18 MONTHS!!!

2 days ago, our crazy Belle reached that 18 month mark! I cannot believe how old she is! She is now nearing her 2nd birthday and I honestly can't get over it. It amazes me how fast time flies and it amazes me that our Miss Isabelle Jane is no longer a baby, she is a little girl.

Our little girl is growing more and more every day and her personality shows more and more as well. She is definitely a girl and loves everything girl - she loves babies, clothes, shoes, make-up, and jewelry. That being said, she is not a quiet little princess. She is a CRAZY, busy body who likes to run, jump, climb, and be thrown. She has very little fear and loves rough housing with her daddy.

She is a smarty-pants with lots of determination. She is bound and determined to get whatever it is she wants and she does not like anyone or anything to stand in her way. She loves to read books and can't get enough of them. She also loves her doggies and loves to chase them around the house.

She is learning new words every day and is getting to the point where she repeats just about any word you tell her. Right now her main words include: Mommy(ies), Daddy(ies), doggies, baby(ies), bubbles, binky, blanky, bath, more, coke, color(s), help, hot, juice, candy, medicine, drink, car, shoes, boots, coat, and of course - no. She says a lot more, but those are the words she uses most. And of course every single one of those words just sound so darn cute.

Our little Belle certainly is busy and exhausts us every day, but we love her more than anything in the world and are so happy to have her. She truly brightens our lives.

a funny realization

re·al·i·za·tion

1 [singular] : the state of understanding or becoming aware of something ▪ There is a growing realization that changes need to be made to the coaching staff. ▪ She had a/the sudden realization [=she suddenly realized] that things had changed between them. ▪ He came to the realization [=he realized] that he was adding up the wrong numbers.

2 [count] formal : the act of achieving something that was planned or hoped for —usually singular —usually + of ▪ He was thrilled by the realization of his lifelong dream.

After three years of working as office manager at a medical office, and a random sequence of thoughts yesterday, I made a funny little realization.

Before I get to my little thought sequence, I must begin by saying that a huge part of my job as manager is keeping the books - I manage all the money, pay all the bills, do the payroll, pay the taxes, etc, etc.

Yesterday, after getting all the W-2s done for the employees, I began thinking about how my life has become consumed in running numbers - whether it's making sure we are getting paid enough on a certain procedure, or creating a budget for the month, or trying to figure out how much square footage we need in a new suite. I was thinking that this job has turned out to be a surprising career path for me, as I went to college in communications/editing with the anticipation of news writing or editing. So I decided to think back to my childhood and try to remember what my ambitions were then.

As a kindergartner, I wanted to be a nurse, and that ambition gradually turned into wanting to be a doctor until about the 6th grade, when my interest suddenly changed from the medical field to journalism. I specifically remember being asked in 2nd grade what I wanted to be, and my reply was to be either a nurse or a doctor because I wanted to be able to help people (what a sweet little 2nd grader I was). As I thought about that, I was then brought back to this little memory:


When I was in 5th grade, my class spent a day or two at this lovely place - Young AmeriTowne. This mini-city is made up of 17 businesses that are run by cute little 5th and 6th graders. The purpose of this town is to teach kids to have jobs, earn paychecks, spend the money that they earn within their means, and just learn how to run businesses within a community. As part of the Young AmeriTowne experience, we had to submit applications and go through an interview process for the jobs that we wanted. I, of course, applied to be a doctor at the medical office. You can imagine my little 5th grade disappointment when I did not receive the position of a physician. However, I was still given a job in the medical office. My position -- book keeper. My teacher who gave me the position tried to lift my spirits by telling me what an important job it was, and that I was given that position because of my math abilities. I was in charge of running the books for the Young AmeriTowne Medical Office. I did the payroll, I paid the office bills, and kept the office running.

Any similarities to what I did for that 5th grade assignment and what I do now? Who knew my 5th grade teacher could see the future?

I think the irony (or really coincidence I guess) is pretty funny. And even funnier, is the fact, that I have never thought of that story before.

That is my funny realization - in more ways than one.

Just some cute moments

Belle and Daddy snuggling with Porter. Belle LOVES the dogs and she loves to snuggle with them. Porter will usually last a short time with her, but poor Belle can't get Emmy to stay near her. As soon as Belle goes near Emmy, she just gets up and moves.

I was going stir crazy in the house tonight, so Belle and I went for a walk. She LOVED running around in her snow boots and playing with the snow.

