March Madness

March was a busy month for us. Between spring break, house sitting, a wedding, and just everyday craziness the month just flew by. Here are some pictures of our adventures. Warning: there are a lot of them!

We went to Mesa for a few days during spring break and visited Barrett's grandparents. This is in their little park model trailer. (We stayed in a motel because there was no room for us!)

Barrett's grandparents took us for a drive in the hills above Mesa. It was so beautiful and green after all the rain they got this winter.

This is a place called Tortilla Flats that was once a stagecoach stop.

Riding on the golf cart that Grandma and Grandpa Gibson use to get around in their 55+ community. Lets just say Anna got a lot of attention!

It is so crazy to me that they just grow oranges and grapefruit in their yard! Talk about a different world from my native Idaho! Anna had fun trying to pick them.

She tried so hard to get this one off, but it just wouldn't give!

A little help from Dad

We went to the Phoenix zoo and loved it! It helped that it was 82 degrees. So nice! Anna of course had a blast looking at all the animals and still likes to tell us about all the animals she saw.

My handsome husband and my little monkey at the zoo!

One of my best friends from high school, Amber Blaylock, has been in Mesa doing student teaching so she met us at the zoo and we were able to catch up on our lives since she went on a mission to West Virginia. It was fun to spend time with her.

We house sat for the lady I visit during spring break. They have 3 dogs and a cat that we took care of. They may look cute in the pictures, but I am not a fan of shih tzus or any little yapping dog for that matter. Nor was I a fan of having 4 dogs (including Cooper) in the house. We were so covered in hair!

This is an 80lb Rottweiler on my lap! She is a really sweet natured dog but I would never have a dog this big in my house, especially with black hair! We don't let Cooper on the furniture (except to take this picture) so it was crazy having these dogs all over us all the time. I was definitely ready to go home by the end of the week! On the up side Barrett really enjoyed being able to watch the NCAA basketball games on their satellite all week!

Barrett's Grandma and Grandpa Gibson. They don't like to smile in pictures for some reason

Anna with Barrett's parents at Bethany's reception. It was in the Legacy Flight museum in Rexburg. It was different, but turned out really cool. We drove all night Thursday the 25th to get to Rexburg for the wedding on Saturday and then drove home all day Sunday. It was a fast trip, but went pretty well. Thank goodness Anna is a good little traveler. Can you tell she loves her grandparents?

Anna's "smiley" face. She does this anytime the camera comes out. So silly!

My family was awesome and took care of Anna most of the time we were there. Barrett and his brother Jason and I did the music for the reception, so we had to spend time rehearsing and setting up and stuff so we didn't have time to take care of Anna. She loves her extended family!

Auntie Rachel

Double trouble! Good looking guys those Gibsons!

Sisters!

Yep, we're crazy!

Binky, Bed, Boogers, and Belly

As the title of this post states, we have had quite the month of changes.

First: we got rid of Anna's pacifier!! (or plug as she called it). She was only allowed to have it in her bed in the first place, but I think the only reason she liked it was to chew on it. It was just getting to be a big hassle because she was always dropping it out of her crib and stuff. I was a little worried we would have some awful nights, but it went so smoothly I was amazed!

Love this girl!

Here's how we did it: she chewed on it so much that it got a hole in it so we cut off the end and let her attempt to use it for a few nights. Then she chewed a little more off it and it was just a mess so we told her the plug was broken and needed to be thrown away. Without a hesitation she marched downstairs to the kitchen and put it right in! We said goodbye plug and put her to bed. She still asked for it for at least a week, but I was so glad that we had HER throw it away so we could just remind her that she threw it in the garbage. It worked like a charm! It is so nice not to have to keep finding the thing and worry about losing it on trips and stuff.

Our little Anna is getting so grown up! The next big thing this month was that we changed her bed from a crib to a toddler bed. I was really worried once again that we would just have some nightmarish nights trying to get her to stay in it, but she actually goes to sleep much better! When she was in her crib we would put her to bed and she would play and play in there for hours sometimes instead of sleeping. But once we changed it to a toddler bed I usually only have to tell her to get back in bed once and she goes to sleep. Of course she still has her days....in fact I think she's been playing in her room for about an hour now instead of sleeping, but for the most part she does really well going to sleep in her "big girl bed." (And she only falls out every now and then!) It is so cute when she wakes up because she knock on her door until we let her out and then with a huge smile on her face says "I wake up!" She also often reminds me that she slept in her bed. I think that's her way of telling me she slept in her big bed instead of a crib. She loves it.




