I Love Halloween!

Reason #1: Carving pumpkins!

Nick's scary face guy.

My scaredy cat.

Wedge's self portrait.

And Shasta's bat.

Her bat is my favorite!

Then my cat of course!

I couldn't get a good picture of Nick's or Wedge's pumpkins so this is all you get.

Nick did the boys and I did the girls.

Reason #2: The decorations!

Spider egg sack!!!!! Love this guy!

Pretty much the extent of my decorating this year. I put spider webs on the fence, but the wind and rain ruined it so it wasn't worth taking a picture.

Reason #3: The food!

Spaghetti Brains, Breadstick Bones, Tiki Punch Blood, And the dirt and worms pudding grave site they came out of!

Aren't Halloween treats the best?!

 Reason #4: The Trick-or-Treaters! I love all the cute kids in their costumes. I didn't take any pictures though. That might have been weird!

That's right, we handed out Shasta Sodas!

Reason #5: Being the favorite house on the block! Favorite Quote from a trick-or-treater: "Sodas?!? I can't wait for next year!" Then as they were leaving I heard one say under his breath, "Maybe we can come back and she won't recognize us!" Love it!

Second favorite moment tonight. I got a knock on the door from 4 adults that I didn't know and was worried I was supposed to recognize them. (They weren't in costumes). The blinds have been open all night and they saw our sword hanging on the wall and wanted to know if it's real. Then they asked if we collect swords. Random. Nope, it just went well with the pictures so we bought it as a decoration and yes, it's real!

This is what he was asking about. Excuse the glare from the light!

Third favorite moment from tonight:

Gotta love when you're home alone and the babe wants to eat during prime trick-or-treat hours!

Reason #6: The costumes! Unfortunately I can't post Wedge and Shasta's costumes until after this coming weekend. Our niece was born on Halloween and today is her first birthday. She's having a Halloween birthday costume party this coming Saturday and Shasta's costume is a surprise for the family. Stay tuned for it though. It's epic!

Reason #7: In Utah (or at least in Logan) the trick-or-treaters start coming as early as 5pm and by 8pm they're done! Ah! I still have the rest of my night to spend watching something Halloween-ie and blog! Homework you say? Naaah. It's Halloween!

6 Month Stats

Today Shasta had her 6 month check up and shots. Poor girl; first her ears pierced then three shots in her legs and a nasty syrup to drink. Lucky for her this week won't get any worse! Her doctor is really pleased with her progress, as usual. She's under weight in comparison to other 6 month old kids so he showed us the average weight for 4 month old kids and she's just barely under that average which is between 13 1/2 to 14 pounds. He said her development is at about a 5 month level as far as holding things and wanting to stand goes. I told him we've been working on sitting for over a month and she just doesn't seem to get it. She always straightens her legs and stiffens her body so she's forced to stand or lay down. He said most babies by 6 months old can hold themselves up for a few seconds before falling over and since she's (finally) doing that then she's technically ahead of the game for being a premie. He told us we can start giving her other baby foods (so not just rice cereal anymore) and dissolvable solids. She's growing up way too fast!

There are lots of fun things to share this month and fun pictures to go along. By 6 months:

Weight: 13lbs 1oz (5th percentile)
Height: 25 inches (23rd percentile)
Head: 16.9 inches (64th percentile) (Everyone always says their baby has a BIG head. My theory is babies heads need to grow faster than the rest of their body to get rid of their soft spots so their brains can be protected)

• Sleeps on her belly. I put her on her back and this is how I always find her when I check on her. And once I found her with her face in the mattress which was pretty funny, but made me nervous too. Good thing I could hear her breathing!

• She sure loves to stand. Especially when I try to put her in the bath. She straightens her legs and won't bend them for anything. She still loves her baths, she just loves to stand too!
  

  

  • Had her wiggly piggies painted for the second time.

•  Coos and coos and coos. If I coo at her she'll coo back, but so far that's the only copying she does.

• We've been practicing sitting up, but she is completely oblivious to it. I'm beginning to think she's never going to sit up and she's always going to have a bald spot!
  

• Fit into her first pair of store-bought shoes.

