Mothers Day

Here's a picture of my sister Denise, My mom, and me that we took last Sunday for Mother's day.. It was a good mothers day, we ate roasted duck for dinner with Asian noodles, Ceasar salad and baked potatoes. Being a mother has made me appreciate my mom all the more. I can't believe what a strong person she is; and how much I could learn from her example. Anyway it was mostly a day for relaxing and good food, which in itself is a great mothers day gift. Crystal wasn't available for the picture, but I'm also posting these pictures of her at the bottom. Just in time for mothers day she's learned the art of scribbling on paper; and chairs and walls and herself among other things, but it was really cute to watch how excited she would get just by learning something new. I guess that's the mother's day gift that keeps on giving.
Crystals First Picture!! Awwwwww.....how sweet! *sniff, sniff*

Naptime Wars

Lately Crystal refuses to take her afternoon nap. Is this a phase? Usually she pouts and whines a litte when she doesn't like something and it's over, but lately shes extremely ademate about naptime...it's as if she feels she's being punished by it. After her lunchtime the other day I proceeded to tell her once again that it was naptime and she flat out yelled "no!" and shook her head. I thought it was funny. I asked her why and she pointed to the fridge and said "mas?" which means "more" in spanish...she was asking for more food. I ignored it and figued she was just stalling, but in the process of trying to remove her from her highchair, she threw a tantrum. I figured maybe she really was hungry so I put a little more food on her tray, and after putting 2 pieces of food in her mouth she was out cold. As funny as this was, I don't know if I'm just going to have to fight her everyday to make her take a nap or if this will pass...I'll guess I'll have to wait and see. Any of you moms who have experienced this and figured out a soloution feel free to comment. (:

Kissy kissy

Crystal likes to give us kisses all the time...if we're out of reach she'll kiss us on the knee from where she is, but she's a very affectonate and cuddly girl. We have seen her kiss her stuffed animals, and she has also asked us to kiss her stuffed animals at bedtime. She's even made two stuffed animals kiss eachother as well! Anyway today she grabbed one of her rubber ducks and went up to our wedding pictures on the table and pretended her duck was kissing our pictures. It amazes us that a 16 month old can already have that much to their imagination. She cracks us up when we see into her world sometimes.

May 2007

We can't believe that April has com and gone so quickly, and now it's already the cinco de mayo!!! (:
April was full of get togethers for Lisa, including her cousin Alessandra's wedding shower, her friend and ex mission comp, Ramsey's baby shower, her friend Robyn's wedding, and her other cousin Adam's wedding.
Scott was also busy all month dealing with finals (along with working fulltime,) and is happy to say that he passed all of his classes so we're all the more closer to his graduation which will hopefully happen in the next 6 months or so.
One little thing is that Lisa's had a relapse in her abdominal pain, and it turns out that instead of it being an ab muscle that they thought Lisa tore, it looks like a problem in her digestive system. (The only reason they thought it was the muscle at first was because she fell that day...but that apparently had nothing to do with it.)We're currently seeing a specialist who says he can fix the problem and we'll see how it goes. In the meantime she's being really careful of what she eats, mostly liquids and fresh fruits and vegetables.
Crystal has been battling a little cold, along with two new teeth coming in, so she's been kind of a whiner lately, which we guess is understandable, but still no fun. Luckily she's usually comforted with some kind of stuffed animal. She LOVES stuffed animals...her favorite is a little stuffed easter duck with rabbit ears...why it has rabbit ears we don't wanna know. Anyway at the bottom of this we'll attach a clip of how happy she gets when we offer it to her.
Lisa is going to start taking time to care for a 2 month old little girl, who belongs to a fellow co-worker of Scott, while she's at home with Crystal. She's looking forward to this, since it will give her more practice at being a mom and give her a taste of what more than one child would be like.
Aside from that, nothing too new. Scott is enjoying his short break from school and we're watching alot of PTI, the NBA playoffs, and the Office these days at home. We also went to see Spiderman 3 this afternoon (on opening day) and enjoyed it very much. All in all, this summer is off to a good start.

Robyns Wedding

This is a picture taken at Robyn's (Lisa's friend) wedding reception tonight. Unfortunately not all of Lisa's friends were there at the same time, so there are some girls missing from the picture (sorry about that). Crystal was in a bad mood because Lisa made her sit on her lap for 2 hours, so we went to the ihop afterwords and ate some fries together, which did the trick...she was in a great mood for the rest of the night!
Top picture, (left to right):
Lisa with Crystal, Janalee, Marilee, Robyn, Lisa F. with Halle
Bottom picture: Crystal eating a french fry happily

Flower picking?

Crystal's new thing is picking dandilions wherever they grow...however instead of picking the pretty yellow flowers like other girls she picks the dead ones that the seeds have already blown off of. She runs around picking them and then sits down in the grass and puts them in a little pile and plays with them. She's completely obsessed with this, and everytime she sees grass, she immediately starts looking for dandilion stems to pick. Everybody has a hobby right?

We're going on vacation!

We've just made some final plans for our vacation in June. In seven weeks Scott, Lisa, Crystal, and Lisa's sister Denise, are going to spend time with Scotts family on the East Coast. We will be spending most of our time in a beachouse on long island and enjoying the beach, however we will be spending time in in Scott's hometown in philly; D.C., Atlantic City, and of Course New York. We've already purchased our tickets to see Monty Pythons "Spamalot" on broadway. Should be fun. We're definately looking forward to posting some pictures to show you how it goes.

Crystal pouting during lunchtime

Crystal was finished with her food and started pouting, so we took out a camera to get it on film cause it's cute when she pouts. She's such a girl...when she pouts it's obvious enough to know she's mad, but it's subtle enough that it's not a fit either. For the record, we usually take her out when she's done, but we delayed this time to get her to pout on film.

