Christmas in the park!

Yukon Oklahoma is outragiously over-zealous about their holiday displays. A few years back I took my nieces Melissa and McKenna to see the fireworks. A good display, but roughly 90 minutes too long. This year Catie and I went to Christmas in the park. It is a huge arrangement of displays that takes about an hour to drive through when it's said and done. It was a really nice way to end the evening on our first anniversary. Below is a picture of Catie with the creepy white Santa in one of the displays. Hence the creepied out look on her face.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Well the day has finally arrived, and it has been a wonderful day so far.
We've been taking pictures with our regular camera instead of our phones, so I don't have any CURRENT pictures to share with you, but I'll have to post some later.
We've had a wonderfully relaxed morning, we all woke up around 9:00am and had a delicious breakfast that Sam's mother Jennifer prepared. It was German Pancakes, kind of a breakfast keesh of sorts, and it was very delicious. Then we opened our presents, watched A Christmas Story, and I think we're going to the movie theater later today to watch Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler. That movie looks so cute! I'm excited to see it.
Anyway I just wanted to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas, and I wanted to leave everyone with a special Christmas treat!
(i might get some hate mail from Sam's sister, Marge for this!)

When you let me live with your parents... PART DOS

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

So I'm sitting here waiting for Sam
To finish his interview....(yay!!!) and I decided to update the blog! :)

"Merry Christmas Eve Eve!" is what my siblings and I would say to each other as we would get more and more excited for Christmas morning to arrive, I guess you could call it a tradition of sorts. Traditions have been on my mind quite a bit lately, with the nearing of Christmas and all. Last year was kind of out of whack because Sam and I got married and it was my first time meeting his family, so we did all of their stuff and everything was just kind of crazy with all of the family in town and whatnot. This year is our first TRUE Christmas together, and we're having fun figuring out each other's cute little traditions, and things we each like to do at Christmas time.
For example when I was little my family made Santa cookies every Christmas, and we always put coconut on his beard! But Sam and I couldn't find a Santa cookie cutter anywhere 3 days before Christmas, so we just hand cut some Santa shapes. Well, it turns out that didn't work as well as we planned and they got ridiculously huge and ugly as soon as we put them in the oven! Yuck! See picture. That's our cracked-out Santa, haha. But we had tons of fun decorating them together, yay traditions! Sam has agreed he likes this tradition, so we're going to continue it with our family in the years to come. So this next year I'm going to have to buy a Santa faced cookie cutter on eBay or something....

This is what happens when you let me live with your Parents....

We've got a scooting baby!

Crawling? I'm not sure if I would call it crawling QUITE yet, but, it's pretty freakin close!! So yesterday we put Charli in the middle of the living room, and she saw her toys all piled up underneath her swing on the other side of the room. So, she was like, "OMIGOSH i HAVE to play with those!!!" and used a mixture of rolling and scooting forward to get there.
Enter Photo #1


Then she spotted the baby wipes under there as well, and for some reason that is her ABSOLUTE favorite thing to play with in the world...it must be because they make an awesome crinkley sound. But she saw them and then was like, "OMIGOSH I HAVE to play with those!!!" so she did. She played with those for a little while...
Enter Photo #2

She does this thing that's so cute, when she starts playing with something she accidentally pushes it too far away to be able to play with it anymore, so she has to scoot forward to catch back up with it, to be able to play with it again. That's what she did with the wipies, and she chased them all the way to the Christmas tree. Lo and behold! What is that sparkley IRRESISTABLE crinkley thing under said tree???? Why, it's a Christmas present for Charli! "OHMIGOSH I HAVE to play with that!!!"
Enter Photo #3

So she left the wipies behind, (as you can see) and began to play with her present.
She has also started getting into the "crawling stance"...
Enter Photo #4

It's so cute...she rocks back and forth. It's adorable! It's really kind of scary to think that she'll be crawling here pretty dang soon...!
She continued her journey for a while longer before she got fussy and quit...
Enter Photo #5 and #6


That was Charli's miraculous Christmas journey! haha :)


On a different note, Charli has started saying "Mamamama" and "Dadadada". Presumably because that's what we say to her all the time in the hopes that she'll say ours first....haha. But we all know she said Mamamama first :)
She garbles, grunts, and talks quite a bit! It's so cute and funny, I'll have to get a video up sometime!

Clothes! Yay!

My Aunt Julie sent us a big package of clothes for Charli! Yay! Most of them are 18-24 months, so they're a little big now, but they'll fit in no time. Thank you so much Aunt Julie and Uncle mike! We love you!

