Loving our time in Utah!!

So I continue to be a really bad blogger...anyway, we have been so busy enjoying being around family in Utah!! I came out on the 12th and had a week to work on projects with my mom before David came. We love having someone around to constantly entertain Maia and take care of all of our needs!! I will be sure to post lots of pictures once I get home to my FAST internet!! Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas vacation and enjoying family time!

So Last Week...

So Thanksgiving was definitely a week ago and probably no one is really interested in what we did by now, but here goes anyway....we hosted Thanksgiving and had a big group of friends over for good food and good company. I really love having Thanksgiving away from home because we each get to make our own "family favorites" and then come together in good company and share them all. Thanks to everyone who came and brought delicious food! Here is a picture of most of us!

Then last Saturday we decided to take advantage of David's last little bit of free time before finals started and so we went to Christmas in Clarence where they have a Christmas light festival, carnival rides and activities for kids, story time with Mrs. Claus and visits from Santa. It was really fun...Maia had such a good time and that's what it's all about anyway!

David and Maia on the train ride...
Maia and Mom posing for the picture!

One of the activities we did with Maia was decorating sugar cookies...you can imagine how much she LOVED it...she had 5 different colors of frosting to choose from and also got to pick 3 candy toppings from a row of about 10 choices...she truly was in heaven!
Frosting the cookie...she wanted to make sure that we used every color!
She also got to ride the carousel and then we let her try the Bounce House...we thought she would love it, but she was pretty reserved with it and stuck close to the wall. After a while she got more daring, but I definitely don't think we got our $2 worth!!

The last thing we did was go and visit Santa. I thought she might be afraid of him, but she actually talked to him...very, very quietly and with her head kind of down, but she still talked to him. She was so excited when he gave her a candy cane afterwards. Now every time we see one, she reminds me that Santa gave her one.
Anyway, it is a really cute place to go and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a fun, family Christmas outing. Now David is heavily into studying, so I'm afraid there will be no more playing for us until the 19th!

A friend like this...

So somehow I got extremely lucky to live next door to Megan Shaheen....it's kind of funny how we ended up being neighbors, but I am so thankful for it!! She is such a cute, crafty, creative, and talented gal and is so kind to always share her talents with me!! She seriously teaches me so much and does so much for me!! I am getting emotional just writing this because she is seriously such a great friend and I don't know what I'd do without her! She has started doing some photography lately and, like everything else she does, is amazingly good at it. She took these pictures of Maia for me just the other day...they turned out SO CUTE!!! I wanted to share these adorable pictures with you all because a) my girl is so cute and I have to show her off and b)I shouldn't be the only one who has the opportunity to get these kind of pictures taken of their kids....If there is anyone who has been wanting adorable Christmas pictures of their kids or family, you definitely need to get a hold of Megan, I know she'd be more than willing to do it for you and her prices are so reasonable! You can email her if you are interested and she can give you the details! Her email address is megansteel@hotmail.com



These are just a few of the hundreds of cute ones she took! I absolutely LOVE them so much!! Thanks so much Megan...don't know what I would do without you!!

Happy Birthday My Girl!!

Yesterday was Maia's TWO year birthday!! Pretty crazy to think that she is already that old and that pretty soon we will have another little baby around this house....time just goes by too fast when you are watching your kids grow up!
Right when Maia woke up yesterday, David and I told her it was her birthday. The first thing she said was "Oh, thank-you Mama!" It was really sweet. I told her, "You know what, you should be thankful, because I went through a lot of work to get you into this world!!" Anyway, she sang "Happy Birthday to you Maia" all day and was so excited when she finally got to eat cake and ice cream and open her presents.
She is such a joy in our lives and we don't know what we would do without her! She has this spunky little personality and says the funniest things! She is constantly making us laugh and keeping our life happy as ever. We love you Maia!

Two years ago yesterday....2:19 pm.....8 lb......20 inches.....this little thing joined our family....


....And now look at how grown up she is!!

What we've been up to...

So I'm going to try to keep this post short and sweet seeing how I always seem to over-do it on the pictures and words...it's just that when I don't post for 2 weeks, there is too much to talk about!! Anyway, here are the highlights of the past 2 weeks....

First of all, Maia got her first haircut!! My friend Katie was over one morning and so on a whim, I just asked her if she would cut the mullet off of Maia's hair....she has two girls herself, so I was confident she could do the job just fine! It turned out so cute and Maia looks SOOO much better. Here are the before and after pictures....the after ones are kind of blurry and you can't get the full effect of how much better it looks, but trust me, it DOES. No more mullet, hooray!!

Before: Mullet-licious

Gearing up for the big hair cut...
After: a cute bob! Way better, huh?

Next, we had a few nice days of warm weather (probably the last of the fall, sadly!!) so we spent a lot of time outside going for walks with Megan and baby Lilly (who Maia LOVES!), playing, doing sidewalk chalk, and blowing bubbles. I love warm weather!!



