This has been a fantastic holiday. Morgan already wrote about our Thanksgiving, which was wonderful. Our Baby Girl has had an overload of grandparents over the last couple of days. Which I don't think can ever be a bad thing. On Wednesday night, my dad and step-mom and sister came for dinner and a visit. Baby Girl was pretty happy, especially since she's usually really fussy in the evening time.  Then all day Thursday, we spent with Morgan's family. Then on Friday, my mom came to visit and left this morning. It's been fun to spend so much time with family. Thanks to Baby Girl's grandparents, we have one spoiled child. 

It's been said that our Baby Girl is turning into a Mamma's Girl. I think she's too young to really care. I know that she knows who I am, and she recognizes me, but as long as she's with a caring person, I don't think she misses me. Who knows. I don't mean to have a Mamma's Girl, but it's kinda hard when I spend 24 hours a day with her. I've left her on several occasions with Morgan to go to meetings or the store. About a month ago, Morgan and I left her to go to the temple. And my mom offered to babysit on Friday night, so we took the opportunity.

It's been a while since Morgan and I have been on an official date. We hang out together, but this was fun. We definitely need to do this more often. We went to Sonic for dinner. They have a brown bag special for only $6.99. Cheap dinner and we got to sit quietly in our car together and talk. Then we went to The Quarry to go Indoor Rock Climbing. We saw this place a few months ago, and Morgan said that he would want to go, but I was 8 months pregnant. Morgan was an expert Rock Climber back in his pre-mission life. He's been a couple of times after his mission, and not at all since we've been married. We got a 2 for 1 coupon in the mail, so we thought we would give it a try. I have never been rock climbing, and I'm not only out of shape, but have no muscles at all. I didn't think I would be very good at it at all, but I was willing to give it a try. We had to take a little course on how to balay. Then we had to climb a practice wall in front of the instructor. The first 3 steps, I was excited because it was pretty fun. And it didn't matter if I tripped and fell, because Morgan would catch me. Then I kept climbing, and about half way up the 45 foot wall, I started to get short of breath. My arms started getting tired and I realized that this would be a lot easier if I exercised once in a while. I kept climbing and made it to the top without too much trouble. Then it was Morgan's turn to climb the wall. He did it in about half the time.

Now that we were 'certified', we were free to climb the other walls. Morgan found a fairly 'easy' wall for me to climb, so I started climbing. I got about 15 feet up, when I got stuck. I couldn't see where to grab and couldn't climb higher. I fell, but Morgan had me secure - so I didn't go anywhere. Morgan asked if I wanted to rest or start over, and I did not want to climb that 15 feet again, so I stayed there hanging in the air - resting. When I had caught my breath, I tried grabbing again, but I still couldn't figure out where to put my feet and my hands. After falling again, I just had Morgan bring me down. Morgan climbed the same wall with great ease. Then we found an even easier wall for me to climb. I liked this wall better. I was able to climb all the way to the top. Morgan climbed a more difficult wall. By that time, I was tired. I know, I only climbed 2 1/2 walls, but I was done. Morgan climbed another pretty difficult wall. He said he was out of practice, but I was impressed with his mad rock climbing skills.

It was so much fun to go on an official date, to get out of the house and not worry about our Baby Girl for a few hours. I got to try something new, something that Morgan really enjoys. I felt completely safe on an indoor rock climbing wall, but now Morgan is talking about taking me out in the 'wild' to rock climb this summer. Hmmm, I'm not so sure I can handle that yet, but you never know. Thanks, Morgan, for the wonderful date night!

