Ready or not, here I come....found you!

I feel like I've been playing "hide-and-seek" with blogging for a while now. It's been...phew, too long! I kept thinking that if I wrote on my blog that'd mean that I would have to read up on all the blogs I follow, and that would be THOUSANDS of new posts. Not gonna happen. I think I'll just go see what a few people have been up to and keep it simple. K, blogger, you found me, and I'm back ;)

SO, what have we been up to for the last month or two? Well the big news is that we now have a 1 year old child in the house. Yep, Rowan had a birthday! First here's some of her one-year pictures we had taken by our friend Leigh Root. If you need a good photographer give her a call, she's amazing and affordable too :)

And here's some of her birthday pictures. We didn't really take any good pictures, sorry. We were just too busy enjoying the moment. AND we forgot to take pictures of Dad, Mom and Tiffani. They were so incredibly awesome to come out and celebrate with us. Love you!

Rowan's first birthday cake! I'm pretty proud of how it turned out :)

I made her 'smash' cake too. Perfect size for her.

 At first she just took a crumb at a time (such a lady ;) 

Later she started taking chunks.

That's my happy birthday girl!

On the left she's getting washed off after all the cake. 

On the right is the next day (her actual birthday) unwrapping presents! She was good at it.

Other than that, there's not much happening with us. Ben started school, and is working. I'm a stay-at-home Mama that's just wondering why no one warned me about the Terrible One's? Or maybe Rowan's one of those kids that likes to act older than her age and we just shot straight to the Terrible Two's? Who knows. But she's still a lot of fun.

Just so that I can remember these things later I'm gonna list some of her traits and skills she has right now:

• Rowan talks A LOT! But we have no idea what she's saying. She talks with all sorts of intonations, and sometimes I think she believes that she's really talking with me, but I usually just say "Yeah, really?"
• On her actual birthday (Sept. 5) Rowan stood up and stayed standing on her own for the first time without anything to balance her.
• Maybe a week or two before her birthday she started walking/running/leaping from Ben to me and back.
• Just today she started to walk across the room with no viewable objective in sight, just walking to walk. She went pretty far, steadied herself, then walked a little more and fell over. (she might've just sat down on purpose)
• She does the sign language sign for "more," and she shakes her head for "no."
• She also understands sign language for "changing diaper" and the international sign for "no" wagging my finger ;)
• She understands quite a bit of Spanish too. Words like, 'quieres', 'mas', 'besito', 'vente'.
• She crawls on anything she can.
• She will thoroughly examine something new by flipping it over and over, and checking it all out before it goes in her mouth. 
• She currently has a taste for wood and cardboard. Which we're trying to discourage.
• She's not very picky. She'll taste anything and usually eat it. Especially if we're eating it then she really wants some. 
• She loves the water.
• She loves dirt. Water is much better after the dirt ;)
• When music plays on some of her toys she'll try to hum with it. So cute!
• She likes to get into trouble too.
• She's very sociable. She LOVES playing with other children. The other day she was playing with the neighbor boy (that's her age) and he was walk/running around our apartment and she was chasing him while 'monkey crawling'. They were both laughing a lot, it was so precious. :)
• She's a Daddy's girl. She gets so excited and squeals when Daddy comes home, and always wants him to hold her and feed her. :)

Love that girl!

My Big Brother Robert

Since we were in Utah for Christmas, and having fun with family, and showing off the new baby...you know how things get when you're on vacation. The blogging world just seems to go on hold. Especially since it seems that we are all family oriented people. For which I'm super grateful for. I love reading others blogs about their family events, or what their kids are up to, or what they made for their kids, etc.

So, while doing fun family stuff in Utah over Christmas, I didn't get a chance to write a birthday note to my brother. And his birthday was just before Christmas on the 23rd. So, to catch up...here goes!

This is my brother Robert. Robert has done everything! He used to do modeling (as if you can't tell), and has been a flight attendant for about 10 years now, so he has truly traveled the world! Brazil, Japan, New York (like a mill-ee-on times) he even lived there. Gosh I don't even know where all he's been. But I sure ended up with some great souvenirs! ;)

My brother is the kind of guy that doesn't even know how special he is. He is sincerely kind, loving, thoughtful, and giving. And he's a true defender of what is right as well.
One memory I have of him is when I was 17 and I broke my back and compressed three vertebrae. I had to wear this really long turtle shell back brace that covered from just below my neck down to my hips, like a huge girdle. Well, after a little while I didn't want to wear it anymore, of course what 17 year old girl wants to work and live in that thing (especially while being a waitress). My Mom kept telling me that I was going to have serious lasting damages, and that I better wear my brace, but no dice, I just didn't want to. I know, I was dumb, what can I say? Robert found out and came to talk to me about it. He asked me to 'please wear it', that is was 'important'. And because I always looked up to him, I listened. And no, I'm not paralyzed, my back (although now perfect) is much better than it would've been. Thank you Rob!

Another time he really helped me in my life, and probably one of the most important, was at the end of senior year of high school. I had slacked off that year, and as graduation drew near I didn't know if I would graduate. I had all these extra 'packets' to do, and assignments to catch up on. I really felt like giving up because it really became SO stressful. I remember very clearly how he really wanted me to graduate with my class, and it became a motivation for me. There was one especially stressful time during all that when I had about 3 places to be at once, tons of homework to do with nearing deadlines, and he was going to give me a ride somewhere. Everything had just become too much that day and he took me aside and gave me a big hug and told me things would work out. This is an excerpt from an online journal I was keeping back then. "I knew that he really wanted me to graduate with my class, and I had just needed someone to give me that hug that he did, and it really meant so much."
Robert you're awesome! I'm proud to have you as my brother. Happy Birthday!!!


Love,

~Crystal