Jessica's Birthday Celebration

On Saturday, we went to SLC to spend the day with my sisters (Megan and Jessica) and my brother-in-law (Matt) to celebrate Jessica's birthday. It was a gorgeous day outside (70 degrees) and very windy, so we went to the park to fly some kites. Nate and Uncle Matt did a great job teaching Bridget how to fly the kite.

In fact, they did such a good job she was doing it by herself before too long. It was just too bad her attention span was so short that she would just drop it and walk away after a minute or two.
Can you believe she's not even 16-months-old yet?
She loves to steal my sunglasses.

Can you blame her? She looks so cute in them.

And here's the birthday girl with the Barbie birthday cake she requested I make for her. Apparently 21 is not too old for such a cake.

The rest of the festivities included making and eating homemade personal size pizzas (sorry no pics of that) and eating cake with homemade ice cream. Yum!

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

Lately, Bridget has decided that she likes to sit on her toy drum because it is just the right height for her. When she was playing with it on Saturday, she decided to take the lid off and sit on it, and this picture is the result. It was so funny that I could hardly stop laughing and had to take advantage of the photo opportunity. Too bad she didn't find it as funny as I did. And her crazy hair in this picture is from the nap she'd just taken. I promise I would not allow her to go out with it like that in public.

15 Month Stats

Yesterday Bridget had her 15 month checkup, and all is well. She's now 32" tall (90th percentile) which means she's grown an inch in the last 3 months. I'm not surprised because most of her pants have started to look a little short lately which means spring needs to come so I can buy her a new warm weather wardrobe. She's slimmed down to 25.5 lbs. (80-85th percentile), so she only gained half a pound in the last 3 months. If I ran around as much as she does, I'd probably slim down too. And for the first time in her life she's below the 90th percentile in something. Her head measurement only changed a tiny bit, and she's still off the charts in that area. She only got one shot this visit and handled it very well. I was a little concerned she might have pink eye because one of her eyes was looking like it yesterday (minus the goop), but it seems to be better today.

Our Little Helper

We decided it was time for Bridget to start earning her keep around here, and laundry is one of those tasks where she's actually more of a help than a hindrance. Once she empties the clothes from the dryer into the basket, I carry it upstairs so she can immediately start emptying it onto the floor while I try to fold and put away as fast as I can. Once she's emptied all of the contents onto the floor, she puts them all back in the basket and decides she's done. It cracks me up how she does the exact same thing every time without fail, and I do appreciate her help.

Have No Fear, Her Hair is Here

For months, people have commented on Bridget's lack of hair, and I've been wondering if it would ever fill in and be long enough to do anything with it. Although it still isn't long enough for a ponytail of any sort (due to the fact that the hair on top is still really short), it doesn't bother me anymore because she has the cutest curls now! She definitely is her mother's daughter, and someday she'll probably hate me for giving her curly hair just like I've always hated mine. And I have to give Nate props because he's in charge of styling her hair during the week and does a very good job.

A Few More Milestones

So I haven't been blogging lately not because I'm lazy. Our lives have been fairly mundane, so it's a good thing we have Bridget to keep it somewhat interesting. Here's just a few of her recent accomplishments:

• She's finally mastered going down the stairs, and is so good at it that she goes up and down whenever she feels like it, carting all sorts of toys or random objects with her. In fact, we hardly ever shut the baby gate anymore. And one of her favorite things to do is go down one or two steps, sit, and flip through her books. Nate and I are both loving not having to carry her anymore!


• Another one of her new skills I'm loving is her ability to clean up after herself - somewhat. If I tell her to clean something up she usually does especially if I get her started. Our house is nowhere near as tidy as I'd like, but it's a little better.


• Her vocabulary is increasing and she's recently added "baby" and "cougar" or as she says it "ca-ga." I know it's a weird word to pick up on, but she loves the cougar on my BYU sweatshirt and loves trying to repeat it when I say it. Her favorite words are by far "Dada" and "yuck," and both are said more times a day than I can count.


• Currently, she's learning to climb up onto the couch but is only successful part of the time.


