Mother's Day #1!!!

I finally get a Mother's Day for ME!!! I'm so excited. Reed made me a drawing of a precious picture of Anaya and me. I can't wait to frame it and put it up. He is so talented. I also got 2 snickers bars...that's right...2, and cookie dough bites. Then Anaya interrupted me upstairs whilst making up my face for church to present me with this...

Also, we went as a family to Texas Roadhouse for some good ol' fashioned country cookin' the Friday before. Mmmm-mmmm.

A pretty good 1st Mother's Day indeed. Thanks Babe!

Happy Mother's day to you Mom and to you Jeani. You both are such good support systems for our family. Thanks for all you do. We love you both!!

Baby's First Christmas!

It was fun to spend Christmas with our new baby. There were few presents, but the joy we felt as we celebrated what we did under our tree were priceless. I am so blessed to have one of Heavenly Father's children in my home to nurture and enjoy. Anaya is the best Christmas present we could have ever received.

Our daughter shows her true feelings about Christmas morning...

Deciding to put on a good face for documentation sake...

Still not in the Christmas spirit I suppose...dirty diaper?...

Our ornament (still to come) for 2009...

Visiting with family...cousin Phil...

Merry Christmas everyone!...

The Best Birthday Present Ever!!!

Yesterday I got to spend an entire 1/2 hour with my baby girl. What a great birthday present! That's right...we're having a GIRL!!! The doctor knew we wanted a boy, so she looked real hard for a penis, but to no avail. Oh well. That's just more incentive to try again. It's just going to be very hard to choose a name now. Reed and I had already agreed on a name we both liked for a boy. Now, we have to start all over. Reed doesn't like the name I want to choose for our girl...but who's doing all the work here? Oh, that'd be me. Who's gonna bring this baby into the world? Oh, that'd be me. So I think I'm entitled to have dibs on the name...right?? Maybe if I convince him to let me name this girl, I will let him name all the other kids whatever he wants. That shows you how much I like this name I chose. Anyway...back to my joyous 1/2 hour birthday present. I am simply amazed at not only nature and God's beautiful creations in action, but the technology we have now to see it happen. I saw just about everything you could see on a human...and she was perfect. Everything was developing normally and she just looked so perfect. She moves around a lot too. It was fun to see her mouth open and close and her arms and feet move right in front of me. It didn't really hit me just how amazing an experience that was until later that day at home. During the appointment, you are so focused on what the doctor is saying and what you are seeing, and then of course the big revealing of the gender. It's hard to really soak it all in and realize what you are priviliged to be seeing. But once I let it all in and was able to concentrate on it, it was the best feeling ever. My first baby. I am already in love with her.

Independence Day 2009

Reed and I had his family over for the 4th's celebration this year. We usually just watch the fireworks on TV or go up to the second floor of our apartment complex and see what we can see, but this year we decided to mix it up. Being a homeowner sure does open up many more rooms of possibilities. Reed and I thought it would also be more fun to have a BBQ at the very nice and spacious park by our house. Well, when we arrived to clean off the grill that other nasty people have used and start the coals burning, the very nice and spacious part was drenched in about a million gallons of water (courtesy of the downpour we had the night before). Apparently this park also serves as the drainage for our community. Brilliant!! Reed had actually gone over earlier to check the park's availability of crusty grills but decided not to tell me about the water in hopes it would all be gone in the next few hours and I suppose in fear of any yelling that may ensue upon me hearing the dreadful news. So, Reed and I enjoyed cooking and semi-hosting our first BBQ in pools of molch sprinkled with rabbit poo...and the aroma...mmmmm! I say semi-hosting because instead of Reed's whole family attending like we thought and were hoping for, Reed's parents came. (That sounds bad...we did enjoy their company). The other family members showed up in small numbers eventually. The night ended up being rather enjoyable. Reed did a wonderful job with the burgers and hotdogs, he even fed one to the rabbit pooed water. They were tender and juicy. Yummy! We ended the night at the Fireworks Spectacular held in Marana. Next time we'll have to bring lawn chairs, even though we thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the ant-ridden dirt hoping that one would not crawl down my pants.

Reed and his BBQ-ing skills!

Only a fraction of the drainage aftermath...and my father-in-law, Darwin.


My mother-in-law, Jeannie, waiting for her food in the van. She did not want to hang out with us in the rabbit-poo water for some reason.

Now there's the spirit folks!!