•  No clothing or diaper size changes this month. Still wears 0-3 months and size 1 diapers.

• Here's one you're dying to know...! It used to be that every diaper I changed was filled with poop. Now we're down to every third it seems and sometimes just once a day. Also, she goes to bed with a fresh diaper on and wakes up with a pretty fresh diaper on. Sometimes she's a little wet, but most mornings she wakes up dry. Hopefully that'll be the case when it comes time to potty train!
  

• Still loves her fingers and smiles more and more!

•  Holds onto toys for long periods of time, but once they fall they're out of site out of mind.

• She spits up a lot less, but still a lot more than I would like. It's less predictable now too which makes it hard. It used to be EVERY time she burped, but now it's more when she's laying on her tummy or just being held. And sometimes it's just a little and other times she's like a little milk fountain. Sigh. Someday my clothes won't be covered in baby spit.

  

  • I LOVE this picture! They're both looking right at the camera! She rolls to her belly EVERY time she's on the floor. For a while she couldn't remember how to flip back over to her back, but she pretty much has it mastered now. She struggles to get her arm out from under her, but I have a feeling before I know it she'll be crawling! PS. I love her little feet in the air. Super cute!

• Watches Wedge, tries to grab his tail, when she gets a hold of him she tries to bring him to her mouth (as if he were one of her toys), and has laughed at him a few times! Funny story: one night she was laying on the floor in front of me and he was sniffing around her face. She grabbed hold of his ear and he tried to get away only to find she had a death grip on him and the more he tried to run the more his ear got tugged on. (He's really sensitive about his ears). It resulted in him yelping "in pain" right by her face since he couldn't get away, her having no idea there was a problem, making the saddest face, and then bursting into tears. I couldn't stop laughing and it was sad that nobody could share in the humor with me. Retelling it is never as good as actually witnessing it.

• Got a new toy (but her feet don't reach the floor yet). Also wore tights to church for the first time and they were pretty much huge. Supposedly they're for 0-6 months.

•  Started getting tears when she cries. :(

• I've noticed she's quite the talker when we're at home, but once we're somewhere else she's pretty quiet. We were at a friends house almost the whole day one Saturday and she hardly made a peep. Same when we're at Nick's parents house. I guess she prefers to make noise when it's quiet so she can hear herself and when it's just her, Wedge, and me at home it's pretty quiet.
  

• Had gel put in her hair instead of baby lotion to style it.

•  Everything she holds goes straight to her mouth.

• She goes down for naps really well; doesn't cry and talks to herself (makes her tired noises) until she falls asleep. Unfortunately, going to bed for the night isn't as smooth. Our bedtime routine is rice cereal, bath, nurse, sing I am a Child of God, pray, and lay her down. Most nights she falls asleep while nursing, but some nights she's awake through the whole routine and then cries and cries once I lay her down. Sometimes I can get her to take a pacifier, but she spits it out within 20 seconds and then cries again. I don't have the heart to let her cry it out, I think she's too little for that. If I nurse her again she'll go back to sleep, but it's definitely not the same as nap time where she'll just go to sleep on her own. We have a night light in her room, but I wonder if the difference is she's afraid of the dark.

• Tried rice cereal for the first time.

• Makes tired noises and if I put her down for a nap before she's fallen asleep she'll lay in bed and make those noises until she's asleep.

• She growls a lot. She growls while I feed her rice cereal, while she gets her diaper changed, while she's laying on the floor, while she's in the car, while I change her clothes, and with pretty much anything she doesn't like.

• Had her first side pony tail

• Loves her toys

• Has developed a new obsession with my hair. Every time I carry her down the stairs especially she puts her hand on the back of my head and more or less pets me. It's super cute! But then again everything she does is super cute!

• Slept through the night for the first time and so far has been sleeping at least 6 hours every night since. Don't worry though, she doesn't usually sleep in my bed. This was after she got up way too early and went back to sleep. I just thought it was cute that all three of them were sleeping together.

• Has reverse old man hair. She has a lot of hair on top, but due to her bald spot and her hair thinning there's almost nothing on the sides. She looks like she's wearing a toupee.