• Teething seems to be an almost constant event with her. She just got her 3rd molar and from the way she's been acting today I wouldn't be surprised if the 4th is on its way soon.


• She's also learned how to show people that she's one. If you ask her "how old are you?" she holds up her pointer finger (if she's up to performing and isn't holding something in her hand).

Christmas in Portland

Once again, I'm slow to post, but it's better late than never. We were fortunate to be able to fly to Portland, OR to spend Christmas with my family this year. Even though this is our 3rd Christmas since we've been married, it's the first we've spent with my side of the family. The group included Mark and Mark, Jill, Rob, Elaine, Charlotte, Megan, and us. Unfortunately the weather in Portland was really bad for several days before we were scheduled to leave, and we were very nervous that we might not be able to get there. As luck would have it, the weather was great leaving home early Christmas Eve morning and only snowing slightly when we got to Portland.

Because of the bad weather there, we mostly stayed in the house relaxing, visiting, eating, playing with the kids, watching TV and playing video games. Bridget thought playing with her cousins Charlotte and Elaine was pretty great and also enjoyed the new toys all of them got for Christmas.

As far as Christmas festivities, we had our usual big dinner on Christmas Eve followed by the traditional rice pudding game which my sister, Jill, won.

Before the kids went to bed, they each opened a new pair of PJs from Aunt Megan. Bridget loves to open presents after all the practice she got from her birthday and didn't want to stop at just one.

This is Bridget admiring the Wonder Pets that Elaine got from Santa on Christmas morning. Bridget wasn't enjoying the present opening as much because she was ready for a nap at this point due to the fact that she'd been up since 5 am.

One of her favorite toys was this telephone from Jill and Rob, and she was constantly dragging it around.

While we were there we discovered that Bridget and Charlotte had matching PJs so we just had to get a picture. Jill and I tried our best to get the 3 kiddies to pose for a picture, and this was the best we could do.

This video shows a bit of everyone enjoying Christmas morning. Bridget had great fun for days playing with an empty wrapping paper roll as evidenced here, and the rest of us are enjoying the yummy Crème Brûlée French Toast and bacon in our PJs.

Family Christmas Party

Saturday night we attended a Christmas party with Nate's extended family. It was just the usual stuff - lots of delicious food and a visit from Santa for the kids. Bridget loved the opportunity to run around and play with other kids and took a special liking to her 2nd cousin Caleb who's about 6 months older than she is. When she saw him, she went right up to him and was trying to hug and kiss him. She got a hug out of him the first time, and then we she tried to do it again a few minutes later, she gave him a big open mouth kiss right on his mouth! It was hysterical to watch, and luckily we got it on video. I don't know why she decided she needed to kiss him because she doesn't usually give kisses away so freely.

Being the friendly, outgoing girl that she is, she had no qualms about sitting on Santa's lap.

Daily Rituals

A couple of Bridget's daily activities include emptying the kitchen drawer containing all the dishtowels and bibs and the drawer with all of the plastic food containers. As soon as she sees me putting anything away, she quickly tries to get them back out. I can't wait until she understands the concept of cleaning up after herself...that day can't come quickly enough for me. It's daily rituals like this that make me wonder why I bought her toys for Christmas when it's the simple things that entertain her.

Bridget's 1 Year Stats

Today Nate and I took Bridget to the pediatrician for her 1-year checkup. Developmentally she's doing everything she's supposed to be doing, and she's still very healthy and growing well. She weighs 25 lbs. (98th percentile), is 31 inches tall (95th percentile) and her head is 19.25 inches (above 98th percentile). I keep thinking that one of these days her growth will slow down a little bit and she might actually be below the 90th percentile in something, but not yet. She runs around a lot, so maybe that will start to slow her weight down. Amazingly, she handled her 5 shots very well too. She screamed and shed a few tears, but only for about a minute. And her hemoglobin was tested to make sure her iron levels were good, and they were (thanks to parents who only feed her healthy food). As a treat afterward, we did take her to Coldstone to get her free birthday kiddie cup, but she was only interested in a few bites. She's been drinking whole milk for a few days now, and she doesn't seem to mind the taste at all, but she won't drink it cold. We have to warm it up just a little or she won't take more than a sip. Hopefully she'll stop being so picky soon.

