Excuses, stories, and of course pictures.

Well, it's been a while and I can explain that
#1:
http://pinterest.com/.
Yep, I joined. And I love it.
If you haven't heard of it, hear of it because I'm telling you it is AMAZING!
My email is chucked full of things I love and things I want and now I can keep it organized and even find more things I love and simply must own at some point in my life.

#2:
I've been sick.
Terribly.
It all started last Tuesday with a special date to the temple, with my boy to do sealings.
And it ended up with me completely passing out face first on the alter.
I'm not even kidding.
I've never passed out before. Ever.
I would say I was so very embarrassed but that would be lying because I personally find it much too hilarious to be even remotely embarrassing.
My boy was a sweetheart as usual and didn't start imitating me until after we walked out of the room.
Gosh, if that would have been Michael, I would have laughed out loud right in the very sealing room.
Apparently he's more reverent than me.
Anyway since that day, I've been sick.
Tired, nauseated, weak, headache, and then I came down with a cold.
The kind of cold that makes you lose your voice.
Which according to my love is a blessing in disguise.
If I do talk I sound exactly like a warthog.
It's definitely hideous so I try not to.
Oh and no I'm not pregnant.
Definitely not.

#3:
Our internet has been slow.

And that about wraps up the coming up with excuses part. So sorry Mickelson family. I promise I'll do better!

What we've been up to.
Well let's see.
We are 95% sure we are going to go sell pest control in Cali this summer.
April to be exact.
I'll do a post explaining that soon.
I'm so very excited to be going.
Olivia and I will be spending our days at the beach.
I'm getting so very excited about the tan I'm sure to get.

We are waiting "patiently" for Michael's LSAT score.
It should be here this week!!
He's still of course busting his butt off with school and work.
I'm so proud.

Our baby girl is walking!
Well she will take about 10 steps now.
So crazy.
I'll post the video of her first steps soon as well.
Oh she also just randomly started crawling up the stairs.
This is obviously dangerous business.
She seriously books it up the stairs and if you try to go after her and tell her no no, she just looks back and you with her cute smile, waves bye bye and keeps going.
We love her so much.
She is learning so much everyday and has just the cutest smile you'll ever see.

Here are some pictures:

Playing outside with daddy.

Getting ready to play the tickle feet game with dad after her bath.
She sticks her little toes out for Michael to tickle and then just busts up when he does.
It is so cute.

She figured out how to turn the light switch on in her bedroom.
Usually I am so proud of all her new tricks and such.
But this one, not so much.
She has been known to get up in the middle of the night and turn it on and then just play.
And same thing goes with her naps.
So being the smart mommy that I am I've gone ahead and taped it down.
And that pretty much took care of that problem.
For now at least. Let's just hope she doesn't figure out how to rip the tape off.

Here's my boy.
I just love him so much and am so grateful for how hard he works for our little family.

Oh and wait until you see this.
After some convincing and maybe a few bribes.
Michael let me buy this lovely duvet cover for our bed.
I couldn't be happier about this.
Our bed is pretty much complete except for the pillows I want to make for it.
I'm so excited!
(Oh ps this isn't our bed or bedroom. It's just a picture of the cover.)

Stay tuned for more posts.
I'm sure I'll update soon.

New blog.

Oh...
I started another blog.
It's pretty much a blog showing what I love to do.
Make pretty things in my spare moments.
And there aren't many of those but there's enough!
Check it out!! Oh ya and follow!

http://precioussparemoments.blogspot.com/

Love.

You know what I love more than anything else in this world?

My cute little family.
They're the best.

Our lives and such.

First of all, Happy Fall.
I guess it's more like we skipped fall and went straight into winter.
Because of the snow.
I'm hoping the snow and freezing cold stops so that we can enjoy the nice breezy (not too cold) fresh air, the beautiful, colorful leaves,
and my favorite is of course the constant pumpkin baking that will be filling our house really very soon.
Below is a pumpkin truffle that we found at Thanksgiving Point.
Isn't it the cutest thing?
It's definitely going to be hard to eat something that cute.

Now on to the exciting lives of us.
Since pretty much every post is about our sweet Olivia, I figured it was time to put in a few words about my boy and I. But don't worry there will still be some words about Olivia too. I just don't think it is possible for me not to talk about that little cutie.
So....
We are living in my parent's basement right now. Which has been very nice for several reasons. #1: It's free and so are a lot of other things. #2: We have built in babysitters. Which of course means romantic dates. (It's been a crazy few weeks so we're due for one of those.) #3: And I just love being around my family, especially my mom. We do lots together. We are anxious however to get out on our own. We have spent the better part of our 2 happy years living in either my parent's or grandparent's basement. So it will be fun to get out on our own and have our own place. But we are so grateful to my parents and grandparents for letting us live with them.
It has been so nice not to worry about spending at the very least $600 a month on rent.
Michael is still going to BYU. He's in his 9th semester, but will be graduating this very December!! His major his Spanish, with a minor in philosophy. But don't get to excited about this graduation because there's lots more school for us ahead. But that's a good thing right?!
He just took the LSAT for the first time this past Saturday. So we should be getting his score on October 20th. As we've discussed over and over where we want to go to law school, we've pretty much narrowed it down to 2 choices. Michael doesn't really want to live in Utah, and I'm okay with that but I don't really want to live all the way on the other side of the country you know. So we've agreed that we would like to be somewhere on the West coast. But where? We have no idea yet. As we've researched law schools, we've realized that it would be beneficial to go to law school close to where we want to live. Mostly because of all the internships you do and how your name gets out and stuff. (Talk to Michael for more details, I obviously struggle in the explaining department. )So originally our goal was to go somewhere like Virginia, or Duke. But for now our 2 tops schools are:

University of Washington.
My top pick. Mostly because I would love to live in Seattle.


