Josh’s and my first Valentine’s Day as a married couple was on a weekday in the middle of midterm season. We gave each other sweet cards, and I heart attacked the door for him, but we didn’t really do much else. We declared that we would postpone it until a time when it was more convenient.  Well, it turned out that there never was a convenient time, so it got skipped altogether.

This year, Mother Nature blessed us with the “snowmageddon” only two days before Valentine’s Day, and as such, Josh had the entire weekend–from Thursday til Sunday–free to spend with Fay and me at home!  As such, we did quite a few fun things!

On Thursday evening, we made cookies to take to our neighbors and to Josh’s home-teaching families!

This is me looking goofy while displaying them!

On Valentine’s Day itself, we all dressed up in as much pink and red as we could find! Our next door neighbor was good enough to document it for us. 🙂

Fay also got a cake pop from the neighbors! It was the best looking cake-pop I’ve ever seen that somebody actually made, so I got all sorts of tips from Robin on how to do it. 🙂 Anyway, Fay really liked it! I don’t think she realized that it was cake inside, and she mostly just ate the sprinkles off of it. But it was adorable!

And, of course, we had to have a delicious dessert after our Valentine’s dinner! Fay gobbled up her strawberry short cake!

 

The day after Valentine’s Day we had our friends, the Burtons, over for dinner! We really like the Burtons and we have been wanting to have them over for quite some time. But the reason we wanted them over this weekend was because we had a hankering to make a fantastic Valentine’s Day cake, and we needed somebody to be impressed by it. 🙂  The Burtons were perfect cake subjects!

Told you they were perfect!

Anyway, we had a great Valentine’s Day weekend! Thanks to the snow for making it a party all the way through!

 

 

 

Josh and I have recently re-picked up some hobbies. Josh got (from me) some oil paints for Christmas 2012. He tinkered with them quite a bit last spring, but since we moved to North Carolina and school started again, he hasn’t had much of an opportunity to paint. But, now that we have 9:00 church and Fay takes a Sunday nap, he uses that time (I’m usually napping as well) to work on his painting! This is a recently finished work of his! It is beautiful and meaningful for this part of our life!

For those of you who don’t know, that is the well that is the icon of UNC.

 

As for me… My Aunt Martha taught me to crochet when I was about 12 (when Mother and Daddy went to pick Jordan up from his mission to Venezuela), but since high school I really haven’t done much until NOW! 

I’ve been a little baby happy (we are only 11 weeks away from baby Kid’s due date!) and the baby boy vest is the first article of clothing I’ve ever really made! AND it is the first pattern I have ever followed from written instructions!  The white project is the beginnings of a hat for Little Brother Monson. It was supposed to be newborn size, but I can’t really tell if it actually will be. Especially since my perception of baby is all skewed right now. We’ll see when he gets here!

The past week–since last Wednesday–has been mostly characterized by a rather cranky Fay. Some kind of bug has been going around our apartment building and Fay got it. 🙁  Over the weekend, it was mostly just a runny nose, a cough, and all around “icky-ness,” but on Monday–just about two hours before we were supposed to have the missionaries over for dinner–Fay threw up. Fortunately, she had been able to take a really long nap before, and another really long nap, actually during the missionaries’ visit.

Because of her extra nap–an hour before bedtime–she was feeling a little better by the time that we were trying to go to bed. She is lucky to have a daddy who loves her enough to play with her late into the night.

She has been feeling progressively better, I think, and she is definitely acting more like her cheerful self. She still has her moments, however.

For example: Yesterday at lunch she happily ate about half of her PB&J sandwich, and then wanted some milk and the cheese crackers that Mommy was having. I got her the milk and asked her to eat one more piece of sandwich before she could have crackers. It was the end of her life.

I don’t know if you can really see, but the piece I asked her to eat is in the bottom middle of this picture. She would put it in her mouth (once she realized I was serious) and then gag and spit it out. It was SO FUNNY! When I told her she really had to chew and swallow it, she buried her face in her hands, as though her puppy had just died.

Sorry, that isn’t the best picture.

But today, she is really feeling much better. She has been far less picky with the activities she does and how long she does them, and she has been giving me lots of smiles and laughs!  I’m happy that she is feeling better, for her sake and for mine and Josh’s. 🙂

I know it is already the end of January, but I thought it might be fun to note a little bit of how we have changed in the past year.

