BYU Baby!

Once again, I have full bragging rights for a year! Woo-hoo! For those of you who don't know, we have a full-blown rivalry in our house around this time of year especially, because I cheer for BYU and Stephen cheers for the U. Since we both attended those colleges, it does make sense that we're divided like that, and Stephen's also been a Ute fan his whole life. Since I buy all of Kirsten's clothes, I had a great time at the BYU bookstore while we were in Utah and bought BYU clothes for her. Look how happy she is in her baby BYU outfit!

We watched the game with several of Stephen's friends from high school (all of whom are Utah fans) and I had to cheer for BYU all by myself. Chance and Levi were telling me I dressed Kirsten in the wrong colors. It felt great to prove them wrong at the end of the game! Kirsten was BYU's little good luck charm.

Here's BYU's smallest fan (at least, the smallest one I've ever seen).

Go Cougars!

And there's our divided family. I told Stephen he's lucky I don't gloat too much, because if his team had won he would have been much more annoying about it than I am! The good thing is I have another year now to bug him about BYU beating those Utes.

Random Thing I Love #1

Project Runway. I had never seen it before, and then Bravo played marathons of all the first three seasons. I DVR'd them all and have been slowly watching them. The show is just so addicting! Now I'm totally hooked, and I'm watching the new season too. It reminds me a lot of HGTV's Design Star, where the designers get these crazy challenges and have to pull off a great design from almost nothing. It's just fun to watch! I'm pretty addicted to reality TV now in general, so I guess it doesn't surprise me that I love this show. I don't watch every show, but the list of shows I enjoy includes American Idol, Survivor, Amazing Race, So You Think You Can Dance, Last Comic Standing, The Bachelor (yes, I'm embarrased to admit it!), Dancing With the Stars, and The Apprentice. All this from a girl who didn't watch a single TV show all through college!

Lights at Temple Square!

The day after Thanksgiving, we headed to Temple Square to see all the Christmas lights. It was really cold, so we didn't stay very long, but it was pretty! Kirsten was all bundled up in her cute little reindeer suit and several blankets. There was absolutely no snow in Utah while we were there, not even in the mountains. I was bummed, because I think snow is so beautiful and without the snow Utah was sooooo brown and ugly. My cousins Jessica and Stefanie came with us too!

All we could see of Kirsten was her eyes and nose most of the time, and the rest was buried in all the blankets.

Temple Square is really beautiful! Especially at Christmastime. I'm so thrilled that it's my favorite time of the year again!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm so thankful for so much! I'm thankful for all the people and things that bring joy and happiness to my life. The list is endless, but definitely includes my awesome husband, beautiful baby, wonderful family members and friends, my pets, the beautiful place where we live, and the wonders of the world and life in general. My life truly is an adventure, and so far I'm thankful to have lived it to such a full extent! I only hope I can continue to do so, and to try to bless others' lives as much as they have blessed mine.

We went back to Salt Lake City for Thanksgiving, to see Stephen's family. We had such a fun trip, and we got to see so many friends who I've missed so much. I'll post more pictures from the trip later, but here are some of Kirsten with the Veater side of the family. Everyone loved her, of course!

Kirsten and Grandma Veater

With Stephen's Aunt Ruth and cousin Jazzy

With Stephen's Aunt Bernadette and cousin Jennifer

With Kirsten's Aunt Mary

Kirsten's Half Birthday!

On November 13'th, Kirsten turned 6 months old!

Some things she loves this month:

-Playing in the Jumperoo. She used to just sit in it and not do much, but now she bounces a lot in it and is much more interested in all the toys. It's cute to watch her!

-She's getting more interested in all toys. She plays with them more forcefully, and flaps her arms up and down when she gets excited. We bought her this farm set for her six month birthday present, and she loves it!

-Chewing on anything! Everything she can grab goes straight to her mouth now, including her feet. She likes them better without socks though. She's teething, but the teeth haven't quite broken through yet.

-She also loves to roll. She might be one of those babies who rolls wherever they want to go instead of crawls, because she hasn't started scooting yet. She just rolls and rolls, across the whole floor if she wants to!

Some things she hates this month:
-Photographers. Sadly, she gets scared at portrait sittings, and usually bursts into tears very quickly. Forget about smiling, we're lucky if she even looks semi-happy.
-Random "scary" sounds, like pulling packing tape off boxes, loud crinklings of plastic bags, and putting the blinds up or down. Those sounds make her squeal and cry. The odd thing is she's not bothered by louder sounds like the vacuum, flushing toilets, and the garage door shutting.
-Being left alone in a room (yes, we still have to rock her to sleep. Every time.)

