Lily's First Steps

Jordan here. So maybe I don't really comment a lot on this blog.... Okay to tell you the truth I have never blogged on this blog. My thinking is that Tabby does a lot better job at telling the story of what is happening with our family. But since today was the day that Lily took her first steps I thought I would comment.


It all started yesterday when we (Lily and I) were over at the Stonehawker's apartment. We were talking about something and I look over at Lily and she  was making an attempt to go from their coffee table to their couch. She took her first step and I was amazed... Wow!!! Could this be her first steps?? Am I going to the first person see Lily walk? As these thoughts go through my head I see her plument along with my heart on her next step. She was so close. I was going to see her take her first steps before Tabby. Ha ha ha (the evil kind of hahaha more like mwahahah). Tabby would have been so jealous. After several attempts to get Lily to try this again I gave up. Lily, I decided, was not going to walk for at least another month.


At around 12:00 the next day, I get a call from Tabby at work. "Guess what honey???" She says with an excited and over the top voice. "Lily took her first steps".  When I heard this all I could do was smile and think to myself "I may not have seen her first steps but at least I saw her first step". Small condolensces for a jealous daddy :)

The perfect 10 summer of 2010

This last summer was easily one of the best of my existence. There is nothing better in life than being stay at home mom and that is what I was for one summer. I did not work nor did I have clinicals. My responsibilities included one online class and a cute little family to take care of. It was so much fun! It was wonderful to be in a situation where a clean house, clean folded laundry was found in the drawers and a nutritious (not frozen) meal was the norm. And I was able to spend all day everyday with my darling little girl! I can't imagine anything else that I would rather do. Our summer was full of fun activities. So here's a little recap:

1)Friends (don't act so surprised!)!! I had time to make friends and spend time with time-tested friends.

Here's Lily with my best friend whom I met in my LPN program

Yeah Doug!

2) CAMPING! Our wonderful friends in our ward, the Stonehawkers invited us up to their family cabin along with some other fun people.

Here is Jordan with the Stonehawkers playing his new favorite game, Dominion



One of their friends brought their horse dog! He was literally the size of a pony and the most well mannered dog I've ever met. Lily loved him!!! He let her poke him in the nose, sit on him, ect.



3) BBQ's This is on labor day with some other friends we have made in the ward, Edgar & Bree along with the Stonehawkers




What's up?



After who knows how many hours, Jordan took and did very well on the GMAT. Jordan worked very hard to get his score. He would come home from work, eat, and then head out to the public library to study. He averaged about 20-25 hours/week in just studying.



4) As I mentioned above, the laundry was done on a regular basis for the first time in our married lives. It was actually quite pleasant. Every Thursday I would wash the clothes during the day and then while Jordan was at his presidency meeting, I would turn on  the movie I had gotten from netflix and fold the clothes. Sometimes I would have to do it during the day, and that's when I had a little helper.

5) Pie Nights! My neighbor decided we need to learn how to make pies. So we, along with another neighbor started our adventures in pie making.

*It started with our strawberry rhubarb pie (not so great).

*Our second pie....Apricot pie. Awesome. Martha would be proud.

* Next was this yummy Apple Pie

* Our most recent adventure was a chicken pot this last week. Not perfect but we are on our way to success!

the 12 month Munchkin

Lily is 13 months old! I can't believe how fast just this last month went. Here is recap of her recent developments over the past month.

She's fallen in love with books. When she's really fussy the one thing I know will calm her down is reading to her. Here she has pulled each of these books out of the bookcase and "read" (flipped through) each one.

I've tried to get a good picture of Lily in her cute BYU outfit at the park, but she was too distracted by everything going on.

Lily is becoming more and more of a little helper everyday. She even tells me when the floor needs vacuuming.

She saw me writing down our menu for the next two weeks and when I put the pen and paper down to look up a recipe I saw I found Lily adding her suggestions to the menu plan :)

It's FOOTBALL season! Lily has been needing to comfort Jordan during the last two BYU games. :(  We don't get any channels so we went to the D.I and bought a $2 radio so he can listen to the games without sitting in his car for 3 1/2 hours (which he was about to do!)

This is a video that Jordan took while he was listening to the first BYU game of the season while watching Lily so I could get some homework done. Watch to the end.... (it's only 30 seconds).

And now you understand why Jordan wasn't allowed to hold Lily while watching BYU football last season when she was just a newborn.

Lily's new favorite game is 'come chase me!' She starts crawling, and looks back to make sure I'm coming to get her, then with a squeal of delight, crawls to the front door in anticipation of being caught (her favorite part).

One of the sweestest sounds on this earth is the laugh of a baby. And nobody can make Lily (or myself) laugh so hard but Jordan!

Secret Agent Lily Pad

Lily has recently begun her training to be a secret spy by practicing using common objects as communication devices.

Here she is receiving devastating news about her upcoming mission through her "My Little Pony"

She'll fool even agent 007 with her sock-a-phone

We're still working on the device-to-ear accuracy.