January 2013 was the first month of “the rest of my life” as a stay at home mother! It turned out to be quite an adjustment for me–moving to the world of no real milestones of my work (Fay has plenty of milestones!) and much less praise from those (she) I do all my work for. But, as you can see from the above picture, I couldn’t have too hard of a time, because I really did have the greatest job ever! I still do!

In April, we got the chance to “walk” in graduation! I thought that it would feel kind of empty because we had actually finished everything back in December–and my high school graduation felt empty even though I had just BARELY finished everything–but I was wrong. I definitely felt like we had accomplished something big! Especially since we did the last year pregnant and with a baby. (Not too shabby, I’d say!)  And because Fay was so much a part of our experience there at the end, I made her a cap and gown! (I made it from a free t-shirt I got in a class one time my sophomore year!)

In May, my parents took Josh and me to FRANCE!!!!!!!!!!  It was really an amazing trip, and just thinking about it makes me wish we were there right now! I would show you more pictures, but alas, we only took so many and my DADDY (hint hint!) has yet to send me all of his!

We spent our summer with Josh still working full time, and Fay and I playing full time! But Josh’s work ended at 5:00 every weekday and we didn’t have any homework or anything on the weekends, so we tried to do a lot of playing together. I think we had talked about going on some cool adventure during the summer, but we ended up saving our money so that we could afford our next big thing…

We left for North Carolina in August–we left from Josh’s brother Aaron’s wedding reception. It took us a good 3 days to get there, but Fay really was a champ!  She did NOT like her carseat for hours on end. BUT she was so good to us! She took her regular naps (two hours in the late morning and two hours in the afternoon) and even went to sleep for the night at the regular time. When we got to Chapel Hill, she would still cry whenever she saw the car for the next two or three weeks. Poor girl!

On our trek over, we got to stay with my brother David and his family in Columbus, Ohio! I think that we were their last house guests there, because they moved to Utah only a week later! But it was SO good to see them! Especially since we got to meet their new little baby, Calvin! (Oh yeah. I colored my hair red in early August. You can kind of see it here.)

I just like this picture because Fay is wearing a Carolina shirt at Duke Gardens. That’s our family for you!

October was an exciting month for us because we had a big announcement! We are excited to become a family of four in April of 2014! And Josh is very excited to have a little boy! (I am too, of course!)

For Halloween this year our family was Peter Pan! Fay was the cutest TinkerBell the world has ever seen!

We had Thanksgiving at our house in November and we had one of Josh’s coworkers over (as well as a friend from the ward later on in the evening), and I know that we took pictures, but I can’t for the life of me find them. My apologies.

Another thing I can’t find pictures of is Christmas. But I don’t think that we took our camera to Utah as we could barely fit all the stuff we absolutely HAD to.  But we had a FABULOUS holiday visiting with Muhlesteins and Monsons! We ate tons of super delicious food, and Fay played with all sorts of doggies! And we got to talk to both our missionaries!

Now we are home, and it is 2014! A few things that I have noticed as I’ve done this post are that  #1. Our life just keeps getting more exciting and more happy! I expect a similar trend for the next year, so long as we keep being good like we’re supposed to.  #2. It is such a beautiful thing to go back and remember things,so I am REALLY glad I have documented them! and #3. Fay seriously has SO MUCH HAIR nowadays! (Check out last January’s picture!)

We are looking forward to sharing more of 2014 with you than we did 2013! Our EyeFi thing we got for our camera (thanks a million, Mom and Dad!) makes it WAY easier to get pictures up!

 

 

This afternoon, Fay and I played a brand new game called “transfer beans” (you may feel free to rename it, if you wish). I got out two bowls and put dry beans into one of them, handed Fay a spoon and let her have at it!  She absolutely loved it, and got way into it!

And every so often, she would hand the spoon to me and say “mama!” I would then ask her “Is it mama’s turn?!” and she would respond with a great big “YEAH!!!!!!” that lit up her whole face. Here it is…

Motherhood is the best job in the world!

In our stake, every autumn they hold “Women’s Day” for all the Relief Society sisters. It is seriously the best idea ever! They just have a ton of different classes available ranging from crafts, to parenting tips, to spiritual subjects, to self-reliance, etc.  They have three hours of classes, so you get to choose three different classes to go to, and then they have a delightful lunch at the end! It really is quite a lovely experience. Anyway, I went this past month and loved all three of my classes! I went to “Photographing Children,” “Interior Design,” and “Sprouts.”

