Memorial Day Catch Up

It has been a long long time since my last post, I have been thinking about writing a post for a while now but could never actually bring myself to do it. It is probably going to be a little crazy, but here it goes. So I went to California and Utah for a couple weeks and it was awesome. It was a really fun time and I was so happy all of my family was finally able to meet Fife. Fife loved meeting his cousins and it was so cute to see them all interact.

Memorial Day weekend we decided we needed to get out and go somewhere. Initially I told Taylor we could go anywhere he wanted but I wasn't going to camp. But I changed my mind a few days before after we still hadn't come up with a plan. We ended up having a pretty awesome time. Saturday morning we went to our ward breakfast and that afternoon we packed up all our camping stuff, and our bikes, and headed out. We stopped at Shenandoah Caverns and spent some time there. They had this warehouse full of old parade floats, it was kinda creepy, but fun. Some of them were pretty cool.

Go Texas!

Fife loves America

Then we went and took the tour of the caverns. They were huge! And very pretty. I especially liked the colorful lights they put on some of the walls. It was great to be down there on such a hot day.

After this our plan was to go to Shenandoah National Park and camp for the night but by the time we got there all the campsites were full (they didn't allow you to make reservations). So we spent the next couple of hours looking for a place, in the dark. We finally found a place, there were no more campsites but the guy let us just camp by a pavilion. It actually turned out pretty nice! On Sunday we hung around the campground until 1pm. We went on a bike ride, took a walk, and relaxed by the pond for a while.

 We went to church and afterwards headed to Powhaten to camp for the night. Because we didn't want to be stuck without a campsite again we made a reservation online for a place. When we got there it turned out to be a pull out back in some woods. No bathroom, no water, no nothin. We were glad we had all our water containers filled and we made it work. One thing it did have was ticks, and Taylor got one in his knee socket.

Monday we headed to the Virginia Capital, Richmond. We rode our bikes all around the city, hills and all, and did a few loops around the capital grounds. It was a nice day. We went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts which was very good. I guess we looked suspicious because there was a security guard who followed us through half the museum, every time we would go to another room we would look back and there she was. We also stopped at the Fredricksburg battlefield visitors center before heading home to take a quick dip in the pool. Taylor and I both concur, this was one of our most memorable memorial day weekends.

Twenty Five and First Food

The past couple weeks have been lots of fun and we have been busy. Taylor and I got to go on a date! Just me and him, which is the first time since Taylor's work Christmas party. We got some friends from the ward to watch Fife and went to eat at Old Country Buffet with my free birthday meal, it was delicious. And then we went ice skating! It was a lot harder than we both remembered. I had fun, Taylor says he is never going ice skating again, we shall see. 

The next day we went in to the city with our upstairs neighbors Kirsten and Mike and went to a Persian New Year Festival at one of the Smithsonians.  The festival was super crowded, it took us like 30 minutes to find parking, and then we had the stroller so we had to find the elevator every time we wanted to go somewhere new and maneuver through the crowds of people, so we wished we had brought the moby wrap. But it was fun to just spend some time out and get to know our neighbors better. They had fire jumping, and mask/crown making, and storytelling and Persian food, and a scavenger hunt. We spent a bit there and then the crowds got the better of us so instead we just walked around outside through the art garden. It was a beautiful day.

Taylor and I made this crown for our little prince... who are we kidding, he is the king of the house.

The 12th was my Birthday and I turned 25! I can't believe I'm that old, or young. It's weird, I feel much younger than 25, but then at the same time I feel like I've lived longer than 25 years. I spent the day with Fife, he is the best company. That night we went to dinner at Denny's to bring back the good times in Provo. We went to Denny's when we were dating a couple times, to celebrate Taylor getting a job, the night we found out I was pregnant to celebrate, and for my birthday last year for breakfast where I threw up both before and after my free grand slam (yay for morning sickness!). This year Taylor ate my free grand slam and I got dinner food, I didn't feel like breakfast for dinner.

Afterwards we went to Krispy Kreams and then to Walmart to get cheesecake and ice cream. When we got home we ate the cheese cake and ice cream while we watched 24. It was a pretty awesome day.

Taylor and my mom sang to me, it was beautiful

Fife is now 5 moths! He can't really do too many "new" tricks, he's just been refining working on his old ones. He is as cute as ever! We love him so much! He has started on eating solid foods. So far he has eaten baby oatmeal, and butternut squash. I've made up some apples that he is going to try tonight! I think he likes eating real food, and he LOVES making a mess while he does it.

This is the first time Fife ate food, it is baby oatmeal. 

playing with daddy before bedtime

                                                                Fife hard at work

This last weekend it was very nice out so we went on a walk to the farmers market to get our produce for the week and then afterwards drove to a park to play some frisbee. It was fun and refreshing. We joined Taylor's work team and will be starting games soon!

