Three years!

Yesterday Matt and I celebrated our anniversary. We have been married three years! Time just seems to fly by! It feels like we JUST got married despite the fact that we have experienced some pretty major things over the past few years. The other day we were talking about how amazing it is that we found each other considering we lived across the country from one another. We often laugh about how incredibly bold Matt was (pretty out of character for him) and how, oddly enough, I wasn't freaked out by it! I'm so glad that he was bold, because I was pretty clueless back then and had he not been bold, nothing would have come of it and we wouldn't be where we are today. He won me over pretty quickly with his thoughtfulness, his sense of humor, and his adorable, quirky personality. I am so blessed to be married to such a special man!

Sleeping....

Lately I have noticed that Addy has been sleeping in this position and I think it is so cute! Also, she is FINALLY sleeping through the night. It has been such a challenge to get her to go to sleep at all. I felt terrible letting her just scream her guts out for hours so I opted not to take that rout until she insisted on screaming whether I was in the room or not. I'm glad we decided to let her figure out how to get herself to sleep, because she sleeps sooooo much better! I honestly don't know if she would have been ready before now or not. She is very, very stubborn and it wasn't easy those first couple of days!Addy is also sitting now...she has been for over a month but I haven't gotten around to taking pictures of her sitting until now!These are just some pictures of her chewing on things (it's what she loves to do best!)And here she is giving her monkey a kiss!

This girl loves to eat!

We started Addy on solids a little over a month ago. I could tell she was ready because she would watch me longingly as I ate my dinner or whatever I was eating. We started with sweet potatoes and of course I forgot to take a picture. She loved them and gobbled that first bite down without any problem! I did get a picture of her eating spinach (which she also liked). She loves to eat (just like her mommy) and she eagerly grabs the spoon to help me get the food in her mouth faster. She's such a funny, sweet little girl!

She's eating rice cereal here.
I'm thinking she likes it! I don't think she will be a picky eater...hopefully.

I'm also posting some pictures from our trip to Georgia. Matt's brother Mike just graduated from Optometry school, so we were there for his graduation. I am terrible about remembering to bring my camera to events like this or even remembering to take a picture when I do have my camera, so we don't have many pictures. These are just a few pictures of Addy with her cute cousins. They were so sweet with her and excited to see her and play with her! We had such a nice time with everyone!

Here is Addy with cute little Easton. She really likes him (despite the serious look on her face). Whenever he came over to play with her, her face would just light up.

Mike, Malia, Matt, Addy, and Easton.

Here is Matt with Easton and Brennan. Brennan is about two months older than Addy.

Projects

Just before Addy was born, I really got into crafts....mostly for Addy's room. Here are a few of the little projects I have been working on.

My first project was recovering and painting an old toy box that Kiera and I shared when we were little. My dad actually carved the legs himself. I wish I had a "before" picture. It was a very nice toy box when Kiera and I were little, but it was looking pretty dingy when I got it. The cushy top that was once pink, had turned brown/pink and there were crayon scribbles all over the front and sides of the toy box, not to mention a few gouges here and there. Anyway, I recovered the top with minkie (I don't even know how to spell it!), repainted the wood and then hand painted some little flowers on the sides. I think it turned out pretty good!

My second little project was the butterfly mobile. I found the kit at Ben Franklins and then I just covered the butterfly pattern with some cute scrapbook paper. I saw the paisley design on a little butterfly on some scrapbook paper and thought it was cute so I sort of copied it and added some flowers. Addy loves to look at her butterfly's!

I found this idea at Ben Franklins as well. All you do is cut out a piece of paper to fit the clock, take the face of the clock off as well as the hands, and then mod podge the paper on. I used flowers instead of numbers, but you can use the number stickers. Then you just put everything back together and you have a cute little clock. I got my clock at wal mart for like, $5.

I found the wooden letters for Addy's name at JoAnns, painted the wood pink and the mod podged scrapbooking paper on the letters. Then I stapled the ribbon on the back of each letter and tied a bow at the top. I did the same thing with these picture frames! So easy and cute!

I still have to put pictures of Matt's family members in the the empty frames.

My most recent project has been making these cute little shoes. I'm sort of obsessed. I LOVE fabric! It is so fun/dangerous for me to go into a fabric store and look at all the patterns. I'm the same way with paper!

