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 :)