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!

Post-Christmastime in Arizona

We did finally make it to the Mesa Temple to see the Christmas lights, but not until after Christmas. It was as beautiful as always!

Mike flew out late Sunday night, taking the red-eye back to Ohio. We were sad to see him go, but glad we got to stay an extra week with my family.

One thing we finally got around to doing was our Christmas craft that my mom got for us. She had my aunt pick up these super cute Noel blocks for us to paint. Mom and Calli and I loaded our stuff up and went to Grandma Knight’s house (we needed some peace from the kids because we knew we’d get nothing done with them there!). By the time we got set up, got lunch, went to Joann’s, and finally got started, we didn’t get very far. While I did get mine MOSTLY painted before I left the next week, I will admit that my mom finished the touch-ups and embellishments for me! Thanks Mom!
My Dad promised Amy months ago that he would heat up the “Little Pool” (meaning the hot tub) for her to swim in when she came to see him in Arizona. So one night, the tub was warmed up and we all got to lounge in the pool! Taylor was even brave enough to jump into the actual pool! Crazy girl! Matthew really loved the water!
Amy spent a lot of time playing with her cousins. Taylor and Amy wore the princess dresses from Grandma’s chest EVERY DAY. We often had to convince Amy to take off the dress so that we could take her pajamas off, put her clothes on, and then put the princess dress back on. They also spent a lot of time playing with Taylor’s play dough set in the backyard. We sure wish they lived closer to them! Amy and Keaton got along MUCH better this time! It was so fun! We of course took the opportunity to go quadding with my Dad one day. We The kids had a lot of fun roaming around, riding the quads, and snacking. It’s always a blast to go out to the desert and ride!

Matthew's Baby Blessing (finally!)

Though most of you probably didn’t notice, there haven’t been any baby blessing pictures of Matthew yet. Well, that’s because we had not blessed him yet. With the chaos of the move, and wanting to have family there, we kept delaying the blessing. Well, we finally got the chance over Christmas break. While Mike’s family wasn’t able to attend, due to crazy busy Christmas schedules, it was nice to have some family there.
Matthew borrowed this adorable outfit from his cousin Brody. Get this – while it’s a little short on him, he totally fits in it. Brody wore this when he was a month or two old. Brody is definitely going to be the enforcer of the group!
Mike, Dad, and Brendan were able to bless him. Grandma and Grandpa Knight came over for dinner afterwards too. It was beautiful and a very special day for all of us.