Shasta's 10 Months!

Here are some fun things Shasta's doing!

• Knows how to give kisses and she's either really stingy or really generous in sharing them.

• Loves to dance/bounce whenever she gets excited. The best is when she does it while I'm holding her!

• Started pulling herself up to things. It started off with low to the ground things like our banana chairs and a stepping stool, but now it's the kitchen chairs and the couches.

• Loves to eat and will try anything. Whenever she sees me eating she heads straight for me and stares at me until I share with her. I think she's learned that from Wedge!

• Started taking shorter naps.

• Got another tooth. That makes a total of 6; 4 on top and 2 on bottom.

It's not very easy trying to tickle her, snap a picture, and keep her from trying to take the camera from me!

• Thinks she needs to stand in the bathtub. It's a never ending battle every night.

• Has decided a sippy cup isn't the worst thing in the world. If I hold it she'll guzzle it down and in the last 2 days she's started to figure out that when she holds it she also has to tip it up. (We started a sippy around 6 months and she did pretty good with it, but then decided she didn't like it anymore. Now we're finally back to her liking it and figuring it out on her own).

Don't mind that the sippy's upside down. She only lets me snap one picture before she's crawling to me to get the camera, so this is the best we got.

• Loves to play with Wedge. She laughs and laughs when she's doing something she thinks is sneaky, like taking his toys from him!

• She likes to follow me around.

• Has started showing some interest in the stairs. She'll crawl over to them, but doesn't actually try to climb them. She'll just pull herself up to a standing position while holding onto the bottom step. I've tried a few times to teach her how to go up and down the stairs, but she's not interested in trying.

• Played with Play-Doh for the first time. I left it in a ziplock bag because I knew she would try to eat it and sure enough that's all she wanted to do. Eventually, I took it out of the bag for her to hold and again it went straight for her mouth and she got frustrated with me constantly stopping her. Maybe I should just let her eat some and she'll decide she doesn't like it and won't try anymore.

• Started using a curling iron to style her hair.

She started off sitting on the counter with her feet in the sink and eventually wormed her way into this position! Looks pretty cumfy! All I can say is it's a good thing she doesn't know how to turn on the water!

• Ate an entire bowl of Easy Mac in one sitting. She loves it!

• Understands the process of getting dressed by putting her arms in the sleeves or pulling her shirt down over her head to uncover her eyes.

• Understands getting out of her carseat by moving her arms to get out of the straps.

• Loves pulling all the shoes off the shoe shelf.

Maybe I should move her toy box so the shoes aren't a temptation on the way to the toys!

• Not quite ready for 6-9 month sleepers. This picture is to show she crawls right out of the legs!

Notice she just got done pulling out all the shoes.

• This girl has the longest hair on top. I think I say this every month, but seriously look at these pictures. This month the sides have really started to fill in. I also trimmed the extra long hairs around the sides for the 2nd time now since she was born!

• Has the cutest chub. I'm sad she always has to have pants on because her chubby legs are so darn adorable. (I'm also sad to always put socks on her because I just love her cute little feet!)

I took her pants off just to get a picture of her cute legs!!!

•  Has taken a liking to walking while holding my hands. Before she couldn't figure out the whole stepping process, but now that she's catching on she enjoys it a lot more.  

•  Pictures of her with Bree. Posed pictures are nearly impossible to take now. I set the camera to motion pictures so it snaps like 10 with one click and cross my fingers that at least one turns out. These are as good as it gets.

It's hard to remember if some of the things she's currently doing are new in the last month or just a continuation from the previous month. These are some of the fun things she's doing that are noteworthy, but may have been mentioned before.

• She clicks her tongue all the time and makes frog noises in the back of her throat.

• She tries to copy me when I make faces at her.

• She can be so happy and smiley when we're out shopping, but the second someone approaches us she gives them a death stare as if she's saying, "that's close enough". Then once they leave she's all smiles again.

• She gets so excited to see her dad and reaches for him when he walks in the door from work (when he comes home for dinner).

