Our Precious Daughter

 Would you say this is the cutest, most beautiful little girl ever?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How about now? Would you say that now?

Thirty-Five

Well, I had my 35th birthday. That sounds old.

Sam gave me this for my birthday.

 

It says, "1 Free ticket to imbaras (embarrass)

Sam Johnson without him complaining." Then it has his signature

Then, "Have Fun

expires on Easter Morning"

 

Easter was the next day, so it was something I had to act on quick. I didn't think of anything to do so I guess I missed my chance. 

New Laptop/Motivation

Wow, it has been a while...
I have considered not blogging anymore, because I just don't have the motivation to do it regularly. I know if I stop I will look back on what I have blogged and regret that I didn't keep it up. This blog has turned out to be a great record of our little family.  When I really think about it, I think I want my life to be blogged about but I don't want to do it.
Recently our laptop broke down. The soldering in the motherboard has just slowly disintegrated until it no long holds together and makes the necessary connections needed to work. Motherboards are not cheap, so we had a local computer guy solder it to see if that would work. It did for about 30 hours.
So Matt and I went shopping and found ourselves a little Dell for as cheap as we could find ($280), which turns out to be only $30 more than the new motherboard.
The local computer guy will now transfer our data from the old computer to the new for free.
This brings me to my point. Last time our computer broke down I was so worried about the stuff on it, like pictures and recipes. But I knew in my heart that the best pictures were safe on the blog, so if we lost the ones on the computer we didn't have to be too sad. But this time, it has been so long since I have blogged I would have been sad to have lost so many pictures and, lets face it, memories. I have several pictures of our baby Andy that of course I have not and will not share on the blog but they could have been lost forever. That would have been so sad, but thankfully I have blogged about feelings and events from around the time we lost him. I should really get and external hard drive to back everything up, as well as print the blog into books, which I have really thought a lot about, but just never done.
So, I am making myself blog, finding the motivation to do it in the fact that it's the only history I've been keeping of what our life is like.

Thanksgiving

 This last Thanksgiving was full of fun and excitement, and when I say fun and excitement I mean, food, family and puke.
All of Matt's family got together for the occasion. And some great family pictures were taken.

Scott Hancock Photography

Scott Hancock Photography

 Matt's brother, Paul and family came in from San Diego and they brought their dog, Lyla. Lola loved the dog of course. And the dog was very patient with Lola.

Lola and Lyla, Best Friends Forever.

She looks so comfortable in there I'm considering getting her a cage of her own.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving we had a Family Home Evening about Gratitude. We invited our neighbors, Sandy and Bree over for the evening.

 We read some scriptures about gratitude and thankfulness and then cut out some leaves and wrote what we were grateful for on the leaves.

 Then we taped the leaves to the wall around the picture I like to call , "The Thankful Man."

On Wednesday night, the night before Thanksgiving, Lola threw up and go sicker and sicker as the days went on. What we originally thought was a bit of stomach flu turned out to be a urinary track infection. The poor girl was ripped from her sick bed and dressed up like a doll to get the family pictures taken. We joked about getting a picture of just our family so we would have a nice family photo to display at her funeral. I'm so glad we did because thanks to their airbrushing and photoshopping it is my best photo ever. I am of course also so glad she lived through the illness.