Cute As a Button

I have to give a shout out to my adorable baby girl. I had intended to post this in celebration of Marie's 6-month birthday, uh, almost a month ago, but I'm late, whatever. My tardiness worked out well, though, because now I can post thumbnails of her 6-month photo shoot at JCPenney, which I just received today. The pictures turned out so cute!

The last 6-months have been the ultimate roller coaster ride. Life has been pretty overwhelming for our little Marie. From problems with weight gain, nursing, constipation, sleeping, spitting-up, and colic she has certainly tried my patience and my confidence in my skills as a mother. However, a day doesn't go by when she doesn't provide me with a gorgeous smile and a loving look that reminds me how much I love my baby girl. She is a beautiful daughter of God with such a sweet personality. I am grateful that Heavenly Father trusted me with such a special spirit. I pray each day that I may be worthy of this blessing.

I love you, baby girl!

Autumn and Zakk 04.11.08

My cousin Zakk has been dating Autumn since before they were both toilet-trained. OK, well, not that long, but it has been several years. They saw each other through high school and then Zakk served an LDS mission in Portugal for two years while Autumn attended Paul Mitchell Academy up in Rexburg. On April 11th Autumn officially became part of the family when the two were married in the Rexburg temple. Autumn looked gorgeous and Zakk had his usual smile plastered on his face. I am so proud of both of them for making it to this point!

The happy couple!

Autumn and her friends. I just wanted to show off her cute dress. Not every girl can pull off a dress like that, but she does it perfectly!

Check out that cake! Isn't it incredible? The wedding theme was black and white polka dots with accents of gerber daisies. Super cute!

That's my Mom and my Great Aunt Frankie (she's like 90 years old, lookin' good, huh?) but really the purpose of the picture is what's behind them. Don't you just love the Japanese paper lanterns in the center?

The candy table. Not very nutritionally sound, but what wedding food is?

He's back like (insert clever analogy here)

For those of you from V-town, or anywhere else, that read my blog to keep tabs on your old chum Brandon (aka my husband), I just wanted to let you know that he is back! He posted on his blog last night. Of course, if you have been reading my blog you already know what's going on in our life, so therefore, his blog is somewhat redundant; however, you should still check it out. He's funnier than me. www.strodaddy.blogspot.com

Duck Park: Take Two

Alright, these posts are not in chronological order. Don't judge. I have so many pictures and videos from the past three weeks that I am just posting as I have time. Soooooo . . . Brandon and I took the William back to the duck park at the end of the week in California. William was a little more comfortable with the ducks this time, however, they weren't very comfortable with him.

Read, read, read.

Two reasons why this is beautiful:

1) William was quiet. That is usually a bad sign. It was very pleasant to find him "reading" a book, rather than emptying the baby powder bottle all over Marie's room.

2) Teaching my children to love reading is second in importance only to teaching them the Gospel. It is so rewarding to see that he already loves to look at books, even if right now it is only for the pictures!

Is she a singer or what?

Brandon and I had a good laugh when we noticed a recurring theme among the pictures with Rachel in them. We love you, Rachel, mouth wide open and all!

Lovely.

She is just so adorable in the swing and then . . .