We Made It!

So obviously it has been a long while since we have updated our blog. A lot has happened in the last few weeks; Rick passing his boards, Rick graduating, moving to Salt Lake, and getting situated in our new house. It has been a very exciting time, but it also has been very sad. It has been so great getting reconnected with my old Salt Lake friends, but I definitely miss my Texas friends.

Bella has been adjusting really well! I have been surprised at how well she has taken to the new house and getting to know new friends. She actually stayed in nursery all by herself yesterday, which as most of you know has been a constant battle for the last 6 months. She loves having a backyard and having her very own playroom. It has been so great, but I do miss all of the activities that we had to do in Dallas.

It was so exciting to see Rick graduate on May 13. What an awesome accomplishment. He was the 1st to graduate from College in his family and now from graduate school. He is amazing and I am so proud of him! All of our families came out to Texas to support him and I must admit that I got pretty teared up seeing him get his diploma. These past four years have definitely been the hardest and most stressful years of our marriage, but also the best years! I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband and darling daughter!

The move was easy thanks to family and friends. Getting all of the minor details down was definitely a headache, but it all went so smoothly! Thanks to all of our families for everything that they did in helping with the move. You all are the best!

I will definitely start posting more now that everything has settled down. I can't wait to get caught up on every one's blog! Talk to y'all later!

This is just a slideshow of what we have been up to for the last two months.

Anniversary & Turning the big "2"

7 year Anniversary

Rick and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on April 13. As a present to me, Rick and I went to the Blue October concert in Austin. It was awesome! We were the 4th row back and I swear the Justin was singing to me the whole time :). It was such a great concert and I even converted Rick into being a Blue fan.

I can't believe that 7 years have already passed. As you all know, I am not a mushy person so I will just say this: Rick you know I love you and am so glad that we found each other. You are such a great husband and father! Enough said!

Bella Turns 2

Our little Bella turned two on April 14th. We had such a good time taking her to Build a Bear and letting her ride the carousel in the mall. It took over two hours for her to open up all of her presents. Thanks to our families for spoiling Bella so much!

Bella's Stats:

Weight: 29 lbs 2 oz 80%

Height: 35 1/2 in 90%

Head: 49.5 cm 94% (She has my big noggin, poor girl)

Bella's Favorite Foods: Milk, Mac & Cheese, noodles, pizza, nuggets, grapes, strawberries, ham sandwiches.

Bella Likes: Gymnastics, movies (Madagascar II and Horton Hears a Who), Dora, friends, jumping, bubbles, and coloring.

Bella Dislikes: Vegetables, most of her mom's cooking, bees, nursery, and naps.

Her Favorite Sayings: "More Milk", "Come on mommy/daddy", "Cleo off the table", "I watch a movie".

Favorite Books: "No David", "Llama, Llama Mad at Mama", and the Pigeon Books.

Favorite Songs: "Elmo's World", "Popcorn Popping", "Wheels on the Bus", and "5 Little Monkey's".

Personality Traits: Stubborn, loving, fiery, and playful.

We love you very much Bella and you are such a blessing!

Bella at two weeks.

Bella at one year.

Bella at almost two years.

Parties, Parties, Parties!!

Bella with her BFF Lucy having a sleepover :)

Bella with her close friends Lucy, and Mckenzie at their tea party.

Bella and Lucy at the zoo. They held hands most of the time, so cute!

The "Sprinkles" cupcakes that I made for Bella's party.

Dora and Diego party

The kids running wild!

Bella with her friends

Everybody jumping.

We have had such a fun month with parties! Bella went to her first tea party a couple of weeks ago at her friend Lucy's house! Mckenzie, Lucy, and Bella had so much fun dressing up, drinking from tea cups, and eating PB & J sandwiches. They were so cute together and they always have a great time with each other!

Our next adventure was the zoo. Bella's most favorite person is Lucy. She is Bella's best friend and they just love hanging out with one another. Rachel and I thought it would be fun to take the girls to the zoo for a day of animal watching. On the way to the zoo we were serenaded with the debut of Lucy's and Bella's first music single "We love the zoo...zoo, zoo, zoo-zoo!" It was great. It was a perfect day and it was a lot of fun to see all of the animals.

