I Love To See The Temple

Spencer's good friend, Jessica got married on Thursday, March 31st. We had great privilege of attending all the festivities for the wedding. After the sealing we wanted to make sure we got Maggie into the pictures of the wedding party, so we ran home to pick her up. It was Maggie's first time on the temple grounds and I loved having her there.

Here she is, all ready to go! She was excited to see the temple!

(Her first on-camera smile!)

We took a bunch of pictures of the 3 of us on the grounds and around the Logan Temple.

My cute family!

Come on Maggie - Smile!!!

Sweet baby!

Daddy and Maggie

Mommy and Maggie

Being there on the grounds for a wedding with my wonderful family made me realize how incredibly lucky we are. I am so grateful for the temple and for the chance my family has to be together forever. I have always known how important that is to me, but now, having my daughter in my life makes me appreciate the temple blessings even more. I don't know what I would do without it, and I can only pray that we will be able to help Maggie know and feel of its importance so that one day she will bless her own family by being married in the temple and receive the blessings of an eternal family too.

Kicked Out

After 25 years of life my mom decided that I needed to clear out of her house.

Up until now I have had a bedroom in my parent's home that is full of a lifetime of stuff - and it's ALL mine. Not sure what exactly came over her, but last week she gave me a call and told me that we needed to clean it out. I can't say I blame her - but it's been nice to have somewhere for my junk.

So last Sunday night she drove all the way up here to pick Maggie and me up and took me to Centerville to go through the endless droves of shelves and drawers that took me years to fill. Maggie and I stayed until Tuesday to finish the job. Here are some pictures of Maggie from the visit:

First though, Monday morning we got up and headed South to visit Aimee and go out to lunch. The actual occasion was that my mom and Shelly Perkins, Aimee's mother-in-law, needed to take their porch flower pots to be planted in Springville. While they did so, I waited at Aimee and Porter's apartment.

Aimee pulled out this little play area for Smoot and Maggie. It was really fun to watch them in it. Maggie doesn't have anything like this at our place - so she was quite intrigued by it all.

I still love taking pictures of these two together. Smoot still towers over Maggie. It's so funny!
Right here, Smoot had grabbed on to Maggie's sleeve. It looked like the were holding hands while they kicked around on the ground there. So adorable!
After lunch, we went back to my parents' and Maggie's aunts were waiting patiently for her there. They thought it was cute to get her to kneel down and fold her arms with the family while we prayed.

She did so well with it!

Aunt Sadie and Sydnee were good little teachers :)

And while I took a much-needed nap, Sadie took Maggie and paint her nails.
She looks like a little diva with her bright pink finger and toe nails. It's adorable!

Life at Home

So, in trying to catch up on Maggie's first 2 months of life, I've kind of just sailed through a lot of stuff and summarized some of the big events. So I thought that in this post I would add all the little random pictures we've taken at home.

This is Spencer trying to get some homework done while holding Maggie. This moment was especially funny because Spencer was afraid she was going to blow-out her pants. So instead of holding her like normal in his lap he took all weight off of her bottom, resulting in this:

Then I made him pick her up and give me a real pose

While Maggie's nighttime sleeping habits have improved significantly, she has a hard time napping during the day now. (We will take this ANY DAY over being nocturnal). She only seems to sleep in her bed (which is her car seat) at night. She much prefers her naps to be in our arms or on our bed.

Sleeping in Daddy's arms

As soon as we move her to the car seat wakes right back up. But she's just so peaceful everywhere else :)

Sleeping in our bed

We are having so much fun with her though. It's been a blast to see her grow and show more and more personality.

Here's Maggie with an almost-smile on her face. I always seem to miss it. But I love this outfit on her! It's darling!

Spencer's favorite game to play with Maggie. Balancing her on his outstretched hand. This was one of the more amusing times because of her pink little nun cap.

I took this picture on March 27th because Maggie found her thumb - which she then proceeded to suck on. It's not in her mouth any more, but we thought it was adorable. But let's be honest here, what parent doesn't think that every tiny thing their child does isn't adorable at this age?

Later that day, Spencer was playing his favorite game again. I made them pose for pictures because Maggie looked so cute in that dress like that. It was pretty much priceless!

Don't you just want to kiss that face!? I love it!!!

Maggie's flower courtesy of Little Daisy's Boutique.

St. George

Spring break at Utah State went from March 7-11. It had been 6 weeks since having Maggie, and we decided that we needed to get out and do something fun for it.

My cousin, Matti, gave us the perfect excuse. She got married on March 5th in the St. George temple. We just had to go! Unfortunately I forgot my camera :( So the only pictures I have are the ones that Matti's sister, Dani, took of us. But at least we got something right?

Here we are at the temple, waiting for Matti and her new husband, Dan, to come out. This is my sister, Aimee, Dani and me.

While in St. George we stayed at my family's time share, World Mark. We invited our friends, Emily and Travis to come with us. It was so much fun! In our 2-bedroom condo we had Spencer, Maggie and me, Travis and Emily with their daughter, Gwen, and Aimee, Porter, Oaklee and Smoot. I absolutely loved it!

Here's a random pic of our family. Spencer was having way too much fun with the sleeping child.

