More Progress

On Saturday Mom met me at Brittany's and we spent the day working on sewing projects. I was able to complete the top of Liv's quilt and will be taking it to be quilted tomorrow. I love how it turned out! The colors remind me of Spring. I know that we are months away, but I am ready for green grass, warm sunshine, taking Liv to the park to play on the swings, tulips, no more coats, and longer day light hours. Oh well until then we will enjoy the cold and the smog :).

Here is the finished top:

Other pics from this weekend...

Cowgirl Olivia

Best Buds (most of the time).

I'm making progress

I have been working on Liv's quilt for the last two nights and I am so excited about how it is turning out. I love the colors and it is coming together faster than I thought. You can tell I am a novice because some of my squares don't line up exactly- I don't think Liv will care.

Last year for Christmas Scott gave me a very expensive sewing machine that I have used maybe four times. One of my New Year's resolutions is to remember how to sew. When I was younger I learned how to sew in 4-H. My mom was our fearless leader. She is an amazing seamstress and I am sure she was sorely disappointed in my lack of detail. I can still remember unpicking my uneven stitches (several times) on a peach skirt that I was going to enter into the State Fair and grumbling that I hated sewing. Funny how things change as you get a little older. My first project is going to be a crazy quilt that I making for Miss Olivia for her birthday. Here are the fabrics... check back for progress throughout the month.


Miss Olivia turned 11 months old yesterday. Sometime this month I realized that she is no longer a baby-she is a little girl. Although it makes me sad to see her grow up so quickly it is also so much fun to see her little personality develop. This month she decided that army crawling was not fast enough and now crawls around exploring the entire house. She cut her third tooth and is working on four more. She has a million toys, but likes to play with the DVD player instead. She knows she's not supposed to and checks to see if we are watching and then laughs when we catch her. She laughs and giggles when she is tickled and has started saying tickle tickle so daddy will tickle her. She loves "This little piggy" with her toes. How lucky are we to have such a fun little girl in our family? What did we do with ourselves before she came along?

First Christmas

Olivia's first Christmas was so much fun. We spent a long weekend at my parent's in Idaho with all of my family with the exception of one sister, her husband, and little Sophie (we missed you guys). Olivia must have been a very good girl this year because she was spoiled by Santa, Mommy and Daddy, and both sets of grandparents. She showed little interest in her toys, but loved her BYU sqeaky shoes and the wrapping paper. Grandma made all of the granddaughters matching pink turtle PJ bottoms, which turned out absolutely adorable. We watched lots of movies, ate way too much food, and had a great time together.

The whole crew waiting to see what Santa brought. This has been a tradition in my family as long as I can remember. We would line up in age order (as the oldest I was always last in line, but now get to be second last since Scott is older than me) on the stairs and would have to wait for dad to light the fire, turn on the lights, and see if Santa actually came. As kids this would happen at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, but we slept in until almost 8:00 this year.

The Tree...

To Olivia, Love Santa...

Grandpa and his girls

Opening presents...

One happy girl (Don't you love the hat?).

Meeting the Big Guy

On Saturday we decided that it was time for Olivia to meet Santa. She has been so funny about strangers lately I was really worried about her reaction to sitting on the Big Guy's lap, but there were no tears.

Christmas Traditions

With only ten days until Christmas I thought it would be fun to share some of our family's Christmas traditions...

Ever since Scott was a little boy his dad would make fudge at Christmas. Instead of leaving cookies for Santa, they would leave fudge and on Christmas morning there would always be one piece of fudge left with Santa bite marks in it. We have continued the fudge making tradition and each year we make several batches to share with neighbors and friends.


Our first Christmas together Scott bought me a Nativity. We now buy a Nativity each year to help us remember why we celebrate Christmas. This one is the one that purchased this year:

Another tradition relates to the ornaments for our Christmas tree. Anytime we take a big trip we try to find a Christmas ornament from the place we visit. It is a fun way for us to remember our travels and makes for a very interesting tree. Here are the two we collected this year: The jester is from New Orleans from when we picked up Olivia right before Marti Gras and the Texas ornament is from when went to the BYU-Oklahoma game in Dallas.

When we meet with Olivia's birth mom we asked her if her family had any holiday traditions. One of the things she mentioned was that they open new Christmas PJs on Christmas Eve. Scott's family also did this when he was little, so we decided that this year we would start a new tradition.

One of Santa's littlest helpers:

Last night BYU had a basketball game at the Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake. Since we were already in Salt Lake we decided it was the perfect opportunity to look at the lights at temple square. We invited Jon, Brittany, and Emma to come with us. What a great day: we had good seats at the game, got to sit by some of our favorite neighbors, the Brobergs, BYU won handily, we got to hang out with Brittany, Jon, and Emma, and see some beautiful Christmas lights. Here are some pics of the highlights:

We had a really fun time at the game. Olivia loves going to the games. She claps her hands and dances when the band (or other music) plays.

Definitely a Cougar Fan!

Temple Square was beautiful, and a little cold (okay a lot cold). I was really worried about Olivia being cold so I put four layers on plus three blankets- she couldn't move, but she was warm :).

It was so cute when Olivia and Emma saw each other. Emma was kissing and hugging Olivia and then Olivia started hugging and kissing Emma back. I think they missed each other.

Olivia turned 10 months old this past week. Her newest thing is saying Hi to everyone. Every morning she tells daddy-Hi Da. Today at church she keep saying Hi to the little girl in front of us and then was telling her baby Hi this afternoon. She is very friendly. She has a smile for everyone. We frequently get stopped in stores by people telling us how cute she is and she typically responds with a smile. She has such an infectious smile it is hard not to be smitten with her. She definitely knows what she wants and is not afraid to produce some tears when she doesn't get it. She already has the gift of gab. She loves music and likes to dance to anything that has a little rhythm. We love this precious little girl.

Olivia in her Christmas Dress.

Helping mom with the tinsel for the Christmas tree.