University of Oregon.
Our top reason for considering this school is that we found out that they have part-time graduate student teaching positions where you literally work 8-10 hrs a week and get your tuition paid for for. Is it a top law school? No. But it would be so nice not to come out of school thousands, thousands, and more thousands of dollars in debt.
And I think it would be fun to live in Portland as well.
(Actually I just found out its not in Portland haha. I 'm not sure where it is, but I'm sure it would be fun just the same:)


So we shall see I guess! He's been working on applications and personal essays and all that stuff. He also had to talk to some professors in the Spanish Department to test how well his Spanish was. (Vocab, accent, and all that fun stuff.) We find out that score in 6 weeks! Now that the LSAT is over his current project is working on getting published. We're thinking that would look great on his transcript. So this has been the busy, and stressful life of my boy. But I am so very proud of how hard he works to support our family, how hard he works in school, and what an amazing husband and father he is. Because if I was in his shoes, well....we'll just say I'd barely be passing, and I'd definitely not be pleasant to live with!

I am so happy that I get to spend my days at home taking care of our Olivia. She is my little bundle of joy and I enjoy every second of being her mom. Now that she is mobile (not walking yet) I have had a bit more time to do things like, crafts, sewing, scrapbooking, and my new favorite reading. I just barely finished the Help. Oh my gosh, it was such a great book and I can hardly wait to see the movie!
I teach the little 8-9 year olds in primary every other week. They are quite entertaining as you can well imagine.
Well this is getting kind of boring so....

We'll move onto this little love:

She's sick right now.
Hence the swaddling and holding still for more than 2 seconds!
We took her to her 1 year doctors appointment today.
Here are her stats:
Height: 27 inches-11th percentile
Weight: 17 lbs 1 ounce-2nd percentile
She's still so very little.
But so very cute.
And of course healthy as can be!
She had to get 4 shots.
Poor little thing.
She's not walking yet, but is getting to be quite the fast crawler.
She's very good at standing up on things and walking around them.
She loves giving kisses to everything, even the carpet, waving bye bye to everything, going upstairs to see Aunti Sophi's bird, wrestling with mom, reading books, eating and drinking anything she sees mom and dad with, going outside, dancing to music with dad, screaming when she wants something or doesn't want something, biting and hitting(we are working on that one), calling everything except for an actual bird (she knows that word) and me (she knows mom too) a bbbbbbbb. Whatever that means! We think she knows what things are but just calls them a b because a lot things start with a b. For example: banana, baby, bird, bib, binky, bottle, bye bye, bath, book ect. She turns on the light switch in her bedroom, plays peekaboo and pat a cake, gives high fives, and so much more. But most importantly she brings so much love and joy to her mom and dad every single day. And we couldn't be happier she's ours.

Wow. That was long.
But this is kind of like my journal.
So I'm thinking I might want to remember some of these things!

Her little party:

I seriously have no idea how it has already been 1 year since our Olivia was born.
I'm a mom to a 1 year old!
I just can't think about it too much or I might just burst into tears.
I get a bit emotional thinking about how fast time has gone.
However, I am loving how much she is learning each day.
And being able to see more and more of her oh so cute personality.
It has been such an amazing year.
Definitely not always easy.
It can be stressful, and exhausting (to say the least) to have a baby.
But every second of it is worth it.
And I am so glad she is ours.

I put together a small party for her.
I'm not going to lie, I did kind of go all out.
But I couldn't help it, it was her very first birthday!
I spent days making her dress, banners and cake and cupcake toppers.
Sophia and I stayed up late one night making the tissue pom poms and then decorating.
And I spent the day before her birthday baking cupcakes, cookies and of course her cute little cake!
Let me just say that our other kids will not be so lucky on their first birthday or any other birthday for that matter.

Enjoy the lots and lots of pictures I took!

Her invitation.

I just love this picture because it shows just how small she is, still fitting perfectly right on my lap!

Surprisingly she did not really like the whole make a mess of your cake idea.
Especially when her dad put her face in it. (See video posted on facebook.)

I think Michael enjoyed opening her gifts a bit more than she did!

Being so nice and giving her new baby a kiss. (This one seems a bit vicious but I promise she gives cute ones.)

She loved her package from the Mickelsons. Especially since she got to pull everything out and play with the tissue paper.

Giving the fishy a kiss. (This one is nice)


Before stores stopped selling fireworks, I had this brilliant idea to have a little firework show on her birthday.
Mostly since I was a mean mom and didn't let her stay up late to watch the big ones.
But I think I made it up to her!
She loved them!
Oh ya and during the small show I found out that it's illegal or something to do fireworks after a certain date. Whatever that means. Whoops:)

Happy Birthday to our very sweet girl!