Growing too fast!

Dan reading to the boys.

Elliott is growing by leaps and bounds. Once he learns something, he works on the next. Since I last blogged in Dec, he learned to army crawl just before he was 6 months, two weeks later was crawling on hands and knees, and somewhere in the midst of that work, was sitting up on his own. Just this past week he has learned to pull himself to a stand. I don't think it will take him that long to start cruising. I think his older brother inspires him. He just wants to go play with Dono, and to do that he needs to move around faster.

Dono wearing Dracula teeth.

I'll Do It Myself

It's been a long time since I last blogged, sorry. I will back-track. I've been quite busy. Looking back I can't recall what took so much time besides getting my ideas and reading done for my book club and covering my couches.

My couch covers. (Don't they look great?)

My mom helped me get the patterns right and helped me get started. I am very happy with the results. Now I can change the pillow colors if I want and no more couch stuffing is poking out. Yeah!

But as for the title of this blog, Donovan is going through a phase where he has to do everything himself.

This is the face I sometimes get when I want to get things done quickly but Dono disagrees. He has also figured out how to put his own socks on (which took a while to figure out). Now he puts on not only his socks, but any socks that happen to be lying around.

Cabin Getaway

On Jan 26th/27th I got to get away (with Elliott of course) with some friends to Emily's cabin up in Strawberry, AZ. It was cold and wonderful! There were patches of snow everywhere, but who was outside? I think there were 16 ladies and 4 nursing babies that joined our retreat. We had tons of junk to eat, fun facials, and lots of games and talking. LOTS of talking! It was around 2:30am when someone finally said what time it was, and we weren't even tired! I went to bed around 5:30am because I knew Elliott would wake up around 7:30 and I knew I wouldn't function if I didn't get some sleep. Here are some crazy pics. (Thank you for bringing your camera Whitney! I hope you don't mind my stealing these from your blog.)

Emily Campbell

Mari Ashby

Jen Mix

Mari, Amy Webb, me

Kim and Stanton Curry

Whitney Dibble

Myra Johnson, Stacy Reading, Brook Cook

Of course at every slumber party there has to be a prank. Nobody wanted to be the first one to go to bed for fear that their bra would be frozen. Well, that wasn't quite what happened. Unfortunately Stacy left her bag unattended. During the short snoozing, her bra was swiped and ended up frozen stiff, even though she wasn't the first down. It was great to see such a good sport about it.

I had a great time. Thanks Em and Whitney for putting it all together!

Welcome Baby Anderson!

Little Balen Anderson was born on Monday Jan. 8th (two weeks early). Weighing in just a little over 6 pounds -which isn't a surprise because Yumi is so tiny. The funny thing is that we went out with Yumiko and Shawn the Sat. before so Dan could try "good" sushi. I asked Yumi if she was ready to give birth and she said no, that she had two weeks left and so much to do still. I told her that Elliott was two weeks early, so she could go at any time. Well, it would seem that prepared or not, sometimes babies will just come.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! We spent New Year's Eve at home playing games and watching movies. Most of our friends have to put kids to bed so they couldn't come over and we also have kids to put to bed, so we didn't want to go anywhere either. Oh well, it was fun just the four of us.

As tradition allows, we made resolutions for the new year. I always try to choose something I really want to do and that is realistic, not something that will stop because I'm a weakling. So, I have chosen to be healthier. Dan and I have slowly started eating healthier (we still can eat junk, just not that often) more veggies and fruits and grains that are not enriched. We don't usually eat meat except for chicken and that's only occasionally, so that helps. I also want to loose this baby fat. I'm not giving myself a certain weight amount or inches, I'm just going to exercise to make me feel better. If I loose weight, it's all that much better. I just don't want to be huffing and puffing when I run or climb up hills. Dan and I gave each other bikes for Christmas. So once I teach Dan how to ride, we'll use those to exercise too.

Dan resolved to do something every month that he's never done before.

On New Year's Day we took the Hale family to the zoo. While there we saw so many friends who had the same idea. It was lots of fun.

Dan w/Elliott & Donovan, Rebecca & Spencer w/Kaitlyn & Rachel

Rachel & Donovan at the elephant exhibit.

The peacock that was running around the zoo.