• She wakes up at 6:30 every morning to eat, is back in bed by 7, and will usually sleep until 8 or 8:30 before she's up for the day.

I forgot to put this picture up last month and I just love it! Nick put my galoshes on her and she thought that was the funnest thing. Seriously, look at that face! I love it! She's just the best!!!

Love Is In The Air

I'm anti-Valentine's Day as far as doing any kind of gift exchange. I would much rather my husband do something romantic for me because he WANTS to and not because he's OBLIGATED. We acknowledge the holiday, but don't do any type of celebration for it. This year I thought it would be fun to post about how Nick and I met since Valentine's Day is all about love! Aww!

Our story is a little crazy since he lived in Bountiful, Utah and I was from Gilbert, Arizona and we met in Nauvoo, Illinois. Nick was in Nauvoo because at the time he worked for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at the Conference Center in Salt Lake as a Master Electrician. How's that for wordy?! He helped with the lighting for all the shows performed in the Conference Center and the local pageants around Utah. In 2005 he was asked to go to Nauvoo for 6 weeks to do the lighting for the Nauvoo Pageant.

I had spent the last 5 summers in Nauvoo because my parents owned a Bed and Breakfast there and after I graduated high school I moved there to go to school. I worked in a restaurant where Nick's crew ate breakfast every morning and then I volunteered at the pageant site every night. Needless to say, we crossed paths several times.

Nick wasn't one for coming to the restaurant for breakfast so it was rare that I saw him there. He had two roommates that convinced him he needed to go to breakfast with them to come check out this really cute waitress. It turns out the cute waitress was my roommate who also worked with me. Sad for me, but it was okay because sure he was cute and all, but I was interested in another guy.

*Nick claims that they went to check out my roommate, but he found me cuter than her. I guess he married me so maybe there's some truth to it, but she was dating someone so he didn't have much of a chance with her! :)

Towards the end of the summer, Nick and his two roommates asked me and two other girls if we'd like to come over for dinner at their condo. It was a casual group date, but Nick and I got paired off together for the game we played. It was probably planned. Boys are sneakier than we give them credit for!

*Random side note: I took the most awful dessert to the dinner. I used half and half instead of whipping cream. BIG DIFFERENCE! Ha! I'm surprised Nick was even willing to date me after learning I couldn't even make a simple dessert!

Anyway, he decided to try to get to know me better and started inviting me over to his condo after the pageant was done each night. I took him up on his offer once or twice, but I had it in my head that I liked someone else so I tried my best not to be interested. Then there was one night that my world came crashing down on me. All in one phone call I found out my mom had to have a major surgery, my grandpa wasn't doing well and probably wasn't going to live much longer, and my uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given 6 months to live. I found myself feeling very sad and alone. My only family was 1600 miles away (in Arizona) and 3 of them were suffering.

Nick called me that night to see if I wanted to come over and I told him I wasn't feeling up to it. I informed him of the news I had just received prior to his call and he responded to my heartache by asking me if I would like a blessing.

Wait, what? Who is this guy? He hardly knows me and here he is offering me something so sacred and special. I was taken by surprise. I had only been give a handful of blessings up to that point in my life and all of them were something I had to ask for; never offered. I turned him down because I had an unrealistic understanding of what Priesthood blessings were for and I felt like my situation wasn't important enough to be bothered with a blessing. Sure the 3 family members facing their hardships could use blessings, but not me. But in that conversation it dawned on me, someone willing to offer me a blessing is someone worth getting to know better.

I decided I didn't want to sit at home and sulk so I showed up on his doorstep with some movies and hung out with him the rest of the night. From there we hung out every day until he had to go back to Bountiful. Then we dated long distance with several plane trips back and forth while I still lived in Nauvoo and then back and forth when I moved back to Arizona.

He proposed to me a couple days before Valentine's Day in 2006 (only because that's when I flew to Utah... otherwise I would have been very against the coincidence), we got married that May, and the rest is history. The proposal is another great story, but I'll save that one for another day.