Bridget's First Birthday

On Thanksgiving Day we celebrated Bridget's 1st Birthday. After we spent the early afternoon eating dinner with Nate's immediate and extended family (I think there were 50-60 people), we came back to our house to have Bridget's party. She had a hard time staying away from the presents while we were waiting for family to arrive. She got some fun toys, books, and clothes. She is a true girl because she was just as excited about the clothes as she was the toys.

I finished making/decorating her birthday cake just before midnight the night before.

It was hard to keep her away from the presents while we were waiting for family to arrive.

Here's a video of her opening some of her presents. I didn't include all of them because I didn't want the video to get too long, but it hits a few of the highlights.

My favorite part of the party was watching her eat her cake. She loved it, especially since we're very strict about what she eats and don't let her eat junk food. She ate the whole piece and was quite a mess by the end.

Happy Birthday to our beautiful girl!

What are the Chances?

Today Bridget and I headed to the mall after I got off work, and as we were getting ready to leave the mall a horrible thing happened. Maybe I'll win a nomination for the bad mom award, but here's the story.

I had just put Bridget in her carseat, and she was crabby because it was lunchtime and naptime. She grabbed the keys which I had in my hand, and when I tried to take them back she screamed. So I decided to let her hold them for a minute while I put the stroller and bags in the car. I shut her door to open the door in front of it, and then put my purse and bag on the front seat. I shut that door and was about to open her door again to get the keys to open the trunk when I heard that dreadful "click" of the locks. In the 2 seconds that all the doors were shut, she just happened to hit the lock button on the remote. I immediately started to panic and hoped that she would miraculously hit the unlock button. When I realized that that wasn't going to happen and my cell phone was also locked in the car, I started looking around for strangers that might be able to help me.

A nice woman let me use her phone to call 911. The dispatcher I spoke to told me that "they don't do that" even though I told him my baby was locked in the car. He said I'd have to call a tow truck. I was shocked. Here I am in an emergency situation and the dispatcher won't even help me. What does he want me to do, whip out the yellow pages as I'm standing there in the mall parking lot? He seriously wouldn't help me at all, so I just hung up. The woman who was trying to help me went in the mall to try and get some help from mall security.

In the meantime, I'm standing at the car trying to keep Bridget happy and trying not to cry myself. There weren't a lot of people around, and luckily some more people came to my aid as I was standing at my car crying. Another woman let me use her phone so I could call Nate and have him start heading home to get our spare set of keys. Then a man who was a tool salesman and had his big truck full of tools was able to use something to get into the car and unlock the doors. By this time, Bridget had been locked in for about 30 minutes and there were about 6 strangers gathered around my car trying to help. The mall security guy informed me that the 911 dispatcher should have called a locksmith who would have opened the car for free because a baby was inside. He was very surprised when I told him what the dispatcher didn't offer to do anything like that.

So here's what I've learned from this experience. Don't plan on 911 helping you in emergency situations. Don't let babies play with car keys unless there is at least one door open at all times. And there are a lot of nice strangers out there who will help you when you need it.

Nate's Birthday

I'm such a lazy blogger these days. Nate's birthday was almost 2 weeks ago, and I'm finally getting around to posting about it. You can tell how excited he was to be another year older from the expression on his face (well that and the fact that he hates having his picture taken).

We didn't do anything too exciting. The three of us went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and then Nate opened his super exciting present (a Shop Vac) when we got home. We ate cake after Bridget went to bed since she couldn't have any. I didn't want to make a big birthday cake for just the two of us to eat, so I bought a little one at Coldstone. I think Nate thought I was a little cheesy because I put a candle in it and made him blow it out after I sang to him, but it's the official birthday thing to do so I just had to do it.