• Got her ears pierced

Bizarre Missionary Experience

I've gone back and forth with whether or not I should post this, but I've decided it won't hurt anything to share this story. Nick and I had a really bizarre experience on Sunday and we kind of feel like we're going to start having these kinds of encounters more often. I feel like this is something someone would say they heard happened in their Uncle's friend's cousin's ward, but it actually happened to me in my very own ward. Here's what happened:

Our ward meetings are reversed. We have classes first and Sacrament Meeting last. There's a ward in the chapel that clears out for us to go in, so in the process there's a lot of people standing around. I found a nice, cozy spot in the middle section on an end closest to the mother's room. I noticed there were a LOT of visitors so I asked Nick if there was a baby blessing, but he didn't know. I should probably mention that we're in a married/student ward, so visitors tend to stand out if they're younger than 19 and older than 35! The pew we were sitting on filled up with visitors so I turned to the guy sitting next to me and asked him if there was a blessing today. He said he had no idea, he was just visiting from California. (But it turned out there was also a baby blessing). We talked for a while and then right before the meeting started he mentioned that this was his first time coming to one of our meetings so he wanted to ask me a question. *Insert sudden pounding heart* All he asked was how we get all of our wards through our building. Phew! That's easy enough. Our church is unique as it has TWO chapels in it so we're able to get 8 wards (our entire stake) through our building every Sunday. I told him how it worked and why 4 wards have their meetings reversed in order to fit everyone in and then Sacrament started so that was the end of our conversation.

Throughout the whole meeting I felt really excited to be sitting next to someone who had never been to our church before. I listened extra closely to the talks which seemed so inspired for the potential investigators sitting in our congregation. They spoke on baptism, the holy ghost, and Joseph Smith. I kept wondering what he was thinking and I knew as soon as the meeting was over I was going to engage in more conversation with him. Sure enough, once the meeting ended I asked him what made him decide to come to our church when he said he was visiting from California and had never been to one of our services before. He said about 25 of them came from California to visit a friend in Logan. They went to Temple Square on Saturday so naturally they thought coming to our meeting was the next thing to do to see what we were all about.

We had a really pleasant conversation for about half an hour and Nick and I answered a lot of his questions. He had a copy of his bible with him and also a copy of the Book of Mormon. He talked with us about scriptures that the Sister Missionaries shared with him and asked us questions about the gospel and about us personally, like what we're going to school for and what not. He was really friendly and easy to talk to. Then about half way through 4 women came and joined him who were also from California and just as friendly. They seemed pretty disappointed that Sacrament meeting was last because they wanted to go to Sunday school. Finally, Nick said we should probably get going and made sure they had given their information to the Sister Missionaries to have missionaries come see them in California.

I left feeling on top of the world. I didn't serve a mission and it's not often that I have missionary experiences where I get to talk to someone who doesn't know much about what we believe in so it was really exciting to me. I kept thinking of all the things I wish I would have shared with them and what more I could have done. I even wished I had invited them over for dessert or something so we could talk more. I didn't want the experience to end.

Nick, however, had different feelings about it. He served his mission in Seattle and has had several experiences with people who like to bible bash. We went home and analyzed the situation and I still felt like their intentions were good and Nick was making a positive experience into a negative one. But the more we talked about it the more I realized it was too good to be true and they probably did have an agenda. There were just too many things that made me feel that way after talking about it more with Nick.

Nick's a ward missionary and happened to have a meeting later that day with the other missionaries and learned that someone else had the same experience we had with three men (one being the same guy we talked to). The person in our ward that talked with them recognized one of the guys that stands on Utah State's campus and preaches to the students as they pass by. Somehow these people from California are affiliated with this group that preaches on campus.

The guy we talked to was a pretty talented bible basher. He seemed so sincere in his questions and would talk about specific scriptures in the Book of Mormon and say why it was confusing to him because it seemed to contradict scriptures in the Bible. I didn't ask him what version his bible was even though I wanted to and he never said what church he attends in San Diego, but he talked about it a few times.

