The End and the Beginning

It seems as if I have some catching up to do. Shocker, I know.

I'll start from the very beginning. That's a very good place to start. Okay, not the VERY beginning, but I'll pick up where I left off.

We had a busy month of December. After our visit with Mitch and Maggie, we had a few days break before we headed into Vegas. We wanted to see the big Christmas tree at the Bellagio. And Trevor was flying in. You remember Trevor. He's our friend from Tallahassee. Awesome fella. Most known on this blog for this story. Yeah, THAT Trevor. Anyway, Trevor was flying in to Sin City, where we picked him up and travelled to LA.

Why was Trevor going to LA and why did we go with him, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. Lish told Trevor that if he ever got invited to be on Jeopardy, we'd drive out to see him. He got invited to be on Jeopardy, so we held on to our end of the deal. It was lovely to get to see him and spend some time with him. I'm sad his wonderful wife and supersonic son couldn't come out with him, but we'll see them this summer, so I'll let it slide. We spent a night in Vegas, drove to LA, met up with one of Lish's good friends from high school who we hadn't seen since our wedding, I ate a crepe, Trevor played Jeopardy, I got to watch while Lish was with Yale, and then we came home. Yale was not feeling well, therefore, not sleeping, hence Lish and I were not sleeping. We cut our trip a day short. It all worked out though.

We had a couple of days at home before we packed much bigger bags repacked our bags and were on the road again, heading up north to be with our families for the holidays. We made Scott and Karen's our "home base" and travelled around to and from there. We spent Christmas Eve at my mom's, doing the traditional delish meal followed by the DELISH spudnuts. Yum! We let Yale try one, and he loved them. Go figure.

Christmas morning was spent at Karen and Scott's, which was lovely. We got to spend time with Maggie and Brandon and Steph and Hannah. (And of course, Karen and Scott.) Then we headed down to my dad's to spend time with him and Alisia and my other sibs who were in town. We spent the night with them because the next morning we headed up to the slopes. The man-made snow slopes. (There was no snow anywhere! And it didn't snow the whole time we were up there. Of course it snowed up there last night and today.) It was still really fun! Love that tradition. And what made it even better was that Lish came! I know. Hell froze over. He said he'd probably treat it like the Olympics and only go every four years, but we'll see about that. I am very persuasive.

After that we spent a lot of time relaxing, visiting with family and friends. We even went to a movie in a movie theater. Lish and I haven't been together since before Yale was born. On New Year's Eve, we went on a double date with Maggie and Brandon. We went to Keys on Main. It was fun, but we were all exhausted by about 10:30 and ready to go home. How lame are we? Don't answer that.

We had lots of fun and made lots of memories, but I have to admit, it does feel good to be back home and know that we aren't going anywhere for a while.

Enjoy the many visuals.

Grandma K's 60th and Grandpa M's Visit

Remember how Yale turned one? Me too. We spent his birthday weekend up in SLC with Karen and Scott. It was Karen's 60th birthday that weekend, so we had lots of celebrating to do. Maggie and Lisi flew out as well, which means we had a grand time! Except that poor little Lisi was sick all weekend. We still got in some playtime.

After we got home, we spent a couple days preparing for some company. Mitch, Lish's dad, flew into Vegas on Wednesday, and Maggie and Lisi flew into St. George. (Yes, for those of you who don't know, St. George has its own airport. It's very exciting.) We didn't do too much while everyone was down here. We explored St. George a little bit, visited Lish's office, went to a couple parks. You know, the normal low-key stuff you can do with 2 babies, 4 adults, and 1 car.

It was so fun to have them all visit. I loved getting to see Yale and Lisi interact, now that they can kind of play together. And by that I mean play side-by-side. And I loved getting to see Mitch play with his grandkids. He's a natural grandpa. It was also fun to spend time with Lish, Maggie and Mitch, as they reminisced and brought tears to their eyes from laughing so hard. There was a lot of joy going on around here last week. It was lovely.

ONE

Yale turned one today. One. ONE. One? A year? Oh my goodness. My baby is growing up. I did not know this was going to happen. . . so fast.

This past year has been full of ups and even higher ups. And a few downs. I'm not unrealistic here. I'm not saying being a mother is easy. Many women have already discovered this.

In this past year Yale has:

*met several family members and made many, many new friends
*gone from lifting his head, to lifting his chest, to rolling over, to getting up on his knees, to crawling, to standing, to climbing, to taking steps, to dancing, and finally to walking
*went from smiling to laughing to making us laugh
*grown 7 teeth
*gained about 12 pounds
*grown about 8 inches
*given his mother and father more joy than they thought possible

It's been a wonderful year. And I can't wait to have many more with him. And celebrate many more of his birthdays. And watch him continue to grow and grow.

Enjoy some visuals from our monkey's party:

I love him so much and I'm so glad he's in our lives!