Best business model in Provo.

The "mate" store in provo. Just in front of the applebees where we ate
with a bunch of old friends. Anyone familiar with life at byu/byui
should appreciate this.

Like father like son

Bruce pushed me into this fountain in front of casa bonita at
restaurant in Denver. I was about ten years old at the time, and I figured
it wasn't too early to get started with Charli. We drove through
Denver on our move from Portland to OKC.

Charli taming the beast!

Sweeeeeeet!! I just figured out how to send pictures and text/posts from my phone straight to the blog! This post is totally from my phone. This is so rad! I wish I had had this set up while we were on our long road trip from Portland to Oklahoma, but oh well! This will be super cool, and expect lots of ridiculously cute pictures from my phone!

Everyone is sick :(

I guess it must just be that time of year, but I've been sick since Thanksgiving, and of course Charli got what I got! So that's been barrels of fun...I completely lost my voice for a few days and had a really sore throat. Charli has really only had a stuffy nose. But we've been travelling so we probably spread it to like a million people along the way...sorry about that!!! But just today Sam came down with the flu. Yuck :( he's been feeling preeeeetty dang awful, so we haven't really been able to accomplish much lately, but hopefully we can get all settled sometime soon!

Whoah, it's really been a long time!

Well hello everyone!
I hope you all didnt get discouraged by my lack of posting, haha.
Anyway, we have TONS of stuff to update you all about! So, obviously from the last post we left you on our way to Portland, Oregon...but a lot has changed since then!
The economy in Portland has taken a really rough turn and as of right now it has a 7.5% unemployment rate! It's crazy high, and sequentially Sam and I had a very hard time finding employment. So we took that to mean that Portland obviously isn't the right place right now.
Sam and I were suddenly thrown for a loop and all our plans were out the window, so we had to come up with a plan B relitively quickly. As we were visiting Sam's parents for Thanksgiving (hope you all had a wonderful holiday!) we had both been throwing around the idea of going back to school, and Sam's parents said if we needed a place to stay we were always welcome in their home. Well, we kindly (and quickly!) accepted their offer and packed up all of our things and moved to a suburb right outside Oklahoma City named Yukon. That's where I find myself posting from at the moment, Yukon, Oklahoma. Crazy Huh? Alaska to Oklahoma in about a month.
Sam and I don't have all the kinks worked out yet, but hopefully everything will work out and we'll both be attending Rose State College starting January 20th.
Well I have some pictures to update you all with of course! Drumroll please! haha.

Anyway, on our way from Oregon to Oklahoma we stopped to see some of Sam's friends from college in Idaho Falls, Shem and Carly Carlson. This was the first time I met them and they were tons of fun!! They are both wonderful people and I hope we'll get to see them more often in the future. Carly is a FANTASTIC photographer and while were there she was so kind to take a few family pictures for us, and they turned out wondefully. (Don't be surprised if you see these on our Christmas cards!)
Anyway, enough talk, here they are!





Well, those are a few from the shoot, and they are so freakin good!! If any of you are ever in Idaho Falls, make sure to look her up at www.carlycarlson.com! ;)

Well here are some long due pictures, so I'll just post em!
Here is Charli and her Grandma! (my mom) My mom absolutely LOVED holding her, and would get so concentrated and serious, but with a big smile on her face!

So we've started feeding Charli solids, ...!!! That explains everything for those of you with children! haha. Charli was definitely ready, she took to them and learned so quickly! It was crazy. We started her with runny rice cereal, but she didnt have that for very long. She was ready for the solid stuff! So a week before Thanksgiving we started her on SWEET POTATOES! yay! and since then we've given her Carrots, Oatmeal, and Bananas! But here is a picture of her dring one of her first rice cereal feedings. :)


Well anyway, that's all I have time for right now! But I'll be posting more regularly now that we're almost settled! yay :)

Aforementioned video... sooooo cute!

FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

Charli is the cutest baby in the world! But that's just a mommy's opinion I guess ;)
She has discovered her feet, and how adorable is that??

She just loves sitting in her swing, lifting up her legs, and exploring her feet and toes with her little hands! awww!

I also find her staring at her hands for extended periods of time. CYOOT!
She's also started doing this HILARIOUS squawking thing while she's playing with her toys. I got a video of her playing with her Purple Moose and just squawking like crazy. I'll try to post it soon. SO cute.
Charli has learned so many things since I posted about her! She is just a beautiful young lady, and she's growing up too fast! FOUR MONTHS is creeping up on us really fast!