Welcome to the modern world. I've been busy the last couple of days realizing a few ideas that I've had for this website that have finally gotten done. They are relatively small and may go unnoticed but some of them took a lot of work and research. They are as follows:

1. Live Traffic Feed by FeedJit - Jen wanted this feature so we got this up and running
2. HTML editor by FCK Editor - If you leave comments from now on you will see this feature. This took a little bit of work but it turned out alright. It just allows you to add some formatting to your text when submitting a comment
3. Dedicated Comment Window - I've seen other blogs that have the separate pop-up window for comments that opens to a specific dimension so this is what I've gone a head and programmed into this blog. I did have to tweek some of the setting in Firefox to get it working (it would open in a tab and not a separate window) so if you find it doing the same thing you go into Tools -> Options -> Tabs and check "A New Window". If you find this feature more annoying than helpful please let me know.
4. Non Case Sensitive Gotchya Codes - Yes, I've sacrificed security on the altar of convenience. The gotchya codes for the comments are no longer case sensitive.
5. Mobile Version - I have programed a lightweight version of the website for mobile devices (e.g. cell phones) because I know of a few people who use them to view our blog. When coming to this blog it will automatically detect if you are using a mobile device and transfer you appropriately. If you find that this feature does not work with your mobile device, as I have not tested it out with every kind, please let me know and I can get it fixed.

So, anyway these are just some of the little changes that I've made to hopefully make this blog a little better and more user friendly.

This year we had Thanksgiving dinner with my family at my parent's house. I think it is the first time I've been home for Thanksgiving in a few years and it was nice to spend time with family during this time. Jen made a relish tray that resembled a turkey, it was really creative and looked really really good. Jen also made her famous caramels that turned out perfectly -- a feat in itself because they require so much attention and she was also dealing with an upset Baby Girl at the same time, and she also turned out two loaves of her wonderful homemade bread.

Baby Girl got a lot of attention at Thanksgiving, probably because she is the first Grandbaby in my family, but she didn't seem to mind all the different people holding her. She was incredibly calm throughout the day. Many pictures were taken of her and we posted a couple with oversized mittens on her hands. They said she looked like a penguin.

Before dinner we had a family game of Yahtzee, competition was heated between my brother and my sister.When it came down to the end and all the scores were tallied up my wonderful wife surprisingly won the game and came out 15 points ahead of the next in line, which was my brother.She always wins board games -- I don't know why I play with her.

For Thanksgiving dinner we had a wonderful traditional meal (however,I don't recall stuffing being on the table during our feast) of turkey, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, breads and rolls, cranberry sauce, and many other Thanksgiving type foods. Afterwards we rested and then indulged ourselves in many different types of pies. Jen and I really liked the peppermint pie, but there was also pumpkin, lemon meringue, coconut cream, caramel apple meringue, and apple -- there may have been more but that's all we can remember.

After dinner we took some family pictures and you can click here to see my brother out of control when we decided to take a funny picture. After the pictures Jen fed Baby Girl and then we took off for home. Baby Girl, who normally loves car rides, was crying and screaming for the last 20 or so minutes of our ride home, but we made it home safe, and full of food.

In the words of Tom Lehrer

"Christmas time is here, by golly, Disapproval would be folly, Deck the halls with hunks of holly, Fill the cup and don't say when. Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens, Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,Even though the prospect sickens, Brother, here we go again."

Christmas time is fast approaching. Jen has been talking about putting up Christmas stuff up for months and she finally got her wish. I am of the opinion that out of respect for the holiday one should not overlap holiday "celebrating" especially when it involves Thanksgiving and Christmas. First you celebrate Thanksgiving, then you worry about Christmas. Jen, however, sees things differently and will start to celebrate Christmas way in advance, sometimes even before Halloween. So as part of my birthday gift she said that she would restrain herself from putting up Christmas decorations until after my birthday -- which she did. I think she got up at 12 am that night though to start putting things up. So anyway when Baby Girl gets old enough to understand her mothers obsession she can look back at this blog entry and realize that mothers always had this sickness. So enjoy a picture of our Christmas tree, even though we really should have Thanksgiving decorations up, my beautiful wife decorated it and it looks absolutely fabulous. If I were left to decorate the Christmas tree it would probably look like some 8 year old science experiment or maybe something like this. Jen really does a good job at making this house a home!

I just want to brag for a minute about our Baby Girl! I put her on her tummy last night and she was holding her head up so well! I got a couple of cute pictures. She was holding it really high for a long time too. She's so adorable.

