on this the last day of 2008

I thought I'd take a moment to share what I am most grateful for this year. 2008 has been filled with so much joy--I feel really blessed. Life always has its down moments too, but this year has mostly just been really wonderful. So in brief, I am grateful for:

As always, this wonderful man who I call husband. We celebrated our first anniversary this year and will soon celebrate our second. Life with him just gets more wonderful.

After more than a year of waiting, Jared and I were sealed for all eternity in the Bountiful Temple. I will never take that day or what our sealing means for granted.

I was able to grow a baby in my womb and bring him into this world naturally and safely.

I became a mother! I don't have the words to express the depths of emotion that accompany this role. I will be forever grateful to be called Mother.

My sweet, sweet baby Asher. Oh, how I love him more everyday! My heart just keeps expanding as he develops and grows and his darling personality becomes more evident.

These three crazy kids who initiated me into the topsy turvy world of parenthood. It is an honor to watch them mature and learn and become little interesting people. I'm grateful to be such an integral part of their lives.

Of course, my amazing family. I appreciate them more every year. I have been incredibly blessed with seriously amazing parents and super interesting and fun siblings. I'm really glad we were all able to be together for the first time in more than 2 years!


Oh, there is so much more than I am grateful for--Jared's family and all our extended family and my amazing friends all over this country! I wish all of you a happy, healthy, and fun-filled 2009!

Happy New Year!

my mama's birthday sunflowers

My mom turned 49 on December 30 and these are her birthday flowers from my dad. How fun is it to have sunflowers in winter?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Don't be jealous that you don't have a cute little elf like this at your house.

christmas eve jammies

We have a tradition in our family of opening one gift on Christmas Eve. This gift is always pajamas. Check out these cuties.

5 months

Our sweet boy is 5 months old today!

What a joy he continues to be. He laughs more and more everyday and is loving being around so many family and friends. He charms everyone he meets, most especially his brother and sisters.

Here are all the kids after church today.

Laughing with Daddy.

A rare photo with me.


And these are from the other day. I just love this baby!!!

off to utah

Our plane should be taking off in about 12 hours. We are headed to Utah for three weeks to see lots of family for the holidays, celebrate a few birthdays, and even go to a wedding. I'll try to post here and there if I can, but if not, I'll see you all in 2009!

lots of asher

I had a craving for Asher pictures today. So we snapped a few here and there.

Behold the cuteness.

in case you haven't had enough twilight

True Twilight fans will know that Stephenie Myer has been working on a book called Midnight Sun which is Twilight from Edward's perspective. And the more die hard Twilight fans will know that one of the partial drafts got leaked. Stephenie wrote about it on her website in August. (I just barely found out about it.) She says she has stopped writing Midnight Sun for now because of the leak and decided to post the draft on her site. It's over 250 pages, and I read it the past couple days. While it is most definitely a draft and therefore has lots of mistakes, it was SO fun to read! It is so refreshing to read the story from Edward's more mature perspective. It's so wonderful to see how and why he falls in love with Bella. It's so fantastic to see Bella from his eyes. Oh, and it's really fun to get more insight into the Cullens. I am aching to read more. I want Stephenie to write all the books again from Edward's point of view. I really hope that she at least finishes this one someday.

twilight movie

So we just barely saw the Twilight movie on Friday, and even though I am a few weeks behind, I want to talk about it. We kept changing our minds about whether to see it in the theater after we read all the not so stellar reviews. But Jared talked me into going Friday afternoon, so off we went. Asher once again proved to be a movie buff in the making--he was very well behaved and watched a good chunk of the movie.

As for what I thought about the movie-- I should probably start with what I thought about the books. I fully acknowledge their faults, but I also totally enjoyed each of the books. They are just so darn entertaining! I went into the movie with low expectations, which I guess is the way to do it, because I did enjoy it. But it was far from perfect.

I loved the casting of Bella. Kristen Stewart was great, and I think she made Bella a more likable character than she is the books.

I also liked Robert Pattinson as Edward. I wish he had worked out some more, but I think he pulled off Edward satisfactorily.