Motherhood: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Motherhood definately has it's ups and downs, just like everything I guess.
Last week Scott was gone at school during the night and I heated up my little frozen dinner of swedish meatballs with noodles. Crystal eats whenever I eat, and it's usually what I'm eating; so there we were sitting side by side on the couch eating our frozen dinner while we were watching American Idol on the television. We each took turns taking a bite of our meal and everytime a contestant would sing she would bob her head and sway side to side to dance along. I looked down at her while she was dancing to the music, chewing her food with a smile on her face. It was a moment of pure joy. I felt like the luckiest woman alive to have this little friend next to me who loves and needs me so much, and I need her too.
A couple of nights later while I was putting her to bed I made a funny face and she couldn't stop giggling for the rest of the night, even when I stopped. It's amazing at how much the happiness of your child can mean everything to a parent.
Then there are the days that aren't the best. Everytime I get on the computer she gets jealous that she's not the center of attention and climbs to my lap and immediately starts pounding on the keybord and messes up everything, she deletes files, sends random emails, everything. I could understand if I were on for hours but I'm talking within the first 2 minutes of my being on it. I moved the keyboard where she couldn't reach it, so lately she tries everything to get attention, from basic whining to throwing toys at me, and has even bit me on the knee when I tried to ignore her once. This afternoon she kept taking her pants off even when she knew very well that I was telling her not to. I stayed patient and would just put them back on every time she took them off and telling myself that it was no big deal. Finally after a few hours and my loss of patience I figured if she want's to run around in her diaper it's no big deal. Apparantly it was a big deal to her because I looked away for a minute to download some music on my computer and when I looked back she had torn her diaper off...and it was full of poop, which she managed to smear EVERYWHERE. Due to the fact that it was my time of the month I think I actually started to laugh and cry at the same time; I'm not sure which came first or which dominated. What can you do but clean up the mess right? I'm going to buy her a belt!
In spite of the not so good days, I really feel like the good moments are worth it. I love my little friend. When she looks up at me with that huge smile on her face when she's just loving life, I know God really loves me; and when she smears poop everywhere, I'm pretty sure he's laughing hardest.

A Bilingual Daughter

We've been working with Crystal's language skills by speaking to her in both spanish and english in hopes that she'll grow up speaking both languages. Lisas parents have helped us work with her by speaking to her in spanish as well. In this video clip Lisa is asking her where several body parts are located and she identifies them. Sometimes instead of pointing to it she'll just move the body part, for example when we ask her where the light is, she looks up. When we ask her where her teeth are she opens and closes her mouth, and when we ask her where her bellybutton is, she tugs at her clothes (to indicate that it's underneath her clothes). For those of you who don't speak or understand spanish we added subtitles to the video to help you enjoy it a little more. Push play and see for yourself.

Watch Crystals Easter Egg Hunt! (only a little over 3 min)

Easter 2007

This Easter was a lot of fun. We went to Lisa's parents ward for sacrament meeting to spend time with some family, and enjoy the real meaning of Easter together. Crystal had a brand new Easter dress thanks to grandma, that made her look like a spoiled little princess...a beautiful one. Crystal had a small easter egg basket, but instead of candy, she had some toys. She was very happy to see more rubber ducks in her basket along with a small wind up chicken...she couldn't have been happier. It's great how they're so easy to please when they're so small! We ate an early dinner at the Lisa's parents house with them; Lisa's grandma, and Lisas cousins. There was a lot of good food including steak, ribs, buffalo wings, rice, ceasar salad, potato salad and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. We were stuffed! We then had some of the easter eggs set out (which Lisa colored earlier that day,) and let Crystal enjoy her first easter egg hunt which was a lot of fun for her. She was running from egg to egg so fast that she kept tripping and falling, but luckily it was soft grass she was running on, so she didn't care. She got so excited during the process that she had to go down for a nap soon after because she was exhausted. As fun as Easter has been for her, we're looking forward to being able to teach her, in time, that not only is it fun, but also a day to be thankful for and appreciate our Savior. We're so glad to know that life, with it's good days like this one, can continue long after our mortal deaths, and that there are many many happy days to look forward to in the future.

In the park

We took Crystal to the park today. Here are some pictures

April 2007

We're finally over most of the birthdays for the year, which makes eating healthier a little easier. Toward the end of the month Lisa took a nasty fall resulting in a torn muscle on the left side of her abdomen. She is currently wearing a rib belt and keeping close tabs with the doctor to make sure that it's only the muscle and not a cracked rib. Funny how you appreciate breathing and eating without pain when you have to be aware of every move you make in fear of having it! She's fine though and she's still pretty upbeat about the whole thing. Life is the same other than that. Recently Scott and Lisa took some time away from Crystal to go on a date and see the movie "Blades of Glory", which was exactly the kind of movie it seems like it will be, but because it appeals to our senses of humor, we really enjoyed it. (If you're a big Will Ferrell fan, this is a must see.) Crystal is doing well. Lately she's practically obsessed with ducks. Anytime we go into a store and pass by stuffed animals, she can immediately point out a duck if there is one, and she has a collection of at least eight toy ducks at home, rubber and stuffed; and she can't sleep without them. "Duck" is also one of the very few words that are in her small vocabulary, along with the usual "mama's" and "dada's" and other typical baby's first words. Although her vocabulary is small, she does, however, understand most of what is being told to her, and can respond to yes and no questions by nodding and shaking her head. She also knows and mimics all the actions to, "the itsy bitsy spider" and "popcorn popping" which I will try to get a video clip of sometime if I can get around to it.