An Update

You know how when summer comes, you think of all of the things you are "finally going to have time to do"? And then you never get any of them done, because summer is just crazy?? Well, that's what we've been experiencing at our house lately. Our life has been busy, but full of fun things. Here's an update on what we've been up to.

Lydia. She is 7 months old now, and getting more and more fun every day. She has found her voice and is not afraid to share it with everybody! She talks and talks and talks all day long. There's nothing that is sweeter to me than her little (I mean very loud) voice. 

We had our first swimming adventure in grandma's swimming pool, and she LOVED it. She was just smiling and kicking her legs the entire time. It was so much fun!

Her feet had never been exposed to water for so long. They were pretty much prunes.

This was from our second swimming adventure. I forgot her hat, so we had to improvise with a bandanna at my mom's house. She looked like my motorcycle biker baby in her do-rag. Haha!

She's also taken to sleeping in very funny positions in her bed. She LOVES to stick her arms and legs in between the slats and rest on her crib pads.

I walked in to check on her the other day and she was SOUND asleep like this. 

Her hair has started to get so much thinner in the back, but is going NOWHERE on the sides. We like to say that she has Jewish payots (the long hair on the sides that they aren't allowed to cut). My mom went to Jerusalem a while ago and brought back a little Jewish prayer cap for me, so we put it on Lydia to get a good picture of her payots. Haha!

She is obviously much cuter than this man, and doesn't have a scraggly beard, but you get the idea.

She is getting SO close to crawling! She will get up on all fours and scoot around try to take a big scoot forward and then just face plant it. She is going to start crawling any day now, I think.

She will exert herself all the way until she can have her bum as high in the air as it can go, stay for a few seconds, and then just topple over. We call it the down-dog. Look at her on her tippy toes! She's pretty much a yoga proficient by now.

She got all pretty for church, so we had to take a few pictures.

 Lydia has discovered her headbands now, and has figured out that she can pull them off. I call this video "The Battle of the Headband". I was trying so hard not to laugh while filming it. You can just see her frustration as she tries time and time again to get it off her head. She makes me laugh.

 I got a haircut! Post-pregnancy kind of did weird things to my hair. It got all frizzy, and kinda thick, and just started falling out like crazy! I hear it is totally normal for that to happen, but it still bothered me. And, it was getting to be really warm outside, and so I thought I would cut my hair short for the summer. When I got my first look at it, I wasn't sure I loved it. I had 8 inches taken off! I feel like it made me look old. But, oh well. Hair is hair, and it will grow back, right? Besides, it is kind of growing on me now. Haha, get it? Growing on me??

The new do!

The Chocolate Exhibit. The Natural History Museum at the U of U recently had a chocolate exhibit, of the history of chocolate - where it came from, and how it developed from ancient times to now. It was so fun, especially for chocolate lovers like us! We went with our friends Clayton and Amanda, and it was great to see them too. They used to live in our old ward when we lived in Grandma's basement, and we would get together all the time. It's harder now that we both have kids, and live pretty far away, so getting together with them is a special treat.

The Deck. Our deck in the backyard was in desperate need of re-staining. We hadn't done it since we moved in almost 3 years ago, and the paint was chipping off and it was looking pretty bad. So, we decided to take it on as our first summer project. We weren't quite sure what we were getting ourselves into. It turned out to be a monster project, one that took us three days to finish completely. It started with stripping the existing stain from the deck. We should have been a bit more careful about reading the instructions, but we didn't. We were just going at it, painting the stripping stuff on, when I start to feel a burning sensation on the places on my hands and arms that the stain stripper had touched. I look down, and I have bright red welts on my hands and arms. I tell Dave that he might want to put on some gloves, because this stuff is pretty bad. I went and washed my hands and put on some gloves, and then read the container. Don't worry, it just said that it was imperative that the stripper does not come into direct contact with skin - CAN CAUSE PERMANENT TISSUE DAMAGE. So that explains the red welts on my arms. We found out just a few minutes later, that the stripper was eating our paintbrushes and our paint trays too! There were holes in all of them. So, in case you're ever going to re-stain your deck, be careful of the stain stripper!! 

Look at the paintbrush! That white stuff used to be entirely connected to the pole, but was eaten away by the stain stripper.

Dave's face accurately explains our feelings about re-doing the deck. Good thing we don't have to do it every summer!

The finished product. We even installed a porch swing. It is so nice out there now. We love sitting on the swing and reading our scriptures at night - it's so fun to just hang out and enjoy the summer evenings. We have dinner outside almost every night too. 

My cousin Shiree came into town. Shiree and I were roommates in college, and we had baby girls 1 week apart! This was the first time that they were able to meet each other. We took our Grandpa out to breakfast and the two girls got to meet. Eveylyn was super excited about Lydia, but Lydia wasn't that enthused with Evelyn. It was sorta right at the time when she would normally be taking a nap, so hopefully next time they meet each other she will be more cheerful. Anyway, it was great to see Shiree, and I'm excited we get to see each other again in 3 weeks!

I had my first piano recital! My cute little piano students have been working super hard to memorize their songs for the recital, and were so excited to play! It was a big deal for them to memorize two songs, but they all did it, and they all sounded so good. I couldn't have been more proud of them. I got to play a duet with most of them, which was really fun.  We are taking the rest of the summer off because of vacations and crazy schedules, but we will start up again in the fall.

I really like teaching piano. It lets me get my "teaching fix" in while still being a stay-at-home Mom. 

A treat I made for the recital out of kit-kats. I honestly thought that this would be mostly a decoration, but before the recital even started, half of it was already eaten by all the kids there!

This was just BARELY after we had gotten everything set up. See how some of the black keys are already missing?? Haha. I love kids. :)

My piano recital helpers and supporters (my sister was a big help too, she was just taking this picture). 

 Mary Poppins. Brock was in Mary Poppins at Hale Center Theatre and we went to see his show. He was the best dancer of them all! I always love going to see Brock's shows, because even though he looks the same as all the other dancers, it is NEVER hard to find him. I can always, always pick him out because he is the most animated one. All the time. I feel like he is untouchable when it comes to dancing. It doesn't matter how hard the choreography is - he just makes it look like it is a walk in the park. He is so enjoyable to watch, and I'm glad that we have so many opportunities to see him perform.

Doesn't he have the cutest smile??

Mom's Quilts. My mom is pretty much the quilting bee of all quilters. She LOVES to quilt. Her sewing room at home is FILLED with quilts to make. If she had nothing else to worry about, then I think she would be perfectly content to quilt all day long. She is so talented. Anyway, the Salt Lake Library is having a quilting display, and my mom's quilts are featured there! We took an afternoon and went down to see them the other day. I was so proud of my mom for having so many of her beautiful quilts on display.

Those are all my mom's quilts hanging up there! 

Thinking about matching up all of those corners gives me anxiety.

Well, I think that's it for now. Hopefully this summer I will have more time to do "all the things I've been wanting to do", but if my summer is filled with nothing more than the type of things in this post, I will be completely content.