The rest of the Cullen family was hit and miss. I really don't understand why they chose to cast brunets as characters whose most distinguishing feature is their blond hair. Rosalie was awful! That actress as a brunette is quite pretty, but with dyed blonde hair and pasty makeup she looked horrible! I guess she is friends with the director, but man, they should have just cast a gorgeous blonde model. Jasper was also pretty awful looking with his dyed blond hair, and Carlisle wasn't much better. I did like Esme, and Jasper I hardly noticed but he was fine. Alice was cute, although not as little and pixie-like as I imagined. And their makeup all around was rather overdone. It seemed to get a bit better as the movie went on, but it was just so obviously makeup. These things are all pretty easily fixed, so it annoys me that they were so off.

I loved the casting of all the Forks High students. They were very believable teenagers. I also really liked Bella's parents. Jacob was great, as were James, Victoria, and Laurent.

I have to admit I laughed a little at some of the scenes with Bella and Edward. Things got pretty darn cheesy. And there is something about being in movie form that just highlights the absurdity of Bella not being at all afraid of Edward. I mean, I don't think there is any 17 year old girl that wouldn't be a little scared to be out in the woods with a guy she barely knows who happens to be a vampire telling her how great she smells and how she could never get away from him if he decided to kill her. I don't care how hot said vampire is, or even if you thought he wouldn't hurt you, you'd still be a little scared in that situation.

Oh, and I had read elsewhere that the whole sparkling in the sun thing was pretty bad, but I actually thought they managed to pull that off. If only Robert had spent more time bulking up a little... the shirtlessness would have been so much better.

So that's my take on it. I definitely want them to make the other books into movies, and I will see those ones too. For all their silliness, these are still fun stories.

obsessed

note: If you don't like seeing photos of cute babies or are annoyed by mothers' neurotic obsession with their offspring, this post probably isn't for you. Thanks for stopping by!

I freely admit that I am obsessed with Asher's eyes. More specifically his eye color. You see one of the fun things about me and Jared is that we have very different coloring. He has dark hair, brown eyes, and an olive complexion. Whereas I have red hair, blue eyes, and a very fair complexion. So we were excited to see what our baby would look like given that he could pretty much have any eye color or hair color. Now that Asher is here, we are still wondering what hair and eye color he's going to have. Although Asher has a hint of red to his hair in the right light he is by no means a redhead. (This does not stop people from proclaiming him as such however. I want to say to those people, if I didn't have red hair would you ever think this baby has red hair? I guess people see what they want to see.) It's still up in the air whether his hair will go light or dark. He needs to grow more before we'll know the answer to that one.

But as I said, what I am really obsessed with is his eyes. Baby eyes change during the first year of life and I keep going back and forth in my predictions for Asher. At first I thought he'd have brown because his eyes were SO dark when he was born. They were such a dark blue/grey they were almost black. But then they started to lighten up a bit and for quite awhile I called them his navy eyes. See how well they match our navy couch?

October 31

We became pretty convinced that his eyes were going to stay blue. We figured they'd keep lightening a bit and that would be that.

Then a couple weeks ago I noticed a change. Asher started to get some little streaks of brown around his pupil. At first it made his eyes look a bit green. I actually have gold around my pupil making my eyes look green sometimes, so I thought perhaps his eyes would turn out like mine. I got out the trusty camera a took some photos so I could get a real close look at his changing eye color. Click on the photo to see it big and you'll see what I'm talking about.

November 24

Now there is even more brown which makes me think Asher might be on his way to brown eyes, or maybe just some kind of hazel. I used the flash in this one so there'd be less window glare to better see the color. Again click on it to see it bigger.

December 5

Whatever color they end up being one thing we know for sure--this kid is a cutie! I am just so curious to see how they turn out!

Now if you actually read this far, I hope you'll indulge me for one more moment. I'm really curious to hear at what age your babies' eyes settled onto their true color. I'd especially like to hear from those you have brown eyed children. I find this whole change from blue to brown/green/hazel fascinating. Thanks!

mya and beckham

I know I've been bombarding my blog with photos this week, but that's what I've been doing, so that's what you get.

Today I photographed two adorable kids--Mya and Beckham. They are our upstairs neighbors and their mom was hoping for a nice Christmas card photo. Seeing as how they are 1 and 3, sitting still together and smiling for the camera were not high on their priorities, but I think we still got some fun photos of two beautiful kids.

And now I know why my wedding photographer only made like three of our wedding photos black and white--red hair is really fun to photograph and much better appreciated in color!