Lisa Turns 27!

Lisa turned 27 and she looks better than ever! She is a great wife and I have loved growing old with her. She makes me laugh more than ever, and I respect more and more all the time as I see her in her role as mother. I have been impressed by her willingness to sacrifice for me and Sophie.

At the end of the day when I come home to her and Sophie, I remember what is important. Sometimes, I wish I could just hang out with them all day. I would probably drive Lisa nuts though - I wonder what retirement will be like!

Anyway, life is good, and I have loved having Lisa in my life. I have now been with her for about a fifth of her life, which is quite a lot.

Lisa is a great person and I am excited to live the rest of my life with her. I look forward to every new adventure because she is such a good sport and always willing to go along with my crazy ideas. She is an awesome woman and I love her a lot!

No more snow!

Yeah, so the year we move back to Utah is the year we get dumped on with snow. I do not want to sound like a pesimist, because I do think the snow is beautiful (at times) but c'mon, I'm measuring 15 inches of snow in one storm. I just need to ease back into the cold, so this is a little much right now. I'm definitely ready for some spring weather.

Sophie does not have a snow suit, so I had to wrap her up in a fuzzy blanket to keep her warm.

I have not posted new stuff for a while (surprise, surprise) Here are a couple pictures from the last month or so.

Amidst all the Christmas bliss!

I love when Sophie gets rosy cheeks

My niece Emily and I went ice skating on New Year's Eve. It was her first time and she was already much better than me, which isn't saying much since I am pretty unathletic. We had a good time nonetheless.

Sophie Eats Prunes

Here is a little video of Sophie eating some prunes. She is now eating solids pretty well now. She really likes Cheerios.

Sophie Meets Santa

We recently had our ward Christmas party, which we attended despite the 6 inches of fresh snow and bald tires on our car. We made it to the party okay, but not without some anxiety (mostly on my part) We slid around a bit, and hit a few curbs, but we made it. Once there, we were able to relax and eat some delicious food, visit with friends, and Sophie met Santa for the first time. She was surprisingly calm through the whole thing. I expected some tears since she has been going through a little separation anxiety lately. She must somehow have known that this man is connected with fun toys! It was hilarious to watch her examine him. She just stared at him for the longest time! I'm guessing next year will probably not go as smoothly.

Getting home after the party was a bit more challenging. We were unable to make it up any sort of a slope, since our tires were so bad. Not good, considering our house is surrounded by hills. Matt's brother eventually came to our rescue and towed us back home. After replacing the tires, we are now ready to travel in the snow, although I think I will still avoid it!

Nobody looks happy here

Happy Birthday, Matty!

We recently celebrated Matt's 29th birthday. It was pretty low-key since Sophie was sick with her first cold, plus Matt prefers a small celebration anyway. Next year, though, we will definitely go all-out for the big 30! We had the usual cake and ice cream and opened presents. We got to celebrate a little more over the weekend with a short trip to Park City. It was fun to relax, shop, and eat out during such a beautiful weekend!

So let me just tell you a little about this birthday boy! He is one of the most easy-going, likeable, fun, hard-working persons I have ever met. Anyone who knows him might agree. Often Matt is the life of the party, and some of his close friends may know what I'm talking about. I'll never forget this one night in Provo while we were dating. We were hanging out in his apartment, a frequent occurance in those days, and I can't remember what prompted it, but Matt came out of his room in a wife-beater tank top, surfer-looking, nappy, blonde wig, and electric guitar. He proceeded to rock out on his guitar and even slid down the hallway on his knees (he got a pretty nasty rug burn from it, but all totally worth it!) It was so hillarious, and I'm thinking I might have to ask him to bust that move out again sometime.

Matt is also very talented, and I'm still surprised with what he can do. It seems like anything he atempts, he excels at. He loves wakeboarding, skiing, crocheting (a hidden gem of a talent), playing Settlers and Acquire, surfing, playing pool, basketball, golf, soccer, building web sites, playing the piano, (he can even play the organ!), and I'm sure I'm still forgetting some. A little story about Matt's talents: Once while we were dating, I wanted to learn something Matt didn't know how to do. I bought a harmonica, a "learn how to play harmonica book" and learned how to play a couple easy songs. I thought at the right opportunity I would showcase my hidden talent to Matt and impress him. I did so, only to find that he knows how to play the harmonica! He continues to impress and amaze me!

I'm still not sure how I got Matt to marry me, but I'm glad he did! It's been an awesome 6 1/2 years together! I love you! Happy Birthday, Matty!!

The birthday boy!

Celebrating in Park City

Pebble Beach

Playing Acquire in Carmel

Swamp Thing!

Happy Halloween!

I'm not sure if this qualifies as child abuse or not, but I felt pretty guilty about putting Sophie in her Halloween costume. Although she looked adorable in it, she certainly was not comfortable. She ended up resembling the little boy in "A Christmas Story." (You know the one I mean!) Most of the time the peas were totally in her face and she made the best of the situation by sucking on them. It was pretty gross by the end of the night. We were unable to take her trick-or-treating around the neighborhood as we had planned, since Matt didn't get home from work until about 7:30. We did have time for a quick stop to grandma's house for a little treat bag and a visit with the cousins before we had to get Sophie to bed. She was such a trooper, and stayed really content most of the night!

Turning over a new leaf!

Okay, so the day after we had Sophie, Matt got super motivated and created this blog. He was so excited about it, and it was cute to watch him as he posted something nearly every day and even blogged about the diaper genie! I loved that he was so into it and enjoyed reading his posts. As you can see, the motivation has been lost somewhere along the way, and we have not updated it in MONTHS!! I have decided to take over and hopefully will be able to keep up with it.

So much has changed with our little Sophie in the past couple of months. Next week she will be five months old (seriously where does the time go!) and is now able to roll over, eat sold foods (so far she has only had rice cereal and sweet potatoes) and grabs ANYTHING within her each. I am accepting the life of wearing minimal jewelry, and feel I should consider cutting my hair shorter since she is constantly grabbing at it. :) She is so much fun and our new favorite thing to do is make her giggle. It is honestly the best sound ever and hopefully we will be able to capture her laughing on the video camera. We have not had much luck so far...as soon as she sees any kind of camera, all the magic is lost. She stops doing whatever she was doing and stares at the camera. We love this little baby so much and feel blessed to have her in our lives!

Sophie LOVES to eat! This was her first taste of rice cereal

In Park City celebrating our 5 year anniversary

We have so few pictures of us all together. One day we will get a good one.

Hanging out with the Blakes