Cascade Springs

Dallas and I haven't really tried out a lot of the hikes around here. Today we decided to remedy that! We figured Alpine Loop was a good place to start. Once we got there I realized I'd actually been here before, but I'd never realized it because I'd always just followed friends or families on adventures. I rarely had to be the one to plan them...but now, planning adventures depends on us!

I was concerned because friends who went up last week or prior said many of the leaves are already gone. They were right, but it was still beautiful! The weather was perfect and we loved getting to enjoy this day with Emma. This is her first fall and it is so exciting getting to share this beautiful earth with her!

Here are some pictures of our afternoon up Alpine Loop:

At Deer Creek Reservoir Viewpoint. We didn't see any reservoir...

Just getting started on our little walk - Emma's pumped!

SO excited to finally go on a hike in the mountains!

She's thinking about something brilliant...I know it because I stick
out my tongue too when I'm thinking great thoughts :)

About 50 yards down the trail... Don't worry, Dallas didn't
let me keep taking pictures as often as I wanted

Happy baby with her daddy

Emma's been doing this thing lately where she throws herself horizontal
so she can get a different view of things. Or at least that's our hypothesis.
Whatever the reason, she is super cute when she does it. I tried to catch her
doing it on camera, but I am too slow! No worries, I'll try again soon :)

Here she is part way down...

We loved all the bridges - the springs truly are beautiful! Unfortunately
we have some crazy shadows on our face, but I still like the pics  :)

Another bridge shot

Oh hey, Emma! She also loves patting all materials. Here she is
doing some QC (quality checking) on the solidarity of the trail's signs.
She seemed pretty pleased with it so it must have passed inspection :)

It's always great looking behind me and seeing these two!

Me and some beautiful cascading water

And now, a whole slew of selfies! 

We love life!

Hasta luego! That's the end of the trip!


p.s. one other thing I loved about today is that we ALSO got to go rollerblading! I found an excellent rollerblading hill a few weeks ago and have been wanting to go for SO LONG! Today we woke up early and went before Dallas had to leave for his frisbee game, which was at 9 a.m.! I feel like these experience officially qualifies us as legit rollerbladers :)

Month 1 Review

Highlights of Emma at 1 month:

• Giving lots of smiles 
• Got to wear her hat (still too big, but super cute)
• Doing tummy time - tough, but gives it her best shot
• Getting better at looking at her black and white cards
• Loves to be swaddled, most especially by her daddy
• Started to make cute sounds/sing
• At 6 weeks she was sleeping 4-6 hours/night
• Makes lots of visits up to daddy at the library or math offie

Feb 12, 8:30 a.m. Smiling after a yummy morning breakfast

Feb 12, 12:30 p.m. All bundled up to walk up to campus and visit Daddy

Snoozing on the job...but glad to be in the BYU library with Daddy

Feb 13, 1:30 p.m. Emma has started to like to be held on our shoulders

Feb 14, 10:00 a.m. Emma getting rocked and cuddled by Dallas - he is
so good at rocking her to sleep. When I try to rock her, she always wants
to nurse. Dallas has the magic touch, he wraps her up and rocks her
and she goes to sleep no problem.

Feb 14, 5:30 p.m. For Valentine's we took Emma
rollerblading. She slept through it. 

Feb 15, 8:00 p.m. Tummy time is not my favorite thing.
I often forget to make it happen. Dallas always
remembers though and he is good about hanging out
with Emma so she doesn't have to be all by her lonesome. 

Feb 20, 6:00 p.m. Emma spends much time in her bouncer. I think
she likes it because she can see me while I do other stuff. One of her
favorite places to sit is on the table so she can have an even better
view of what I'm doing AND look out the window. 

Feb 23, 7:30 p.m. Dallas helping Emma with her black and white cards.
Someone gave us these cards and instructed us to show them to Emma.
She really enjoys looking at them and following them with her eyes. 

Feb 24, 3:30 p.m. The process of bundling Emma up to go outside

Just because this picture is so cute...I posted it again full-size :)

Feb 24, 5:00 p.m. Dallas helping Emma practice her cards

Feb 25, 10:00 a.m. Emma has started singing and making cute sounds!
She doesn't sound happy in this clip...but she did before I started taking it!

Feb 25, 11:00 a.m. I just love holding, cuddling, and looking at
our sweet Emma.My mom and everyone jokes that I never lay her
down and the only difference between now and two months ago is
that Emma is still attached to me, just now she's on the outside. 

