Taylor's Blessing

To wrap up the holidays, we ended with Taylor's blessing on the 30th. We had a lot of family and friends attend and we are very appreciative to all that came. Eric/Dad did an excellent job, despite Taylor crying the whole way through it. The minute Eric was done, Taylor stopped crying. We had expect this to happen, because every time we are at church, she barely makes it through church. I really enjoyed hearing what Eric said and i know Taylor felt the spirit and how much we love her. WE are so blessed to have Taylor, and wonder why we waited so long to have her bless our lives. She is a little "angel" and we love her more than ever. We are so excited to see her grow. She has already been blessed with so much love from family and we are grateful for family near and far.

Taylor was blessed in my G.Pa Mac's christening dress. It is 85 years old and is hand made. It was special to have her blessed in it, along with my brother Dave. It is very simple and elegant.

The day was great, except for G.Ma Connie and G.Pa Phil. We missed having them there and we know how much they wanted to be there. We did receive a phone call and were able to tell them about the day. We miss you guys!

Temple Night

Among all the other activities we did over the holidays, we had to squeeze in the lights at Temple Square. We met up with my parents and the P* family after they did a session at the SLC temple. The weather turned out to be pretty decent and we got some light snow to make the night fun. I have to confess, I didn't think the lights at temple square were all that great. I remember the whole place being covered in lights. It was a little disappointing. We got a few pics, spent about 45 minutes and we were done. At least we can say we did it!

What??? Taylor is sleeping? :)

Grandma Kris


Sisters

The dads pushing the kids

Our little family

Bowling Night

Over the holidays we did so many things. One thing was we went bowling! I haven't been bowling for so long. My sister, brit, aaron, jack, eric, taylor and I all went over to Heber and bowled at Holiday Lanes. The same place we used to go in highschool. So funny! We had a really good time. Some of us were a little rusty(boys!). Brit and I were the high scorers. I had a 132 and brit had a 135. She barely beat me. Jack had a fun time looking at all the balls, he wanted to pick them up so badly.

Gettin' ready to bowl!



Good ol' fashion bowling shoes...i think i remember people used to wear these as day to day shoes! Sweet.

Our action shots(left to right: eric, aaron, brit, jonna) Don't ask what my leg is doing, I have never been able to tuck it like you are supposed to when you bowl)!

Can you guess what Taylor did...yup she slept! That girl makes it so easy for us to go out and do things. She can sleep in the loudest settings, it is great!

Here she is, fast asleep in her car seat!

Strike a pose!

STRIKE!

Taylor's 1st X-Mas! (and she slept!)

Well, it has been a busy holiday season. My sister and her family have been in town and I feel like I have been going none stop for awhile. We have been having so much fun with family. For Christmas we went to my parents house in Midway and spent the night. We only live 20 minutes away, but we wanted to have the whole experience of Christmas morning. That night we had a fondue feast with the works. Cheese fondue followed up with chocolate fondue. Very yummy! After dinner we did the traditional Christmas Eve program. My family has done a collection of Christmas stories, and music every Christmas Eve. This year I played the piano, was very rusty. My mom also played and we all read a story. The list includes:

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Little House on the Prairie(the Christmas chapter)
Excerpt from A Christmas Carol
Why Christmas Trees Aren't Prefect
Excerpt from Max Lucado
And the Bible story of Christ's birth

It was fun to be with family and keep the traditions we have always done. It was the first Christmas in my parents new house. Taylor was asleep for the whole program. We tried to make her last, but we have to listen to her when she is tired.

Christmas morning we woke up and had brunch. We had crepes and the Sutterfield's traditional Christmas morning egg casserole. We usually go out to brunch (before opening presents...can you imagine that as a kid!-it was so hard when we were little!:) but we decided to stay home with the kids. Once again we tried to keep Taylor up to open presents but it was during her morning nap, so she opened 2 toys and was off to sleep. Taylor pretty much missed all of Christmas. But that is okay, she is too young to realize what it going on anyway. We had fun with jack opening presents. The Grandparents spoiled the kids...you did way to much mom and dad...thank you! We love all our gifts.

Christmas Morning-you can tell Taylor wasn't having it!

After cleaning up, we just relaxed until that evening. We then had our traditional Christmas dinner by candlelight. My cousin and her family also joined us. The menu consists of:

Lasagna
Ribbon Jello
Salad
Garlic Bread
Sparkling Cider

Christmas Dinner

It was delicious! And of course....Taylor slept through the whole thing! The girl is on a schedule!

Christmas was wonderful and I loved sharing it with my family. We had the chance to talk to my brother Dave who is on his mission in Brazil. It was good to hear from him and we can't wait to celebrate with him next year.

This is Cutout Dave! My mom dressed him up for the holidays!

We also made gingerbread houses. Mine kept falling apart...it was a disaster.

our house & Brit, Aaron & Jack's house

my house wreck...brit & I(I am holding my house together:)

3 months!