I just thought of two other B words that could have been in my title: bear and bunny. Anna has always had to sleep with her bear blanket that my mom made her, but recently has become very attached to a white bunny she got from Barrett's grandma as a baby. She carries the bunny around everywhere and cannot sleep without it. You can see in the picture of her sleeping that the bear and bunny are her best pals! Of course the bunny would have to be white....lets just say it gets washed quite often!

Ok, I know you are all dying to know why I put boogers in the title. The answer is that my child is obsessed with putting things up her nose lately! Ugh! She has placed little hair bands up her nose 3 or 4 times, a piece of broccoli, and lunch meat. Yes, I did say lunch meat. That one is a long story that I won't go into detail about, but the point is yuck! Why do kids find that so fascinating? Thankfully we have some medical tweezers Barrett got when he worked at the hospital or I don't know how we would have gotten those things out of her nose. We keep telling her not to and remind her how much she hates it when we have to pin her down and pull them out....but she still does it! Thankfully it seems to be getting better. I have caught her a few times though, trying to put things like stickers or pieces of paper up there. What a crazy girl!

This post is long enough, but I'll include a few pictures of my belly at 30 weeks (1 week ago) and some more fun hairstyles I've done on Anna. She is so good to let me do her hair and I've been having a lot of fun experimenting. These hairstyles will be really nice in the summer when it gets hot...I'm tempted to try some on myself! ha ha

Projects!

I have been doing quite a few crafty projects lately and decided it would be fun to document them.

Before Christmas I made some nativity ornaments out of sculpey clay and never took pictures of them. I gave them to the ladies I visit teach though, and one of them had hers chewed up by her dog!! So I made a new one for her and remembered to take a picture! They are really fun and easy to make. (I copy the examples on the sculpey website!)


I just finished making Anna a growth chart so we can mark her growth and she can always have it (instead of making marks on a wall or door). It didn't turn out quite like I wanted, but it looks pretty good. I just have to put something on it to hang it up now. (I also need to iron it. Oops!) If anyone cares to know I just bought a sewing measuring tape and sewed in down the middle of a strip of fabric. So easy!



I've been making lots of hairbows for Anna lately as well. Her hair finally looks good in pigtails so I had to make a bunch of matching ones for those. I really enjoy making these because they are all so original! I get a lot of my ideas from bedrestbows.blogspot.com


On the hair note, I just found an awesome blog where a lady shows lots of fun hairstyles to do with little girls. Lots of the hairstyles work really well for girls that don't have a lot of hair too! The site is shortyrocksitshort.blogspot.com and she has great step by step instructions for some really fun hair! I just tried this one out on Anna this morning. So cute!





Well, since I have a baby coming in a few months I had to get some blankets made for him. So I made 5 flannel receiving blankets and one nice silky quilt/blanket. I made the same one for Anna in pink because she has been sleeping with my baby blanket that is 24 years old! It is made out of tricot fabric that is very soft and silky and she loves it, but tricot is hard to come by. My mom found a store in Provo called the Fabric Mill and they have tons of tricot! So I picked some up on our way home from Idaho for Christmas and Anna finally got her own tricot blanket. She loves it! Those two blankets were a challenge for me as I had never done baby quilts or sewn a binding on before. I had to do a lot of picking out on the first one, but I learned a lot from it and they turned out way better than I expected!




Oh, I forgot I also made Anna an apron/bib a couple of months ago that turned out really cute. I found the cutest pattern online (here is the PDF link if anyone cares! http://www.themayfly.com/weblog/smock_pattern.pdf) and fell in love with it. It is so nice to put on her for messy dinners like spaghetti because it wraps around the sides. She has a tendency to wipe her hands on her sides while she eats. (And yes, it is the same fabric as her growth chart...it was really nice fabric and on sale!)
Well, that's it for now. If any of you have fun projects you have been working on, tell me about them! I am always looking for new fun things to do.

Help Jason and Autumn adopt!!!!