Feb 26, 12:00 p.m. Emma laughs and smiles all the time!
Even during diaper changes! She is such a happy baby. :)

Feb 27, 11:30 a.m. Emma being super cute. So happy...and then within
minutes, she was sound asleep! Emma often falls asleep about 1.5
hours after waking up and then can make it about 2 hours
before she's ready for another nap.  

Feb 27, 4:30 p.m. I love this little outfit and bow of Emma's!  She is
such a beautiful,happy baby. I feel I have to capture every moment!

March 1, 5:45 p.m. Emma is pretty petite. Newborn outfits are all
she wears. Having heard that babies grow so fast they hardly
need newborn clothes, I was seriously lacking. This is a little
dress I bought for Emma to wear to church...still too big for her! 

March 3, 5:00 p.m. Here is Dallas cleaning out Emma's nose.
He is really good at it and Emma is a pretty good sport.   

March 3, 5:30 p.m. Emma loves when Dallas comes home.
I love the way they are looking at each other in this picture. 

Just some Emma Dallas time :)

March 4, 9:00 a.m. Emma is super excited for a new day!

March 4, 2:00 p.m. BYU has some great bathrooms that have 
entire rooms devoted to nursing mothers. Here are Emma and I 
hanging out in the Math building mother's lounge. 
She was being so happy and cute we had to document.

March 5, 4:30 p.m. It's so fun to play with Emma! I could 

watch her and take pictures ALL DAY! Oh wait...I do.

March 5, 5:30 p.m. Dallas LOVES how many pictures I take.:)

March 6, 11:30 a.m. Emma and I go on walks EVERYDAY! 

Often we go on multiple walks a day! Here's when we went 

to the duck pond, the temple, and we also noticed the trees 

starting to bud!  We love going on walks together! 

I hope it's a tradition we'll always keep.

Emma is crawling! And has teeth!!

Emma is now 6.5 months! We love her so much and love seeing her grow and hit each phase. Her most recent accomplishment is FORWARD crawling. She has been moving backwards for more than a month. She could turn around and back up like a pro, in fact, my sister Wendy said, "Get her a rear view mirror and she's set!"

We figured forward crawling we could come sometime soon...and just in time! Emma surprised me with her first forward crawling on MY BIRTHDAY! What a thoughtful little girl - six months old and already getting her mommy presents :) She moved just a bit forward and I immediately g-chatted to Dallas "Emma is crawling forward!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Emma gets tons of encouragement from me and Dallas. Nobody lives next to us right now, but if someone did, they would probably think I watch a lot of football. To the contrary, I'm just watching my baby do great stuff and cheering her on. :)

She has now been crawling forward almost two weeks and she is a speed demon! Today in church she crawled all over the place. I thought it would be a bit more difficult because she was in a long frilly dress and had shoes. But, nope! That didn't stop her! During Relief Society she met a new friend. He had lots of toys and Emma raced to get them all. Sweet, funny girl. Dallas and I both love being her parents and watching her grow. It's so fun to see her grow but also makes me sad to know she won't always be our little baby. I take a ton of pictures to make up for it...so many, our icloud storage is full and I couldn't take one of playing with her friend in Relief Society today! Bummer. 

Emma also has two teeth growing in! We noticed her first tooth on July 16. Emma was chomping on Dallas' finger when he jerked back and realized there were more than gums chomping down on him. We affectionately call her "our little vampire" and joke that she must sharpen her teeth at night when we are not paying attention. Her second tooth showed up within the next week. Our baby is growing up!

Back to Blogging

Hello!

I have kept putting off blogging because I know how far behind I have gotten! And it just keeps getting worse! Today I watched the mormon message Choose This Day and it reminded me that I need to get started TODAY! I would like to share everything that has happened in the last four months (which is code for everything about Emma's growth and new tricks and happy, adorable pictures)...but for now, I will just post a picture and video of Emma from TODAY (don't worry, I usually take at least one picture a day).

Emma and I on a walk this morning - I said her name
and she gave me this winning smile :)

Tonight after dinner. Emma was showing off her panting skills.
She's such an adorable pro :) Don't mind the junk in the
background - I was going through old papers and journals,
I'm thinking of typing them all up...

