One Year

I can't believe my little girl is already one year old. It has gone by so fast! It has definitely been a new experience being a mom and having someone else besides Andrew and me. She has changed our lives so much. Here are some of my favorite moments from this year:
1. Seeing you for the first time
2. Your first real smile
3. Your blessing day
4. The first time you slept through the night without your Lamby Swing
5. When we were watching a sad movie and it looked like you were crying, so we laughed and said you were crying and you instantly made a noise that sounded exactly like "No I'm Not!"
6. Your first steps with Aunt Jessica in Minnesota
7. The first time I was away from you for a while and you were excited to see me, the same way you are always excited to see your dad when he gets home (I was always jealous of your dad for that)
8. Rockin’ out to Reggae Got Soul
9. All the times you snuggled with me
10. All the times you laughed with me

Happy Birthday Olivia! I love you!

Olivia's New Home

I am a big fan of homemade toys, so is Olivia. When a present for Andrews birthday came, it was a rectangular box, so I propped it up and it was Olivia's tunnel. When Andrew and I paid off our cars we celebrated by buying a Bar-B-Que Grill, and that box was huge. So I had an idea. I cut a square out and hooked Olivia's tunnel up to it. Then I cut out a couple of windows and Olivia had a new home...but it was still under construction. The local carpet company had those free carpet samples that they use in preschools, so we carpeted her floor. Then Andrew made a real roof so She would stop hitting her head on one of the flaps that hung down. And since it is the Christmas season, she of course had to decorate. She loves it in there. She will drag toys in and push other ones out to make room. She is alot like her dad and that house is her "garage time", where she can be alone but knows that mom is right there.

Fall's over, but it was fun.

First leaves (next year we expect this should be a picture of Olivia's first raking the entire yard all by herself)

Fort Snelling, Minnesota

Grandpa's House and secret hiding places.

Apple Orchard. Olivia wasn't much help with the pick your own apples.

The Smith clan

Smith clan at St. Paul temple

Minneapolis Airport (they made Olivia pick up her own bags)

Boat ride in Grandpa's backyard

Trunk or treat's best decorated car, you had to skee to see how many treats you get (thanks to the trash pile for supplying the materials to build it)

Ward winning costumes

A little of everything

Olivia and I got back from Lake Powell about a week ago. Andrew stayed home and worked and I ditched him as always. We had lots of fun and Liv loved the boat rides.

Olivia playing with Elmo

I think summer is finally over. It has stopped being in the 90's this week and has been raining off and on. Our chickens don't really like the rain. Mosher's "hair" cracked me up because it looked like a girl who spent alot of time on her hair and then went out in the rain haha. Poor Mosher. Our chickens have finally started being useful though. For about a month we only had one chicken laying an egg a day. But now I think 4 out of the 7 are laying because yesterday I found 4 eggs and today I found 3.

Olivia never fails to make us laugh. Today she has been slapping her head over and over again...I don't really know what she is doing, but whatever haha. Well that's some updates on what has been going on in the last little bit.

Why I love the Dump!

Andrew and I went to our favorite store in Winnemucca again...the DUMP! We go to the dump at least every other week, I guess that's what happens when you are pretty much flipping a house. We always find all sorts of treasures up there. I just used our Scott's spreader to Weed and Feed my yard this weekend. My chickens use a barrel we found there as their waterer. Our friends sat on our bench in the backyard today that we got at the dump. The list goes on and on. But we found the all time best dump find the other day...OUR DUMP COUCH! So we went to the dump as usual and when we got there we saw this couch that was upside down. So we unloaded our load and flipped the couch over, and it looked pretty good. We started looking for the cushions and found all but one. We decided to just leave and forget about it. So on our way back to town we saw the cushion on the side of the road! So we pulled into a construction site that was close by and pulled some debris out of their dumpster and loaded up our truck for our second load. We hurried back to the dump because it was almost closing time. Andrew told the lady that we lost part of our load (which wasn't a lie because a cardboard box fell out while driving back to the dump). As I unloaded the back of the truck, Andrew hurried and put the couch in the bed of the truck and we took off. We stopped on our way back to town and picked up the last cushion. We felt like such rednecks! We got the couch home and I pulled out the carpet cleaner and used the upholstery attachment and cleaned that baby up and look at it now! Just like new!



It doesn't have any legs, so we need to either make some, buy some, or find some at the dump haha! But it's super comfy! I took a nap on it today and let me tell ya, that was a pretty nice nap. Once our under construction family room is finished we are going to put it back there. Some people think we are ridiculous...but hey, I got a free couch and I am helping to save the earth! Just looking after our home, the good ol' earth : )

Alot of Work!