Her favorite place to walk was the tennis court. She just ran around and left the cutest footprints all over it.

Relaxing in her new chair we got for her.

One morning before her bath, Belle decided to put one of her rain boots on and ran around the house forever in her diaper and one boot.


Daddy usually leaves early in the morning to go clean, so when Belle wakes up, she takes Daddy's spot in bed to drink her milk while watching cartoons.


When I get home at night, I'm usually too exhausted to control too much of what Belle does and Daddy is away at school, so this is what happens - she runs around crazy doing what she does best: making messes!

Christmas and New Years

I know this post is a little late, but thought I'd do a little catch up on the holidays. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family in Syracuse. It was very low key, but nice. We had everyone there, but Camille's family (until later Christmas afternoon); it was fun to have most of us together. We were pretty excited for this Christmas with Belle, as last year she was too small to care about anything. For the most part, she enjoyed opening presents and playing with new toys. She certainly got spoiled this year.

Santa brought her a new baby doll (as she is completely baby obsessed) and a whole doll set - stroller, pack 'n play, and bouncer and of course he gave her some stocking stuffers as well, including a sing-a-ma-jig which seemed to be more popular with the adults than her. I gave her some books and puzzles, and Dave gave her a laptop (as she is always wanting to play on ours). Of course, she got spoiled from Grandma and Grandpa with a Madame Alexander doll (much like one that I used to have as a little girl), some blocks, books, a cute outfit, and beautiful Christmas dress. Of all the presents, she was the most excited to open the little sweat suit my mom got for her. I wish I had a picture of it, because she was SOOOO excited when she opened it, and it was so cute. It was pretty hilarious.

After coming up the stairs, she immediately ran over to her new baby.

She tried to feed her baby (missing the mouth just a bit)

Then she ran right over to Grandma

I guess she thought she deserved the binky rather than the baby doll

The best picture I could get to capture the excitement on her face for her new clothes. She is definitely a girl.

The family PJ picture

Unfortunately, Christmas day, itself, was not such a fun one for our family, as we did not sleep at all Christmas Eve and Belle had a fever of 103 all Christmas day that would not break. We spent our Christmas night at the doctor's after-hours and ended it with a painful shot. :( It was a sad day. Hopefully, we will have a better Christmas next year.

For new year's eve, we went to Blanding to spend the weekend with Dave's family. As always, New Year's is a good time with Dave's family - filled with food, family, and games. Our trip was not long enough, but it was good to be able to spend at least a few days there.

Things to be grateful for

I'm not gonna lie, these last few weeks have been a bit blah for me - maybe I'm having some slight seasonal depression or just in a rut, I don't know. Whatever it is, I've just been a bit down. Usually this is my favorite time of the year, but with the stresses of work combined with the fact that we have absolutely no money, it has been kind of hard to enjoy the holidays - they are just becoming more of a stress than anything. Added on to this blahness (if you will), I have gotten caught in the terrible trap of comparing my life to others. Not that my life is really that bad right now, but of course it could always be better - we could have more money, I could be at home being a mom and making more babies, Dave could be done with school, we could have a bigger house to have more babies in, my reproductive system could work properly and allow us to have more babies, etc, etc.

I usually try not to get caught in this comparison trap, because, honestly, I realize that my life is really not that bad and we have some incredible blessings that many people don't have. Let's face it though, I am very human, and once in awhile, I get down about things.

And then of course, just as I am down, I am reminded of how truly lucky I am. While at work the other day, I learned of a patient that Dr. Vincent had read an EEG for. A 22 year-old woman with a 2-year-old, 6-month-old, and expecting her third went to the hospital with a headache. After an evaluation, she was sent home with some pain medications. The next day, her husband came home to find her lying lifeless in their hallway. After calling 911, he began CPR to try and revive her. The ambulance soon arrived and rushed her to their small-town hospital and then transferred her to UVRMC. After arrival at the hospital, it was determined that she had a pulmonary embolism. She remained in a comatose state and had an EEG done to determine her brain activity. Dr. Vincent was the physician reading her EEG and had to report the hospital that, unfortunately, this young wife and mother had no brain activity.

As I heard this story my heart just ached for this woman's husband and for her children. My heart also aches for her, as she will not have the opportunity to raise her children in this life. I could not imagine the pain of leaving this life before I had the chance to raise my sweet daughter and watch her grow.

