Ski day

The Carlson's decided it was finally time to get together to have a ski day! Aaron and I love skiing but can you believe that we have actually never skied together in the 8 years we have been together??! Last season I was preggo and the doc put the kibosh on skiing so I was so looking forward this season when we could finally get out. Grandma Carlson was very kind to watch Grayson and Ryan so that the rest of us could enjoy the day. We went up to Brighton and the weather was absolutely perfect. It was slightly icy but otherwise great skiing. That is for the BIG exception of the power going out and getting stuck on the ski lift for an inordinate amount of time! Way lame but we at least got a 1/2 price day pass out of it so I guess we will look forward to another great day of skiing.






Poor Mila got smashed by another kiddo in her ski class and it injured her tooth and made it loose, they think it will fall out soon. I told her that I'm sorry she got hurt and she said "it's ok, I will grow a new one."

Merry Christmas!

Usually I have to work on Christmas Eve, but not this year! We typically get together with the Carlson’s on Christmas morning and open presents together, but we decided to do it on Christmas Eve instead. Grayson loved his little truck he got from Aunt Chanel and Uncle Richard, he played with it all night. We got everything we wanted and it was so fun to hang out with the whole family. And what kind of Christmas would it be if Rich and I didn’t play the “Christmas song”; one of us plays the left hand and one plays the right and together we make some great music-this year, we had a new song to try, it was challenging.










Christmas morning was left to our own little family. We were all spoiled rotten. Not sure why we spoiled Grayson because he ended up loving the paper and bows more than the toys.

Family pictures

I felt the need to get some pictures for Grayson’s six-month birthday but I didn’t want to pay a ton of money. A few people in our ward went to a place called Fotofly in Draper. Their pictures turned out pretty good so I figured we would give it a shot. It’s a large room with different walls and props all over the place and you can choose to take pictures where you want. It was pretty cool. Grayson did pretty good except the repeated flashing made him mad. We had to calm him down every few minutes….annoying, but we got some great ones of him!

Vacation!....Fox style

Last weekend, we went on a family vacation!!!

First one since Grayson was born

Nevermind that it was only to Spanish Fork canyon for the guys to go hunting and nevermind that it was so cold that I didn’t step foot outside the camper the whole weekend and nevermind that the whole weekend, my mother-in-law played with Grayson while I did homework.

It was a vacation none the less!

Happy Halloween!

I had to get some shots of my little darling in his costume.

He is a lion if you couldn’t tell.

People have asked if we will be trick-or-treating….

I don’t think we will be prostituting our child for candy this year-maybe next year (I think people would catch on to what we were doing!)

Happy Halloween!

Six months old!

I cannot believe that my little boy is six months old! It seems that you spend their newborn stage exhausted and sleep deprived and therefore can't remember anything. I do remember thinking how I couldn't wait until he was not just a eating, sleeping, pooping lump anymore. Now he is an interactive, explorative, loving, happy, smiley little boy. I have decided that this is my new favorite stage of baby-ness. At his 6 mos checkup he weighed a whopping 16 lb 14 oz and was 28 inches long. He is hitting just about all of his milestones. He it getting really good at being spoon fed and still loves squash and sweet potatoes the most. He grabs toys with both of his hands and brings everything to his mouth. He still is not great at sitting up on his own and is not big on standing-but the doc thinks it is just his laid back attitude. He sleeps 11 hours at night and still only gets mad when he is hungry or sleepy, otherwise he just hangs out where ever we put him!
I saw a tutorial online about how to make baby ties (I had to find something cute because there is just not much out there that is cutesy for boys) and I went to the DI and found a few ties to turn into baby size. Then I just had to take some pics of my little guy in his cute tie because who can resist a baby dressed up like an adult?? (although the shirtless-ness is a little more risque-so ladies watch your eyes!)

I love my little man

I love him when he is sick because it's the only time he likes to cuddle anymore

I love him when he sleeps through the night

I love him when he giggles and smiles

I love him when he watches cartoons intently with his daddy

I love him when he coos in the morning to let me know he is awake

I love him when he shoves both hands in his mouth and sucks away

I love him when he gets excited to see "Mr. Monkey" blanket

I love him when I get him in the morning and he flails his arms and legs wildly in excitement


It's SO HARD to leave him as often as I do for work and school and it makes me realize how much valuable time I am missing out on. I try to make every minute count while we are together. All you moms out there who get to stay home with your sweet babies-please understand how lucky you are!!!