The most fun celebration was Bella's Dora & Diego Birthday Party! She was so excited for her birthday party and it was all she could talk about for the last few days. We had her birthday party at her gymnastics place and all the kids had so much fun. She even had her favorite coach, Coach Kelli, as the instructor for her party. It was great! Her friend's Lucy, Gracie, Lilly, Treyson, Mckenzie, Asher, Preston, Caleb, Jacob, Maddie, Sofia, and Randen were all there to celebrate the day. We are so blessed to have so many great friends! Bella's real birthday is on the 14th of April and so she will be really excited for more presents and more cake. The pictures are terrible from her birthday party and I apologize for this. We have a very old digital camera that breaks often and once we get an income a camera will be the first thing I buy :)!!!

NEWS

We are making it official, Rick has accepted an offer from Dr. Kelly Carroll in Salt Lake City. Rick worked with Dr. Carroll before we moved out here to Dallas and he has offered Rick a position as an associate for his practice. It is a great offer and we are so excited to move closer to our families and old friends. Dr. Carroll was actually the one that told Rick to apply to Baylor and we are so glad that he did. We have absolutely loved it out here in Dallas and will miss all of our friends so much. We have made great friends out here and it is so sad to leave them behind. We will also miss the great weather out here as well!!! We will be moving back to SLC on May 16 and Rick will start work soon after. We have found a great house in Draper and it has an awesome backyard, which I am so excited about!!! All of my SLC friends can't wait to see you again and also do any of you workout at 24 hour fitness? Just wondering....

I hope all of you are doing well and hope to talk to you all soon!!

Springing Forward

Bella showing that she can play a little hoops too!

Rick showing us that he still has it even though he is 31!

Bella dressing herself. She loves the bling, bling!

It has definitely been spring here in Dallas. We have really been enjoying the 80 degree temperatures and being able to wear shorts and go to the park. Bella is following in her daddy's footsteps and loves to play soccer. She will just continue to kick the ball until she is stopped by a fence or until she trips and falls down. She is growing up so fast and it is amazing how fast time is flying by. What is also amazing is how bipolar the weather is out here too! It was a nice 83 degrees yesterday and now today's high is going to be 45. Crazy, but all I can say is that at least it doesn't stay in the low temps for very long since we will be back up to the 70's by Monday.

I was trying to potty train Bella this past week, but ultimately my lazy side won. Most of you know how much I hate dirty diapers and stinky bums, so the potty training failed after one missed poop in the toilet. I just love diapers!! I love the convenience of them, I love that I don't have to make Bella use a public restrooms, and I love how, for the most part, all the stinkyness stays inside the diaper. Bella has been asking to wear big girl panties and doesn't want to wear the diapers anymore so I am assuming I will have to start back up again soon...or maybe I will just wait until Jackie comes out for Rick's graduation and she can just do it for me since she has 4 kids experience :). Bella has been cracking us up lately and her "spirited" personality is coming out more and more. She now yells at us "No, be quiet!", "That's mine!", "Stop it!! Ow, Ow, Ow!" The last one is always my favorite saying that she seems to do at church or at the grocery store and she does it right in front of someone so they think that I am abusing her. It is great.

Rick is doing really well. He has only two months until graduation and can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. What a long and hard process it has been for him and we are all just so proud of him. He has passed his National Boards and his Mock Boards and so all he has left is the licencing boards in the middle of April.

I am still staying busy with work and Bella. I am still taking my tennis lessons on Tuesday nights and love it. Plus, being the enrichment leader keeps me busy as well. I am surprised at how much I have really enjoyed this calling, mostly because of the great people on the committee. Rick has also surprised me with tickets to my favorite band in April for our anniversary. We are going to see Blue October in Austin on April 11 and I think that it will be great. I will hopefully get to post pictures of me throwing myself on the stage.

I hope everyone is doing well!

Sorry about the wind blowing in this video.

Bella was delirious for this video, bad nights sleep and a poor nap.

Olympian in Training

Bella just loves her gymnastics class on Saturday and she really loves Coach Kelly. Her favorite event is the bar and she is really good at it. She has been spotlighted for her ability to do "skin the cat" on the bar at such a young age. Of course I had to post a video of her doing it, because we are so amazed by her strength.