Last night, she had a hard time going to sleep. She ate at 9:00, but was wide awake and fussy afterwards. Morgan finally got her to sleep and in her crib, but she woke up 5 minutes later. So, I tried rocking her and she would not get to sleep. Finally at 10:30, I fed her again, and she fell right to sleep. And she slept through the whole night and didn't wake up until 7:00 this morning! At 6:30, I woke up and was surprised that she was still sleeping. I must admit, I snuck into her room to make sure she was alright. Sure enough, she was sleeping like a log! It only took her 10 weeks to adjust to sleeping through the night. Not too shabby!

Just for fun, I looked up these pictures, and I want your opinion! Here is a baby picture of Morgan and a baby picture of me and a picture of Baby Girl. Who does she look like?

Our Baby Girl is 'talking' all of the time. It's so fun to hear her little voice develop as she's oooohing and aaaaahing. Last night, she slept until 4:30 this morning. Not quite through the whole night, but I'm not complaining. She was kinda crying, so I decided to try and rock her back to sleep before she was fully awake. Just to try and encourage her to sleep longer. I went into her dark room and started bouncing her matress a little to try and rock her to sleep. I didn't turn on any lights or talk to her at all. She stopped crying and started 'talking' to me. She couldn't see or hear me, but she knew I was there. It was almost like she was telling me "I'm awake, so there's no use in trying!" So I gave up rather quickly and got her up to eat. After a feeding and a diaper change, she was pretty happy and still wide awake. I wanted to go back to bed and Baby Girl was just as happy as could be - awake, when she should be sleeping. I put her down in her crib, still wide eyed, I kissed her and told her to go to sleep. Then I went to bed. She stayed there quietly until she fell asleep on her own! What an easy baby!!

Later, after Baby Girl was dressed for the day, I decided I would try to get her 'talking' on camera. It didn't quite work out. She ended up getting fussy. But I did get this cute video of her before she started crying. Enjoy.

This is our Sunday report. Usually Sundays are a very laid back, relaxing day. Today was exactly that type of day. We went to church. Baby Girl did well, until Relief Society. She was just a little fussy. I spent most of the meeting standing at the back, rocking her. At least I was I able to stay for the lesson. After church, we spent the day relaxing. Morgan cleaned out the fireplace. I made banana bread. Baby Girl took a nap in her swing. She's so much fun when she's awake. I've attached a couple of pictures of Morgan and Baby playing. So, as for our Sunday Report, there's not much to report, other than we are happy and healthy!

Here's an update on our beautiful baby girl since our blog crashed. Thanks, Morgan, for fixing it! This last week has been great. Baby Girl is doing fantastic at sleeping through the night. She eats at about 9:00 then goes to sleep pretty well. Almost every night this week, she's slept until 4:30 in the morning. One night she made it until 5:30 in the morning! It's fantastic!! It's nice to be able to sleep for that long. Hopefully she goes a little longer as time goes on.

She is such a chunker. I think she gains weight every day. She's so cute. She's now in Size 2 diapers. It's crazy to think that she was once in, and has since grown out of, Preemie, Newborn and Size 1 diapers.

She is smiling all the time too. Here is a cute picture that Morgan caught on camera. She's so fun. She's starting to 'talk' a lot more too. Morgan can easily get her 'talking' to him. It sounds like she copies what he says to her. It's adorable. She's now starting to like toys. She can't grab on to them yet, but I hang them over her head and she just stares. Her swing has a moving mobile, and she focuses onto the moving butterfly or caterpillar. She loves it. It's fun to watch her grow and develop.

Some of you may have noticed our blog was down for a few days. We had some technical difficulties with our web server's hard drive making funny noises so we shut it down for a few days until I could get the server rebuilt with a new hard drive. Well today we finally have got it up and running again so hopefully we will not see anymore down time. For the past couple days we were hosting the page on another server, a friend at work was kind enough to do that for us, and we did not post any blogs during that time because of the setup.