Then, I got sick sometime last week--totally NOT fun at all! But I am just so thankful for wonderful friends. Megan took such good care of me that day...she brought me juice popsicles (which saved my life and was all I ate the whole day) and offered to take Maia, and then she brought dinner over to us that night too. Thank you so much Megan, you really rescued me that day!! And then the next day when Kendra had gotten word that I hadn't been feeling well, she brought over some homemade Chicken Noodle Soup. Super delicious! Thank you to Katie and Andrea too, and all of the others who called to check in! I have the greatest friends ever!
Also last week...we started Potty Training!!! It is actually going quite well and I am so impressed at how Maia is doing with it. Of course, we've had some accidents, but she is doing better and better every day. So far today she has been 100% accident free (knock on wood!!) and the day is almost done for her, so that is great!! I hope it will just keep getting better and better and she won't slide into reverse anytime soon!
The last of the big news happened last night! Our good friend Alison was baptized! She is such an amazing person and it was so great to be a part of it. She has been receiving the discussions at our house for the past year and a half and made the decision about a month or so ago to be baptized. We couldn't be happier! It really has been such a great experience to see her transformation!

Just before the baptism...

I guess that brings you up-to-date in a (sort of) quick way! Hope you are all doing well!

Halloween Part 2 and Some Birthday Partying!

So the Halloween fun continued this past week...first of all, on Thursday, Maia had a little Halloween party at the library during her story time hour. The kids all dressed up and had some Halloween stories read to them. Then they got to go march around the library and sing some Halloween songs that they had been working on for the past couple of weeks, which Maia LOVED, seeing how it goes along with her obsession of "Halloween Stuff." To finish off the morning, there was a little Trick-or-Treat for the kids and they got bags to decorate and then all of the parents went around the room and dropped candy into the bags. This was Maia's first experience with Trick-or-treating and she was quite excited about all of the candy!! I am having a dilemma about all of it because we have (sort-of) started the process of potty-training (which Maia is doing pretty good at) and so I feel that treats are reserved for the times that she goes potty and that if she gets too used to eating treats all of the time, her little mind will tell her that she no longer has to go potty to get a treat...see the problem?? On the other hand, I feel bad with holding everything from her and making her earn every single piece--where's the fun in that??? Anyway, back on track....

Here is Maia all dressed up and ready to go to her story time at the library.

Maia loved walking through the library and waving at everyone...doesn't she look like a princess in a parade waving to the crowd?

Thursday night was our ward's Halloween Party, complete with a chili dinner, games for the kids and a trunk-or-treat. We only stayed for the dinner and a few games, but it was fun. Maia's favorite game was the "cake" walk...she ended up on the winning number one time and got a chocolate chip cookie--she was so excited!
Ready for the ward party...
Doing the cake walk...
Then on actual Halloween, we took Maia out trick-or-treating with our friends, the Fox's and then went to a Halloween party at some other friends house that night (sorry, no pictures of that...I really have been so bad at taking pictures lately!!). Whew!! That's a lot of Halloween stuff! It was so much fun to take Maia trick-or-treating!! She would yell "Trick-or-treat!" and then get SOOOO excited when they dropped candy into her bucket. It was seriously so fun to watch her get so excited!
The family...David and I didn't dress up this time..I guess we are kind of party-poopers!

Then on Saturday, I woke up to these and to breakfast waiting for me on the table....David and Maia had been hard at work to get my birthday started off right!! It was so sweet! I have such a great little family and I feel so blessed.
My birthday continued to be wonderful because my good friends Megan and Kendra had a little lunch get-together for me! I seriously have the greatest friends here...I love them all and will miss them so much when we have to leave here! Thanks Megan and Kendra for putting it together for me and thanks to everyone who brought the yummy food, you guys are the best!! I wish I would have gotten pictures of everyone--I always feel bad when I've left people out--I really don't mean too! Anyway, when we were all eating lunch, somehow the conversation got turned to the new Hobby Lobby store that just opened up here. Now, first of all, you have to know that Buffalo is NOT like Utah at all, in regards to craft/home decor stores....meaning it pretty much SUCKS. So we were all so excited when we heard about Hobby Lobby because we just don't have anything like that here. So what do you think we did? We had to go on a shopping spree, of course!! I might have spent just a little too much money, but it's my birthday right??

This is my friend Rachel and I...Rachel has the same birthday, so we both got to be queen's for the day!

Kendra and Megan--the gals who put it together!

Me, Katie, and Andrea....so we might be laughing a little too hard because we had all eaten too much and were trying to cover our bellies for the picture...Me and Katie are both pregnant, and Andrea just had a baby 10 days ago, so we REALLY have a lot to hide!And then to top the day off, David and I got to go out on a date that night. Thanks Jen and Hayden for playing with Maia!! It was such a great day from start to finish...thanks to everyone who made it that way.. I love you guys!!

Halloween Part 1

Some of our friends threw a fun Halloween Party last weekend. It's always fun to get together with everyone and eat yummy food, talk, play games, etc. Here are a few pictures from the night...I've been so bad at taking pictures lately, so I don't have very many of people's costumes, which I'm sad about! There were some really good ones!

Here are Doug & Rachel...so hilarious...a personal favorite!! And they totally acted the part to make it even better.

David and I...nothing too fancy...we weren't even sure if we were going until the last minute, so when we did decide to go, I was stressed out about a costume...good thing that Megan rescued us and helped us come up with a cute idea. Our friends Travis and Stephanie had the same train of thought going with the baker/bun in the oven thing, but Stephanie made an actual oven to fit around her...very cute and creative! Wish I had a picture of it....
Bron and Megan...should have seen Megan's sweet boots!
Anthony and Kristie...a little Napolean and a Harley chick...Kristie needed to be standing to get the full effect of her outfit--she's hardcore!
The doughnut eating game...so funny and very entertaining!!