The weirdest part to me was thinking about his original question before the meeting started. "I've never been to one of your meetings before so can I ask you a question? How do you get all your wards through your building?" Seems like a fairly odd question for someone to ask when there could have been a million other things for him to wonder about. When we finally finished our conversation and left I noticed the women went and sat in the foyer and later learned the guy went and talked with those other two men to someone else in our ward for an hour. But I feel like he asked me how we get all our wards through our building to learn what times the other wards start so they could attend as many meetings as they could and talk with as many people as they could. I feel like our entire stake had this really strange experience, and I don't know if they actually did, it just seems that way.

Here are the facts:

• 25 people came from California (a 14 hour drive) to "visit a friend in Logan"
• while here they decided to visit Temple Square and felt attending our church was the next step
• He had a copy of our Book of Mormon with him that I assumed the Sister Missionaries gave him, but Nick and I both noticed there were a lot of notes written in the front and he had a few scriptures highlighted throughout the book.
• He seemed pretty knowledgeable with the scriptures he kept referring to in the Book of Mormon. It wasn't so much that he knew the whole book, but he definitely knew which scriptures he wanted to talk about.
• He kept claiming that the scriptures he had questions about were scriptures the Sister Missionaries shared with him at Temple Square, but Nick knew those particular scriptures wouldn't be something the Sisters talked about during a first encounter with a potential investigator. Maybe after several discussions, but not on day one.
• He remembered a lot of details that we shared with him about us including using our names after only telling him once. Maybe that's a weird point, but it just seemed strange considering it was a casual conversation and we would never see each other again.
• He kept making points and asking questions that we didn't fully know how to answer without him having a better understanding of other aspects of the things we believe in.

After all was said and done I feel like he was trying to plant a seed; like he wanted me to listen to the points that he made and question what I believe in. I've felt pretty frustrated about it too. I went from having this really neat missionary experience and feeling really good about how I answered his questions to feeling like he came into my place of worship and tried to bring things to my attention that I may not have questioned before. I've even felt a little violated, similar to how I would feel if someone broke into my house and went through my personal belongings. I couldn't imagine going to someone else's place of worship and try to coax their thoughts to show them that what they believe in isn't true.

The good news is this experience has strengthened my testimony. I've realized I may not have all the answers or fully understand everything that we believe in, but I have faith in Heavenly Father and I know what I believe in is true. The guy asked us what we liked the most about our church. Nick answered his question and it didn't circle back to me so I didn't get the chance to answer, but what came to my mind first was the way I live my life because I have the gospel. If nothing else, I'm a better person because of what I believe in and there is nothing wrong with that. I can understand why so many people hate "the Mormons" after taking a stand on Prop 8, but at the end of the day, what's so bad about being good? Why are we protested against so often when we are a Christ-worshiping people who want nothing more than to become like Him?

Nick and I could be making something out of nothing, and I really hope that we are, but I wanted to share our story to first, make people aware that something like this can happen even in our own church buildings, and second, find out if anyone has any similar stories.What are your thoughts on the matter? Would you have handled things differently?

Happy Half Birthday to Shasta!

Shasta is 6 months old as of yesterday. I've decided I want to celebrate half birthdays, but I had a hard time deciding how. A Mad Hatter's Tea Party sounds SO fun, but doing it for every half birthday every year is a lot and loses it's excitement so I had to think of something else. I wanted it to be something fun and different and a little silly, but nothing was coming to mind. Finally it hit me. A half birthday means a half celebration. Half a serving for dinner, a glass half full to drink, half a piece of dessert, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, yesterday was so busy that we didn't actually hold true to our new found tradition. In fact, I didn't even bother making dinner because I had a meeting that started at the same time Nick comes home for his break so he said not to worry about it. And I had intentions of making rice crispie treats as our half birthday dessert and didn't even get that done.

We did, however, do two things to celebrate Shasta's half birthday. First were her presents. They were things she was in need of and nothing she'll find exciting. Once she grows out of the clothing size she's in she doesn't have any dresses in the next size up so I got her two dresses. She also doesn't have very many warm clothes in her size or the next size up so I picked up two long sleeve onesies for her.

