Birthday and Christmas.

First of all, sorry this is a bit delayed.

We were all deathly (not really but it sure felt like it) sick the week before Christmas, a.k.a. Finals week.  It was horrible.  Avery got sick and threw up four times on that Monday, then had diarrhea for over a week. That Wednesday, I got sick and was extremely weak and Friday, thankfully after his last final was over, Jacob got sick and threw up a bunch.  It was crazy!  Thankfully we had friends bring us dinner, help watch Avery etc. and so we survived.  I was super nervous that we would be sick up in ID, but by about the 23rd, we were all feeling well.  THANKFULLY!

Christmas was awesome.  We spent it up at Jake's family's house and then the cabin.  Everyone was there and it was great to be all together.  I enjoyed seeing his family's traditions and being part of that.  It was the first time I have been up there for Christmas so it was a great time.  I'm lame, but I'm not gonna give details, but I will just put a lot of pictures here so hopefully that will suffice.

However, before I do that, I need to say...Avery is ONE! It is seriously mind blowing how fast these little ones grow.  She is almost walking, doesn't have teeth, everyone at church loves her and she has inspired at least 5 women to tell me that they are baby hungry. ha!  :)  I tell them it is the best thing in the world, and it is true. 

Avery is very vocal and "talks" a TON, she is always making noise, but she clearly says, Dada, Momma, hi, bye, duck (i swear), doggy or Buddy (sorta), she has stopped saying Jesus as much as she used to, but she still says it.  She also says Katie...my younger sister's name, which makes Katie feel like 100 bucks. haha! Avery loves Katie!  She loves to dance, play on our laptops, play with the stacking cups/ball thing, and she got a bunch of new toys from Christmas that she loves to play with! She loves reading books too which just melts my heart! She is very observant and loves people.  She will go to almost anyone.  It was so cute the other day at church, she recognized our friends from across the room, also one of our friends has a little girl that is 6 months older than Avery, and they love each other so much! It's the cutest thing ever! Avery has so much personality and it so happy pretty much all the time, except if you are trying to get her down for a nap and she still wants to play. haha.  

She wakes up once during the night right now.  It took her about 1 week to get back on her schedule of sleeping after our Christmas vacation.

I think Avery may have a milk allergy.  I need to make a doctors appointment to be sure, but I am almost positive that's been whats going on.  After I have cut out cheese and yogurt from her diet,  as well as not giving her milk, (or ice cream) she has slept better and does not wake up in pain.  UG.  Hopefully, it's not as serious as I fear, but I need to get her in to see the doc.

Here' the pics you've been waiting for!

best time of my life

I am most happy, fulfilled and full of the Spirit when I am focused on others and how I can help them.  I am so happy right now.

I am invested in my calling, or church responsibility, and I love it.  I am excited for our Visiting Teaching Conference that is coming up.  I feel that our ward is turning a new leaf and people are wanting and excited to do Visiting Teaching!!! Visiting Teaching is when each sister in the ward receives and assignment to visit two or three other sisters every month to check on them, become friends and share a gospel message.  People haven't really been doing it as much as they should but I feel like that is slowly changing! Boo Yeah! We finally have some people who are called to help me and that has made such a difference.

Avery is a doll and I love just playing with her and being with her all day.  She is hilarious and is my best friend. We have so much fun together.  And I hope that continues forever.


 Jake is a wonderful husband and works so hard to be able to provide for us now and in the future. He's been focused on getting ready for his interviews (he's done 2 out of 3) and his last one is coming up...VCU which is in Richmond VA! We want to go there the most.  So pray that it goes well; it's this weekend!


I have just set New Years resolutions.  One of them is that I want to make a bucket list. Any suggestions?  

11 months and CHRISTMAS!

My babe is 11 months!

CRAZY!

I really don't know how to deal with this girl growing up so much!  She is doing everything but walking on her own.  I'm pretty sure that will happen before Christmas.  She is crawling everywhere and talking all the time.  She does this little whisper too that is so funny!

She seriously takes my breath away with her sweet little personality and she makes me laugh all day.
Love her and life right now.

Jake has had one interview at Trinity already and two more at Minnesota and VCU are scheduled for Jan 10 and 17 respectively.  He really liked San Antonio and especially the warm weather.  He was in 75 degrees and came home to a huge snow storm and ice...pretty sure it was 1 degree at night last night.  He hates the cold so that was not fun for him at all.

