a reminder

A few weeks ago, Mim provided me with a great reminder about what Christmas is all about:

This was her favorite way to arrange her nativity- everything pointing at Jesus.

Just a bit

A bunch has happened the last almost 2 months.  Mike's birthday, Thanksgiving, Mike herniating disks in his neck, and then there was December.  I do intend on catching up, but for now, here's some pictures of Mim on Christmas. 

She got a kitchen set that Mike and I made out of some nightstands on KSL.  One is a sink and cupboard, the other is a stove/oven.  She's a fan.  We set them out so she would see them first thing and as soon as she did she headed straight for them, asking "Wha is it?"  She started filling up the little glasses and giving them to me and Mike to "drink."  It was sweet. 

Halloween

She adjusted to her costume pretty quickly, once I gave her some candy to ease the transition.  Doesn't she totally look like an ewok from behind?

Bean Museum and etc

We went to the Bean Museum (Kita calls it the dead animal zoo) with all the Harper cousins, as well.  I don't really have any good pictures of looking at the animals.  What I really wish is that I had gotten pictures of Mim petting the live animals they had out.  Mim visited the tortoise first, but wasn't very interested.  Then we saw the turtle crawling across the floor and I think it clicked for Mim that these weird little things were alive, and then she wanted everything to do with them.  She kept trying to grab the turtle- me and the BYU student looking after the turtle both had our hands full.  She even petted the snake they had out.  I kept my distance there, because snakes creep me out.  Then we went back to the tortoise and she thought it was awesome.  They had a lizard out as well that Mim also loved- every time it moved she would start laughing like crazy.  It appears as though I have successfully ingrained my love of animals into my daughter.  The vote at our house for getting a dog is now 2-1.
We went into the Bean play room for awhile, as well.  Mim is not great at sharing. 

Ki put them both on a big toy semi and pushed them around, but it didn't last long before they were both jumping off and fighting over something else.  Oh, little ones.
No more pictures of the Bean- this was my only half decent one.
I'm completely lacking in pictures of Wheeler Farm, which is a bummer.  Kaid and Jenny took everyone up with them to check out all those animals and go on a wagon ride.  Mim was great at the beginning and loved chasing all the free roaming ducks and geese around.  By the time we got to the bigger animals, it was her naptime and she didn't care about anything.  She was ok again by the time we got back to Kaid and Jenny's and had some pizza and cookies.  I'll have to round up some pictures- the farm was a really cool place and it was a very fun afternoon.

Pony ride!

Amidst all the activities with my family and Ki, we went to a fund raiser with Mike's family for one of their family friends.  It was at Young Living Lavender Farms, down in Mona.  It's a cool place, turns out.  Mim had her first (and second, and third, and fourth) pony ride and she loved it.  So much.  She was pretty excited to sit on the horse and pet it, and then they started moving she could hardly contain herself.  It was so cute.

{She was on a little pony for her first go round.}

For her subsequent rides, she was on a real horse.  Somewhere between this ride and the other stuff we took pictures of, Mim smudged the camera lens and I didn't realize it, so they're a little blurry.

They had a little mini zoo there as well.  We got charged by a buffalo (only a few running steps, but whatever- still a charge) and it made me jump pretty good.  It didn't phase Mim- I think she probably wanted to pet it.
Then we saw the zonkey!  (The sign said ze-donk, but I think zonkey sounds more awesome.)

I want one.
They had a whole miniature medieval village set up (I guess they used to have jousts and festivals and stuff there- like a Medieval Times sort of thing), so Mike and Matt stayed amused as well:

Looking at ducks

We went to Adventure Land park up in Highland to see the ducks.  Apparently I put my camera away for that part, because all I have are pictures of the kids playing on the big toy beforehand.  Grandpa got to catch all the kids coming down the slide; everybody loved it. 

{It looks like Mim is explaining something really important to Will, but really she's going in for the hug.}

{This is as close as she got to the aforementioned hug.}

After we were done with the big toy we went and fed the ducks.  They were aggressive.  I gave Mim some bread to give to them and I'm pretty sure if my dad hadn't been fending them off with his cane they would have eaten it right out of her hand.  Or just attacked her for it.  Mim totally wanted to hug the ducks. 

This one time my sister came to Utah...