Halloween

As usual, I'm a little slow to post, but here are some pictures of Bridget in her 2 costumes. We borrowed both of the costumes, and since she looked so cute in both she wore the bumble bee costume to our ward trunk-or-treat on the 29th and the pumpkin costume on Halloween. She never sits still anymore, so trying to get a good picture was almost impossible. As of the 29th, she's officially walking all over the place. If she falls, she crawls just long enough to get to something where she can pull up to stand, and then she's on her way again. On Halloween, Bridget got to show her cute pumpkin costume off at my school and then at Nate's office. That night we tried to visit as many family members as possible, but she's not a night owl so we didn't get to see everyone. Sorry to those of you we missed. Being the strict mother that I am, she didn't get any candy this year, but I'm sure she'll love it next year.

Pre-Halloween Fun

Last Friday, Megan, Jessica, and Matt came to hang out with us and stay the night. We're so much fun I can't believe they don't come and stay every weekend. We started off the night by eating some of my homemade BBQ chicken pizza and then baked some halloween sugar cookies. We had so much fun that I even stayed up way past my bedtime. The next morning when Bridget woke us up at 6:30, Nate took her and went to Einstein Bagels to get us some delicious breakfast including my favorite pumpkin bagels with pumpkin shmear. Once everybody was finally awake we ate, played with Bridget, and then decorated our sugar cookies. It was a fun-filled weekend, and I'm pretty sure I ate way too many cookies.

11 Months

I seriously can't believe October is almost over, and Bridget is now 11 months. Her 1st birthday will be here before I know it. Nate and I love watching all the new things she's learning to do, and can't help but laugh at some of them. Here's a quick run-down of the last month and a video highlighting some of them:

• She's getting so good at walking, but still resorts to crawling at least half of the time. I love how she walks like a zombie with her arms straight out in front of her to help her get her balance.


• Her ability to understand amazes me. If we're in our living room and we ask her where Jesus is, she gets a big smile on her face and looks at the picture hanging on our fireplace and then at the statue on the piano. I know I'm a little biased, but it's so cute!


• Any time you say to her "no pooping," she smiles and pretends to grunt like she does when she is pooping. Sorry if that's TMI, but it really is funny.


• She got 2 more of her top teeth.


• She loves to play "Where's Bridget?" aka peek-a-boo if there's a blanket or dishtowel nearby.


• Bath time is still one of her favorite activities, and she's not afraid of the water one bit. If we lay her down to wet her hair, she doesn't get scared or cry at all.


• The stranger phobia still hasn't set in, and at this point I don't know that it will. She's a very friendly baby, and will smile or go to most people if Mom or Dad is nearby.


• She finally wore shoes for the first time, and is getting better at walking in them.

A Few Steps

Bridget is getting closer and closer to walking by herself, and a couple of days ago she made some good progress. She will sometimes let go of things (couch, people, etc.) on her own now and take a few steps. She does really well if she goes slow and gets her balance with each step, but sometimes she gets a little too excited and then falls. Anyway, this is a short video of one of her practice sessions. I'll be surprised if she's not walking on her own by her birthday which is only about 5 weeks away!

Recent Changes

We've been in our house now for about 2 months, and in that short time we've already gone through some major changes at church. About a month ago Nate got called to teach Elders Quorum one Sunday a month, and lucky for him he probably now holds some sort of record for serving in a calling for the shortest amount of time and never having to actually do anything with it. Within 2 weeks of receiving that calling, our stake made major boundary changes to every ward and dissolved two of the nine wards (ours being one of them). Obviously everybody from our ward was released from their callings, and on Sunday we attended our new ward for the first time.

On Saturday a member of the bishopric randomly showed up at our door (for some reason they didn't have a phone number for us so he couldn't call first). I happened to still be in my pajamas because I'd been so busy cleaning and taking care of Bridget that I hadn't had a chance to get ready for the day yet, so it was just a little embarrassing. Anyway, I got called to be the 2nd Counselor in the Primary of our new ward. When he told me the name of the president, I didn't have a clue who she was (not surprising since we've only lived in our house a couple of months). When we were all sustained during sacrament meeting, I didn't even recognize her as somebody I'd ever seen before. She even admitted to me later that she couldn't even remember my name, but when she was praying about who her counselors should be, she knew it was supposed to be me (the woman who spoke in sacrament meeting just a few weeks before and bought the Riggs' home). I'm really excited about this calling since it's something I haven't done before, and I love Primary. I also look forward to getting to know the other women in the presidency, the teachers, and the kids.

