Welcome to London!

This is the view from our balcony of Canary Wharf where David works.

So this is at least the third time I have attempted to write this post. Each time I start to write how our first week in London has gone (now our first two weeks) and it turns out to be quite the novel. Now I know some people are interested in our travels, but I’m sure nobody wants to know as much as my novel contains even after a few edits. The other problem I have encountered is that we have to purchase pay as you go internet time, so I do not have the leisure of unlimited time on the internet. This has led to me typing my posts in Word and copying them onto the blog when I finish, but the bonus is that I have my travel novel for myself and I can just give you the highlights. So without any further ado, since we have been here….

• Upon arrival we were told Sophie and I needed Visas and couldn’t enter the country without them, and then we persuaded her to let us in anyway
• For the first 4 days Sophie woke up at 3 or 4 every morning and wouldn’t go back to sleep until 7 or 8
• We celebrated Sophie’s first birthday
• We celebrated our 3^rd Anniversary
• Sophie and I have had our first couple of outings to see the Tower of London, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and a picnic in St. James Park.
• As a family we have walked around Canary Wharf, St. Paul’s Cathedral, The British Museum, Kensington Palace, Greenwich Park and the Royal Observatory, the shops at Bond and Oxford Streets, Piccadilly Circus, and Trafalgar Square. We have also had a picnic in Hyde Park, taken a tour of the Bank of England (by mere chance we were in the neighborhood on one of only four days a year they give the tour) The Natural History Museum, and taken a ride on the London Eye!
• Sophie started standing all by herself on Thursday and is very proud of her new trick!

To sum it all up we had a couple of really crazy days when we first arrived, but are having and great time and wish you all could come and visit. Stay tuned for hopefully better and more updates on our summer in London! (I will post more pictures later but we are off to explore Tower Bridge)

Summer is Crazy but so FUN!

So far we have had a totally crazy summer. It started with me turning 30 and currently consists of David driving to L.A. and back in a day in order to pick up his passport so we can fly to London in the morning. Here are some of the highlights of our summer so far. Stay tuned for more details and our adventures in London.

My 30th Birthday Party

We went to Ohio to visit David's Grandpa

Hiking in Ohio with David's family

We had an early 1st birthday party for Sophie in Pocatello

She really loved her cake!



Last week we went to Zion's National Park with my family and David's sister Robyn and her family. It was lots of fun and Sophie loved being outside.

We've had a great summer so far and we are really looking forward to spending the rest of it in London! Hope everyone is having a great summer.

Happy Earth Day!

I love Earth Day! Is that weird? Every year I want to plant a tree on Earth Day, but it has never worked out. Some year I will make it happen, but until then I will find other ways to celebrate. So this year, in celebration of Mother Earth I thought I would post some pictures of her beauty. ( Okay and one of my sweet baby Sophie-she fit right in with all the flowers!) On Tuesday I had the chance to go to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point with David's mom, his sister, his aunt, and his cousin. We had a great time and saw some really beautiful flowers.

I'm truely grateful for the beauties of the Earth, whether it be a flower, a snow capped mountain, a warm beach, or maybe even an ash cloud produced from a exploding volcano ( I hold no grudge against this ash cloud as long as it stays under control long enough for David to get back from London!). These beauties really help me feel Heavenly Father's love for me. It's amazing that He would take the time to create such beauty,emaculate and simple, for me to enjoy!

Nine Months!

Last week Sophie hit her nine month mark. I can't believe how big she is getting. We love her so much and she is truely the greatest joy in our lives. I just wanted to share some of my favorite things about her.