Ki lives in Philadelphia.  If you ask me, it's not ideal, but whatever.  Anyway, Nate was out here, doing an internship for school, for two months, so Ki and the kids came to visit for a couple of weeks.  It was excellent to see them all, especially Ryker.  He and Mim are little buddies.  She's totally going to boss him around when they're older.
The first week Ki was here was at the beginning of October, when it was so unseasonably warm.  It was so warm, we had another baby pool party.

{That face means she's really enjoying herself.}

{The only picture I got of the three little ones hanging out.  The boys wouldn't sit in the pool, it was too cold.  Mim is tough.}

{The girls.  Ari and Mim fighting over the sprinkler, Kita waiting patiently.}

 

{Can you see why I wish this little guy was around more?}

{Debbie is a sweetheart and gave Mim a swimsuit to match Ari's.  It's so cute.}

 

{Her first otter pop.}

{Almost too cute to comprehend, am I right?}

I can't decide

Should I do one huge post or a bunch of little ones?
I'm thinking a bunch of little ones.  I think I'll start with the yard- we finally got it graded!  Many of you may know that we exhausted our house budget this summer by getting air conditioning (worth it!), so our yard was super gross this summer.  Kind of embarrassing (but still worth it to not have it be 85 degrees inside).
Here's what our lawn looked like most of the summer:

Early in the year we had the retainer curb around the lawn removed (before we got AC, which, as I may have mentioned, was totally worth the world's ugliest lawn for a summer).  We also removed the sod ourselves in preparation to have the lawn be graded. 
And now:

Nobody has ever been happier about flat dirt. 

Because this took us so long, we won't be able to get our sprinkler system in this fall, which is kind of a bummer.  We wanted to have that done so that next spring we would be able to get the grass seed in right away.  Ahwell.  To make things move along faster next year, we plan on assembling fence panels in our shed over the winter, so all we need to do when it warms up is dig post holes, place posts, and pop our fence up.
Ha.  I should know better.  Lawn stuff will always take at least twice as long and cost twice as much as planned.  And yet I continue to hope. 
So, next year:
*fence
*sprinkler system
*grass seed
*vegetable garden

Here's hoping, right? 

Uhg.

That's how we're all feeling.  Mim's had a cough for almost a month now (after several doctor visits, we now have some antibiotics to help with a possible bacterial sinus infection), we found out last Monday that I have walking pneumonia, and Mike's starting to feel sick. 

Not our best week ever.

However, it's made me feel grateful for a lot of things that I take for granted a lot.

Like moms and mother-in-laws who take Mim for the day so I can sleep and rest
And medicine (especially Theraflu)
And the fact that for the most part, we're pretty healthy people.  This is probably the sickest I've ever been, not counting morning sickness (which was the worst because it lasted 5 months)

So, now I've counted my blessings I can get better, right?

Labor Day

So, Mike and I didn't have any huge plans for Labor Day- pretty much yard work, hang out, and barbecue at my parent's- but it was such a perfect weather day that we went to the park.  Mim and I go to the park all the time; we live less than a block away.  But today when we went there was a spare adult to take pictures!  Not that we took many- it's more fun to watch with your eyes, after all.

She loved climbing up and through and down everything.  And she loves slides.  Can you tell? 

A first

Mim loves to color.  I usually break out the coloring book and crayons at least once a day.  I thought I was being really smart, only giving her 2 or 3 crayons at a time- so she wouldn't be able to secret any away and surprise me with murals like this.  Turns out, I need to pay more attention when I know she actually has crayons.  She was laying on the floor in the living room, coloring in her book, while I watched a show and folded laundry.  I was really into it, I guess.  I looked over and the coloring book was still there, but Mim and crayons were gone.  I was lucky, I suppose, that it was only in one little spot in her bedroom and not all down the halls and everywhere.  I just laughed when I saw- it was totally my own fault.
Here she is beside her handiwork:

  It's hard to see, but it's on the wall by her stacking cup she's holding.

Ah, ma petite artiste. 

Baby pool party

Mim loves the water:

Today was the annual cousin baby pool party at my parents' house.  Mostly it was Mim and Arie, since Will wasn't a huge fan of the water (especially of the sprinkler). 