First Snow Fall of 2008

We all awoke this morning to the great white stuff falling from the sky. Bridget loved to just sit by the window and watch it fall.

By the time we got done with church (4:00 PM) the snow had stopped and it was looking much nicer. Now Nate just has to clean up the mess from the two branches that broke off our tree in the front yard.

Waving

A little over a week ago Bridget learned to wave, and since I'm slow to blog these days, I'm finally get around to posting a short video. She still hasn't figured out to turn her hand the other direction, but she'll get it eventually.

10 Months

I know I've been really lazy about blogging this month, but life's been busy with me being back at work and Nate and I not seeing much of each other. It seems like any spare time we have we use to work on projects around the house. I'll have to try to do better for October.

Anyway, with as fast as September has gone by it's not surprising to realize that Bridget is yet another month older. She's growing up so fast, and it's so fun to watch her learn new things.

She's getting closer and closer to walking by herself every day. Nate actually got her to walk 6 steps before she fell today. The most I've witnessed is four. She crawls and cruises around very well and is also turning into quite the climber. It's not uncommon to see her trying to climb from the arm of the couch to the end table or anything else for that matter. She definitely keeps us on our toes.

She's also learning more sounds and currently can say "Mom, Dad, ba-ba, and hey." She still isn't calling us by name, but can at least make the sounds.

One of her favorite things to do is blow raspberries. If you blow one at her, she almost always does it back. In fact, that's one of our favorite games to play while we're in the car. We go back and forth and get plenty of laughs in while doing it.

She's mastered the pincer grip and is sometimes better at cleaning the floor than a vacuum. It's amazing how small some of the things are that she's able to pick up. And when we're outside she loves to pick leaves up off the lawn or destroy the marigolds.

It's also so fun to watch how well she seems to comprehend things we say. She definitely understands the word "no" and obeys pretty well. It always makes me laugh when I tell her "no" to something she's doing and she turns to look at me with a sly grin on her face and then proceeds to go back to whatever she was doing and laugh while she's doing it.

Her top 2 teeth have finally made it through after a month of trying. Hopefully we'll get a little break from teething before the next ones come.

And Bridget is still a big fan of the bathtub. She will hardly let go of her rubber ducky the whole time she's in it, and she'll even sit and kick her legs when you tell her to "splash, splash." I have fun sculpting the little bit of hair she has with the shampoo. Maybe some day it will really be long enough for pigtails.

Giggles

Lately Bridget will get into moods where anything and everything makes her laugh. I was able to capture just a little on camera, but prior to getting the camera out she was laughing even harder and longer than what you see here.

And even though this doesn't have anything to do with the video, I also have to mention that Bridget learned to say Mom on Sunday. I don't know that she's calling me by name yet, but just making the sound because it always comes out in a long stream of "mom, mom, mom, mom," but she does it a few times a day now.

9 Month Stats

I took Bridget to the pediatrician yesterday for her 9 month checkup. Luckily, she didn't have to have any shots, so it was a quick and easy visit. She's 22 lbs. 3 oz. (93rd percentile), 29 inches tall (90th percentile), and her head is 18.5 inches (above 97th percentile). She's still doing pretty well with strangers, and the doctor even commented that she seemed to like him better than most 9 month old babies he sees. So she's still very healthy, and to quote the doctor "there's nothing small about her."

Labor Day Weekend

We had all sorts of plans for accomplishing things around our house over the long weekend, but we only accomplished half of them due to some unforeseen events. On Saturday Nate installed a new faucet in our kitchen. After 3 trips to Lowes and Home Depot and several more hours than he anticipated, the task was accomplished, but in the process some water leaked through the wall into the bathroom below and now we get to repair the paint that bubbled up. At least we have a fabulous new faucet that's a thousand times better than the nasty old one we replaced. I also worked on painting the dining room. It took me several tries to get the right paint color, and I ended up just mixing my own from a couple different ones that we had because the 2 that I bought just weren't quite right. We also purchased a new BBQ grill - nothing fancy but it does the job. And then we spent the rest of our day cleaning and getting ready to have my family over for a BBQ on Sunday. I should also mention that Nate and I had to speak in our new ward on Sunday so we had to prepare talks on Saturday as well.