Just Call Him Trouble

Here are our two kitties, Tigger and Herbie, sleeping together in our recliner chair. Don't they just look so peaceful and innocent? Not so! Herbie (the black and white one) is the sweetest kitty in the world, but also the most mischievous. As a kitten, he climbed the Christmas tree, a wall hanging, the harp with the cover over it, and pretty much anything else he could possibly get to. He chewed up our phone cord, and his favorite thing is to get inside any cardboard box and chew up the box. He's like a puppy! He recently discovered a new naughty thing to play with... we found two tomatoes on the floor with teeth marks in them. He actually took the tomatoes out of the fruit bowl and played with them! Who would think that a cat would want to bite and play with tomatoes??

Butternut Squash!

Kirsten had her first try with pureed butternut squash last week! She actually ate nothing or almost nothing of it, but it was fun to see her so excited to go for the spoon and taste that funny orange stuff. And it made for some great pictures.

She's ready for food!

I love how big her eyes are as she goes for it.

She was pretty happy at first to be eating big-person food.

But then she got a little upset...

I used to make a kissy lips face like this when I was a baby too. She just started doing it, and it's really funny.

So she's not doing much with eating real solids yet, but it's fun to experiment and see her reactions!

Which Holiday Food Am I?

You Are a Gingerbread House

A little spicy and a little sweet, anyone would like to be lost in the woods with you.

What Holiday Food Are You?

Which European City Do I Belong In?

You Belong in London

You belong in London, but you belong in many cities... Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sidney. You fit in almost anywhere. And London is diverse and international enough to satisfy many of your tastes. From curry to Shakespeare, London (almost) has it all!

What European City Do You Belong In?

My favorite is Paris though. But London is also a ton of fun. I'm celebrating the return of our computer and internet by putting these random things up on our blog. I hope they're interesting!

Who Does Kirsten Look More Like?

Hmm. I think she looks more like my baby pictures than Stephen's, but this says she looks more like him. However, I tried it again using some different pictures, and...



What do you think? I guess she's just a pretty good mix of both of us! This was pretty fun.

Color of My Soul

What color is your soul painted?

Yellow

Your soul is painted the color yellow, which embodies the characteristics of joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, gold, hope, liberalism, sociability, friendship, death, courage, intellect, confidence, communication, travel, movement, attraction, persuasion, and charm. Yellow is the color of the element Air, and symbolizes the sun, grain, and the power of thought.

To take this quiz, visit http://www.quiztron.com/tests/color_is_soul_painte_quiz_23687.htm

My favorite color is actually blue, but the description sure does seem to match my personality. I guess my true color is yellow!

The Stresses of Moving

I've decided we're not moving ever again. Nope, we'll just stay here in this 3-bedroom townhouse forever and ever. Not really, but doesn't moving just make you feel that way? One year ago we made the big move from Salt Lake City to Seattle. That was incredibly stressful: trying to pack while experiencing the nausea and sickness of pregnancy, Stephen driving the moving van through snowy mountain passes, and leaving friends and family for a new state where we didn't know anybody. I can't believe we've already been living in Seattle for a year!

This recent move was a much smaller one, only 5 miles away, but it still came with its all-too-familiar stresses of packing, cleaning, loading, unloading, unpacking, and organizing. Except now there's the added challenge of doing it all with a baby too! We moved to Washington with just Stephen, me, and our cat Tigger. And in one year our family grew to include Kirsten and another cat, Herbie. This has most definitely been a year of change!

Thank goodness my parents were visiting to help with the move. My mom helped me pack, clean, and of course spent lots of time with her grandbaby. And my dad installed tons of shelves in our closets and garage. We couldn't have done it without them!

Kirsten loved going on walks with Grandma.

Little Ladybug

I know, Halloween's old news now and it's getting close to Thanksgiving. But our computer and internet were out of service for awhile during the move, so this is the first chance I've had to make a new post. And I just had to post the pictures of our cute little ladybug in her Halloween costume! Kirsten was the only one who dressed up this year, since we were in the middle of packing and moving. Everything was such a mess! We also didn't get to take her anywhere to show her off, so that was a little sad. But at least grandma and grandpa were here, so we had a nice little break from packing and took pictures of Kirsten all dressed up. We also still had our traditional Halloween dinner of Witches Brew and cornbread. Yum!

Doesn't she make a cute little bug?

She already knows to want the good stuff!

She wouldn't even pay attention to anything else while sitting in the sea of Reese's.

I think she got a little bit tired of all the pictures.

But she still smiled and had a good time!