BEFORE

Our yard is finally starting to look nice! We bought the house in April 2009 as a foreclosure and the place was a dump. It may look like it had grass, but those are just all weeds. The picture makes it look better than it was, trust me. I have put up before and after pics of the inside in earlier posts, but after tons of shoveling, bringing in load after load of gravel, putting in a sprinkler system, seeding and waiting for grass, putting up a new fence, ripping out a chunk of the old driveway and pouring new concrete, and lots of plants here is the outcome (still needs more work, but thats ok).

AFTER

another before

and after




There is still alot of work to be done, but it's getting there : )

Fugitive

So last night as Andrew and I were just laying down to go to bed a familiar noise came through the baby monitor. Olivia woke up. So I went in to put the plug back in when I heard voices outside her window and then someone running by the of my house. I peeked through the curtains and saw some teenagers in a car pull up. I was thinking, oh no you are not going to vandalize my house! No eggs, no TP, no nothing. So I started for my front door and I saw the person run right by my front window and when I opened the door he turned around and darted back the way he came. Then I heard police sirens and thought, oh great! It's always my house! I started looking around and Andrew came out with his mag light. We were looking around for a little while and when I went to put my shoes on Andrew flashed the culprit. He jumped up as quick as a puma and threw his hands in the air and said "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we are playing fugitive, its a game!" The poor kid looked terrified. We started laughing and told him that we love that game and used to run through peoples yards too. We told him that the baby woke up and that's why we came out. As we were talking to the kid a car drove up and that was the end of his running, he was caught because of us. He was hidden so well that we didn't see him and he was right next to us, laying on some gravel. He was good! He didn't shift the whole time we were out there and I don't think we would have ever known he was there if Andrew hadn't moved the flashlight there. When Andrew and I climbed back in bed we were laughing and then said how sad it is that if you see teenagers out in your yard you automatically think they are up to no good and not that they are just playing a harmless game of fugitive.

San Francisco

About 3 weeks ago Andrew and I went to San Francisco for a long weekend. Since Andrew has Mondays off he got to choose when he wanted to take off his Memorial Day Holiday, so he took it on Friday and we had a 4 day weekend in San Fran. It was sooo fun (and much needed). We have been working a ton on the house (mostly the yard) and needed a break. On our way we stopped at the Jelly Belly Factory and did the tour and got some free jellybeans…mmm. Olivia did great on the car ride to CA, I was impressed. We stayed at a really nice Marriott that my Uncle Steve hooked us up with. We went to Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, Chinatown, you know all the touristy things and we loved it. We got some pretty cute pictures of Olivia sitting on a ledge. It looked like I had just perched her on a wall with a 100 foot cliff behind it. Some people walked by and were scared to death until Andrew popped up from a ledge that you couldn’t see. On Sunday we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and went to see the redwoods at Muir Woods National Park. It was gorgeous there! It was so awesome! I wished that I was a better photographer because I just couldn’t capture the beauty with my camera. On Monday we packed up and headed out. We took a detour and stopped by the Oakland Temple for a bit and then started the journey home. Olivia slept for quite a bit of it, but when we were about 1 hour out of Reno she started getting pretty fussy, so I thought I would just feed her some peas that we had and it worked great until she started getting full and I became super carsick! It was horrible! Screaming baby, headache, feeling like I was going to vomit…awesome right? Well Andrew thought so because the next exit happened to be Cabelas exit (I think Andrew planned it). Once I felt better we got back on the road and the little monster screamed the last 2 ½ hours. But it was a blast other than the heinous ride home : )

What Happens When Dad Feeds Me

Need Better Diapers!

A company needs to make blowout proof diapers! For some reason everytime Olivia poops now she needs a bath and a new outfit...and I am tired of it. Here is just a little preview of what we are talking about



And that is a smaller one, sometimes it gets all in her hair trying to get the shirt off. YUCK!

SPRING IS HERE

I love spring time! My tulips are out (even though they were ravaged by a fierce wind storm) and the leaves on the trees are popping out. I decided to get some chicks this year and see if I like having chickens as pets. I am crossing my fingers that we didn't get any roosters. We had John over, our 2 year old friend, and I asked him what the chickens names were. All light chickens were just chickens but the black one was Mosher(Moe-sure). I don't know why, but he loves that one. Olivia doesn't really care about the chickens. We took the little chicks outside yesterday and they had alot of fun. At first Andrew just brought one chicken out and put him in the yard, he was terrified. I decided I would bring his friends out to play so I grabbed their box and walked outside. When the lone chick heard his friends he came running to me so he could be with his friends. It was pretty easy to watch them because they always stayed together and never ventured out on their own. It was pretty fun playing with them in the warm sunny weather.