Festiveness

We have really been on top of our decorations for Christmas this year. Last year we didn't put up anything because I was sick and pregnant... This year we put everything up the day after Thanksgiving. Dubs loved watching us decorate and he really likes the tree.

Here is the "famous" bookshelf and the top of the piano (most of it, anyway). Sad to say, this is my LEAST favorite bookshelf decoration. I don't know what to do with it during Christmas and Winter.... I have been searching Pinterest for ideas...so if anyone finds anything great...let me know!!

We decided to start something different with our tree...normally we decorate it with all my late-Grandma's crystal decorations, which are awesome. But we wanted to add our own touch to the tree. So I found a ton of cute decorations at Hobby Lobby. Our tree is now all red berries, red birds, white birds and white owls. LOVE it. Here are just a couple varieties of the birds and owls:

Here is the tree! Finished with a Mickey Mouse Santa Hat on top.

And the BEST picture of a baby with Santa you will EVER see.... I guarantee 100% satisfaction:

I can't believe how cute, handsome, adorable, perfect, funny and happy my baby is. Honestly!! I don't know why I am so blessed...but I am thankful that I am. Here he is at 6 months.

We are excited for the Holiday Season! We have been festive so far and will continue to do so. It makes it so much more fun when you have a child. They just get excited about everything.

What REALLY Matters...

{http://kcblake.com/pages/Lone%20Flower.htm}

This last week has really opened my eyes... and this happens quite often with me: I will forget what REALLY matters in my life until something jolts me and I am reminded that the little things I obsess over and hold grudges about do not matter. I am not one to really hold a "grudge", however if someone has truly hurt me- I have a hard time forgetting that. I don't try to continue being offish or mean about the situation, but I will think about the situation a lot, dwell on it and continue to have hurt feelings often until one day I just don't think about it anymore. I know this is not healthy behavior and I truly try to get over things quickly...its just my personality. It's also my personality to beat myself up over a situation and never forgive myself for the mistakes I make. The point to my ramblings is this:

Life is too short and too precious to hold onto any negative feelings

I try to keep my blog an upbeat and happy place...obviously this is not the way life is ALL the time, and its not the way MY life is all the time. I have hard times, stressful situations, heartache, worries and sadness just like all of you. This week my brother's father-in-law found out he has cancer. This has been such an extreme blow to their family and to all their friends and family as you can imagine. My heart breaks for them and my prayers and thoughts are centered around them. It makes me realize that all the silly things I stress and worry about and dwell on do not matter in the big scheme of things. It brings my life into perspective. What matters is who I love, how I treat them and everyone around me, and the GOOD things I do in my life. I want to be a good person, mom, and wife. I want to love everyone and be happy! I want to be a good influence and example... I want to let things go! I don't want to dwell on the little things, I want to focus on the big picture. So many people in my life are excellent examples of all the positive things I want to be and I thank them for that! I hope we can all focus on the good things in our life and may the bad things leave quickly.

Anniversary & AuTuMn

This past week was our 3 year anniversary! I can not believe how different our lives are just from 3 years ago. We LOOK so different (ha ha), we have a baby, we have done so many things: bought a home, Scott has finished his Masters, I started school... man, I just can't believe it. I LOVE our life tho and I wouldn't trade it for anything. To celebrate we went out to dinner and got massages. We also exchanged a couple small gifts. I have the best husband ever and I am so blessed in my life. Happy 3 Years love!

All of you know by now that I LOVE to decorate my home... I am constantly switching out my decor and I am so excited for this upcoming season. Fall is my favorite and this year I decided to decorate with pumpkins and owls- my new obsession. So of course, here are the before and afters...


All my owls!!!


My mother-in-law is the sweetest and found me this Owl plug in at Bath and Body Works.... ah! I love it!!
And in our bedroom I decorate the wall with different art... here is winter, spring and summer...


And here is fall- more owls!


My sister and I are in a crafty mood so we are going to make some pillows. I am going to make an owl pillow to match the wall art and I am making a coupe bird pillows to match my summer and spring decor. I am so excited! We bought the fabric- so I will start working on them asap and post when I am done! Can you tell I am really excited for fall? ;)

Dubs

I am very slow... I am finally getting around to talking about William's photo shoot he had when he was 3 weeks old!!! (He is now almost 3 months old...) My friend Maddie came up to our home and took some precious pictures of my sweet baby. I love that we were able to get these done at home in his nursery and in our room. It makes them extra special. I am only posting a few of my favorites...but check out Maddie's blog to see some more!

http://www.maddiethomasphotography.com/2011/baby-william/

I love these sweet faces he pulls... he is such a calm and happy baby. I can't believe he was once this small because at 3 months old, he looks like a small 2 year old now!

Here he is in my room, with his stuffed animal collection. My Nana (William's great grandma) gave me her entire collection of Classic Pooh Bear animals. I have LOVED it for as long as I can remember. We have all the characters: Pooh Bear, Owl, Kanga/Roo, Eeyore, Piglet and Tigger.

