Did you hear?

My sister is expecting a baby! Wahoo! Catherine and Richard will be such great parents and I am so happy for them! Just look how cute they are with Baby Che!



She's due the end of June. Visit their blog for more info!

Happy Birthday to many

Hey there! This is JohnnyT (not my cute wife Barb - who usually posts here)

This time of year has some amazing birthdays to celebrate. First and foremost on December 25th we celebrate the birthday of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We also are reminded of Joseph Smith who was born on December 23, 1805.

And the pure geek in me will add this to the list (from slashdot.org):

Today is the birthday of Linus Torvalds. Just under 19 years ago, on the first day the shops in Helsinki were open after the holidays, Linus rushed out and spent all his Christmas and birthday money on his first PC: a DX33 80386, with 4 Megs of RAM, no co-processor, and a 40 Megabyte hard disc. Today, the kernel he wrote on that system powers 90% of the fastest supercomputers, and is starting to find its way into more and more smartphones — not to mention everything in between.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

JohnnyT

Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday, Richard!

Even though you are far away in the UAE, we are thinking of you today! We love our Uncle Richard! He is so smart, driven, fun, friendly and talented. He's been a good friend to us and we love that he is part of our family!!

Charlie, you're a star!

Our little Charlie is a finalist in the Utah Baby Guide Cutest Baby Contest!! Please vote for him and validate my belief that Charlie is indeed the cutest baby ever! It is so easy to vote, just visit this link, put your favorite three entries (one for each age category) in the subject line of an email and send to contest@utahbabyguide.com
(by January 25, 2010). Only one per email address will be accepted.


Charlie is number 20 (you don't have to vote in the other categories if you don't want.)


There are a bunch of prizes if he wins but mostly I just think it's fun! And come on, isn't he just the cutest?

I have a Mormon Christmas every year...

This has been making the rounds on the internet since it debuted on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brian. But it is too good not to post again! Enjoy!

When did this happen??

Charlie- 8 months

Charlie, John and I have been sick for two months forever. Between the two of us we've had colds, sinus infections, and croup. YUCK. This has been Charlie's first bout with illness in his young life and he's been such a trouper. He's finally coming out of it but now I think his teeth are coming in- AAAAHHHH!

So I've been a little lax with updating the blog and taking photos (as in I've fallen off the weekly photo wagon. Oh well, it was bound to end sometime). We've been in survival mode.

Here's some of our recent hightlights:

-Charlie's First Thanksgiving- We spent Thanksgiving Day with John's aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and siblings in Logan and Aunt Ann and Uncle John's house. Charlie tried his first taste of mashed potatoes and loved it!




-My parents arrived for a visit! We had another Thanksgiving celebration at our house to celebrate with them. My mom and I acted as co-hostesses and I was so grateful not to have to do it on my own (and to not have to tackle the turkey). Everyone contributed a dish or two and we had a grand feast!



-Charlie mastered the army crawl and has now moved to working on the hands and knees crawl.



-Charlie received his first goose egg from a header into the shower curb. His little eyebrow was purple and swollen but almost completely unnoticeable by the time I took these pictures.




-We decorated gingerbread houses with Sam and Lily. My dad created a fire station, Mom made a train, Lily and Sam decorated houses, and I made an ice rink. (Charlie was an excellent audience).






-Madelyn and Cody stopped by for a visit while they were in town. We also went to lunch one day and Charlie screamed his head off in the car seat the whole way to the restaurant. Overtired baby + stranger anxiety = complete meltdown.




-Charlie was mesmerized by another snowfall



-Playing dress up with Grandma




-Grandma and Grandpa building a fort for the grandkids

Believe it or not, this was the best photo I got of Grandpa with all his grandchildren

Charlie loved crawling around in the tent

How many college degrees does it take to set up the tent? (I count 9.5)

Love these two cuties

-Mom surprised Dad with an early birthday party and Christmas, too!







My dad had to go back to the UAE for work but we really enjoyed having him here for a week and half. Charlie loved having some bonding time with Grandpa Mark. My mom is here through Christmas and I feel so lucky to have her here!

Fundraising Auction at Bloom

You'll find me over at Bloom today bidding on tons of great stuff! It's all to benefit two sweet little children, Claire and Benson, who have a rare genetic disease that for Claire, requires 15 hours a day of dialysis! They both need a liver and kidney transplant. Head on over to bid on headbands, photo sessions, blankets, custom artwork and more!

Jack, Josh and Layla

I called my pal Lindsey to see if she'd let me practice my photography skills on her cute kids. Luckily for me, she was game! Here's some of the shots we got.

Baby Layla- What a cutie and such a good sport! She's so tiny compared to Charlie, I almost forgot how little new babies are!

Josh- he was very cooperative and very happy to have a train to play with!

Cute Jack was not as excited to have his picture taken but we still got some good ones of those chubby cheeks!

I had a lot of fun and I think we got some good moments! Thanks, guys!

Moms are the best inventors

When I found out I was pregnant I wanted to have the best, most innovative, most practical, well, let's face it, the coolest, baby gear on the market for my baby. John and I are total gear hounds- we love gadgetry and stuff- so of course, our baby needed to have a lot of stuff, too! We found lots of great stuff (the Moby wrap! the SwaddleMe! the Co-Sleeper!) that we have loved and used! The one thing that was missing was a great baby bath tub. For Charlie's first bath at home, we had Grandma Sue come help out and successfully turned the kitchen sink into a bathing receptacle! One week later, I still hadn't attempted bathing him in the sink on my own, so Grandma came and bathed him again for me. I just didn't feel confident that I could wrangle a slippery baby by myself. I only actually bathed Charlie by myself a few times while he was a newborn.

He eventually grew too big for the sink and we graduated to the bath tub. There I placed him into the traditional hard plastic baby tub. He was miserable. He couldn't move freely, his toes were jabbed against the hard plastic edges, and he was cold. We ditched the tub and used a towel on the bath tub floor instead. He loved it, but I hated having to wring out a soaking wet towel every time and my back would hurt from leaning over him. I ended up ditching the bath entirely and now Charlie just showers with us.

Recently, I saw a new kind of baby bath tub invented by a mom of three called the Puj tub. She had a similar experience bathing her babies in the bathroom sink and figured out a solution to the hard plastic bathtub problem. It's brilliant! I wanted one immediately to add to my baby gear collection even though Charlie is now too big. Luckily for me, I was *chosen to be a product tester/reviewer so Puj sent me a tub for free. Even without the swag factor, I would have spent the money to buy one for my next baby. It costs $39.99 which is the same price as some of the higher end hard plastic tubs I saw at Babies'R'Us. It's pretty incredible.

I borrowed a (littler) baby (thanks, Lindsey!) to try it out for myself. Baby Layla was cradled perfectly in the Puj tub in my bathroom sink. The material is kind of like foam rubber so it's soft and warm. The tub comes as one, flat piece (so you can hang it on the back of the bathroom door) that folds into the tub shape and is held in place by magnets. Like I said, brilliant!

Layla loves it!

Even if you aren't a stuff-collector like me you can appreciate the beauty of a well-designed product!

Check out the Puj Tub for yourself at the new web site exclusively for baby bath tubs. (There's a video of the tub in action, too.)

*I was not compensated for this review other than receiving the product for free and it's my honest opinion. I really like this tub.