Video Post!!

Sydney was pretty adamant about teaching Family Home Evening tonight.  This was a part of her lesson.

Dancing with Papa

Sorry for the poor quality, we were using the web camera on our computer.

Videos

These are some videos I've taken recently. The first is of Sydney trying to put a diaper on her duck and the second is of her walking backwards. She had been doing it for, like, five minutes before I grabbed the camera.

BYU v. Wake Forest Basketball Game

Before the game started.


Sydney kept herself (and us)entertained by dancing.


The student section. The game was a white-out, so they all got free matching t-shirts.


Cosmo made his entrance from the ceiling. Seriously, somehow Charles and I had never been to the beginning of a basketball game, so we were floored by the "show" that occurred. Lights, music, it was all pretty choreographed and very amping.


Basketball team entering.


The Marriott Center was sold out! It was pretty impressive. And VERY LOUD.


Wake Forest free throw.


None of my BYU side action shots came out very well.


And, sadly, this was the final score. But, it was a really good game.

Singing

So, this is the first time we've actually heard her sing. If you listen to the whole thing, you can hear the difference between her singing and her talking. But no matter what, it's still pretty cute.

Christmas Day

We had a lovely Christmas day, just the three of us. Sydney slept in until after 8, so we were able to wake up on our own and just take our time. And she loved EVERYTHING she opened. She kept exclaiming "oh, wow" and wanted to look and play with everything. She made us stop and put her new clothes on her and read her the book she got and let her sweep with her new broom. It was a lot of fun for us to see her so excited and curious about everything.





In the afternoon, we braved the snow and rain and went to see Bedtime Stories together. Sydney came with us and did really well in the theater. We sat on the handicapped row so that there was space for her to run around and let her gorge herself on popcorn and soda (mother of the year award nomination right there, thank you very much). It was a very fun day, and so nice to spend it together.

She was so worn out, that she fell asleep in her highchair at dinner...which has never happened before

Go, Go, Go!

Sydney is cheering for the BYU women's basketball team here. And, as a side note, she cannot say "go" any other way. It is always shouted and in multiples.

Caroling, Sydney Style

*Please ignore my singing...and my flub of the lyrics. Even though I sang that song ALL through highschool, I STILL mess up that last stanza*

Videos from today

Cheering

I forgot that I had uploaded this a week or so ago, but here is Sydney doing the end of the fight song. We were getting her ready for bed at the time, hence the nudity.

Pants!

Sydney's way of putting on her pants.

Eating with a Spoon

Sadly, after this video, she decided that the best way to eat her oatmeal was like this:




So ladylike, huh?

Playing with Beans

This is one of Sydney's new favorite things to do. Thankfully, she hasn't tried to eat the beans like this...just feed them to me or throw them on the floor.





*And as always, ignore my messy floors. I fully prescribe to the theory that she's only one once and I need to enjoy her to the fullest.*

Las Vegas--Image heavy

September 14

Charles' sister Ashley is trying to get into BYU and needed to take the ACT in September. When she went to sign up, she found out that it is only offered in select locations in September and Utah is not one of those locations. So, we offered to take her to Las Vegas so she could take the test, since we have been talking about going for a weekend since Charles started his new job.

So, Thursday, we set out on our road trip. We left about 3:00 and got to Las Vegas at 8:15ish, thanks to the fact that Las Vegas is in the Pacific time zone. I checked us into our hotel (which I had found an awesome deal for) and we brought our luggage in and then went and caught the shuttle to the Strip, so we could see the Fountains at the Bellagio at night and check out where we might want to go in the morning. Holy cow, can I just say that we were all a little amazed by the lights and the sheer amount of people there. It was slightly overwhelming. But we made our way down to the Bellagio and took in the last half of the show there. Sydney loved it, she kept saying "wow" and clapping her hands for every large burst of water that happened. Then, we made our way back to the shuttle and returned to our hotel for the night.

Friday, we got up early and ate at the hotel and then took the shuttle back to the strip. We checked out the Luxor and Excalibur quickly before heading to M&M world. Four floors of melt in your mouth, not in your hand paraphenalia and the smell of candy coated chocolate. Wow, it was quite impressive. Next to that was the World of Coca Cola store, which made me think of Brooke with the aluminum bottles, the old bottles and the pop can tab purse they had. After this, we ran and grabbed some fast food and then headed over to the Miracle Mile shops where they had an indoor rainstorm and some really cool stores that I have never been in before. (while we were here, Ashley started to feel a little sick and we ended up spending over an hour getting her back to the shuttle so she could lay down at the hotel and then coming back) Here, we were stopped by a guy who asked us if we wanted to review a tv show that may go on the air for free tickets to Madame Tussauds. We said yes and, while we were glad we did, we both have to say that the show Whale Wars was NOT worth sitting through for anything but $25 dollar tickets to something that we would have only gone to if it was free.

Anyway, after all of that, we stopped at the Bellagio to check out Tiffany's, since I have always wanted to go in one and this is probably the closest we will get to one for a long time. We also spent some time checking out the fountains again, including one inside that "hops" from bush to bush. When we were done here, we caught the shuttle (Sydney woke up when on our way back to the shuttle and was not happy for the ride back) and got Ashley and went to In-N-Out for dinner. This was everyone's first time, but mine, so it was quite an exciting trip. They were as delicious as I remembered them and everyone else was quite impressed. We went back to the hotel after that and Charles, Sydney and Ashley swam in the pool, then we went to bed.

On Saturday, Charles took Ashley over to UNLV to take the ACT (since that was the reason we had come) and then the rest of us went back to the strip. This time we went to the other side and went over to the Venetian so we could visit the wax museum. It was pretty neat to see how lifelike the figures are and it was really fun to be able to pose with them Sydney didn't like it as much...the figures scared her pretty badly, especially Abraham Lincoln (we tried to get a picture of her sitting on his lap and she FREAKED OUT and ended up overfilling her diaper...it was pretty funny after the fact).

After that, it was time to go get Ashley and head back, so we grabbed lunch and left. Charles was frantic to get the BYU vs UNLV game score, so we spent the first hour with him calling people trying to find out the score. He was thrilled when we finally got close enough to get it on AM radio and even more thrilled with the outcome of the game (59 to 0; Go Cougars!) We made pretty good time coming home and decided that we should stop at Cove Fort on our way home and check out that historic site. which gave us a nice break from driving.

It was a nice weekend, although we wished that we could have stayed longer.

Tricks

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Too Cute!

We recently introduced Sydney to the swings at the park and she LOVES them. She just sits and laughs while she is swinging and it is so cute.



She's actually started to laugh a whole lot more now, which makes playing twice as fun because we love to make her laugh.

**You have to listen very carefully, especially since you can hear the kid swinging next to Sydney laughing as well.**

Crawling

Here is a video showing how well Sydney is getting this crawling thing down.

Going to the Zoo, zoo, zoo.

We took Sydney to the zoo for the first time. She LOVED it! She loved looking in the different windows and then really loved seeing the animals moving and playing. One of the most fun animals to watch was the leopard seen in the video below. He had been asleep, but when he saw that he had an audience, he kept pacing back and forth. It was quite a fun trip and I'm excited to take her to the Henry Doorly Zoo this summer when Trevor gets home!

Do the Wave

She's just started learning how to wave...and will sometimes do it when we ask her too. It's fun having a baby who will do "tricks" on demand.