I only have one little pair of boy shoes for my nephew, but I am planning to make more. I made some for a girl that Matt works with. She has a little boy. They were so cute and I wish I would have taken a picture. They were red and dark blue. The blue fabric was kind of a cowboy bandanna pattern. Anyway, it has been really fun learning how to sew. HARD, but fun!

Baby Blessing

This post is just a bit late, but Addy was bless at the beginning of this month. We decided to wait until March because we were worried about RSV. Anyway, it went really well. She didn't make a peep during the blessing which I was grateful for. Matt did a nice job as well. She also handled all of the company that came over afterwords very well. She got passed from person to person and she was pretty content for the most part. I think she may prefer the little kids. Don't get me wrong, she is fine with adults for the most part, but she was perfectly happy to sit on cute little Maren's lap while Maren gently rubbed her head (she likes to have her head rubbed). Anyway, she did really good. Here are some pictures of her in her blessing dress! I don't have many pictures because unfortunately, we didn't have a new camera yet when she was blessed and the one we did have would only work for a couple of shots.
This a cute little picture of Maren rubbing Addy's head. he he

Hawaii

Like I said in the previous blog, we didn't get many pictures before our camera broke, so I drew some pictures of our whale watching experience (these drawings are so good, there is no need for real pictures!). I forgot to mention that we also got gourmet snacks that consisted of celery sticks, carrots, olives, zucchini, tomatoes and potato chips! Ha ha, I was thinking we were going to have the chance to taste some Hawaiian food! Oh, and the "boat" wouldn't start up again after they turned it off to get the whales to come closer to us. They kept saying "oh, don't worry, this happens from time to time. We will have it started any time now. " It took them at least 30 minutes to get it started and it was clear from the look on their faces that they were pretty worried it wasn't going to start. Despite all of that, it was still an amazing experience! My mom emailed me some of the pictures she took of the trip, so I'm putting those up along with the few that we got with our camera. Keira actually a picture of the little boat we were in, so you can see how truly dinky it was! Oh, and my mom, Kiera, and Sam were kind enough to watch little Addy while we went on our little adventure.
Matt was very brave and jumped off this cliff with Sam!We got shave ice almost every day!

Amazing Experience And No Pictures To Show For It!!

Matt and Addy and I spent the last week in Kauai with my family. Some friends of my mom had a time share there that they offered to let us use, so we took advantage of the opportunity. One of my favorite things we did there was go whale watching. I was feeling pretty excited about the idea of whale watching until I saw the boat we were going to be in! I thought it was going to be MUCH bigger that the dinky little inflatable speed boat thing that I saw out the window of our little rental van. I panicked because I am afraid of the ocean (sharks to be specific), and that boat looked like something a whale could just tip over! Anyway, I decided to face my fears and go on the trip. I am so glad I did! It was AMAZING!! First of all we saw two schools of dolphins! There were hundreds of them. I'm not exaggerating! They were so close to the boat that I could have reached out and touched them! Our captain happened to be a marine biologist and she said that for every dolphin you see on the surface, there are four more below. It was so exciting! We came prepared with our camera so we whipped it out to take some pictures and the dang thing was broken! It was so frustrating. The marine biologist kept saying "This never happens! You never see so many dolphins together at this time of day!" She may have been lying about that, but personally I believe her because she was hanging over the boat taking her own pictures and she seemed genuinely excited. Right after that we saw two whales breach off in the distance. I mean they came all the way out of the water and flipped! The marine biologist (Tina) said that they were males showing off for a female. So we start heading towards the whales and all of the sudden another school of dolphins come swimming by our boat! Off in the other direction we saw some whale spouts so we start heading in that direction. Apparently it was the perfect situation because there were about four whales trying to show off for the female and they were very focused on that so it was possible that they would come close to us. By law you are not allowed to come closer that 100 feet from a whale but if the whale comes close to you there is nothing you can do about it. So we get up there as close to the whales as we are allowed and they come closer. One went right under our boat. I didn't see that, Matt did. It's a good thing I didn't because I probably would have freaked out. The reason I didn't see it was because I was distracted by another whale like, I don't know 50 feet away or less coming out of the water! It was so amazing and I am so mad our camera broke! I have no pictures of Kauai! I am going to have to get some from my mom, and I will post more later!