Hopefully now we should be running alright and not see any downtime. Oh yeah and the video above was a test for embedding video on the blog -- looks like it works! It is from Halloween, I never dropped her, and yes I might be an irresponsible parent for doing this.

This is a cute picture of Baby Girl flexing for the camera. Look at her bulging biceps! Isn't she strong? Actually, her fat rolls are getting out of hand! They are so cute, but it's hard to keep them clean. She has rolls and rolls around her neck. Unfortunately, milk and spit up run down and get in her neck rolls. It is so hard to keep them clean. Plus, she hates it when we have to clean her neck. This is her after her bath this morning. She's such a cutie.

Her bathtimes are getting a lot better. She's learning to love the water. She doesn't cry during her bath, until we have to clean her hair and neck. Then she cries. And she hates it when we pull her out of the water. We wrap her up in a warm towel as quickly as we can, but it's not fast enough for her! So, if we can get her used to that - then we'll have a tearfree bathtime! We're starting to bathe her every other day, so hopefully she'll get used to it. It took her 5 weeks before she stopped crying when she got her diaper changed. She just takes a long time to adjust to things.

Baby Girl had her 2 month check up yesterday. Everything went well. She doesn't really like the doctor's office. She has to have her clothes off, which she hates. Then she has to lay on a scale, and a bench covered in paper. She always cries and cries. She weighed in at 12 pounds 0 ounces. She's almost doubled her weight since birth! She's now 22 1/2 inches long. She is right on track with her growing. She in the 50% for her length and head size and in the 75% for her weight. What a chunker! At her 2 week checkup, she was in the 50% for her length and head size, but only in the 25% for her weight. She went from 25% to 75%! It's a good thing! We love chubby babies!

She also had to get some immunization shots. It was so sad. She only got two shots, one in each leg. I personally had to prepare myself for this! The nurse cleaned her leg with a little alcohol and Baby Girl started screaming because it was cold. Then before she knew it, the nurse poked her in the leg for the first shot. And poor Baby started screaming. She has this scream where she forgets to breath. She just screams and exhales for a really long time. It's so sad. So, she was screaming until her face was bright red. Then, when she normally breaths, the nurse poked her in the other leg, and she kept screaming - without ever taking a breath! I swear her face was turning purple. It made me soo sad. As soon as I picked her up and put her in her car seat, she had stopped screaming. And by the time I made her next appointment, she was sound asleep.

She slept like a log for the rest of the afternoon. That evening, she started screaming again. We gave her some more Tylenol and that helped. She was pretty fussy and I was fearing she would be fussy all night long. She ate at 9:00 and was asleep by 10:00 last night. She didn't wake up again until 4:00 in the morning! That's the longest stretch she's ever made it. She usually gets up about 2:00. I was delighted! I got a whole 6 hours of consecutive sleep. Then I went back to bed and got another 2 hours of sleep! It was fantastic! We'll have to see how she does tonight. She's been really tired and sleepy all day today too. It's a much better reaction than screaming in pain!

So, our Baby Girl survived her first round of immunization shots and I'm so proud of her! More importantly, I survived them too!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Morgan and I did nothing all weekend long. He helped me clean the house, then we just relaxed and were lazy. It was very relaxing. On Sunday, we got all dressed up to go to church. Baby Girl was adorable, as you can see from the pictures. That was the first time she wore shoes! Aren't they cute? She got a lot of compliments for the ward members. She was SOOO happy during church. She was awake through all of Sacrament Meeting. She was happy as can be, just looking around at all the lights. Morgan's found the sure fire way to make her smile, so we kept her smiling all through the meeting. She slept through Sunday School (like father, like daughter!) and slept through Relief Society. By the time church was over, she was ready to get home and eat something. She cried the whole way home.

Baby Girl is staying awake a lot more through out the day. She's a lot more alert. I've decided that I need to make her environment a little more stimulating when she's awake. The past couple of days I've been reading children's books to her. And she starts 'talking' right along with me. There was one book that had a lot of rhythm and rhyme and she smiled during that book. Yesterday, we were listening to Christmas music (yes, that's right, Christmas music! I LOVE it!), I was singing "Here Comes Santa Claus" along with the song and she was grinning like crazy. It's so fun to see her developing and growing. She is doing a great job and holding up her head on her own. I put her on her tummy on this pillow and she was holding her head up so well for a minute. Then gradually, she got more and more tired as her head slowly rested on the pillow. She's so cute! She's going in for her 2 month check up today. I'll have to report how big she's gotten!