The biggest part about today was I GOT HER EARS PIERCED! Yes, it's true. I took away a piece of her innocence today. My family is pro piercing ears while they're still little and Nick's family isn't necessarily against it, but there are 6 other nieces and none have done it so far. In other words, I was for it and Nick was against it. Since day one of our marriage I've said I want to pierce my girls' ears when they're babies and he's always said not a chance. Last week I left him a note telling him Shasta and I went to get her ears pierced. We didn't really, but I needed to know what kind of trouble I was up against for when I did it on her half birthday. Surprisingly, he wasn't mad about it at all, but part of that may have been because he saw her ears weren't actually pierced. Then the whole week I talked about getting it done on her half birthday constantly and he never said one way or the other how he felt. Finally, on Saturday I asked him straight out if he was going to say he was okay with me going through with it because even though I planned on doing it, I still wanted him to be okay with it. He told me he wasn't going to give me his blessing, but he wasn't going to stop me. That was good enough for me!

Before

After

She cried, but not very long and then she didn't care anymore. The lady doing it kept telling me to hold her head really still so she could put dots on her ears so she knew where to pierce them. Shasta was not a fan of being held down. The more I held her the more she wiggled and fought me and the more the lady kept telling me to hold her tighter. Finally, I stopped holding her head altogether and just let her play with my hand and she held perfectly still. For a six month old she did as good as could be expected. All in all I'm glad it's done and I don't have to beg Nick to give into me anymore! :)

What Did We Do Today?

Shasta spent the afternoon in Mom's Salon! And then we had a little photo shoot!

And She Finally Slept Through The Night

I jumped out of bed at 8 this morning and ran into Shasta's room in a panic. I put her to bed at 10 last night and never heard her again so I had to make sure she was still breathing. Usually she's up at least twice during the night so you can understand my concern. Either I never heard her cry (which is highly unlikely) or she's finally sleeping through the night. *Insert happy dance*

Yesterday morning she didn't get up until 6:45 and I thought that was just a fluke, but this morning she slept until 8:15 when I woke her up because I couldn't wait any longer to feed her. She slept for 10 hours! I've never gone that long without feeding her. I think I had 3 meals worth of milk ready for her. After I fed her I still had to pump just to feel comfortable again and still pulled out 6 more ounces. Holy have some milk batman! Anyway, for getting so much sleep she sure was grumpy this morning. By 9:50 she was asleep in my arms and by 10 she was back in bed for a nap

I think I owe all the credit to fruit mix rice cereal. Two nights ago I switched to the fruit mix to see if she'd eat more than the plain stuff. Needless to say she HATED it! She made some of the funnest faces and she spit every bite back out. There was rice cereal everywhere. That night she slept from 10-6:45. Then last night we did half fruit mix with half plain rice cereal so it wouldn't be quite so strong and she still hated it. She gagged and coughed and shuttered until she, the Bumbo, the counter, and my hands were covered in it. I doubt if she actually swallowed more than a spoonful or two. Then she slept from 10pm until 8:15am! Hallelujah! Nick thinks it's her way of saying she hates the fruit flavored rice cereal so much that she has to sleep off the torture and prove she'll be good so she won't have to eat anymore!

On a sadder note. Because she was making so many funny faces and growling at me with every bite, I decided to pull out the camera and record it. About two minutes in the camera beeped at me so I looked to see what was wrong and it said the memory was full. Later I went to watch what I got on camera and all but 4 of my videos are no longer on the memory stick. Luckily they're the first 4 recordings of her when she was super tiny at two months old, but they weren't the first 4 recordings on the camera which seems really strange to me. I pull out the video camera at least twice a month and record a few minutes of something fun she's doing or a new milestone in her life, and all of those moments are now gone. Please tell me someone knows how to get those videos back??? Nick tried, but he thinks they're gone for good. I'm really hoping he's wrong.

More Funny Things Nick Says

• He always gets the door for me, but when we were leaving the grocery store I put the cart away and he thought he'd pick me up rather than wait for me to get back. I got back before he backed out of the parking space so I knocked on the window for him to open it from the inside.