In my photographing children class, I learned some new things that I feel have increased the quality of my photography. Granted, I’m still nothing close to professional quality, but I definitely see some improvement. Take a look!So, I know that this one doesn’t have quite the right focal point (it’s more on her nose than on her eyes) but I really liked the lighting.  You can tell me what you think in the comments.

 

My other two classes were fabulous as well! After the interior design class–a subject that I have become interested in relatively recently–made me want to go back to college and major in it! Our teacher briefly touched on “color theory” and I was so fascinated by it! I would totally love to take a class on that! Plus, I would love to have a beautifully designed house!

The last one was about growing sprouts at home, which is seriously SO EASY and a brilliant idea for food storage. You can keep the seeds for quite a while, and then when you need them, all you need to have fresh sprouts (at a time when you may otherwise have no fresh produce) is a mason jar, some sort of hole-y top (they make special caps or you can use cheese cloth), and some water. You don’t even need sunlight!  It seriously is brilliant! And I have done it all by myself, and I had a big jar of sprouts in about 3 days! If you want more info, seriously talk to me! I will convince you that it is the best food storage idea ever!

So, I was talking to Megan Muhlestein (my sister-in-law) today and somehow blogs came up. I remembered that I really do want to keep a blog so that we can remember things that we have done! So here’s another go at a post.

There are lots of things that we have done that we don’t have many pictures of; so I need to not only get better at blogging, but also at bringing the camera with us places. Some examples of fun things we did that were not on the camera are the Duke Homestead and Tobacco museum in Durham, the Life and Science museum in Durham, and the ward camp-out at Jordan Lake. They were all super fun. Sorry for no pictures.

But one thing we did that WAS documented was Pirate Day at Krispy Kreme donuts!

Now, you may be wondering why we are dressed like pirates at home as opposed to at Krispy Kreme. The reason is actually quite amusing.  So, we got all dressed up, ready to have two DOZEN donuts for our little family, and we drove out to Franklin Street which is where basically every restaurant in Chapel Hill lives. We knew we would have to pay for a parking garage, but it was only $.50 for each half hour and so we were like “worth it!” We just told ourselves to make absolutely CERTAIN that we weren’t there for any more than an hour because we only had $1 cash. So we were planning on hanging out for a while and eating our donuts with all the other pirates. Well, we excitedly walked into our little Krispy Kreme and Josh greeted the woman at the counter with a pirate-y “ahoy!” She said NOTHING, handed us each a box of donuts, and started helping another customer.  It was SO funny! We were just so underwhelmed by the whole experience that we decided to leave and eat our donuts at home. So we did. And we took pictures there too!

The Monson Family is happily situated at the student family housing of UNC called Baity Hill. Josh can walk to his building in 30 minutes or bike in 10; and there is a free bus service for all of Chapel Hill and into the neighboring city of Carborro!

Our apartment is really nice and we already feel very much at home here! Here are some photos for your viewing pleasure!

Below is a picture of our kitchen. It has plenty of cupboard space and, as you can see in the photo, space above the cupboards for big things! It also has a dishwasher!

The next picture is of our living room/dining room. We like the carpet we have in the apartment except that it is under Fay while she eats. Hence  the rug under the table. We still end up manually picking up most of what was on her tray from the floor but it’s okay. The couch you see we got for free from some neighbors down the hall that we met our first couple days here. It was chilling in her parents’ garage this summer and when they learned that we were in need of a couch they arranged to have her parents deliver it to our house! It is SO nice! Best couch we never bought!

Fay’s room! Lots of room to play! I like having a room where toys can live that is not the living room.

Master Bedroom. We have a big walk-in closet with a light fixture! I seriously feel so fancy living in this apartment! The windows are lovely also!

Our first bathroom ever with counter space!

Down the hall between the kitchen/living room and the bedroom/bathroom we have a big storage closet and our laundry closet. Our washer and dryer are glorious and there is space above them for storage also!

 

We really do love living here! Our ward is wonderful and so are our neighbors! We randomly have 4 lds families living in our hallway and at least one more family on the floor above us!

I didn’t think to add this to my other post. I don’t know why. But I made Fay a little skirt and a matching headband for St. Patrick’s Day and we got the shirt for $1.49 after tax at Old Navy. It pays to be last minute!

It’s getting harder and harder to get staged pictures of Fay. So this is her looking less put together than I perhaps would I have liked to show in her picture. But the facial expression is PRICELESS!!!