On a different note, Sam and I are really gearing up to get down to Oregon, so I might not be able to blog as much for the next few weeks. But I'll try to update you guys as much as possible! Love you!

Wide Awake.

Wow. It is SO 2:30 in the morning. I can't sleep.
It feels like every thought in the entire world is finding it's way into my mind.
Every idea; creative, thoughtful, thoughtless, meaningful, meaningless, mindless wanderings.
Too much caffeine with dinner? Yes.
Awake? Yes.
I feel like taking a jog around the block, but that would just be silly. and cold.
and unsafe. and....weird.

I keep dreaming that I need to start my own boutique. A fashion line. But A) I have no frikin CLUE how to even START doing that. I don't even know how to sew.
But all these wonderful designs keep finding their way into my brain. They just want to be written down before they flitter away.
flitter? Yeah, I just made it up. It's my new late-night word. It perfectly describes what happens to my brain every night when I can't sleep. It's flittery.

My fashion line would be named: Charli.
Except it would look like this:

Yeah? Kinda lame, I know. But it took up some of my bored-time.
It's "catch phrase" would be:
Modestly Fashion Forward or
Modest with a Twist or
or or...I can't think of any more. I'm too tired. Let me know if you think of anything TOTALLY AWESOME! I might pay you for it.
Not really.
But you'll feel cool and awesome inside that you had an input in my some-day million-dollar idea.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow....

Charli watching her first snowfall!

It's been snowing for about a week up here in the ol' Alaska. People drive so CRAZY during the first couple snows of the year! For no reason, too. It's not like the roads are icy! haha.

Anyway, Sam and I have been gearing up to move down South, and it's pretty stressful. We managed to find a company to ship our things for relatively inexpensively, but it's still pretty $$$. Thank goodness for the PFD, right?! We've started the packing process, I have my plane tickets down to Portland for Charli and I, and we're going to stay with my family while Sam drives our little Stratus down the AlCan. Yikes! This is a HUGE step for our family. Sam is going to go to school and get his nursing degree OR join the Police Department down there. We've been talking and praying about it a lot, but we haven't quite nailed anything down yet. I'm so excited to get to be with my family, and to see my Mom, and just plain old get out of Alaska!!
If anyone knows of a job opportunity for Sam in Portland, please please PLEASE let us know! Please keep us in your prayers!!!

Playing with her toys!

Here's a picture of Charli playing with her toys after her nap like I described in our previous post.

Sneaky Baby.

Yesterday we put Charli down for a nap because she was being a cranky-pants, and she fell asleep for probably about 1/2 an hour. But then we heard some happy noises coming from her room, so we went to go see what she was up to. She had SCOOTED over to where a couple stuffed animals were and had started playing with them! We were pretty shocked.

I have no idea what age this sort of thing is supposed to happen, but it's so exciting watching Charli grow and develop. She's getting closer and closer to being able to sit up on her own! How crazy! CRAZY!!!

I'm so excited. She's growing up so fast!


Here's a picture from a little Mini Photo Shoot we did with her. She's so gorgeous! Look at those eyes!



Here's Charli playing with her toys!

So What? I'm still a Rock Star.

Here's Our little lady with her
Diva Shades.

She rolled over all by herself!

So continuing from last night's post, Charli slept for 7 hours last night. Sure, she's getting better, but it's no ten hours! :P

So, hopefully this will continue for a while so Mommy and Daddy can catch up on some lost sleep!

On a different note, Charli rolled over all by herself!! Nothing propping her up, or anything! Woohoo! This is a pretty big step, I think! She's just getting so so so strong! I'll post a video on the sidebar!

Sam started working again today, yay!
It was really really nice having him home for a week and a half, He's been so wonderful and so VERY helpful, but he had to go back to work for obvious reasons ;)
Well, I think Charli is waking up from her nap, so I'll get that video posted a little later!

FIRST ALL NIGHTER!!!!

Charli slept all night last night. It was SO CRAZY! We put her down around 10:30, and she didn't wake up until 8:30!!!!!

I woke up at six thirty all confused....

I went in and poked her just to make sure she was still alive....

Hallelujah! She's just still sleeping!

So, I went back to sleep.
It was so amazing, so wonderful, and fabulous. I've just put her to bed for tonight, and I guess we'll see if it was just a miracle, or if she is going to continue this wonderful and amazing gift to her parents.