Sunday afternoon my sisters and their families came over (Jill, Rob, Elaine, Charlotte, Megan, Jessica, and Matt) for dinner. The weather turned cold and it rained a lot so we had to stay inside, but it was great to get together and visit. We tried to get some good pictures of the girls together but none of them would sit still long enough to get one, so here's the best of what we got:

Just as my family was leaving that night our power went out due to the storm going on outside. And it stayed out for 23.5 hours! I don't think I've ever been in a power outage that lasted so long, and you never realize how much you use electricity until you don't have it. All night long I kept waking up because I was worried about losing all the food in our refrigerator and all of the things we wouldn't be able to get done on Labor Day without power. First thing Monday morning Nate loaded up most of our food and took it to his Grandma's house to put in her fridge and freezer, so we only ended up losing a little of our food. We really didn't do much the rest of the day, but it was nice to finally have some time to relax.

9 Months

Here's a picture of Bridget enjoying her new room (not that you can see much of it). The walls are a very pale green to match her frog bedding. She had a hard time adjusting to her new room the first couple of nights, but sleeps through the night as usual again.

She's crawling all over the place, and getting very fast. If I look away for too long she's bound to be going somewhere or doing something she probably shouldn't. She's also getting better and faster at cruising along the couch or anything else that's the right height. And learning to climb stairs was definitely something she learned to do much sooner and faster than I would have liked.

The last couple of weeks she's been able to spend her mornings with Nate while I'm at work, and she doesn't seem to mind one bit. I'm pretty sure she's already realized he's the fun one anyway.

A couple of weeks ago she also had a fever for a couple of days and her top two front teeth started to appear, but they seem to have stayed where they're at and haven't come through anymore. So shes still really only has two teeth.

In the last month she's also taken much more of an interest in other babies and even herself when she looks in the mirror or sees pictures. It will be fun to see her interact with her cousins Elaine and Charlotte when they come visit in a few days.

As far as her stats go, that will have to be a post for next week after I take her to the doctor for her checkup. She's certainly getting taller because she's recently outgrown most of her 6-9 month clothing.

Climbing Stairs

Bridget has decided that she is old enough to take on the stairs. Yesterday morning I found her 1/2 way up the bottom half of our stairs. This morning she decided it was time to conquer them.

Resolution of a Nightmare

So much has happened since our last post, and I'm never one to tell a brief story but I'll try to be as brief as possible in explaining our nightmare of an experience with closing on our home.

We closed on Wednesday, August 6th (my 28th birthday by the way), and everything went very well at closing. Bridget was well behaved and the paperwork was all signed in about 30 minutes. The nightmare didn't begin until we were finally able to get a key to the house and get in on Thursday evening. One of the first things we noticed besides the filthy condition of the house was that the seller stole the refrigerator which was supposed to stay according to the contract. After contacting our agent we found out that the seller was out of town for an unknown amount of time and no one seemed to be able to tell us when we'd get it back for sure. This was extremely irritating because of how much of a necessity a fridge is, and that no one could give us any answers. We kept being told it would be returned by a certain time, and then it wouldn't happen. It was getting to the point that we were feeling our only option was to buy a fridge and hope that the seller would pay for it, and that's an expensive risk we really didn't want to take. At some point in the middle of the night Saturday night, part of the filthy dirty refrigerator was returned to our garage where we discovered it on Sunday (missing doors, shelves, and trays). I should also mention that the seller had failed to give us garage door openers and the gift cards we'd been promised as a credit for some other issues we'd been having with the master bath remodel. Anyway, here's what the fridge looked like:

After several more phone calls and still no real answers we were starting to feel like our only option might be to take the guy to small claims court. I ended up calling his fiance who happens to be a girl we know from the singles ward we attended. Things got more and more heated and emotional as we talked until she wouldn't talk to me anymore. She said she would have the rest of the pieces delivered Sunday night, and I told her I just wanted a clean, working fridge put back where it's supposed to be. Monday mornning I got a call that the agent was at our house with the rest of the fridge, one garage door opener, and our gift cards. Then he called me a while later to say that this girl wanted to come over with some guys that night to clean the fridge, move it into the kitchen, and put it back together for us. She even brought ice cream and root beer as a peace offering. So we now have our fridge and most of the other details sorted out.