Fun Thanksgiving in IF. My first Black Friday was a success.  We went at like 9:30 am and got all the deals we wanted, the crazies were mostly gone or tired, and Avery did great!  I think I will be doing that again, the deals are just too good to pass up when we are so poor.  haha! It's also nice to be mostly done with shopping so we can focus on doing fun festive things besides shopping and focus ourselves on the reason for the season.  :) We will be up there again for Christmas so that should be fun.  However, I am also a little sad bc this will be my first Christmas (minus mission Christmases) away from home but I'm sure it will still be delightful.  Exiting and busy times!

I love CHRISTMAS so much! Everything about it is amazing.  I love the traditions of Christmas! Sugar cookies, hot chocolate, making gingerbread houses, shopping, Christmas music, The Christmas Carol, etc.  I love being prepared with thoughtful gifts and I love giving them and seeing people react to them!  I love making gifts for people.  It is a wonderful time and a perfect time to focus more on our Savior.

We decided yesterday to focus our reading in the Book of Mormon on the Saviors teachings for December, so we will start today and read from 3 Nephi 11- end of Saviors teachings.  I am excited and happy to do this so I can remember what this time is all about.

What are some of your favorite Christmas traditions?  

mostly for myself- Avery's sleep

My online journal is not working right now so I just wanted to document a few things for myself and for the future.

First of all, Avery is sleeping so much better!  We went through a stage (like from age 5-9 months... yeah way long) that she was waking up a lot during the night.  At around 8 months old, I was extremely tired and didn't know how to help my little babe sleep better and getting frustrated.  We had had her sleeping in her swing for naps and had caved and put her in it during the night because she slept so much better there.  PLUS, she didn't sleep very well in her pack-n-play as we traveled during the summer, so she just slept in her swing and got pretty attached.

Finally though, I knew she COULD sleep through the night and felt that I might have to just let her cry. I did NOT want to do that.  Thankfully, I found this website: http://www.troublesometots.com/ and started making small changes before the cry it out was to come.  I made sure I had a solid bedtime routine.  I had done that before but I was still nursing her to sleep.  BAD.  Don't do this again!  Do this routine instead: bath if needed, PJ's, nurse, books, prayer and song.  This takes about 20 min+ and she is still fully awake when I put her down and after the first few nights of crying for less than 10 min, she goes down like a champ.  Now she goes down like an angel every night and Jake can help put her to sleep which is just precious and something I know he loves! The cry it out never came!

She used to wake up a lot during the night too, but what I did was just make myself nurse her one time during the night (11 or 2 or whatever) and then once in the early morning (5 or 6).   Even if she woke up more, I would only nurse her once during that time frame.  I would only nurse her for like 3 min. on one side and eventually she stopped waking up during the night.  We're still working on the 6 am food but hopefully she'll eventually stop that too.  I don't even care though.  Sleeping 9 hours straight without waking up is awesome!

The next goal was to work on naps and I have been doing that the past couple days.  Before 2 days ago, I would read a couple books, and sing her songs but she would not go down in her crib and she was not sleeping well in her swing.  She was just so riled up, and excited that she couldn't calm down for naps without her swing.  She would sleep for like 30 min and then just cry and it was horrible.  I think she has officially outgrown it. She never slept in her crib.  HOWEVER, the past couple days I have been doing EXACTLY the same routine (even changing her clothes before putting her down) as bed and she has slept in her crib for naps.  She I hope it's not a fluke, it would seriously be great if this is her new habit.  It would make life/traveling so much better! (I have become a champion swing setter-upper.  Not something I'm proud of)

I hope this helps in the future. Or helps anyone out there who is not getting enough sleep with a baby/child that should be sleeping mostly through the night.     

recently

So Avery Mae is 10 months old! She is such a doll and we love her so much!

Here's the little babe for Halloween!  She was a pig! 

We were farmers, but Jake looked a lot like good ol' Joe Dirt...(He loves that mullet wig!)

She is walking with her little walker now.  I was going to post a video but it's not working for some reason...I'll try in another post.

But she cannot crawl yet.  I am totally fine with her not crawling because I can still keep track of her when I put her down to play.  Even though she can't crawl yet, she is seriously the most active baby ever!  If she wants something, she will find a way to get there even though it's not the typical moving hands and knees together movement.  I don't even know how she does it, but she is into anything within a three-four foot radius of where I put her down.

