Gavin: seven months

Our little Gavin is so fast and so strong! Now that he can, he follows either me or Liam around everywhere and is pulling himself up onto everything!! I have to constantly be with him because he wants to explore everything, but he's not steady enough on his feet, and we have lots of hardwood floors - I seriously worry about his little head. He's such a little daredevil and has fallen so many times, poor little guy.

He cannot keep his arms still while nursing. He reaches up to play with my face (mostly my nose) or else fidgets with his own ears.

Another weird habit he started is he is always chewing on his tongue. And it kind of makes him look like a gorilla :)

Gavin has had only two real food experiences this month: applesauce and a puff. And both times he gagged until he threw up. I'm really not sure what to do next...

This busy guy is just so stinkin cute! But these photo sessions are starting to get more difficult...

Eliana's blessing

Last weekend we got to go to South Carolina for our little niece's blessing!
How beautiful is this little girl? And how gorgeous is that blessing dress that my sister-in-law made just for her?!

We had a great time chatting and playing with our family! Except that Alissa had to spend a lot of Saturday chasing down her bag that the airport lost, and that night Liam got a fever.  So he was pretty sleepy and lethargic for about 3 days, poor little guy.

I really need to get better at taking pictures on trips. Apparently the only things I thought to capture were the blessing and Gavin's first trip to Steak 'n Shake. Equally important events, right?!

In other news:

Gavin got his first tooth this week! We are really hoping that is the reason that he kept us up for three nights in a row...
In the span of just a couple weeks, Gavin has gone from a little baby to a sitter / crawler / stander! He is keeping me on my toes for sure!

Liam has just started a biting and hitting phase, yikes! He is mostly doing it "playfully", but that doesn't make it any less painful. I'm constantly saying "don't hit your brother" or "we don't bite sister"!
But they still have their sweet moments.

Jenna has lately been obsessed with Garfield comics. For three weeks in a row, she checked out every single Garfield book the library had in stock. And she has read them all. I know she doesn't understand most of the jokes, but she laughs at them anyways!
I'm pretty sure this love for comics comes from two years ago when we were getting the Sunday paper in my short attempt at couponing. Jenna looked forward to reading the comics with her dad every week!

Kali and several other mommies have started a twice weekly exercise group. We meet in the church building's gym, bring toys and snacks for the kids, and get our groove on! At our first meeting, one of the girls led a zumba class. And I'm so happy to report that I am not as out-of-shape as I expected! Apparently living somewhere with stairs, carrying Gavin everywhere, and all those dance parties are a better workout than I thought :)

Paul has finally interviewed, chosen, and hired a new assistant! So, things are looking up for him at work.
Hurray for more family time!!

Christmas, Anniversary, New Year's!!!

The Saturday before Christmas we drove down to Danville to meet up with Grandma and exchange family presents. It's a small town exactly halfway between us, and just happens to have an awesome Science Center built from an historic train station.

I don't know if it was because of the time of year or because it's a really small town, but we had practically the whole place to ourselves. We all had fun building, playing, learning, and running around. We'll definitely take a trip back someday, hopefully when their butterfly garden is open.

Then we had a wonderful Christmas at home!
We enjoyed decking the halls, lots of Christmas music, movies and books, baking cookies, a trip to the D.C. Temple lights, new ornaments, reading Luke 2, and 2 hopefully new traditions:
-We had the missionaries over for a big ham dinner on Christmas Eve. It was a great way to invite the Spirit and focus on the real meaning of Christmas right when we're usually feeling greedy.
-We got "caught" on only the second day of doing the 12 days of Christmas for our sweet neighbors, but it was fun to try and be sneaky anyway.

ANNIVERSARY

Paul had to work on our anniversary (his assistant left for another job just before Thanksgiving, so Paul's had a busy holiday season - thanks buddy!) so we all went out to dinner the night before. Then the day of, I brought the kids to the women's basketball game and we got to be with daddy in a suite. It was a fun day, and we came up with this fun countdown:

8 years

7 homes

6 moves

5 vacations

4 job promotions

3 beautiful children

2 people so in love

1 eternal family

NEW YEAR'S

We welcomed 2015 three hours early this year. Netflix had an animated kid's countdown so we let Jenna and Liam stay up "late", partied in the fake new year, and put them to bed.

Then Paul and I played a new game we got for Christmas, and rang in the actual new year with sparkling juice and kisses with certain little baby that never sleeps!

I have tons of goals for the year, most of which can be accomplished simply by getting on a schedule. After having nothing resembling a schedule since Gavin was born, I'm super excited to make good use of the command center binder my sister-in-law made us for Christmas!

And we decided our family motto for the year is the primary song "Saturday is a Special Day". We want to make sure to use our Saturdays to prep ourselves and our lessons so that our Sundays can be relaxed and focused on our family and our Savior. Obviously we try to bring the Spirit into our home every day, but we felt like we especially want to focus this year on making our Sunday mornings less hurried and stressful.

Here's to an amazing 2015!