The other stressful thing that happened right after we got into the house was discovering that the swamp cooler was leaking into the master bedroom closet. Nate discovered it Friday afternoon, fixed the leak, and tried to clean up the water as best he could. Sadly, when he got to the house Saturday morning the ceiling had completely fallen in because of the weight of the wet insulation and sheet rock, so there was a giant mess all over the bedroom. Here's a picture of the closet. So now we have to get that repaired, and hopefully we won't have any more problems with the swamp cooler until we take it out in 3 weeks to put central air in.

Another piece of good news in addition to the fridge problem being resolved is that we had amazing help from family and friends on Saturday getting most of the upstairs painted. The entire upstairs was in great need of a paint job, and all 3 bedrooms and the living room got painted on Friday and Saturday. Now we have just the dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and hall to do. Thanks so much Desaray, Sabrina, Megan, Corey, Emily, Andy, Candice, Megan, Jessica, and Matt for all of your help over the weeked!

Bridget Meets Amy

Last week my friend, Amy, came to Utah for a family reunion. She was kind enough to fit us in her plans and she came for dinner and a visit. She and Bridget color-coordinated outfits that day and the picture turned out perfect.

Thanks, Amy, for taking time away from your family to visit. We can't let it be another 3 years (or was it 4) before we see each other!

If You're Happy and You Know It...

Clap Your Hands! Bridget randomly learned to clap her hands today. I've been trying to get her to do it for awhile, and all of a sudden she did it on her own. To make sure it wasn't just a fluke, we had to see if she would do it again on video, and she did:

8 Months

I really cannot believe that Bridget is 8 months old already and how quickly she's learning new things. Here are some of her accomplishments over the past month:

• She's crawling all over and getting into everything! She still doesn't crawl far distances and won't follow me from room to room, but she certainly can get around the room she's in. She loves to pull the DVDs off the shelf by the TV, and she loves to play in the bottom drawer in our kitchen that's full of plastic bags - supervised, of course.

• She tries to pull up to stand on just about anything she can, and she's getting more steady on her feet and faster at walking holding onto people's hands.

• She has 2 teeth on the bottom that are coming through but not completely there yet. Luckily she hasn't seemed to be bothered by teething much at all.

• She still loves to eat everything I give her, but especially enjoys when I share what I'm eating with her like little bites of banana or graham crackers. She's also finally figured out how to eat Gerber cereal puffs without trying to swallow them too quickly and actually "chews" them with her gums now.

• She learned how to hold her bottle herself and also enjoys drinking water out of a sippy cup and even a real cup when we share with her.

• She loves to blow raspberries and also babbles quite a bit. Right now she says "da" a lot, and it even comes out "da da" sometimes which makes Nate happy.

The Joys of Parenthood

Lately Bridget has developed a liking for sucking on her bottom lip, and some days she likes it so much that she does it nearly all day long. Of course, a picture of her would not be complete without some drool. I should also mention that Bridget's first tooth (bottom right) finally started coming through today!

This is definitely not an attractive picture of me, but the horrified look on my face is because Bridget had just been climbing all over me and then decided to spit up all over my neck and chest - and not just a little bit. Nate was laughing so hard that he decided to grab the camera while he was grabbing a burp cloth for me. Let's just say I am eagerly awaiting the day she stops spitting up, and it's a good thing she's so cute so I can put up with it.