Him (from inside the car): "Open the door. It's unlocked."
Me: Still waiting...
Him: Finally opens the door.
Me: "I can't touch the handle, it has poison on it!"
Him: "What makes you think I wanted you to touch the handle?"
Me: (Quoting him) "Open the door. It's unlocked."
Him: "Oh, yes. That's pretty good evidence."

• Nick always hand writes in a notebook before typing anything up. Seems like more work to me, but I guess it's just the dedicated writer in him. Anyway as he was taking forever writing a post for my blog titled, "The Deeper Meaning Behind Football #1", I said:

Me: "How long is this post gonna be?"
Him: "When have you known me not to write a lot. That's why I don't write you more letters because they would be 4 and 5 pages long."
Me: "Sure sure. Likely excuse."

• When we pulled into the church parking lot there were 3 girls having a meeting under the pavilion by the parking lot. In the grass a couple of feet away was a seagull watching the girls in a frozen stare. Nick said,

"Do you think the seagull is part of the meeting?"

• (When I first typed this up I called the seagull a pelican. When I showed the post to Nick he didn't notice it was wrong. Later he said the Pigeon moment would have been better with a picture (totally true, it was priceless!). I corrected him and said Pelican. Then he said it was a Seagull because he wondered if it was Johnathon (anyone who's read the book (or seen the movie) will get that one).)

• I undercooked the brownies... again. When Nick ate some he said we have to call them Browniesh (brown-eesh), as in Brownies-ish because they're not quite brownies.

• After watching the pilot episode of Friday Night Lights Nick said:

Him: "I don't think I'll be watching many more of those episodes"
Me: "Yeah, I didn't like the camera shots."
Him: "It's not that. I think I'd cry too much!"

• I was taking a shower before Nick got out of bed one morning and dropped a bottle which caused a loud, crashing thud. Nick jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom to see if I was okay. I didn't think much of it at the time, but later I asked him if he was in such a panic because he thought I fell. His response:

"Yes, and I had no idea how I would tell people you died in the shower."

• There's a duet by Reba McEntire and Linda Davis called "Does He Love You" that my sister and I like to sing together. In the song, Reba is the wife and Linda is the other woman and they're both in love with the same man. (Not the best song for two sisters to sing, but we love it!) Anyway, I was singing it in the car and after singing the line:

I'll never see his face in the early morning light
You have his mornings, his day times
And sometimes I have his nights

Nick said:
"What's so special about this guy you two are fighting over? He obviously doesn't even have a job if he's spending all his time with the two of you."

Shasta's First Studio Photo Shoot

I debated on whether or not to put up all the pictures from her photo shoot because we paid a small fortune for them, but there are 22 pictures and then 23 more of the same pictures with fun things done to them. 45 pictures is a lot for one blog post! But since the pictures weren't cheap I've decided to put up a good chunk of them. My other reason is so my family can see Shasta in all her cuteness!

PS. I don't know why Blogger is being lame. All the pictures are supposed to be centered, but instead most of them are coming up on the left.

The only smile.

Seriously love this girl's hair!

A little history behind her dress. Nick's Mom made everything you see: dress, shoes, bonnet. She's SO talented! And the dress is everything I wanted. I love eyelet fabric and it was impossible to find, but Raylene still managed to make the perfect dress. And to top it off, she added little Shasta Daisies to the bonnet, dress and shoes to make it completely unique to Shasta.

You can see the little Shasta Daisies on the bonnet.

My mom bought this dress and I absolutely love it! I couldn't wait for it to fit her and then it worked out so perfectly to fit in time for her blessing pictures!

I found it annoying that the photographer turned her so you couldn't see the cute flower on her headband.

She looks like a completely different baby to me with a hat on.

 Okay, so I ended up posting all 22 original shots. Sorry to bore you with my incredibly cute child! There are only 4 more pictures to go. These are just some fun ones that we had printed.

Isn't she just the best?!? I seriously can't get enough of her and these pictures make we want to hang a shrine of her on my walls. Even though we spent way too much on these pictures (a frustrating experience where we felt we were taken advantage of) I'm glad we have them. I think it will be fun to do professional pictures of her blessing dress, baptism dress, and obviously wedding dress. Now I just need to get crackin' on her scrapbook!