Jen's Parents invited us to go see a hockey game, it was the Utah Grizzlies versus the Ontario Reign. The game was played on a rink dyed pink for breast cancer awareness, and the Grizzlies players dawned pink jerseys - a little different especially for hockey. There was supposed to be a lot of free stuff given out to raise awareness of breast cancer, but it appeared to be a big hoax as everyone we talked to pointed us to someone else for the mysterious free bag-o-stuff -- we eventually gave up. Baby Girl loved all the motion and flashing light which kept her occupied throughout most of the game. During the first period the Reign scored two points which kept the crowds pretty quite, and during the second and most of the third periods nothing really happened. Late into the third period the alcohol started to take full effects on the crowds and they started to get a little unruly. I think Baby Girl learned a few new colorfull four letter words to add to her ever growing vocabulary. With about 3 minutes remaining the Grizzlies finally scored and the crowd went wild. Jen's father covered Baby Girls little ears just as the horn went off signaling the goal, we are very grateful that he did because it was really loud. With the crowd back in the game, or maybe because of the alcohol back in the crowds, the Grizzlies started to play really well and scored another point with 19 seconds remaining to tie the game. It went into overtime which the Grizzlies clearly dominated but did not score. At the end of overtime the game then went into a shootout - a very exciting end to a great game. The Grizz pulled it off by scoring a point in the shoot out and the Reign pulling a big goose egg -- the game ended Grizzlies 3 the Reign 2. It was an exciting game and one that I'm sure Baby Girl will not forget -- well maybe not, in fact she probably will not remember it after next week, but Jen and I thoroughly enjoyed the game, being with family, and listening to drunken angry men embarrassing themselves.

Sunday was a special day! It was our Baby Girl's Baby Blessing. We got her all dressed up for her big day. A beautiful dress. (Which when we first got it, I thought it would be too big. But on her big day, we had to leave the top button undone so it wouldn't choke her!) A very large matching bow. (Morgan hates the bows and usually takes them off as soon as he can!) A delicate bracelet on one wrist (thanks to Grandma Kristy). And a ribbon corsage (thanks to Grandma Lisa). The ribbon corsage is meant for her to wear on her wrist on her blessing day, in her hair on her baptism day, and on her garter on her wedding day. I think Baby Girl looked beautiful!

She was so good during Sacrament Meeting. She was sleeping, until right before the blessing. When she's sleeping, it's a safe bet she'll be good. With her wide awake, you never know what will happen. She was just fine. She just didn't want to sleep through her blessing! It was a beautiful blessing! It wasn't until after Sacrament Meeting that she started to get fussy. She was starting to get hungry. So, a lot of the post-church pictures are with her crying! Oh well.

Our Baby Girl is the cutest baby ever! She is growing by the pound everyday! I swear, her fat rolls keep multiplying! It's adorable. And she is smiling all the time. She really is a happy baby. (She has her fussy times, of course.) The other night, I had her sitting on my lap. She was smiling like crazy at me, just as happy as can be. By the time I could get the camera, she decided that she was done smiling at me. I sat there with my finger ready on the camera, trying everything I could think of to get this girl to smile again. She knew exactly what I was up to and refused to smile big for me. She did, however, give me a lot of funny faces. These are some of the adorable pictures I got out of her. She's so animated! One of these days we will capture her beautiful smile on camera.

Baby girl got dressed up Friday night for Halloween. You saw what she wore during the day, but this was her costume for that evening. Isn't she an adorable little ghost? We didn't go trick or treating though. We stayed home and passed out candy to our trick or treaters. We only got 10-15. Not very many. It was a fun holiday, and it will be even more fun next year for our Baby Girl!