1. She loves to give me kisses and play with my hair
2. She enjoys pretty things- like earrings and rings
3. She loves to read books
4. She makes the most interesting sounds when she talks
5. She has a smile and laugh that light up the room and will brighten anyone's day
6. She loves food and is extremely jealous of anything I eat
7. She loves to take baths
8. She loves music and sometimes will try to sing along
9. She loves her link toys and the remote control
10. She can sit up and play all on her own, but refuses to roll over
11. She is starting to try and crawl but has only discovered how to go backwards and in circles
12. She is extemely curious and wants to touch and explore everything around her
13. She loves to go on walks
14. She loves babies (especially her two new cousins)
15. She loves Itsy Bitsy Spider
16. She loves to play peek-a-boo with me when I go to get her up from her nap
17. I love it when I find her in her crib with her blanket twisted between her legs and arms and right up agians her face
18. I love how her toes haven't stopped moving since the day we brought her home
19. I love her chubby cheeks and funny facial expressions
20. I love her two little teeth
21. I love how she blows air through her nose when she is trying to be funny (but not when she is mad)
22. I love how she flaps her arms like a little bird trying to fly when she gets excited or really wants something
23. I love it when she gently strokes my face with her cute little hands
24. I love how she cocks her head to the side when she is trying to be cute
25. Most of all I love her sweet personality and that she loves her mom and dad!

I took Sophie to her first Easter Egg Hunt on Friday. And although she couldn't really hunt for the eggs and couldn't have anything inside of them she really enjoyed playing with them. I love this video because it just shows her little curious mind at work!

Keep your eyes OPEN!!

As far as I can recall, I don't think that I've ever really been one for succumbing to peer pressure. But family pressure, now that's a whole different story. Not last weekend, but the weekend before we decided to go and visit my parents in Pocatello. While we were there we decided to take Sophie to my dad's gym. Sophie loves to bounce, so naturally we thought she would enjoy the trampoline. And she did, as much as any 7 month old can.

Well, that lasted maybe 10 minutes before David and my brother, Bradlydean, started to get bored. So they started to try and do some crazy tricks on this giant ball. Sophie and I went to watch because it was pretty entertaining. That's when the family pressure started. "Just try it, it's fun, you can do it, you don't ever try things anymore, etc. etc." And eventually I let them talk me into doing a trick that I really had no desire to try and quite frankly didn't feel that comfortable doing. They helped me do it the first couple times and then I tried it on my own. The next thing I knew I was slamming my face into the tumbling floor. I felt like I had broken my nose and snapped my neck all at the same time. Then came the tears, the blood, the crying. All the things that I had feared would happen.

Later that night, when the drama had subsided and we were reflecting on the incident I realized my crucial mistake. David was questioning what went wrong because I had apparently completed the trick and then just let myself fall on my face. I told him all I remembered was smacking into the floor, so how could I have done the trick. That's when it dawned on me---I had my eyes shut the whole time!!! So a word to the wise, always keep your eyes open or you may end up like me.

An ankle, a chin, a tooth, and a very twisty tongue!!

I don't know how Sophie got so big. My little chunky monkey is getting taller so a couple weeks ago I saw her ankle bone for the first time since she was about 6 weeks old. She also has a chin again! Even more impressing, Sophie has discovered how to twist and roll her tongue in all sorts of directions. This is quite a feat since David cannot roll his tongue at all and I didn't discover that I could twist my tongue over until I was out of college. She is one amazing little girl! Sophie gave us all a big surprise when she got her first tooth two weeks ago. She had been chewing on everything and slobbering a little more so I figured teeth were probaby on their way, but I didn't realize how close. She is such a good baby and hardly ever fusses or cries, so it was quite a shock when I saw a little white tooth poking through her gums one day. Well, she is almost eight months old now and I just can't even believe it!! We love her so much and just can't get over her cute smile, chubby cheeks, and adorable little laugh.

If you look closely you can see Sophie twisting her tongue!

Holiday Fun and a New Year

So, it has been six months since my last post (which was also my first), but I'm turning over a new leaf. My new year's resolution is to stay in better contact with my friends and family, which I believe includes updating my blog more often. This shouldn't be too hard considering I'm only averaging 2 posts a year. Now if i can't handle that I have more problems keeping a resolution than I thought!

