Catching up with a few pics...

A few fun pictures of the last couple months:
Tylie has started biting her spoon when we feed her. It's really funny, and she looks a lot like a bulldog when she does it.

Playing with a Leapfrog table that our friends loaned us. It makes a lot of fun noises, and it's her perfect size. She loves it.

We've recently learned that Tylie is a very innovative and creative problem solver: she was having a hard time crawling and pulling herself up on things because she always had toys in her hands. But, no worries, she found a way to fix that! We've seen her carrying toys, keys, and even my cell phone this way!

Helping mom with house work...and proving she's going to be a good little climber.

This is what happens if I turn my back for 3 seconds: she's already down the hall and into stuff...and usually has something gross in her mouth (notice the wad in her cheek).

Walking like a pro with a little help. I really don't think she needs that help, but she doesn't quite trust herself enough to let go yet. We don't think it will be long before she's strutting around without assistance.

I absolutely love watching Tylie interact with books. She loves them so much, and already has great reading skills (for her age). This video is pretty long, so you don't really have to watch it all, but I love it!

So, that's what she's been up to!

Girl's Camp

I had the opportunity to go to girl's camp this year with my young women, and had a great time. We went to this fancy-shmancy camp in North Carolina and it had all kinds of fun stuff to do. I wish I had taken more pictures, but here are a few.
We had a huge mess hall with a big kitchen and a stage, a balcony and flag pole area, a full-sized covered outdoor gym with hard floors, a lake with log rolling, a zipline, canoes, kayaks, and a BLOB, a shooting range, archery station, volleyball, tennis, and running bathrooms in all the cabins. The girls had a really great time, and we all got a little sun. While we were there we did all the activities mentioned above, and also had karaoke, line dancing, impromptu skits, and the girls also had to build boats out of cardboard and race them on the lake.
Over all it was a fun week, and I'm glad I went!

Zoo

Brent, Tylie and I took a trip to the zoo, and had a great time! We have taken her there before, but she was still a little young. This time, she was actively interested in what was going on, and would watch the animals intently (at least the ones that were moving around enough to catch her attention).

Taking a ride on daddy's shoulders. I think she is becoming more of a daddy's girl every day.

Starting a terrifying relationship with a giant constricting snake! As soon as Tylie moved up to the glass, the snake came up to the front and started sniffing around. If Tylie moved her hand, the snake followed it. If the snake moved, Tylie tried to keep up. I don't know if he was looking for dinner, or a friend! I thought it was really cute and fun, until an image flashed in my head of running into a big snake in the wild and having Tylie chase it around trying to pet it...

Funny gorilla...he was tired of all the kids and people, and flopped over to take a nap.

Personality

Here are a couple videos I wanted to post weeks ago, and never got around to it. I also have some new pictures to put up, but they are still on my camera, which I leant to someone. I know, I'm a slacker. But hopefully you've just accepted that by now...

This is one of our favorite new noises that she makes...I absolutely love it when babies discover new sounds and experiment with them!


Before she was crawling (which she has been doing for almost two months now...that reaffirms the above comment about being a slacker), this is what we got. Our baby is a natural dancer! She already knows how to do 'the worm!'


This girl isn't afraid of anything! She had really bad hiccups one day, and I tried to sneak up behind her and scare them out of her. She jumped pretty good, then started laughing so hard! It's turned into a game now...she LOVES to be scared!


Do you ever feel like we treat our kids as though they are circus sideshows? Perform, child, perform! Well, Tylie's not having any of it. Most of the video we take is of Tylie NOT jumping through firey hoops when we crack the whip. That's one thing I love about her...she has a strong mind of her own.

Peachtree Rock

We planned a hike with our young women this weekend to cover their requirement at camp (Yep, that's right...we are doing our camp hike before camp this year....strange). Anyways, we hiked around for about 2 hours at a place called Peachtree Rock. Brent was roped into it because it was outside of stake boundaries so we had to have priesthood with us, and the rest of the ward was on a fathers-and-sons campout. He's such a wonderful, supportive husband! :) He and I and Tylie all had a really good time, and we plan to return sometime to hike it again. Here are the pictures.

This is my all-time favorite picture of her. I break into uncontrolable, out-loud laughter every time I see it. This is why babies and children bring us so much joy!

Spring Break Recap

Oh how I love spring break! By that time in a school year, it's always such a welcome time away from the paperwork, attitudes, and demands. This year was especially fun for me because it gave me the opportunity to spend time with my baby girl! Although, that also made it much harder to go back to work at the end of the week. We had a busy schedule, and were lucky to do some fun things. Here's a short recap.
We went to a tennis match and a baseball game as a family. People at the baseball game kept Tylie very busy because everyone wanted to talk to her and play with her. One guy sitting in front of us said she was his “absolute favorite fan here”. Funny.

I love this bow that our good friend Alyssa made for her, and I love that her shirt is 4 sizes too big. She had a lot of fun, even though she watched a lot more of the crowd that of the baseball.

A friend of mine invited us to go to the botanical gardens with her one morning. One of her neighbors is the head botanist and he got us in for free and gave us a personal tour of the place. It was very beautiful, and a nice little outdoor adventure.

Tylie loved the flowers, and wanted to eat them all up…a little gardener in the making.


We went to another baseball game the next weekend, and this time our friends the Fackrell’s went with us. They have a little boy about a year and a half old, and he is so sweet to Tylie. Every time she started to fuss, he would try to make it better: he played with her, brought her toys, and gave her a goldfish cracker.
She was our sweet little baseball fan, and again a favorite of the crowd. This time we had seats a little closer to the game, and that kept her attention for a little while, but mostly she talked and played with people around us.


I absolutely love this picture of us! It’s fun to have the memory of doing things like this as a family.


This was a pretty late game, and Tylie didn’t do super great. She got pretty fussy about half-way through and Brent and I had to switch off holding her at the top of the stadium. I finally got her to go to sleep, and then she woke up when I handed her off to Brent.

Conference weekend and Easter were great. I love having that weekend to spend together as a family, and love having such a strong spirit in our home. We didn’t really think about doing anything special for Tylie, but had picked up a few things for her that she needed, so we threw them in a basket so she could enjoy the day. Her aunt Bonnie had also sent some things, so Tylie had a great little Easter celebration. Holidays are always so fun with kids in the picture!


A whole basket of toys, books, and clothes and Tylie just wants the plastic egg…kids are so funny that way!


I also spent a couple days scrapbooking, a day or two cleaning my house from top to bottom, and a day with my friend Alyssa running errands and crafting. Overall Spring Break was a blast. I can’t wait for the summer!