Yesterday, Taylor turned 3 months old! She is so much fun to have around. Her latest things are smiling all the time, making fun noises, spitting, playing with her tongue and chewing on her hands. She is still sleeping 10-11 hours at night and naps great throughout the day! What a baby! We are so lucky!

Here she is playing in the car! I took her out Christmas shopping on Wednesday, and she was out the whole day, so we took a little break in the car to feed and relax...while listing to Dr. Laura!(don't worry mom, i was in a a busy place in a parking lot...not secluded!:-)

wordless wednesday: cherry, cherry, baby!

Happy Anniversary!

Today is my parents anniversary! Congrats to the happy couple!

Harness Free!

On Thursday, we took Taylor to another follow up appointment for her hip, and good news...she is harness free for good! We finished out the last stage of sleeping with it only at night...now she doesn't have to wear it at all. We are so grateful her hip healed so quickly and so well. Now we just have to keep going back for follow up appointments until she is about 2-3 years of age. They want to make sure her bones are developing properly and especially want to monitor her hip as she begins to walk. There is a very little chance that her hip could go back to being worse...but that is why they monitor her until she is older.

So, Yeah! We are so excited for Taylor...even then she probably had no clue she even wore it...but more exciting for us!

Look at the progression in her leg!

curled up high-add harness-now legs open



the result...frog legs!

We're Back!

Finally, after 2 weeks of vacation to Vegas and Denver, we are home again and ready to relax. It is definitely a whole new world traveling with an infant. It was our first flight with Taylor and she actually did pretty good. On the way there we were delayed 2 hours ON THE PLANE! So that was a little rough. She would have slept the whole time if the plane was on schedule, so we had to keep her entertained and sucking on my pinkie! Thank goodness for the pinkie! She hasn't quite master thumb sucking when she is extremely upset. Luckily, the people around us were nice and they too were frustrated with the delay, so they understood. Taylor did so good!

Saturday: We got to Denver in the afternoon and Lori and Kay picked us up. We had plans to go the the Denver Nuggets game so there wasn't much time to relax...this was the beginning of a long day for Taylor. We had just enough time to get our stuff unloaded, change Taylor into her sweet Nuggets cheer leading outfit(thanks lori and kay) and head off to dinner and the game. We had dinner at the Pepsi Center where the game was. Taylor was doing great. She started to get a little fussy, but after some walking around she fell asleep. We thought she would be out for awhile, but shortly woke up and needed to be walked. Eric and I took turns, sweating...it was so hot, and trying to keep her happy. She eventually just sat on my lap and watch all the lights and listened to all the noise...it was sooooo loud but it didn't bother her at all. This girl loves loud noises. We were able to stay the whole game, and it was a good one, and then we headed home. Taylor had such a long day but did so well. We put her to sleep as soon as we got home. What a trooper, traveling all day long and sitting through a basketball game...WOW!

Dinner before the game

It was 80's night at the game...and Tone-Loc was the halftime show

Sunday: For Eric's birthday back in Oct. I got him tickets to a Denver Broncos NFL Game. He has always wanted to go to a NFL game so I finally made it happen this year. WE had Lori and Kay watch Taylor while we went to the game. We were worried about the weather because of all the snow Denver just had. Luckily it was a clear day and the sun was out. We bundled up and hoped for the best. For the most part it was great. We had seats that kept us in the sun for half the game...thank goodness. But then the sun went down and we started to get cold...mostly just our feet. The Broncos were killing the Chiefs (41-7) so we held out until the 4th quarter with 10 minutes to go. And then we had to go. We tried to drink all the hot chocolate we could, but that would only last so long. So we left. Taylor was great for Lori and Kay. She slept most of the time.I know Lori wanted to play with her more...sorry Lori :). So we spent the rest of the night, just hanging out.

pictures at the game...thank goodness for that sun!

Monday: We didn't have anything else planned for our trip, but decided to take a trip down memory lane for Eric. Eric lived in Denver not far from where we were, so we wanted to go check out his old stomping grounds. We even ate at a place called Good Times, that Eric remembers going to with his dad all the time. We drove over to Castlerock where eric lived to drive by his old house, unfortunately, it is a gated community, and the lady at the gate was not having it. She was not going to let us in! Eric was kind of bummed because the house there is the exact same house as the one here in Park City. So it would have been fun to see. So we drove around the area a little bit and found his old middle school and that was about it. If Arvada wasn't far away, we would have drove there to see where I used to live. I was born there and lived there until I was 7. It was fun to just drive around, we really like Denver. The rest of the day we went to dinner and played Wii the rest of the night.

relaxing with dad

downtown denver-where taylor slept-Moses and Harley(lori and kay's dogs)

We had such a good time and it was fun to go to all the sporting events. We want to come back next summer to visit and go to a Colorado Rockies game! Lori and Kay have such a fun house and we appreciate their hospitality. Thanks ladies for making our trip so fun. We will try to come out more often, we had a blast. Taylor was so excited to meet you both and can't wait until the next time...GO NUGGETS!:)

after all that traveling...taylor was still able to smile! But look at how tired her eyes look...poor girl!