As you can see from the video, one of Emma's new tricks is panting. We are not sure why she does it, but we theorize that it began when she got sick and had to cough. The cough has since switched to a pant. Now she does it because we laugh and she also likes to hear us do it. I have a video of me doing it, but it isn't anywhere near as cute as Emma.

One of Emma's other most recent tricks (did it over and over and over again yesterday!) is getting up on all fours. Do not worry, if I have not yet taken a picture of that, I will do so first thing tomorrow :) I clap super energetically and say in my most happy voice, "Good job, Emma! Good job!" And she gives me the BIGGEST smile!  I love it!

I think she has started doing this because her dear daddy gives her crawling lessons EVERYDAY when he comes home from school! She loves it! Emma loves when her daddy comes home. Dallas is so good about taking Emma out on the grass, on walks around the block, reading her books, teaching her to crawl, helping her eat "real" food (baby oatmeal mixed with breastmilk - she's been doing that for almost a week!), wrapping her up in baby burritos, and so much more.

I am so happy we are a family. I love being together and I really want to be better - I know there is so much more I can be doing with my time and also to help us build good habits and traditions. Feel free to share any great ideas you have! Hasta mañana!

February News

I took this Mid-March,
so it's almost done.

Here are some things that happened during our February:


1) We made a goal thermometer. Dallas signed up to run 150 miles before March 20, 2015. If he does it, he wins a super cool BYU Intramural Champion t-shirt. We also made goals for Emma and I. I must also make 150 miles (but walking also counts for me) and Emma's goal is to be 12 pounds by March 20, 2015.


2) We enjoyed a dinner with one of Dallas' professors. Dr. Glasgow was super nice and invited Dallas and Emma and I over for a family dinner one Sunday. It was fun getting to know Dr. Glasgow and his family and friends better.


3) We had excellent weather for ALL of February! This had to be the greatest February of all time. Well, if you aren't a skier or super wanting snow. The temperatures were in the upper 40s and 50s for the WHOLE month! I believe this was a gift from Heavenly Father so that Emma and I could go on lots of walks. :)


4) We sold our car and bought one a week later! Dallas and I had been looking at cars since December with no luck. Then, in February, our friend offered to buy our car. We were ready for something different and they were ready for our VW Passat so it was perfect. Unfortunately we couldn't find any cars we liked. I had decided that maybe we could make it without a car till Fall (since the weather was so nice and everything is pretty much walking distance), but! I looked on KSL one day and found something that got me excited again and we went to check it out. It was a mini-mini-van! So cute!



5) We celebrated Valentine's Day! The day began with Dallas sending me on a long run while he watched Emma and then I watched her while he went on a long bike ride. That was a great gift for both of us; neither of us had gone on long exercise ventures for a while. I don't remember what we ate for breakfast...but I am certain it was more than just the normal cereal or oatmeal. :) Later in the day we decided Emma should get some fun exercise as well, so...we took her rollerblading! It was super fun! I love being with Dallas and Emma - guess it's a good thing I married him and we get to have sweet baby Emma as our daughter. :)

It'd been a long time since we rollerbladed because I fell once while pregnant and Dallas said, "no más" until the bambina came. After rollerblading we went home and planned what we wanted for dinner and dessert and then Dallas went to Smith's and bought ingredients and we cooked it up! We also exchanged our gifts. This year we specialized in gifts of a symbiotic relationship. I got Dallas new blades for his razor and he got me packs of chapstick. The blades benefit me because they keep Dallas' face soft and smooth while the chapstick benefits Dallas so that he doesn't have to kiss falling apart, chapped lips. :) After eating and swapping gifts and valentines, we watched TWO chickflicks! We never do that...watch two movies and definitely not chickflicks, but this time we did. We watched Confessions of a Shopaholic and When in Rome. I liked the shopping one best - better story and actress and more fun. By then, it was mega late, and Valentine's day was over! It was an excellent day because it was with Dallas and Emma (Oh, Dallas also made Emma an adorable valentine :)

6) We got our blood checked! I'd been wanting to do this since my mission! High cholesterol runs in my family and I wanted to check and see how mine was doing. I've never checked it before so I figured I should get an idea. Turns out it is pretty high....so I am going to be working on that. Dallas is in great shape though! We'll hope Emma gets those genes from Dallas.

7) Dallas signed up to play intramural Soccer with graduate students. The first game was February 28th - they won!