Cross your fingers for us!!!

Some Pictures for Bruce! (for now, stories to come a little later!)

I'm still working on the art of diapering.

Moving to Oregon

So, Sam and I finally decided to move to Oregon, and this is our official declaration, of sorts.
We're going to move to the outer surrounding area of Portland. We're projecting that we're going to make the move at the end of October, so we're going to be gearing up to move pretty hardcore for the next few weeks. We're going to sell all of our furniture, put some stuff in storage, get quotes with moving companies, etc. We're going to be a busy family!
If anyone has any moving company suggestions, we would love your input. Or, just any suggestions/help is always ALWAYS welcome.

Also, if anyone knows of any job opportunities for Sam in the surrounding Portland area, please let us know. Just putting it out there! :)

One of the huge deciding factors in this move is so we can be near my Mom. I miss her so much, and we want to be with her during her recovery. Please keep her in your prayers. I hear she is making some very small, (but very HUGE) steps in her recovery, and I would really like to be a part of it.
Also, Grandma Debbie hasnt even met Charli yet! (or the rest of my side of the family for that matter) and we can't WAIT to introduce her to everyone!
So we're going to use this fatty PFD to finally make the jump to the lower 48.
Yay!

So pretty!

Benihana Picture!

I finally got my scanner working, so here is the picture we got taken of us at Benihana for my birthday lunch!



Joe's kinda creepy. lol.

New Layout!

I went and bought a book on CSS, because I was really interested in learning about it. (cascading style sheets); basically how to design and code web pages.
I think it's safe enough to say it's become a strange nerdy habit of mine, but it's really fun!
I bought the book, Sams- Teach yourself CSS in 10 minutes!
or something like that, and it's been really helpful.
Let me know if you like my new design, and be prepared to see some new ones, some practice ones, some not so good ones, and so on :P.

If only I was good at using photoshop...:P
(or had it for that matter....)

P.S. If you're reading this, and you have a blog too, let me know so we can link to you! Thanks!

Her first Laugh!

CHARLI LAUGHED!

Charli laughed for the first time yesterday! It was so cute! I wish I had gotten a video, but how could we have known that sweet, beautiful sound was going to come out?
:)

She has also started doing this ridiculously cute thing where she'll find her hands and start sucking on them, and just make tons of noise!
Happy noises of course but it's like, ah ah ah ah aH AH AH AH !!!!
It's so so adorable :)
Just thought I would let you all know!

P.S. it has been brought to my attention that some people can't see the side bar of the blog. I'm going to try to fix this and just leave a comment if it's not fixed, or if it's better! Thanks!

UPDATE- Check out the video I posted of Charli sucking on her hands and making the AHAH noises :D (so freakin cute)

Charli laughing video:

AH AH Video:

Catie is 20!

As of September 14th, I am 20 years old! I feel so old! haha. Or, young...I mean, I'm married and have a baby at 20. But I like to look at it this way...Charli will be out of the house (hopefully :P) before I'm 40! Heck yes.

I had a wonderful day, Sam got me a WONDERFUL gift, and I love it so much! He picked out a bunch of items and had a lady at his work put together a gift basket for me! It was a gift basket of sushi making supplies!


He got me this book, along with some sushi serving trays, a NICE sushi knife, an oriental chocolate bar, REAL wasabi, and some sushi mats! I'm so EXCITED to learn how to do this! YAY!

Anyway, to start off the celebration, my sister Christine, her BF Sean, and their son Tristyn stopped by for a little while on Saturday night, and my brothers spent the night from Saturday to Sunday. My best friend Tammy came over and we played charades. It was hilarious. My brother Josef is so awful at charades. Not because he's a bad actor, but because he comes up with these stories in his head and tries to act them out, and more often than not they have ALMOST nothing to do with the item that he's supposed to be acting out. Needless to say, it was a really fun night. :)

So the next morning I snapped some cute pictures of Willie with Charli :) Here's one.


So we went out to lunch at Benihana, and it was SO GOOD! Man. I wish we could eat there more often! They song me happy birthday in Japanese. haha. It was funny.
My brothers went home after lunch, and Sam and I rested for about an hour before going......

BOWLING! YAY!




Afterwards we headed over to the Bee's (Applebees) to have half-priced appetizers, and scored a free dessert there, too!

It was a wonderful birthday, and a great way to send me off into my 20th year! Yay!
Happy Birthday, Me!



Here are some more photos from my birthday!