I love you little man!!!

My first day of clinicals!

As most of you know, I started my masters in nursing. With my masters degree, I will be a Family Nurse Practitioner and will be able to do all the things a doctor does (ie. prescribe, treat, diagnose, refer etc). In school, we started clinicals our first week. We had to do the sports physicals on all the Westminster athletes. It was pretty cool, and I met a lot of foreign athletes. Here is half of my class and my teacher.

What we've been up to...

I started school this fall, so my time is much more limited than before, however, we have done a few fun things...

• Grayson had his four month checkup. He is 14 lbs and 27 1/2 inches (about 28th % on weight and 98% on height)

• Grayson started eating baby food. His favorite is sweet potatoes, his least favorite is fruit

• The little peanut hates using his legs, so I force him to do it by putting him in the jumpy thing

• We have spent some good time with family

• We bought Grayson a new contraption....behold the bumbo! BEST INVENTION EVER!

The haircut

Yes, it is true, the baby got a haircut. Looking at Grayson's newborn pictures, you might have thought he needed a haircut the day he was born.


I am not sure why, but I have this thought that if I start cutting his hair that means he's getting big and for some reason that makes my heart sad. I knew it was inevitable, because let's face it, he has got some serious hair (although much more patchy than at birth). It has grown like weeds and was just becoming unmanageable and gangly. Thanks to my good friend Megan, my child has an adorable haircut, and if you are wondering, yes, I am that kind of mom that saves the hair for his scrapbook-geeze...how else would we commemorate this big day

Thumb vs. Binky

My child has officially found his thumb. He also loves his binky. I have always been the type of person that has hated thumb sucking....cute when they are little, not so cute when they are going to kindergarten still sucking their thumb. It is a lot easier to break them of the binky than the thumb though. Not sure if I should encourage or stop this new habit....

It is adorable though!

What a day

We had a very long day today! I have had a few sewing projects in mind and decided it was time to get out the machine and just get them done. I made the trek out to Sandy yesterday and went to my new danger zone.....Hobby Lobby. I could spend millions in that store! They have some of the cutest stuff ever. I did show restraint and only bought my fabric (which is what I originally went there for) and a large decorative wall clock because I just felt that I needed it. On the list to do was to make curtains for Grayson's room, make a few headbands, make a quilt for Grayson's bed that will match his curtains, make slip covers for the rocking chair cushions, and finally, make a padded fabric case for my laptop for school.

By the end of the day, I was able to check off the headbands, the quilt, and the curtains. I thought it was a fruitful day, especially since I had a 3 month old to take care of. Between my sewing sessions, I gave Grayson a tubby

Had to play "fly in the air" (he loves that game).

He got bored watching me sew all day, so I had to make funny noises at him in between projects so that he would be happy.

Needless to say, by the end of the night, he was tuckered out

i LOVE photoshop!!

Oh my gosh! I can not tell you how much fun photoshop is when you kind of know what you are doing! I say kind of because the more I watch tutorials, the more I realize I really do not know what I'm doing. However, I still have fun. I found an awesome blog online, Pioneer Woman, who has been great at teaching me some new things to do on photoshop as well as how to use my darn camera. If you are remotely interested in photography but don't know where to start, I highly recommend her blog.
Well, as you have seen, we had new family pics taken. The girl who took them is new to photography and I was a little scared how they would turn out. When we got the CD back of pics, I eagerly put it in my CD-rom and I saw that the pictures were not half bad! There were a few that needed some tweaking though. I can not tell you how many hours I have been sitting in my jammies playing with these pictures in photoshop. I think I have some good before and afters for you though!

Before....


After...

Pictures with this many people posed to be quite challenging for me, but as you can see there were some definite changes. People got face lifts, coloring changed, even people's heads changed!!! Can you spot the differences? Like I said, there are some way cool things you can do in photoshop.

Here is another before....
and after....
In this one there is a facelift, blemish removal, lighting and coloring changes.

How about one more!

before...
and after...

I hope this post inspires you to start playing around with your photos. There are many cool things to be done