Fife made some spectacular dives, we happened to get a picture of one of them.

That is some frisbee player

We went to Chevy's last night to use one of my birthday coupons, it was delicious and it was nice not to have to cook!

Update from Alexandria

We have been up to a lot since the last post! Doing projects, going on walks, going to ward activities, organizing play groups, doing community and ward service, me being sick, basketball, and other things I can't remember. Here are a few of the things we have been doing.

I finally repainted our microwave stand! We bought this when we moved in here from a yard sale for $5, it is a great little stand. I like the drawers and the extra shelf and the best part is it has wheels, however, we weren't really feeling the black and gold. We got the paint to redo it a few weeks after buying it but I never got around to it until now. Here are the before and after pictures.

 

I used a stencil to do the blue flower design to put some color into our kitchen. I am thinking of doing a design down the side but not sure yet. I will either do the same flowers down the side or a couple blue and yellow stripes with different widths.When the microwave is on it covers up about half the design. 

Since our Ward doesn't meet until 3pm now we decided it would be good to get out and go for a walk once in a while before church. So last week we decided to go to Theodore Roosevelt Island. I have seen it a few times from the road as we drove by and thought it looked like a fun place to go look at. There is a walking bridge to get on to the island and then there are trails that go around the island (1.4 mile loop) and in the middle of it there is a big statue of Teddy Roosevelt and a bunch of other concrete stuff. We went here a few days after the snow storm so there was still snow everywhere and it made the stroller really hard to push. It was a fun walk. 

Daddy and Fife relaxing before bedtime

For playgroup we had a valentines day party and I made these rolo brownie bites that were soooo good. I really wanted to decorate them cute so colored the frosting and put it in a ziploc bag, cut off a corner and made these designs on them. 

That got me wanting to try out cake decorating, so I got a cake decorating kit with different tips and made some reeses brownie bites, which were even better, for our ward movie night. I didn't have time to make homemade frosting like with the rolo ones so the frosting was a bit runnier but it was still so much fun to do and I got to test out the different tips. I am hoping to do a cake next.

We had a snow storm here a few weeks ago! They said it was supposed to snow more than a foot but it ended up snowing about 8 inches. It would snow a lot and then rain and melt the snow and then snow again and freeze all the rainsnow and snow more. Taylor got to work from home that day and we all built a snowman together. The snow was very wet and heavy, it took some serious muscles to build this guy (snowy is his name). 

This is poor snowy after a few days. The snow didn't last long because it kept raining. If you look closely you will see his right arm (on the left) is still intact. The top fell over about 30 seconds after I took this picture.

There is still a tiny ball of him left today. It snowed about 3 inches last night and this morning so we may rebuild him again later today! Taylor is working from home today because they closed a lot of the transportation in anticipation for the big storm, which ended up being not so big after all. I'm not complaining!

We normally give Fife a bath in the tub, but Taylor wanted to show him what it feels like to take a bath as an adult (being crammed in a tub). Fife loves baths so much I don't think he minded at all. He is going to be a hot tub guy, I can already tell.

Fife is doing great. He has yet to be sick, even though I have been sick probably 3 times since he was born. He is a tough guy. He is still rolling and loves to play. He can be very loud at times, testing out his voice box, he loves to squeal and laugh and has recently started making short staccato grunts which he thinks are very funny. He had his checkup around 2 weeks ago. He was 25.5 inches tall (65th %ile), had a 16.75 inch head circumference (77th %ile), and was 15lbs 7oz (49th %ile). We love our boy!

Rollin' with the gangsta's

This past week  Fife has learned how to roll! It has taken me this long to get a video of him since he always seems to do it when I have my back turned or right when the camera turns off. He did roll a while back when he was only a few weeks old, and a few other times, but this week is the first time he rolled without one of his arms underneath him or laying on a slope. I guess he made up his mind that he wasn't going to do any rolling until he could do it all at once.

Here's a video of him going tummy to back

And now back to tummy

He loves rolling and has been rolling everywhere! Sometimes I go into the kitchen and when I come back he is halfway across the room! He is so strong and so much fun! I love spending my days with Fife, he always makes me laugh.

I did a couple of simple projects the past couple days. First, I have been looking for a yellow clock to put in our bathroom for the past 5 months but haven't found one and Taylor has been asking and asking for a clock in the bathroom. So this last weekend I got a $4 clock at Walmart and then used the yellow paint from the nursery sign I did to paint a stripe around it, it is a little lighter yellow than the rest of the bathroom but it goes well enough.

