13 months

All grown up and sporting pigtails

Rosie has been making some huge changes these last couple of weeks, and I can hardly keep up with it. It is so exciting! She's gone from standing with support, to walking while pushing her cart, to standing up without any help, to taking her first steps. The cutest thing is that she's so pleased with herself afterwards. She knows she's turning into a big girl.

I missed her first steps, but it was only fair since Andrew missed her first crawl.

She's also turning into quite the talker. She's advanced her vocabulary from "ball" to "hi", "bye, bye", "baby", and "this" all in a few days time. We've noticed her starting to parrot some words as well. I just can't believe how fast she's growing up.

Bear Lake: Activities

While we were at Bear Lake, we planned lots of fun activities that turned out great. Our reunion theme was the London Summer Olympics which were just finishing up at the start of our trip. We had a great time making food and planning activities that incorporated this theme.

Here are some pictures from craft time for the kids where they painted the Olympic rings.

We had a special Family Home Evening where my Dad taught the grandkids the Haws family tradition of the Ich Bin Guten Doctor song. Then we learned about keeping family records and made a time capsule that will be opened in 2031 at my parent's 50th wedding anniversary.

Enjoying learning the song

Then my sister Katie planned a London-style Harry Potter movie night for the kids complete with Butter Beer, licorice wands and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.

One of the most intense activities was an adult sports competition planned by my brother Jordan which included a basketball shoot out, ping pong, pool, and an insane race through the house's complex slide system. I proudly took the ping pong title after years of losing to my brother and my dad. But it was my brother-in-law Jeremy who was the overall champion.

The kids also had fun decorating Olympic cupcakes with Grandma.

I was in charge of the treasure hunt where I made signs for each room and made clues to go with them. At the end the kids found reunion T-shirts for everyone.

We also put on a mini Olympics for the kids where they picked countries and got their faces painted with the flag and then had some track and field events. Everyone got a gold medal at the end and it turned out great.

Bear Lake: Beach Day

One of the best parts of the family reunion was spending time at the lake. We had fun boating, jet skiing, building sand castles and enjoying a delicious packed lunch. I especially liked riding the jet ski and watching Andrew try wake boarding for the first time.

Rosie loved playing in the sand and watching Daddy make lots of sand castles with the cousins. It was so much fun she had to taste it just a little.

Big Ben (to go with our reunion theme--the London Summer Olympics)

A mouth full of sand, the baby Godzilla is ready to wreak havoc on Big Ben

Spa-quality mud treatment

We finished off the day by taking some family photos on the lake.

Bear Lake Haws Family Reunion

Jordan and his wife Kara looking so happy!

In August, my family decided to take advantage of my brother Jordan's graduation from BYU and come together for a family reunion at Bear Lake. Jordan graduated with his Bachelor's in Exercise and Wellness and has plans to go on to become a Physician's Assistant. It was a beautiful day and lots of fun to celebrate with so much family.

Then after commencement we all packed up and headed to Bear Lake to the most awesomest house known to man. My parents rented it out to accomodate our growing family and it was an absolute blast, complete with an intense slide system, an indoor playground, and a deluxe theater room just to name a few. Let's just say we weren't bored at all.

We had a beautiful view of the lake.

Rosie had a blast playing with all six of her cousins and they were so sweet with her.

She especially loved spending time with her cousin Lily who is only five months older than her.

Even though we had lots of activities planned, (which I will go into detail about later), we mostly had fun hanging out and enjoying each others' company. Getting the gang all together from Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Idaho, and Utah is no small feat, but it was definitely worth it.

Rewind

Here are some videos of Rosie that I never posted. She's grown up so much since then.

Some "monkey tricks" at 8 months.

 

 For a long time Rose was stuck on "mama", then she changed to "baba", as seen here, then eventually it was all about "dada". We still don't think she knows what they mean, but she sure has fun saying them.

 

My cousin let us borrow this jumper for a while and Rosie had lots of fun bouncing around. She eventually thought she was too cool for it.

This is Rosie's first time crawling at about 9 months. She had been doing some scooting on her bum, and even gone backwards, but this is the first time she's used her knees and gone forward.

We had to videotape it again once daddy came home. It was just too exciting.

My Blogging Hiatus

Happy New Year! Can you guess what my New Year's resolution is? It's been a long four months away from the blogging world, and it feels good to be back. I never intended to take this long of a break, but a few things have kept me away. The first happens to be the cutest little baby girl in the world. Since we moved to our new apartment, Rosie's sleeping habits went from not great to terrible. Unfortunately to avoid waking her up, I became a bit of a noise Nazi in the process, much to Andrew's dismay. That meant I never wanted to use our computer anymore, (our desktop sits right outside Rosie's door), for fear typing taps or squeak of the chair would wake her from her temperamental slumber. Sounds pretty anal, I know, but let's just say I was a little desperate. Suffice it to say, blogging became out of the question, especially because when Rose was awake, she was very adamant that I should not use the computer.

But after a lot of thinking and talking and a big leap of faith we finally decided to sleep train our little one, and after one terribly hard week, she finally learned how to sleep and has been a little sleeping angel ever since. About that time, however, morning sickness with baby #2 kicked in (yep, I'm expecting; 15 weeks along), and so I really didn't feel like doing much of anything. I'm feeling better now, but with all the busyness that goes with the holidays, not to mention three birthdays and an anniversary, there really hasn't been much time.

So now that things are finally settling down I'm ready to blog! I can't promise a post a day, but I hope to do a better job sharing in the new year.