Brown Eyed Girl

When Audrey was a baby I thought she had the most beautiful eyes.  Plus, I was so shocked that they were blue I just couldn't get over it.  Here's a reminder of Audrey around 5 months old.

Her skin wasn't actually this white.  She's a little washed out.

 Along comes Kennedy.  She has dark, deep brown eyes. 

 I may be remembering wrong but I think Kennedy gets more comments and compliments than Audrey did! 

 Some fun updates on Kennedy:  She's quite wary of people outside our family.  She stares long and hard at anyone looking at her.  She won't talk on cue for people even though she knows about 20 words.  I already mentioned her love of reading.  She also loves to have songs sung to her.  She wants to do everything like Audrey.  She and Audrey play really well together (most of the time).  She likes to dress up and act silly.  Her favorite is definitely shoes.  She eats her big sister under the table and often joins me on my chair to eat some of my food.  Her imperfections include unhappily riding in the car, throwing fits while grocery shopping, ability to make huge messes in a short amount of time and not holding still during church.  She just reminded me of another one...playing with electronics.

She is so sweet and angelic and we love our little brown- eyed girl!

The fruits, er vegetables, of our labor

***Warning***

This post will be lame for everyone but me.  Sorry, I'm just so proud.

We decided to grow a garden this year.  We planted carrots, peas, beans and cucumber seeds.  I told Ryan that if we ate just one thing out of it, I would consider it a success.  Apparently, I underestimated Spanish Fork soil because we can barely keep up with the reaping!

 Our favorite was probably peas because we could eat it fresh and ready right out of the pods.

 The girls loved it so much!  As soon as we walked outside Kennedy would say, "peas!!"

I was able to freeze a lot of the beans and we were still eating them up until last week even though they haven't been growing for a few weeks now.

I think we've had about 10 cucumbers so far.  They're still growing.

The carrots are a bit odd looking because you're supposed thin them out and we just let them go.  Oh well.  Lesson learned.

We also planted maybe a few too many flowers.  They exploded!

Next year we'll have a bigger garden with more things and we'll do something with the backyard.  We had such a good time doing it all together as a family.  

Part-time/Full-time

It's been one year since I gave up my full-time job at Sears as the Human Resources Manager.

I am still working there part-time and doing basically the same things, but I have less time to do them.  I owe the whole experience of full-time work peace-of-mind to some wonderful parents, (including in-laws).  My mom would drive to Draper from Bountiful at 6:30 in the morning-whether rain or snow or sleet-to pick up Audrey and take her to her house for 9 hours, then drive back to Draper in rush hour traffic and have dinner with me and Ryan EVERY SINGLE MONDAY FOR OVER 2 YEARS!  I don't think she knows how much it meant to me or how much I feel I owe her.  

From my point of view there is no such thing as part-time mom so I don't feel like I'm now a full-time mom but I do now spend most of my time at home with the girls.  I don't feel less stressed and I don't feel like a better mom, but I do feel like I'm more respected by other moms, which is sad.  Also, I've become a better cook.  Soon I think I need to add another motherly talent like sewing.  We'll see.  I know my mom is ready for me to learn so she doesn't have to be my on-call seamstress.   And this change couldn't have come at a better time because in January Ryan was called as the Stake Executive Secretary.  So with me in the Young Women presidency and his calling, we are only ever home together as a family on Monday nights some Saturdays and most Sunday nights.  

Anyway, before I cleaned out my own things out of the office I now share, I had to take a picture of the wall that served as my inspiration for three years. 

When I moved into my office this was a motivational poster about imagination.  I would rather see the face of my beautiful baby girl every day so I stuck a couple of pictures in the corners.  But she grew so I added more pictures.  Well, she never stopped growing so the poster is full.  When people would come into my office they'd say, "How many kids do you have?"  I'd say, "Just one.  I just have lots of pictures of her."  

There is another poster on the back wall that had a few pictures of Kennedy before I officially stepped down, but it's not as impressive.

Thank you to everyone who helped and supported me in this.  Thank you to Ryan for being willing and, more importantly, able to spend so much time alone with Audrey.  You're a great dad!  And thanks to Audrey for being such an amazing, easy-going little girl.