Let me first say that I was NOT planning on getting my picture taken that day... but I LOVE the snapshots Maddie got of me holding him. They turned out to be some of my absolute favorites. And I don't even care that I wasn't ready or dressed up for them, I just love to see the way my little man makes me glow and smile and I really love to see him in my arms. And here is his crib. Maddie got some great shots of his nursery...all classic pooh bear (even the wallpaper!) I love them. Thanks Maddie and Lee for all the great pictures- they are a treasure to me!

These last couple of pictures I found on my Father-In-Law's camera. He bought a fancy new camera that takes amazing pictures and I had to steal these from him. This one is of William and I at Grandma Webb's house. She is William's great-grandma that passed away just a few days after William was born. I can't get enough of that sweet face of his!! He is seriously a mini-Scott and Scott is the most handsome man ever of course!

We spend a lot of time up in my in-laws field on Sundays when we go visit the family. The nieces love to run and play and ride the four-wheeler. I was trying out this new harness I got for Dubs and Scott snapped this precious photo.

Needless to say, he loves that thing and sleeps the whole time. Some mom's wear these everywhere they go...I can't get myself to use it very often, but it is pretty handy!

I can't believe how much he has grown... He is now starting to be very interactive which I love. He smiles lots and even laughs when you tickle under his chin or arms. He "talks" all the time and loves to watch his toys- he's not grabbing them yet but he kicks them! I will post more recent photos of my man soon. We are hoping to take some family pictures this weekend. Hope everyone has a good week!

Drive In

First and foremost.... are these not THE most handsome boys you have ever seen?? I am the luckiest girl in the world!

Anyhow, this summer lots of great movies have come out and unfortunately we can't go to the movies anymore like normal people. However we have discovered that the drive in is AWESOME for William cause he just sleeps in the cozy car and we still get to see all the new and exciting movies. A couple weekends ago we went to see Harry Potter with Aunt Bri! It was a blast and I loved the movie. We have also seen Pirates and X Men at the drive in this summer.

Our Family:

Aunt Bri! Little William just loves her and we love it when she hangs out with us!

Not much else has been going on this summer. Today was the first time I have laid out at all....it is terrifying how white I am. And after all our outdoor time William and I were sitting in bed having a discussion that ended with him giving me some of these precious things:

How do you not love that face? I want to pinch and kiss those cheeks til I die. And that dimple??? I love him.

My Sister

This post is waaaaay over due. Back in August my good friend Kari offered to do a fun photo shoot with me and my sister "Boots". My sister LOVES posing for pictures and modeling, so she was all for this idea. We had such a blast and Kari did such a great job! I believe she has her own photography business and if anyone is interested in her services let me know and I can get you her info!

I am definitely not as cute as my little sis Boots- but I love these pictures anyway and I am glad my sister and I can be best friends. We have such a good time together and we are always laughing.

Here she is- what a skinny, cute, model!


Some more of us trying to be serious, but I can never pull it off as well as she can. I was constantly laughing and Kari was desperately trying to snap shots in between all the giggling. Good work Kari- you are a trooper!
This part of the evening was pretty neat! Boots was lovin the silhouette look- and she got tons of cute pictures but I picked the best one of her and the best one of both of us.

Our last shots of the night were Boots' idea. She got me this cute matching t-shirt and she wanted to do some fun angled photos. Pretty cute.


And the woman of the hour--- KARI! Isn't she adorable? We met about a year ago in Biology class at the University of Utah (I love this school by the way) and I am so happy we are friends. She is so cute and talented and smart. We have a great time together (even though I haven't seen her in a while :( Sad stuff) and I just adore her! Thanks for the great photo shoot Kari!

Lots of Stuff...

I have missed the blogging world pretty much all summer long. We have done so much and I don't have a lot of photos for your enjoyment, but I will share our summer stories! We haven't been able to go on a lot of vacations because of school, but we have done some fun things. Back in July my family went on their annual Lake Powell trip that Scott and I had to skip this year. However, my boss randomly decided to go camping so I left Scott at home and drove down by myself for 1 night. I had a blast swimming, boating, tubing, having a huge camp fire, exploring the cave by our houseboat and spending time with my family.

The day after I got home Scott and I drove up to Idaho to visit our nieces and see them perform in their parade and their town play. We had a blast visiting them and our niece Sarah did such a great job! Another short trip we made was to Colorado to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. I have never been there before and I really enjoyed it. Scott's favorite band of all time, Primus is touring and they haven't done so in about 7 years. So we made the 9 hour drive- watched their awesomely fun concert- and turned around and drove right back. I love Primus as well and they throw a pretty good concert. The next night in Salt Lake, they played another show. Of course we went to that as well! We went with our buddies Todd and Dano. Super fun.

The Red Rocks Amphitheater

That weekend was sooo super busy, it was just go-Go-GO. After our concerts, the next day was our niece Aria's birthday! She is such a cute girl. Every year we throw a big party in Scott's parents field and they rent one of those big blow-up water slides. This year we also had a cotton candy machine and that was a big hit! We had fun playing all day and eating lots of good food. Believe it or not- Scott and I dared go down this slide. It was hilarious. Happy Birthday sweet Aria!



One of the last things I have to update about is our trip to the Children's Museum. I have wanted to spend time with my nieces all Summer and we finally had a day available. We decided to go to the Children's Museum at the Gateway mall. We had a blast playing around and exploring the helicopter and everything else there. Aren't they the cutest things you have ever seen??