Magic Show

For our January ward activity, Brother Thurman Smith, a professional magician in our ward, offered to do a Magic Show! Hooray! I love this for many reasons:

1. I love magic shows!

2. It took very little preparation and coordination.

3. It's a great activity for the young and old!

There was a family visiting that used to be in this ward who do magic as well. When Brother Smith had done a show for the ward previously, they had been his opening act, so they offered to do it again.

Then, the main attraction! It was really great, especially when he did his head-cutting off act! FANTASTIC! Now, onto the next activity...

My Baby's Getting Big!

Matthew is getting SO big! He is now a proficient crawler. He started out just going backwards, backing himself under entertainment units and couches. But eventually he learned to get on his knees and throw his body forward. Now he gets on his hands and knees and just goes!

He doesn't venture too far yet (hasn't attempted the stairs or even the front room or deep into the kitchen for that matter), but he can get wherever he wants to go. He is also a climber. He's still a little bobbly though, so he typically either loses his grip and whacks his face on whatever he's coming on (usually the tv stand), or he gets stuck because he doesn't know how to climb down from whatever he's climbed on (like the side of his walker).

It's so funny to hear Amy whining from the other room because Matthew has crawled over to whatever she was doing (like a puzzle) and is touching her stuff! She hasn't figured out how to pick stuff up fast enough, so she just sits there and cries until we come and move him. I can just imagine the fights in the upcoming years!

But, at the same time, she really likes how active he is. She crawls around on the floor with him or sits down and says "come here buster!" She asks me to bring him downstairs so she can play with him in the basement a lot.

Riker James Grier

At 6:00 AM on Tuesday, January 12th, I got a call from my little sister, Lisa. She was having her baby! Hooray! However, the baby was breach (butt first), and she was going in for a C-section! Boo! So I rushed off to Columbus, since my mom wasn't going to get there until that evening (she changed her flight because she wasn't planning on coming til the end of the month - Lisa was 3 weeks early). I got there about an hour after Riker was born. He's adorable! A full head of hair!

Very flexible after being stuck like this for so long!

Congrats Lisa and TJ! You'll be great!

Snow Day

Remember that pitiful little snow day I blogged about previously? I'll admit, I was afraid that was as much as we were going to get. Boy, was I wrong! It snowed for about a week straight.

Every once and a while I try to do something fun, like when we first moved to Arizona and I cooked hot dogs and set up lawn chairs and towels in the front room of our apartment on the first day of baseball season so we could watch the D-backs on tv. Well, I decided we'd celebrate snow day. I had grand visions of snowmen and snowball fights... until I remembered that snow is really light and powdery on the first day and doesn't pack well. Oh well... we settled for snow angels and throwing snow into the air. After playing in the snow outside, we came in for warm chicken soup and hot chocolate with our snow tablescape. Then we did some skiing on the Wii. Amy was surprisingly good!

I love my family!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Another birthday has come and gone. I'm now 26, and it pretty much feels like 25. I now have 2 kids, I live in a new state, and I'm definitely growing up.

I spent the day relaxing around the house, not cleaning, etc. That night, Mike and I went to Mimi's Cafe (thanks Hansens for watching the kiddos!). Then we came home for cake! Yum - German Chocolate! Actually, half-German chocolate, half chocolate with chocolate frosting, because Amy and Mike don't like coconut.

Mike got me a new saucepan (which I DESPERATELY needed), an organization container for my scrapbooking stuff, and Pride and Prejudice. My mom contributed additional funds to my freezer fund (picture coming soon).

Mike's Christmas Concert

Oops, this one is a little out of order. Mike had an orchestra concert on December 12th-13th. While it was a "Christmas Concert", Mike played in the couple of short Christmas orchestral pieces, then they had a couple longer pieces that were smaller groups (not strings), which was a bummer. But Mike did good nonetheless! Way to go babe!

Christmas Outfits

We had some cute Christmas outfits this year, so here's our holiday ensembles!