I found this mirror at Ross on Clearance for $4.50. I was white and had some black scuff marks on it. I thought it would be a nice addition to our place. I then got some paint from freecycle and got the idea to paint it. I like it, I was originally going to put it in our entryway but now I'm thinking maybe our bedroom since the color matches our bed and curtains.

This has gotten me in the mood for more painting! I may finally tackle our microwave stand and then onto the kitchen table! We shall see.

Christmas and Camping

So about Christmas vacation, it was great. We spent a week in Texas with Taylor's family and had a ton of fun! We walked around the lake, and were able to take Fife in his stroller on the trail because we have our awesome jogging stroller that can go anywhere! We went archery shooting which was a ton of fun! We spent a lot of time in the indoor range but did do a little out in the forest, I personally preferred the indoor range because I thought it was freezing cold outside. On about our second or third shot there Taylor shot an arrow into the back of one of his arrows already on his target. It was so cool! Just like Robin Hood! Everyone there was super impressed and said how very rare it was.

Taylor also went bungee jumping! So that was pretty cool. And my personal highlight, we went to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert and it was awesome! It was a great show. Grandma and Grandpa Sager dropped by and saw us and Fife! We did lots of other fun things too and most of all got to spend some great time with family and bond more. 

We are back home now in Virginia and I have been feeling a lot better these days! Some days I think I even feel pretty much normal! I joined the ward basketball team and we have had 3 games so far, the first game I thought I was going to die, it was the first time I had run since having Fife and probably the first time I really sprinted in a very very long time. I have been trying to exercise every day now (Taylor got me an xbox kinnect for Christmas to work out inside!) so each bball game has gotten a little easier, even though my playing time has increased. The last game I played almost the whole time because we were short some players and my face was so red I'm sure everyone thought I might drop right there. 

Taylor just recently joined the men's team and he has lots of fun with it too, though there are a lot more boys who want to play so he doesn't get as much playing time as he would like. 

Presidents Day weekend we decided to go camping. I'm not sure what gave us the idea but somehow it got into our heads and we were determined to do it. We just went Saturday night. Taylor made an awesome fire and Fife stayed warm in his many layers and bear suit. We bought a camp stove for the excursion and it worked great! We hope to use it many times. It was very very freezing cold before we went to bed, once we were in our sleeping bags though it wasn't too bad, it definitely could have been warmer but I have been through much colder nights growing up. The coldest part was that Fife woke up twice to eat (he usually only wakes up once) and he wouldn't eat inside the sleeping bag, so I had to sit up out of the sleeping bag to feed him. The next morning we packed up, went for a short walk, and then headed home. It was a lot of fun (doing something out of the ordinary always is) and we hope to go again, though I think we will wait a month or two for it to warm up a bit more. The plus to this trip was there were no bugs! Our Church now starts at 3pm so we were able to take our time, we even went to a friends before church for lunch. 

Fife is getting so big! He is so much fun to play with too. Yesterday it was so funny; he would make a big frowny face, then I would make a frowny face back at him and then he would get the biggest smile! And then he would do the frowny again, then I would do the frowny, and he would get a big smile! He is quite a funny little guy! 

This is the video I tried to upload last post but it wouldn't work, so it is a couple weeks old, but still adorable!

PreChristmas

Okay so it has been a while since I posted; I think I wanted to post so much I made myself not, and then I just forgot about it all together! That is no good. So I'm not sure what to post about, but I do have a few pictures. So I'll start with those!

 Erik and Emily stopped by to visit and stay the night on their way moving to Mississippi! We are sad they are moving farther away from us, it was nice to have family so close! Fife is loving his cousin time! Alyssa loved reading ALL our books, she is a little cutie!

sorry I didn't know how to rotate the pictures...

 We got this cutie all bundled up one night for a family field trip! To the trash can :)

            Here's the man sporting his mickey overalls! I think he's so cute, country style.

This is at Taylor's morning work party! They had breakfast, cookie decorating, a humongous pile of legos, bird feeder making, ornament decorating, and a Hanukkah room were we played dradle! It was a lot of fun, and Fife's first time to see Santa Claus who gave him a mother goose book. We are so lucky to have such a great work family. That night there was a party for the adults at a fancy hotel and everyone was all dressed up, Taylor wore his tux from our wedding and I got a dress at TJmaxx, it was a lot of fun! Fife had a lot of fun with his babysitters!

 Fife and I brought dinner to Taylor one night and then afterwards we played pool and then made hot chocolate and took it to the white house Christmas tree to drink while we walked around. It was really cool and very pretty.

I did have a really cute video that I just took but it's not loading, so I'll try next time I suppose. This is all our pre-Christmas vacation stuff, I will do a Christmas vacation one next time!