Sunday night we invited our cousin Dani and her husband Sevy and their daughter, Hazel to join the crowd in our place. It was so crazy having so many people in one place - but it was just fun to be together. The next day we went to the St. George Aquatic Center (because it was too cold outside to do some actual swimming at the condo). It was so fun to get the kids out and have something for them to do.

The Price and Perkin's families

My favorite part about the aquatic was getting Maggie into a swimming suit for the first time. She was so cute! But even in the indoor pool area, it was a little bit cold to have her in there for a long time.

Maggie in her swimming suit

Spencer warming Maggie up after her first swim lesson

It was Smootie's first time swimming too. Once they were both done they sat like little angels in their seats, probably just relishing the warmth of their dry clothes and blankets.

After going to the Aquatic Center, we did tin foil dinners on the grill. We had initially planned on going out to the wilderness - but it just rained way too much for that to have worked out for us. I couldn't believe how delicious they all turned out though.

We had such a great time there in St. George! The 5 days we were there seemed to fly by. I couldn't believe it on Wednesday when we had to check out to go home. We didn't even get a picture of Travis and Emily the whole time we were there! It was so good to get away though and spend time with such good family and friends. Hopefully next time we'll be able to spend a little more time there with a lot better weather.

Valentine's Day

This year, Spencer and I kinda decided that we weren't going to do something too big for Valentine's Day. We made a deal to keep it really low key so that we could just spend some much-needed family time together.

V-day was on a Monday. Usually on Monday's Spencer would get up at 8am for class and he'd be gone until about 11am. For the first couple weeks after Maggie was born I literally slept until Spencer got home if Maggie allowed me to do so. And she usually did because for those first few weeks of her life she stayed awake all night and slept through the day - which meant that mommy became nocturnal too. But this morning when Spencer went to class, both Maggie and I got up to get ourselves ready for his return.

The Saturday before I took a trip to Old Navy and picked out this cute outfit for Maggie. Before Maggie was born and people were doing showers for us, we kept getting clothes that said "Mommy's Sweetheart" or " Momma's Cutie" or something like that. More than once Spencer voiced his sadness that there wasn't an "I love Daddy" outfit or something for him to enjoy. So when I saw this outfit I knew it was the perfect Valentine's Day gift for him.

"Daddy's Little Love Bug"

I really couldn't help myself, I knew that we just HAD to have this outfit! I had to laugh at this huge flower on her head too. My mom calls it Maggie's fountain.

So I took these pictures of Maggie while Spencer was gone and then decorated the front door for him. This is how it turned out.

Spencer loved it! And up until about a week ago we still had it up - although we moved it to the inside so that everything wouldn't blow off or get snowed on.

And of course - Spencer did a perfect job of making me feel special too. He bought me these incredible flowers, Reese's and a chick flick for our "night in" to celebrate!
It couldn't have been a better day!

First Bath

Maggie's umbilical cord fell off after only a week and a half but there was so much dried blood and stuff leftover from it that we didn't know if there was more or what the deal was. But after Maggie's 2 week doctor appointment on the 9th of February we were told that we could actually bathe her! Yay!

Here are a couple pictures of the occasion. We bathed her in the bathroom sink, where we were extremely lucky not to lose her. We couldn't believe how slippery she got. It was ridiculous! And Maggie just didn't know what to think of the whole experience. Having never been submersed in water before, she kind of flipped out. Especially after getting her head wet.

Can you see the look of disillusion on her face?

She's just not sure what to think about it.

She did survive though and got some much-needed cuddle time with her dad afterward, which I think is SO Cute! Love these two special people in my life!

Cousin Time

On February 3, 2011 Maggie got to meet her closest cousin for the first time! My sister, Aimee, and her son, Smoot, came up to visit us. It was so much fun to get the two of them together. Smoot looks like a tank next to Maggie. They are so cute!

I loved having Aimee up here with us. We really didn't have anything to do, but just knowing that was she was willing to come up here and spend the time talking to me meant so much.

This was great having Aimee hold both babies and I can't believe how big that flower on Maggie's head looks. It's not even a big flower :)

Just 3 days later, on February 6th, Aimee and Porter gave Smoot a name and blessing during their ward sacrament meeting. It was a special day for their family and we wanted to be a part of it. Although we couldn't make it to the actual blessing of Smoot, we met up with my family afterward so that we could all be together.

Here are some picture from that day

I love my baby!

This was the first time all 3 grandkids were together, so naturally we had to get pictures of them.

These poor kids had at least 5 cameras in their faces, all of us snapping pictures, trying to get the perfect shot of them. They were good sports.

Oaklee and Smoot

Smoot and Maggie

And Maggie decided she'd finally had enough. Can't say I blame her :)

This weekend was full of firsts for Maggie. She was only a week and a half old and needed to meet many more of her cousins and aunts and uncles. The next day she got the chance to meet a good chunk of Spencer's family and it was so exciting for us to get to show her off to everyone. Unfortunately it was under the pretense of Spencer's Aunt's funeral. It was so good to be with the family though and see everyone for the first time after bringing Maggie into this life. Maggie even got to meet Aunts and Uncles and cousins that I have never met!

I wish I had taken my camera for that and gotten some pictures - but what can you do now? It'll just have to be enough saying that we were happy to see Spencer's brother and sisters there and all the extended family too. They just ate her up. We had her dressed in the same pink dress she wore in the pictures above and we were the proud to receive so many compliments about our darling child.