Here is actual footage of the one and only Lily Pad receiving her mission assignment. Of course she is using her top secret language to communicate. But we interpret the call to be urgent as she rushes off as soon as the call is finished.

Here Comes Trouble.....

My sister's family and mine shared a large SUV during our stay in Canada and it was PERFECT! Lily sat next to Cali and since Lily was still rear facing, she could also play with Tess and Laney who were sitting in the row behind us. Whenever we got into the car she would start immediately looking for them, and then, get disappointed if they weren't there. If they were in the car they got greeting with a big grin. Her and Cali would hold hands and Lily would play peek-a-boo with Tess and Laney. Lily has always loved Laney, but this trip she also bonded with Cali! We shall see what these two mischievous girls do together in the future!

Whatever it was they were reaching for, Lily wasn't interested in it until Cali was.

Two interesting ways to eat a cake. One with hands, the other with a knife.

Either way...it's a mess!

The luncheon wasn't the only time they made a mess. Here we are at a famous breakfast house downtown and Cali is helping Lily eat her dried apples. And....making a mess together

Off to find another adventure!

Little Miss Lily

Our little Lily Pad is quite similar to Tinker Bell in that her body is so small, there is only room for one emotion at a time. The fun thing is now she's getting so many more emotions and personality. She has so many different expressions, I thought I would share some of them.


This is Lily preparing to give cheesy smiles for grade school.

She is getting good isn't she!!

Arrrrrrrrr. Ye be the egg don't ye!!!

Mom, Dad....you're weird.



I am in lot better shape than daddy!!!!

I will always love you *snif*

I know how to get my way :)

Super Star

Are they having more fun over there?

What could possibly be more interesting than me?

Holy Hannah! I just saw a green space alien from Neptune

Where did that alien go??

Oh! BUG!

Washington just scored a touchdown. Noooooooooo
This is the look she gets evertime we give her a taste of our popsicle

Insert ice cream Here.

Yet she still begs for more afterwords!

One of Lily's favorite pasttimes has always been to dance with us. Or, really, be in our arms while we dance. Lately, however, she has begun to do a little dancing on her own. She still would rather be in our arms while we dance, but she's taking the necessary steps to grow from a passive to an independent dancer.

It's been exciting to see her personality shine through, but I'm glad that she's still my little girl. She loves to play on her own, but every couple of minutes or so, she'll crawl over onto my lap and give me a big hug, in exchange for kisses. This lasts a minute at most before she crawls down to continue playing with her toys.

Lily is a little lady, most of the time. Since she goes to Elders quorum meetings with her daddy, I frequently get brethren from our ward coming up to me saying, "your daughter let one rip right during the spiritual moment of my lesson!" I'm not surprised as she would do the same when I took her to relief society. When she is babysat, along with "she's darling" comments, I also get "she is a good burper!". Just one of her many developing talents. She is still working on crawling daintily. Every movement she makes it a "Bam!" "Bam!" "Bam!" Here is an example:

Calgary Activites

Our second day in Canada Jordan and I decided to visit the zoo! Now, I can't lie. It wasn't the San Diego zoo. However, it did have some unique things that made it worth the visit.

It had the basics such as tigers, lions & bears

Lily made a "Whar" sound while doing this when we were at the Tiger exhibit. Does she know that's the sound tiger's make? I doubt it, but it was cute!

We never saw an actual kangaroo at the zoo, but they had this fun statue. Well, we thought it was fun.

Unique exhibit #1 A Dinasaur park. There was a long pathway that showed a variety of large dinosaurs. Some even moved and made sounds. Downside, there were no REAL dinosaur bones. So, this would have been cool if we were 6 years old.

Unique aspect #2- Free roaming peacocks. They were everywhere. The peacocks didn't like Jordan because he's hotter than them, so they ran away everytime he came nearby.

Unique exhibit #3 and the one that made this zoo worth visiting.....Butterflies!!!!!!! I felt like I was at the Magical Creature Reserve, Fablehaven! There was a beautiful room the zoo patrients could step into with flowers, a pond and butterflies zooming about. It was just wonderful.

We were at the zoo longer than I expected we would be, so I didn't bring enough milk. I ended up buying milk from starbucks. It was the most expensive bottle of milk I hope to ever buy, $3.50!!!!!! At least Lily drank all of it.

Lily's schedule got completely thrown off, so here she is wide awake at 11 pm at night while we are exhausted.

The post-wedding day, we all went to a beautiful park on an Island in the midle of Calgary. BEAUTIFUL!

Of course the biggest hit with the kiddos was this darling playcenter

It has toys to entertain the kiddos......



........And the Kids-at-Heart


This little guy was haning out by the childrens center. I got this close to him and he didn't even care.

Afterwords, while Tess's girls took naps, Jordan and I had plans to go see Body Worlds, but it turned out we didn't have enough time before our plane left to see it. So then, we started walking around downtown and saw a Reggae festival going on. We thought it would be funny to go there, but it was $40/person. Our next option was the Calgary Tower