February update

Well, it has been a little while since I updated you all! Sorry 'bout that. Things around here have finally gotten back to our 'normal' or so. Nathan and Eli are *finally* over their colds and I was blessed to not catch what they had. (The Lord knew that there would be no one around to take care of the mom!) :)

I have some exciting news since my last post! I was recently accepted onto the ScrapGirls design team! I'm so thrilled and I have been having a great time. I am a layout designer, which means that I create layouts to showcase the FABULOUS products that we have at ScrapGirls.com. If you haven't checked it out yet, I suggest you head on over there! Or, if you'd like to see my newest creations, you can check out my design gallery there. I feel like a kid in the candy store because I now have access to all these great products to use for my layouts and we seriously have the most amazing stuff!

The update on our family is that Eli is growing like a weed. He has now learned how to put things into containers instead of always taking them out. I think he likes it because we praise him so much when he puts something away. (Even if he does dump it back out 2 seconds later.) I'm amazed at how he really seems to understand so much of what we say to him, and when he doesn't, you can tell that he's trying to work it out in that little brain. It's adorable.

Yesterday I decided to take him into Nursery during church to see how he would handle it. He's not old enough to officially be in there, but the ladies that supervised were nice about it and I stayed with him the whole time. I figured I might as well let him play with some toys instead of just roaming the halls like we usually do. He is just enamored by other kids his size. He found one girl that he liked and just followed her around. She wasn't too thrilled because she did NOT like to share her toys, so it was interesting to say the least! :) He's never had another kid push him before! :) But he didn't even cry--just looked at her like, 'What are you doing?', and then continued to try and play with her toy. Finally the teacher stopped her from pushing him again (I was across the room and wanted to see what he'd do anyway...is that bad? :) ), and gave him the toy. He liked that. The little girl didn't. But eventually they all got along great and he had a good time. I can't wait for the day when he can go there by himself (only 5 more months!).

I'll include a couple of recent pictures here. Nathan and I went searching for Ron's (Nathan's dad) favorite gelato place down in Newport Beach. I must say, it was divine! It's called Gelato Pardiso and it was pretty close to the real stuff! It's hard to find real gelato in the states, but this was excellent. Eli had his first little ice cream cone and he loved it. Well, he's my kid, so that probably goes without saying, ha! :)


I hope everyone is doing well! I'd love to hear from you! :)

Peace

I have the need to express these feelings so that I have some sort of record of them, since I don't journal as often as I know that I should. I have to say how much I love and respect my husband. Never in my single life did I imagine that I'd be lucky enough to find someone who loves me as much as he does. We've been through more trials than most in the two and a half years since we married, but I know that they have brought us closer together than anything else could have. The more trials we face, the closer we become to each other and to the Lord. While the pain is sometimes almost too much to bear, the sweet joy and bond that we forge makes it worth the effort. This bond that we share is more than I had ever expected to experience. I love him more than anyone I've ever known in my life and I'm more and more grateful for him everyday.

I want anyone reading this to know what a wonderful husband and father he is and how hard he tries to make me happy. Someday I hope to be in a place that I can return the same amount of love that he has shown me. I am eternally grateful to my Heavenly Father for the blessing of this man in my life. I know he is the perfect companion for me, although he himself is imperfect. Good thing I am, too. We're on this road of life together and I wouldn't have it any other way.

New Layouts

At the airport on our way to San Antonio

Emily gave Dad a "BBQ King" T-shirt for Christmas this year.

Christmas at my parent's house

Christmas at the Lakey's.

Picture!

Love this fun, new pic that I took using my iMac's PhotoBooth feature. I just love finding out new stuff that I can do with my baby! (I'm talking about the iMac, not Eli. Don't worry, I still love and spend time with him, too!)

Recent Layouts

Here are some pictures and a layout from a mini photo shoot that I did with Ali and Angela while I was in San Antonio for Christmas. We had fun and I wish we would have had more time! Isn't that always the case? Ah well, they turned out alright.


Here's Ali workin' it for the camera. She did a great job, even with my dooey directions, apparently. :)


This is Angela doing her best modeling pose. She's quite a natural.


Thanks for checking in!

Playing Catchup

Well, things have slowed down a lot lately since the passage of the holiday season. It got incredibly busy there for a while, with work and vacation and church and illness and all sorts of things. But life is back to it's normal pace now, with Nathan back at work, our slow recovery from sickness, and regular life returning. It's always sort of a letdown for me, because Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year and I always miss it when it's gone. But, it's time to move onward and forward!

Okay, I have to put this story down on paper (or cyberspace, whatever). Nathan and I had finally gotten out on a date this past Friday night, thanks to his dad who came down and watched Eli for us. We decided to go to dinner and headed to Claim Jumper. We were told the wait would be about 45 minutes, so we sat down and waited. After about an hour and a half of waiting, they finally buzzed us and we went to the front counter. A hostess took us all through the restaurant to the back, where we got to a table that wasn't cleaned off. So instead of waiting right there for the busser to clean the table off, she took us all the way back to the front of the restaurant and told us to wait until it was cleaned.
So we're standing right next to the counter, staring at the girl who took us back, who was at this point oblivious to us, talking to all her other hostess friends. We're waiting and waiting, and notice that they're starting to call other people and taking them back. Finally, after waiting for about 15 minutes, Nathan asks, "Is our table ready yet?" and the dumb hostess looks at us like we're crazy for a minute, then realized that she had completely forgotten about us. So she says to the main hostess (who is assigning table to everyone), "Is that table ready?" The main hostess says, "Yeah, but I already sat it." So the dumb one turns to us and says, "It's going to be just a minute." She looked at me and I must have given her some sort of flesh-eating look, because she quickly said, "Actually, we can seat you right now." I was thinking, 'You'd better!'
So we finally get to our table and the waitstaff that was there were pretty nice, but we had another problem with our appetizer, so we didn't get it for 20 minutes after we sat down. That's when Nathan asked for the manager. It was possibly the worst dining experience that I've ever had. Needless to say, the manager was really nice about it, and apparently chewed out the hostess because our waitress came over and asked us what the story was because there was a lot of drama happening. Anyways, we got a free dinner out of it, so that was nice. We spent over 3 hours at the restaurant and didn't have time to see a movie. Oh well. Maybe next time! :)

New layouts

Hello again!

Here are some of the latest pages that I've been working on. Enjoy!

Intro!

Hello, everyone. I thought I'd copy Emily and start up a blog as well. I'd like to have a space to showcase some of the things that have been going on in my life lately (namely photography and design stuff), and I thought this is a great place to do it! I like using MySpace to keep in touch with people, but the limited number of photos you can post is a little suffocating, so here I am.

I'll start off by giving a quick rundown of my life at this point. Nathan, Eli and I are living in Mission Viejo, California, where Nathan is working for Ernst & Young and I am continuing to work for Busath photographers in Provo. Eli will be 9 months old on Halloween (where does the time go??) and we're having a great time here with the gorgeous weather and all. Nathan's a ward missionary and I'm on the Enrichment committee. Lately I've really gotten into digital scrapbooking, with more emphasis on the design aspect, using photography as the main point and highlighting it with papers and embellishments. I've learned more about Photoshop in the last 2 months than I have the rest of the other 2 years that I had been trying to learn it! It's all thanks to a website called ScrapGirls. (www.scrapgirls.com) I'm even enrolled in a brushwork class that I just adore! It's been a lot of fun.

I'm excited about showing some of my latest creations here so that more people can get the chance to see them and get caught up with our lives. Hope you all enjoy!