Crawling

Bridget is officially crawling today. She's not particularly fast and sometimes she uses a combination of techniques (scooting, army crawling, reaching) to get to what she wants, but she did some real crawling for the first time today. You can watch her in action:

More House Details

Since Nate failed to post any details about the house, here you go...

The house is 1792 square feet and has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. The basement is a finished laundry room/bathroom and family room. The yard is just under 1/4 acre and has a garden for me to spend my afternoons and evenings.

We are close to a golf course and the Roy aquatic center and in what appears to be a quiet neighborhood (we hope this holds true).

Our House...

So, we finally did it--we bought a house!

When all is said and done (and everything passes inspection, etc.) we will close on August 6th (Kimberly's birthday) and hope to be able to move in during the next week. We are excited to start this new adventure and scared to death to be putting down roots, no matter how shallow, in Roy.

Although we don't have an exterior picture (one will be added soon), here are some interior ones Kimberly snapped during one of our quick visits:

Bridget & Mason

A few weeks ago one of my college roommates, Danny, came to town (along with his wife, April, and son, Mason). We were lucky enough to arrange some time to get together and it was entertaining to watch Bridget and Mason interact.

I was nice to reconnect and I guess we now owe them a trip to Albany, NY sometime in the future...

Rather than repost pictures, here's a link to their post: Mason and Bridget. Enjoy!

Montana Vacation

We're finally back from our long trip to Montana, and it's so good to be home again. We left on July 2nd and drove to Idaho Falls to stay with our friends Dustin & Emily for the night before heading to Kalispell and Big Fork, MT the following day. We were trying to make it in time for a BBQ dinner that was part of the pre-wedding festivities for Nate's brother Brant's wedding, but we ended up not making it.

Friday we just hung around the hotel until it was time to head to Big Fork for the wedding. We had a big downpour of rain that evening, but luckily it stopped in time since the wedding was outside. We don't have any pictures from the wedding because we forgot our camera at the hotel and we never really saw much of the bride and groom anyway. I was too busy with Bridget during the ceremony to take pictures, and Nate was up front looking handsome in his tux. After the ceremony the bride and groom were off taking pictures for almost 2 hours, and we had to leave to go put Bridget to bed shortly after they came back. It was a nice wedding, but it was too bad it was somewhat disorganized and the location was too small to accommodate everyone comfortably. It was the first time I'd been to Flathead Lake, Kalispell, and Big Fork, so it was fun to see new places.

On Saturday we headed back to Nate's parents' house and basically just spent the next week hanging out and relaxing.

Bridget loved being outside and enjoyed Grandma and Grandpa's huge yard. You can see the nice creek behind her in this picture.

Bridget got to help Grandpa mow the lawn

Bridget played with her cousins Tanner and Jaxon a few times.

Another one of Bridget's accomplishments while we were away was learning how to get from her tummy to a sitting position by herself on Thursday, July 10th. Here's a video of it:

On Saturday the 12th, we headed to Great Falls for my friend Angie's wedding. Angie was one of my best friends in high school, and we hadn't seen each other in a few years. I also got to see my friend Emily from high school, and she was kind enough to let us stay with her that night.

Me, Angie, and Emily

As an added bonus, my brother and his partner were in Great Falls for Mark's high school reunion, so we met up with them for lunch that day at my favorite pizza place of all time - MacKenzie River Pizza. Here's a picture of Bridget meeting Uncles Mark and Mark for the first time.

We were very ready to make the return trip home yesterday but had one more stop to make in Pocatello, ID to visit one of my friends from BYU, Marshall, his wife Krista and their two kids.

Bridget did really well with all the traveling. She slept well in all the different places and did really well on all the long rides in the car. But it's so great to finally be home!

My Domestic Side

When Bridget isn't demanding my attention (and that's not very often) I like to spend my spare time in the kitchen or sewing. I just finished her Christmas stocking a few days ago - it only took me 4 months of working on it little bits at a time. And today while she was napping I whipped up a devils food cake with chocolate frosting, chocolate mint ganache, and Andes mints for Nate's coworker's birthday. And when we get back from our vacation in a couple of weeks, I have to find time to alter a wedding dress for one of my former students who's getting married in August.