Church is crazy because I sit by myself and try to contain her though sacrament.  Jake is up on the stand and so he doesn't realize how crazy she gets.  Well, this weekend we had stake conference and Jake was able to sit by us...he said he now has a greater appreciation for me sitting by myself.  I am literally exhausted after church every week trying to hold this little girl from eating leaves that are on the floor, bonking her head on the pews, attacking fellow pew members, wanting the hymn book, and Avery is so happy that she loves to hear herself talk, so I'm trying to quiet her as well.  haha!  The great thing is that I love her and think all of these crazy things she is doing are adorable, so even though it is so tiring, I am also very amused. :)

She does this little nose sniff.  Which is now her greeting to those she wants to say hi to. haha.

She loves loves loves animals.  She gets so excited and wants to attack the poor things.  She is not soft.  It started out with Buddy (Jake's grandpa's dog) but now it's every dog.  When she came visiting teaching with me, the sister had a dog and Avery is so funny bc she wants it, then when she gets down close to it, she wants to be held, but then the second she's in my arms, she's wanting down again so she can pet the dog. haha. It's seriously hilarious.  She saw a dog across the street the other day and was wanting to go get it.  We had dinner at our cousins house the other night and they have a hampster, and she got sooo excited (flapping arms, kicking feet and a look of pure attention on the animal).  It's hilarious.  It made us want to take her to the zoo!  I'm sure she will love it!

All in all, such a joy and is the center of everything around here.  We LOVE her!

We also got these family pictures taken with my family.  I love how they turned out!

K, she's adorable right?!

Also, I almost forgot, but Avery is very vocal right now as well.  She can say "bye bye", "dada", "hi" and Megan says Avery says "mama" when I'm not there and she wants me.  I swear yesterday she said "Jesus" while looking at a picture of him in our house.  I brought it up to Jake and he said he heard her say it too when they were walking around in the church looking at a picture of Him. It's more like "jeeze" but when she reaches out to the picture and says it, I'll take it. :) Proud momma right here.

Ok, other than enjoying Avery to the fullest, we are at a pretty great part of Jake's schooling.  He will graduate from BYU in April and has already applied to Grad School (Minnesota, Virginia Commonwealth, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Trinity University).  We are just waiting to hear if he'll be asked to do a interview.  He has one scheduled already for Minnesota in January!  It's a very exciting time.  
  

General Conference and spiritual musings

It was so great to have General Conference.  I really loved it! Jake and I were able to go to Saturday morning session and I felt that every talk was about something I had been thinking or wondering about.  BLESSING!  On Sunday we stayed home and enjoyed the entire day together with our little family.  I can't tell you how amazing that was!

One of my favorite talks from General Conference was Elder Bednar's talk on tithing.  The thing i liked best about it was Elder Bednar revealing some ways that the Lord blesses us without us even knowing.  He calls them "significant but subtle" blessings.  I realized that I need to be more observant of the blessings that He gives me and look for the not so obvious ways that He strengthens me.  I know one right now:  Jake is gone 5 nights of the week and gone everyday.  Heavenly Father has strengthened me to be able to bear that well.  I was thinking about how it would be so hard for me earlier in our marriage etc. but I am so grateful that I have been blessed to be able to be ok with it for now.  I'm especially grateful for little Avery to help me not be alone.    

In his book "Increase in Learning" Elder Bednar addresses the fact that The Holy Ghost speaks in quiet, delicate and subtle ways. I started thinking about how I feel the Holy Ghost in subtle ways and what things distance me from feeling the influence of the Holy Ghost.  It's a good thing to ponder and something I've been trying to do more lately.  I realize that in the times that we live, having the Holy Ghost to be our companion is a vital thing everyday.  

I really like how the Lord works "subtly".  It requires us to be patient and inquisitive.  Seeking, asking and knocking.  It's so easy to just go through the motions of just reading scriptures, but I have tried to ask more questions and it gets me more focused and provides a better STUDY of the scriptures and the words of the prophets.  On days that I actually do that, it makes such a difference.

Hope you all enjoyed Conference if you were able to watch it! If not, you can find it on the church's website: http://www.lds.org/?lang=eng.

This video...

So funny! I'm seriously laughing so hard right now!

Thanks Amanda for sharing! :)

hehehe!