On with the show... We had a great holiday, and I forgot how nice the holiday season is when you are in school. Instead of having to come back to work after the weekend (this was never the case for me, being a teacher, but David never had more than two days off) we had two whole weeks off. This gave us the chance to go to Colorado to visit David's family for a week and then head to Pocatello to visit my family for a week. We had a great time and Miss Sophie really got the royal treatment.

We went to Colorado on Dec. 18th and were there until the day after Christmas. It was my first time being away from home on Christmas. I missed my family and our traditions, but I had a really great time in Colorado. When we arrived there was hardly any snow, but a few days before Christmas it snowed about 8 inches. The snow was beautiful and David had a really good time using his Dad's snow blower, with which he ran over the newspaper and shredded it to bits. He then proceeded to use the shovel to get up any and all snow he had missed to make his snow pile as tall as possible. David's brother and his family drove down from Winter Park on Christmas Eve to spend a few days. It was a lot of fun having kids there on Christmas morning. Sophie actually slept in Christmas morning (the only day she slept in the whole time we were there) so she missed most of the excitement, but had a good time tearing paper once she woke up. Grandma was so happy to have Sophie for Christmas that she really did an excellent job of spoiling her.

Still a little groggy Christmas morning

Playing with her toys from Santa

Sophie and her Christmas loot (and that's only from one Christmas)!

Because we went to Colorado for Christmas we couldn't take all our presents because we had to pack everything and it costs money to check every single bag these days. So I left David's biggest present home which was coincidentally the present that cost most of his budget. Therefore, I didn't have a lot to give him at his parents' house, so I wrapped all the little stuff I got him in different packages to make it look like more. Well this led to a very funny incident. One of the presents I got him I ended wrapping in a Blackberry box, and when he opened it he was very excited that I had bought him a really cool present. At this point I told him he shouldn't open the box because he would be disappointed. All that was in there was some new church socks...not as exciting as a Blackberry! At that moment I felt like the most awesome gift giver ever!! That was until we got to my parents' house and had Christmas there.

David trying to act excited about getting socks. He added in the iTunes card to make the smile more authentic.




Head wrap and new earrings from Santa

David bought me new goggles and new sunglasses!

We exchanged gifts with my family and opened the presents we had left at home for each other. I saved David's best gift for last. Right before he opened it my parents gave us our gift. It was rather large and I handed it to David to open. As he started to tear away the paper his eyes lit up and he said, " I definitely know that I haven't been this good this year!" My parents had bought us train to put around the Christmas tree. Now every year we go to my parents' house for Christmas David tells me how one day when we have a house he wants to buy a train. So needless to say he was pretty excited. Well great, now it was time for me to give him my present which I was previously very excited about. He had been saying how he really wanted a new pair of snow boots, so I had searched long and hard for a pair of boots that I thought he would like and that were a good deal. He opened the boots, said thank you, told me he like them, and then in the same breath said, "This train is awesome!" I was upstaged by my parents, I guess I should have given him my present first.

David with his upstaged but still cool new snow boots. Notice how is smile is not quite as bright in this picture as in the one above.

As soon as the floor was clear of paper and presents David had the train set up complete with a G.I. Joe and Cobra battle ensuing.

While we were in Pocatello we had the chance to go skiing at Targhee with my family. My mom was nice enough to watch Sophie in the lodge while David and I skied. Thanks Mom you're the best! And I got to test out my new goggles which worked great. Sophie never wants to miss out on any of the excitement and she definitely proved that on New Year's Eve. Normally she is really good about going to bed, but that night she wanted nothing to do with bedtime. She cried and cried until we finally had to get her up and let her join the party. Finally she fell asleep around 11:30! She never stays us that late, but I guess she just couldn't handle us having fun with out her. New Years Day David got the chance to go skiing again with my dad and brothers, but I stayed home with Sophie and my mom because neither of them was filling well. We had a great holiday and are so grateful for the time we got to spend with our families. Now we are back to our normal lives. David is working hard at school and I am enjoying playing with Sophie and watching her grow so much everyday. We are looking forward to a year filled with excitement, joy, new challenges and new opportunities.

Happy New Year Everyone!