Mim was delighted when she realized she could control where the sprinkler went- she tried to spray anybody who came by.  She would also spray herself in the face. 
She was a little tentative at first because of an experience she had last week- I went to help a friend get her classroom set up for this fall, and I had my hands full when Mim and I were leaving (I was holding a pie).  The sprinklers were on outside and Mim started chasing after them, getting sprinkled on.  She kept evading me, so I just figured I'd get everything to the car (15 meters away) and then come back and grab her.  I headed that way and was pretty close when I heard her crying (I figured she was sad that I was leaving her), I turned around and saw that she was near the sprinkler head and she kept falling and couldn't get up (slippery, wet grass on a slight slope).  It was so sad.  I ran to her and picked her up and she was absolutely soaked.  We had a towel in the car, and she calmed down as soon as I had her, but I just can't even describe how pathetic she was, soaking wet and so sad.  I'm just glad she's not scarred for life.

Mim goes to ID

Mim had her first trip out of state a few weeks ago- we went to Idaho for Mike's cousin's daughter's baptism.  It was up in Downey, ID, about a 2.5 hour drive.  Except for the traffic we encountered up around Ogden, which made it a little over 3 hours.

On the way up, when there were still smiles (she did pretty well, actually- the last hour got a little iffy, but it was naptime, after all).

At the baptism (Mike took a secret picture). 

Mim running around outside the church.

. 

This was at Mark and Kerry's after the baptism (they have a ranch, which I think is super cool).
We stopped at a Wendy's on the way home and Mim got her first fast food.  She loved it, maybe a little too much.  Seriuosly, she LOVED french fries.  It was cute- she loved dipping them in ketchup, too.

Don't worry, I'm already working on her future dress up collection.

I will dispense with the excuses about being an inconsistent blogger.

My mom's side of the family had their annual reunion the first weekend of July.  It was just a few days, culminating in an evening at the Scera pool (we've rented the entire facility for a few hours for 3 years now) and fireworks and dessert after (or so I heard, Mim had to go home and go to bed and we missed the last bit).  There was a breakfast on Friday morning, where I took a few pictures, then forgot about my camera for the rest of the day.  Thus I don't have any pictures of Mim at the pool (my mom does, though). 

Mim and Grandma, hanging out after breakfast.

Mim and Grandpa, doing the same thing, except Mim is more distracted.
That little squish loved the pool.  We haven't been this summer, but soon after we got there she was running right into the water.  They also had a little kid slide into the shallow end that she could have gone down all day (which is also the case with slides that are on land), plus she had a little floaty tube so she could just hang out.  Unfortunately, it was a little windy, so she got cold and had to get out of the pool, but my dad was ready and willing to sit and cuddle with her for the hour we had left (which is about 3 times as long as the longest snuggle I have ever gotten from her). 
It was great to see all the cousins on that side- we don't get together much now that we're all older and have so much of our own stuff going on. 
Yesterday and the day before were Mike's mom's family's reunion.  We had a dinner at Kati's house on Friday (I forgot the camera, which I especially regretted when Grace took Mim down the slide on their swing set a few times and when Maren gave Mim a spontaneous hug), and then met for the band breakfast and the parade Saturday morning.  I remembered my camera for that:

That's how Mim feels about parades.  I don't think the fact that she went to bed really late the night before and had to be woken up that morning helped. 

It wasn't all bad, though.  Look at those two cuties.

We only stayed until we saw the AF band. 

We did get a quick family picture, first.  (Yeah, I ran the Steel Days 5k.  My first race since the half marathon I did a few months after Mike and I were first married...yikes.)

After Mim's nap we went to Mom and Dad J's for dutch oven dinner (yum) and family pictures (taken by the wonderful Amber D, who took our family pictures last fall).  Mom and Dad J have 9 grandkids, and when all of them are throwing tantrums and/or crying while they're supposed to be smiling for pictures, it felt like about a million.  Mim was getting into her overtired laughing-and-then-crying-for-no-reason stage, but we managed to get some smiles in the pictures with just her and Mike and I.  About the larger family photos, especially the ones with all of Nanny and Grandad's posterity, I am not so sure.  It was a huge relief when it was over, but I'm glad we'll have all those photos. 

Here are Danger's kittens.  From top left and going clockwise, they are Sweetie Cake, Cookie Pie, Turk, and JD.  I'm sticking this on here so Mike can show his work friend who wants to have one.