These family picture below are the pictures that my friend Whitni Parker took. These first two pictures really captured Bella's personality of being super high maintenance. I don't know if we really got her to smile in more then two pictures. On the picture that we are walking across the bridge Bella was freaking out and turning completely red with how angry she was. If we could have got a picture from the front it would have been priceless. The pictures did turn out great even with Bella being completely dramatic throughout the whole process.

Do not disturb!!

The pediatrician has told us several times, "You just have to realize that you have a VERY spirited child", which in laymen's terms means "Good luck on trying to control her". Bella has kept us on our toes since she arrived in our home. She never ceases to amaze me with her determination and physical strength. As she gets older it is more difficult to coerce her into doing what I want her to do :). I know all you moms are saying "welcome to my world". I thought I had enough biceps strength to man handle a 21 month old, but that thought is dwindling.

She is getting cuter and bigger everyday and sometimes it is hard to remember what she was like as a baby...then we were quickly reminded by the three hour awakenings happening again!!

Bella found a new sense of freedom when she started crawling out of her crib and pack n' play in Utah. It continued on when we got back to Dallas and so we decided it was time to convert her crib to a bed. Nobody ever told me how difficult that transition could be. Bella decided that she could get up whenever she wanted whether it be at midnight, 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4:30 a.m., and finally the real wake up at 5:30 a.m. She was literally getting out of her bed 4 times a night and then would do the toddler run to our bedroom (loud enough to get the cops and apartment management called on us).

So we decided to try a new game plan. There was a "fairy" toddler bed at Babies 'R Us that she really liked so we thought we'd give it a try. She was very excited as we assembled it, which was entertainment in itself. I'm happy to report that she is mostly just waking up at the 5:30 am time. Though she wakes at 5:30 we are often able to get her to sleep another hour or two by walking her back to her room. She definitely loves her "big girl bed"!

I have attached some pictures from our family photo shoot. I think the pictures really capture the essence of Bella :). There is also a video of Bella singing some of her favorite songs. She has fallen in love with the video and song "Frosty the Snowman". I know that we will be watching this video all year round. I hope all is well with all of you!

Christmas Vacation

We had a great Christmas vacation! It started out with my brother and dad flying out to see the Cowboy's beat up on the Giants (unfortunately the Eagles did the same to us a couple of weeks later). It's always more gratifying, especially for my family members that travel from afar, when they pull out the "W". Since it was the second to last game at Texas Stadium tickets were not cheap. Before leaving Dallas we found out Santa was getting some Reindeer hunting material at Cabelas so we snuck over to get Bella's picture with him.

We headed to Utah for a two week trip. First we went to Salt Lake where we got reacquainted with the freezing cold and big snow storms. Ahhhh, that is exactly what I do NOT miss about living in Salt Lake, especially when we left mid 70's weather in Dallas. However, it was fun to see the temple lights in the snow and it was also a blast to go sledding with Bella. She was obsessed with the snow and had a great time making "Frosty the Snowman". The house we stayed at was loaded with built in fun. We had a steam room shower, sledding hill in the back yard, ATV to ride up and down the drive way and 9000 empty sq feet for Bella to run loose in.

Down in St. George we enjoyed our time with family. Bella loved being with her cousins and went crazy every time she played with them. Sledding was also on the agenda in St. George (ok really it was Cedar City since there was no snow in St. George when we got there). Luckily there were no casualties to report. I got to enjoy the finer things in St. George, like Pasta Factory, Paulas (to Ricks dismay), Charlies shakes and Cafe Rio. Christmas was good to us and Santa was very good to Bella. We had to ship most of her stuff home because it wouldn't fit in the suitcases. Rick spent a significant time studying while in St. George and he took his National Boards right before we left to return home. Bella and I had a lot of bonding time!

It was a great trip and we thank all of our family for the accommodations along the way. As fun as it is to go on these trips it's always nice to get back to a normal schedule too.

A day after being home Rick took off again for New Orleans. He was fortunate enough to see one of the most renowned games in University of Utah football history. It was probably the highlight of his year hands down.