Charlie's standing meeting

Charlie can now pull up to stand on furniture and prefers to make all his Skype conference calls that way.

[Skyping with Aunt Cat]

One Little Word

A great New Year's tradition that I'm partaking in is the Ali Edwards' One Little Word challenge. Ali Edwards is a scrapbooking designer and blogger whose blog is fantastic. She inspires me for so many reasons, but one of the outstanding things she does is choose a word to be her focus for the year. (I know many others on the web do this in similar incarnations, but she is the first I ever saw do it). Her One Little Word for the year is Story (past words: Nurture, Vitality, Peace). Ali encourages her readers to choose a word to guide them through the new year. (Check out their word choices here.)

Another blogger/artist I adore is Kal Barteski whose blog I Love Life has become a favorite read of mine this last year. I purchased her artwork for Charlie's nursery and have loved it every day. She is also an Ali Edwards fan and took the One Little Word challenge and expanded it. She chose several words to guide her through the new year (Rebuild, Soothe, Go, Story).

For this year's challenge, I brainstormed a few difference words that could inspire me in my goals:

ACCOMPLISH- school, goals
SAVE- money, resources
HOME- save money for our future home, work hard at maintaining the refuge that is our home
NOURISH- my body, my mind, my family
PREPARE- stay on top of my homework, work on food storage, save money for our home
WORK- treat my jobs of Mother and Keeper of the House (not to be confused with housekeeper) as serious work, work hard at my schoolwork
HEALTH- healthy eating, healthy activity, exercise, healthy weight, strong body, healthy family
STUDY- stay ahead of my homework, study the gospel (Read the Book of Mormon with Sam's guidelines and the Old Testament)

I'm still revisiting this and paring down so that I will have a manageable short list of words that can be my mantra for the year. I love this exercise and I hope you will join me in it!

What will your One Little Word(s) be?

Resolutions and stuff

I feel like I am avoiding this little blog here. I don't know what it is, but I just don't find myself wanting to be here much recently. It could be just feeling overwhelmed from the holidays, but I haven't been taking as many pictures and I haven't been wanting to write much either. I have also taken to Tweeting and checking Facebook whenever I nurse Charlie to sleep so I have been internet-ing in other ways. My apologies for my absenteeism, dear readers.

I still want to update about Christmas and such, but I have been thinking about the hot topic of conversation both on- and off-line, namely, New Year's Resolutions.

When I think back on the last year, my major accomplishment was becoming a mother and getting to know this little person to whom I gave birth. It has been almost entirely a purely joyful experience (and those other non-joyful moments are totally worth it). Charlie has dominated 2009 and I will always remember it as the Year of the Che.

When I think forward to what 2010 has in store for me, I have a few desires. The number one goal dwarfs all others. This is the year I will finally graduate from college.

The path I took after I graduated high school was slightly non-traditional. I didn't attend college for 4 straight years, graduate, then venture into my first career job, then get married, then have a baby. I realize this is more of a cliche than an actuality but it is always how I saw my life going.

Instead, I attended school, juggled several part time jobs, traveled, dated John for 3 years before we married, fell into a career of campaign management and politics, worked full time off and on, got pregnant and had a baby. During all of this, I was attending school off and on. I never quit, I just didn't go straight through. I always had at least a semester of classes a year but there were many years where I took a whole semester off.

I've been calling it the Poky Little Puppy plan.

And now I am a full-time mom with a baby I can hardly tear myself away from, so to finish school is a huge feat. I look up to the women who do much more than that (working, parenting, school, sometimes all on their own) with awe because this is hard enough!

I have a great support system that allows me the opportunity to finish my education. I am thrilled to look ahead to August 2010 when I will finally do it!

What are your goals for 2010?

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!