Hearing that story helped bring me back to reality a bit - to the reality that I am an incredibly lucky woman. I have an amazing husband who loves me more than I could ever ask for and a beautiful daughter that brings me more joy than I ever imagined possible. And I realize that life could change in a brief moment like it did for that young family. But for now, my life is good, and for that, I am grateful.

Fall 2010 Catch Up

It's been awhile since I've posted and a lot of things have gone on, so I figure I better start catching up before I get too behind. Although I pretty much post all of my picture on Facebook, I also want to catch up on my blog mostly for journaling purposes.

I cannot believe that November is over and we are soon approaching Christmas. Autumn is probably my favorite time of the year and I always feel like it goes way too fast. I wish I could hit rewind to add in a few more activities and spend more time enjoying nature and the beautiful leaves. I guess I will just have to look forward to next year and hopefully find time to fit a few more things in the schedule.

Of course Autumn means football season, pumpkin picking, trick-or-treating, and feasting on delicious food - all of which we enjoyed this season.

We took Belle to her first football game together, and then I braved yet another one with her after that with my dad, Britt, and Morgan. Just like anything and everything else, going to a football game with a 15/16 month old is a much different and more exhausting experience than it used to be for me.





Of course another fun autumn activity that we try to participate in is visiting my mission president's farm in Santaquin, Utah and picking our pumpkins for Halloween. We made it a family affair again this year and went with my parents, Brittany, the Cook clan, and Jeff and Aimee. It's always a good time every year we go.


And of course we had such a fun Halloween with dressing Belle up and allowing her to go Trick-or-Treating for the first time. Rather than trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, we decided just to do the ward trunk-or-treat to keep things simple. She loved eating the candy! We decided to dress her up as TinkerBELLE, and she certainly made a cute Tinkerbelle. It turned out to be a nice coincidence that her cousin Courtney was also Tinkerbelle for Halloween. She was soooo cute and she loved dressing up in her costume. I didn't think she'd really care because she is still pretty young, but she is definitely becoming a little girl very fast and loves all things girl - babies, dressing up, wearing shoes, wearing jewelry. It is so fun to watch her grow up and enjoy being a little girl.


And of course, to end our Autumn season, we enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving - two in fact. On Thanksgiving day, we went to my parents house for a movie and dinner. We saw Mega Mind, which was pretty good from what I saw. It was Belle's first movie since she was a baby. And we'll just say that she is not quite ready for movies. She loved the big screen at first and for about 5 minutes sat on the theater stairs just watching and pointing at the screen. She soon got over the excitement and went right back to doing what she does best - running around like a crazy girl. She is such a busy body and cannot sit still for two seconds. So needless to say, it was an adventurous couple of hours at the theater. After the movie, we headed to my parents for dinner and enjoyed some scrumptious food. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the event. :( I need to get better about picture taking.



Then on Saturday, we headed up to Malad, Idaho to have our second Thanksgiving dinner with some of Dave's family. It was fun to have a 2nd dinner and to be able to spend time with both families for the holiday. Belle absolutely loved being at Storm's house and playing with all of their toys. She was entertained all day, and it was probably one of the easiest days I've had with her since she was totally fine ignoring me and just playing.


The only thing that I really wish we would have taken more time to do this autumn is to enjoy nature and the beautiful leaves. I'm hoping we will do better next year and spend a little more time outdoors.


I hope everyone else has had an enjoyable autumn season. It has been for us, and we're looking forward to the winter for more fun.

Oh memories

I was just looking through all the videos on my computer, and I honestly didn't even remember a lot of them. So for a jog down memory lane ... if anyone else is interested.

Note to self: If having a day when you want to kill your dog, just pull up some puppy pictures or videos, and you will fall back in love (slightly).




Porter was the CUTEST puppy ever. I sure do miss him as a puppy.


And of course, some cute videos of our little Belle. Sometimes I forget how small she once was.






...Don't judge me for the large amount of items in the crib with Belle. I know, I know, they are all SIDS risk factors, but when we first moved Belle into her crib, she wouldn't sleep well, because she was so used to her snug little bassinet, so we had to add filling in her crib, until she got a little more used to it. Once she was used to it, we removed all blankets, stuffed animals, etc. ... but that is not the point of this blog. Just enjoy the cute video. :)



And some more. Sorry, for all the videos, but she is so DARN cute, I couldn't leave them out. :)




... and yes, it drives me NUTS that her face is covered by that stupid sun most of the time, but this video was taken by Dave, and I don't think he quite understands the importance of facial expressions in pictures and videos (no offense babe).

Almost Done.




The last one for now.