7 Months

Our little boy just gets cuter and cuter by the day.  We love him.  

Jacob has completely mastered sitting up by himself and loves it.  He loves sitting on his blanket and playing with his toys!  

His favorite position to get into though is going from laying down and going straight up to standing.  It is pretty cute.  He grins from ear to ear.  

Jacob also loves getting his face wiped clean after he eats.  What kid likes that?!  He does.

If something has straps on it, it is a winner for Jacob.  Be it his high chair, the diaper bag, my robe, whatever - HE LOVES IT!  He is one content little boy if he can just sit and suck on some straps - what a silly little guy.  

One thing that just started this week was switching Jacob to only one nap.  This was definitely NOT planned to do this early at all, but he just seemed to be ready and it has actually gone really well.  He is sleeping much better during his one nap and at night.  It had been a really long couple of weeks prior to this switch so, so far so good. 

His favorite past times are playing peek-a-boo, eating, receiving raspberries on his tummy and putting on his coat to go for walks.  

We love our little man. 

Happy Seven Months little buddy.

Butterfly Pavilion

January's family fun day was going to the Butterfly Pavilion.  It was really small (and pretty pricey) but we still had fun.  We spent about an hour looking around at their three little exhibits. 

The first one was definitely our favorite - "Wings of the Tropics".  They have over 1,200 butterflies flying in this room and it is beautiful!  They are landing on your shoulders, heads, pretty much everywhere.  However, the sneaky little beauties never stayed long enough for us to ever get a picture but it was fun nonetheless.

Next we saw their "Waters Edge" exhibit which is incredibly small with only four or five underwater creatures to look at but we were able to pet some starfish and a horseshoe crab.

Finally, we went to their "Crawl-A-See-Em" exhibit where it had all of the creepy crawling creatures.  We looked at cockroaches, beetles, bees, and LOTS of large spiders.  Their main tarantula is named Rosie, they let you hold her.  I kind of feel like one of us should have held her - but I just couldn't do it.  And when I asked Mark if he wanted to he replied that he had done it before and that was probably enough.  Maybe Jacob will be braver than us one day :)

Happy family fun day!

Snuggle Time

This last week we have just enjoyed a whole bunch of snuggle time!

It was Mark's last week of break before he goes back to school.  Today was his first day back and I definitely have mixed emotions.  It will be nice to have some "normalcy" again and get back to regular life.  But mostly I feel sad.  Maybe Mark said it best last night when he gave me a hug and said, "see you in four months...I'm going to miss you."  Sad day.  Can I just tell you how unbelievably excited I am for him to be done with school?!  Granted I know he will have a job but at least when he is home he can just be home and not have to worry about studying.  But we are grateful nonetheless for the opportunity he has to go to school and know what a blessing it will be for our family in the future.

So to spend this last week of no worries we spent a lot of time snuggling and playing a zillion different games.  It was pretty much perfect in my mind.  The only downer was that Jacob came home from our trip with a pretty nasty cold.  The poor little man was so miserable for a couple of days, but that just added to the amount of snuggle time we had :)  And the worst is definitely behind him so WOOT WOOT!

I feel so incredibly blessed in my life.  I am truly very very happy.  I love my life.  What is the biggest thing I love about my life?

These two.  

I cannot imagine a better way to spend forever then with the two of them.  

I hope it's long enough. 

New Years

We were able to spend our New Years with Daniel and Teresa and their beautiful girls.  Last Monday, we drove up to Rexburg and stayed there until Friday.  We had so much fun spending time with them playing games, watching movies and just talking.  We love them and their sweet family so much and can't wait for their little boy to get here next month!  We are so grateful that we were able to spend some time with them during our trip.

Friday we drove back home.  Even though our trip was wonderful, it was great to get back home.  We are so grateful though for all of the family and friends that made time to see us - you truly made our Christmas great!

Can't wait to make some New Year's resolutions!  Cheers to 2013!

Date Night

One of the great things about being home is that we have a whole house full of very willing babysitters!  They have been itching for Mark and I to leave Jacob!  Mark and I were pretty excited to go on a date as well - actually a couple dates!  But we had a big date yesterday.  It was the first time Mark and I have been able to go on a date since we had Jacob and it was wonderful.  Not that we didn't miss our little man, but we knew he was in good hands :)

We decided to go ice skating up at the Olympic Oval.  I have only gone ice skating twice before and I am definitely not an ice skater.  And I'll tell you what, I didn't think that I could get any worse, but I think I have actually gotten worse at ice skating!  Mark was the absolute perfect partner and we just laughed as we very slowly made our way around the rink.  And I think I can honestly say that I was lapped by every toddler in the place!  It took me a half an hour to make it around the rink!  And granted, it's a big rink, but holy smokes, I am AWFUL! 

 
We had a really good time though just laughing and spending time with one another.  I love that man of mine.  We then headed to dinner and continued to enjoy our time together.  We then went and saw "Lincoln" and we both loved it.

Thank you to all of our wonderful babysitters! 

Six Months

Jacob turned six months old on Christmas Day!  How perfect is that?!  We continue to absolutely LOVE our little boy!  He has had so many fun changes this last month!

The biggest change in Jacob is just that he is lots more independent.  He likes to try and do things by himself, which is so much fun to watch. 

Jacob has completely embraced solid foods.  Pears are his favorite thus far - he loves them!  He also loves his toys.  If he can stick it in his mouth, it is a winner!  He is very easy to please!  He also loves to hold his binky and try and put it in his mouth by himself.  He always manages to get the binky facing out and he seems to think that if he opens his mouth bigger he will get the binky in right.  It cracks us up.  When he gets it in, he is pretty pleased with himself :)

He also just recently can sit by himself which has been so much fun.  He gets more and more solid in his sitting everyday and can definitely go a couple minutes now which is just way too much fun.  He continues to just chat away the day and is even giggling now which may be the best sound I have ever heard.  I can't get enough of it.  He definitely makes you work for his giggles though but it is worth the work!

We love our little man.  Can't believe he is half way to a year! 

Christmas

We woke up Christmas morning to a little winter wonderland and I was so happy.  We had our usual descent down the stairs to a tree truly overflowing with presents.  We are so blessed. 

We got so many fun things and we were very lucky.  We got so many things that we just love, but we also got a new camera, which we are SO excited about!  

We spent the rest of the day being lazy, looking through our new stuff, playing games and, of course, lots of food.   

We also were able to chat with Gus and Darlene and missed being able to see them.  We are so grateful for the example they are to all of us though.  We love and miss them and thank them for all that they do for our little family.   

Hope you all had a MERRY CHRISTMAS!