Okay, so Jason and Autumn Perrenoud (our friends from our ward in Rexburg) are ready to try to adopt again, and they are asking for your help. Until now, they have not put a lot of effort into finding their child, but that is all about to change.

They have an idea, but they need your help to make it work.

They are going to use the immense power of

FRIENDSHIP

and the

INTERNET

to help them start their family.

If you are reading this, please do us this simple favor.

Here is a link for their adoption blog:

Please follow the instructions at the bottom of this post and put this link on your blog...

and PLEASE ask everyone following your blog to do the same.

If everyone does this, HOPEFULLY, this link will keep spreading until it makes its way to

their child.

Please help them find their miracle.

Thank you!

Instructions (for those of you who don't already know how):

1) Right click on the picture and Save the image to your computer.

2) Go to your blog Layout menu

3) Click Add a Gadget

4) Click Picture

5) Paste this: http://jason-and-autumn.blogspot.com/ into the link box

6) Click browse and find the image you saved.

***That's it! That's all you have to do to help them find their BABY!

Snow days

I know I have not posted for over a month but would not like to bore anyone with details so I will try to give a short recap of our holidays and a few pictures and stuff, but if you want to see all of them look on Facebook (it is so much easier to upload pictures there than here).

We spent Thanksgiving in Farmington, NM at my Uncle Greg Kempton's house. I hadn't been there for about 5 years since my Granddad died and Barrett had never been there so it was a fun little trip. It was a beautiful week and only took about 5 hours to get there. We stayed at my uncle's house but visited my Granddad's house so I could show Barrett where so many memories from my childhood occured. My cousin Nathan is living there with his family right now. It was so fun to push Anna on the old tire swing and show them the apple orchard and the river and my Granddad's huge shop....anyway it was a fun time. We were so glad to be able to be with family for the holiday!

Barrett only had about two weeks of school left after Thanksgiving and it went by so fast! We got the first big snow storm of the winter during finals week, so Barrett was finished with school by the 9th of December. We couldn't believe how the university and the whole town shuts down when they have snowstorms! That never happens in Idaho!





As I mentioned in the last post we went to the 20 week ultrasound the day before we left for Idaho and everything looks great! We are excited to welcome a little boy into our family. Since we spent a month in Idaho I won't go into great detail on everything we did there. We mostly stayed with my family and had fun just spending time with them. Both of our whole families were able to be there for Christmas this year, so we did LOTS of family stuff and loved it. It was so fun to see Anna interact with her cousins. She sure loved being around so many people and getting so much attention! We ate out at all the local restaurants we've been missing and went bowling and to a movie and ice skating with family. It was really just a fun month of relaxing and focusing on what is important in life: our families! We are so blessed to have wonderful families who have taught us the gospel and so many other things.

Anna's cheeser smile

She loved the babies she got for Christmas

Cousins!

We were able to visit a few friends and old neighbors while we were in Rexburg as well. It is always good to see you guys! It was so nice to be able to go to the temple several times as well. We had plenty of babysitters! I miss having a temple so close. It was really neat to attend with family members as well. Also, we were able to go when my good friend Summer Mortenson and her husband Mark went through the temple. I'm so happy for them!!

We came back to Flagstaff on the 7th of January and have been trying to get back into the swing of things since then. Barrett is enjoying school and staying busy. We had huge snowstorms here last week though and got 54" of snow so Barrett was out of class most of the week. It was fun to spend time at home as a family! I also got lots of sewing done! I am making receiving blankets for the new baby and I also made a nice silky one for him and Anna since she has been sleeping with my 24 year old baby blanket! It was a challenge, but they look nice and I learned a lot!

I love that sweet face!

Lots and lots of snow!

Anna has grown up so much in the past month. She speaks in long sentences and sings full songs all day long. Her favorites are twinkle twinkle, I am a child of God, rock-a-bye baby, the alphabet, and the theme song from her favorite movie Milo and Otis. (She seriously watches that movie every day and never gets tired of it). I am just amazed at how quickly she learns things and speaks them. She is really good at saying "I want some more" and "Anna need a drink". She always talks in the third person and it cracks me up. It is so nice to be able to talk to her directly and ask her what she wants and needs and she can just tell us! She really is such a joy and I thank the Lord every day for the opportunity to be a mother.