I am coming back and sometimes he keeps on crying. I really hope that it gets better soon, at least to where I can move around the house without him going into histerics, only time will tell.

Back to school...

...back to school, to show my dad I'm not a fool. I've got lunch bag packed my shoes tied tight, I hope I dont get in a fight. haha jk. Anyway Dan did go back to school this week. He started the police academy at SLCC. The program takes about 6 months to complete and hopefully when he is finished he will be able to choose which police department he wants to work for. So far he loves the training and feels that he is in the top of his class, which came as no surprise to me considering all the training he has already recieved in the military. I am so happy for him in finding something he really enjoys doing.

Shad got sick

We were very upset to see that Shad was gradually getting more and more sick :( We thought that it was just a cold and were treating it as such and almost didn't take him to the doctor since there is nothing the doctor can do about a cold but we decided to take him in and its a good thing we did because he ended up have bronchialitis which is as it sounds much worse than a cold. Well the next few days were followed by sleepless nights, well half sleepless nights since Dan and I took shifts, he would stay up with Shad until 1:00am and I would get up and stay with him until the about 7:00am. We had to pretty much be up with him the whole time because he woke up about every half hour to an hour and we would need to suck out his nose and put him back to sleep. When we could finally leave him alone for most of the night we needed to find a way to keep him elevated so he could breathe and that is where the car seat in the crib came into play. It was not fun seeing our little boy in so much pain and discomfort so we were happy when it didn't last long and didn't turn into RSV which was our big fear. I think we will keep him in the house for most of the winter though so we can avoid him getting sick again. Just one of the reasons I cant wait for spring.

Christmas

Christmas was great this year even in all its craziness. The whole family was here in UT for the holidays and that is how I like it. We celebrated our traditional 12 days of Christmas where everyone takes a different day before or after Christmas and organizes a family oriented activity. This year we did a variety of things; made gingerbread houses, made ornaments, sang Christmas carols, made lots of snowmen, and of course played board and card games, but the high light for me was Christmas eve when Dan let me open my big gift. He (well techniquely I got it) got me Guitar Hero World Tour which I have wanted for a very long time (well since Oct 22 when it came out). We jammed for a few hours, it was a blast. Christmas morning came and I was so excited to see Shad play with his new toys I didnt even want to take the time to feed him, but dont worry we did, well Dan did while I got ready to open gifts. The whole opening of gifts was a bit weird this year just because Shad had no idea what he was doing and why mom was making all these loud noises and trying to get me to help (Shad hated the sound of the wrapping paper tear). Once his gifts were all open we opened them up to play with and Shad really liked them and after he got the hang of his Jumperoo he absolutly loved it. Some times when I hold him standing up he thinks he is in the Jumperoo and tries to jump it is really cute. The rest of the day we spent with my family visitying, playing games, opening gifts and eating wrapping paper (mostly just Shad and Violet my neice did that). I really appreciate my brother Jay for doing a bit of a lesson or more of a reminder of what Christmas is all about and focusing on the things we have been blessed with over the past year, it was a much needed reminder of just how blessed we all are even when our lives seem to be a bit tough. It was a great day and holiday overall, I really cant wait for next year when maybe Shad knows a bit more about what we are doing and enjoys it a bit more.

Giant Snowman

One day during our winter break my did decided out of the blue that we were going to spend the next day using up all of our good snow by making a ginormous snowman. It was decided that we would start the building promptly at 10:15 (I have no idea why that number, my dad is a bit weird that way). We all had a very good time working together in the snow and shad even came out to join in the fun.


We also found out that Shad doesn't really like the snow, well not eating it anyway.

Haircuts for babies

My sister Heather and her husband Stefan and two girls Lily and Violet all came up for Christmas from San Diego. Well the two girls have a bit of a reputation for having difficult hair so while they were here I made sure to cut it before they went home and both haircuts turned out really cute.

Snowman contest

For Luke's day of Christmas we had a snowman building contest, it was a blast. What made it even better is we won the contest even though I think my parents was better than ours but we were happy to win anyway.

If you cant tell what is going on with Luke's snowman here is an explanation. It is a small snowman riding through a dead larger snowman, a bit gorry I know.
This is Angie and Bekah's gangster snowoman.

A day with Pop

Only grandpas can get away with something like this. Yes that is a bungee cord around his chest:)

Bff in the kitchen

Because of the high prices of baby food and the fact that they have preservatives in them I decided a while ago that I wanted to make baby food from organic food. Well when I started shopping for food mills I came across this amazing kitchen appliance!! It is called the Babycook and its made by a company in Europe called Beaba. The cool thing about this unit is that it steams the food as well as blends it up which makes it so easy to make the baby food as well as clean it all up afterwards because it is the only thing I have to clean. I would deffinatly reccomend this product to anyone who is considering taking on the large task of making your own baby food, it is a bit pricy up front but it is deffinatly worth the money and the time saved in the end. You can also use this product to steam small servings of food for yourself.

cuttest pajamas

I think that one of my favorite things in life is seeing Shad in pajamas. I dont know why it is exactly that I love it so much, maybe it is because he looks so comfy, but anyway this is my favorite pair so far, I think it makes him look like a little boy instead of a baby.

One long day

The whole fam damily was in town for Christmas so we decided to get some family pictures. We really liked the ones we did about 6 years ago and so my mom wanted to recreate that look lucky for us they were in the snow. So we had to coordinate 2 oldies, 7 adult kids, 4 adult spouses, 3 kids, and 4 babies in the snow for one good picture....nuff said.