MDB 2011

Well I'm happy to say I finally managed to take some pictures at this years Memorial Day Weekend and Breakfast in Oak City, UT. It probably wasn't nearly as many as I should have taken, and they are almost all of Lydia, but at least I took some. First, here is the lovely line of all the pregnant women (minus one that we know of) that were in attendance this year. Ain't we purdy? It's amazing how fast our family just keeps growing and growing. This is the only picture I managed to take of the Saturday fun.

Sunday we have the traditional program, red velvet cake, and sourdough stirring. One of the favorite performances of the program is "Si and I." It used to be done by my Uncle LaVelle ("uncle" in this case meaning 1st cousin once removed in-law). Now it's done by his son Eli. He does an awesome job with it in my opinion.

Here are a couple clips of the traditional family songs we sing - "I Saw the Light" and "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder"

After the program, the little chitlins take turns stirring the sourdough pancake batter for the breakfast we host for the whole town the next morning, and we all eat red velvet cake.

Lydia's first red velvet cake experience.

I think she likes it.

Here we are sporting our reunion shirts. I am the 90th great-grandchild of Willis and Angie Lyman (my shirt was too tight around my pregnant belly, so Robert was gracious enough to let me wear his), Lydia is the 212th great-great-grandchild.

As cute as she is, this is the only picture I took of the actual breakfast Monday morning. Shame on me! Anyway, this was the 40th annual Edward Partridge Memorial Breakfast our family has hosted on Memorial Day in Oak City. We fry eggs, ham, and make pancakes for any and all in the Millard County that want to attend. This year almost 1,000 people came. I think our record is 1,400.

After the breakfast there are some Memorial services done in the cemetery. A good portion of my ancestry on my paternal grandma's side is buried in this cemetery including my aunt, my grandma, great grandparents, great great grandparents, and several of their descendants. Lydia is sitting in front of the headstone of my grandma in this picture.

It was a FABULOUS weekend. It wasn't an actual reunion year, so it was a smaller group. But it made it easier to get to know better the people that were there. We don't know when we'll be able to make it again. UC Santa Cruz is on a quarter schedule instead of a semester schedule which puts Memorial Day right in the middle of the 3rd quarter. Hopefully it'll work out that we'll be able to go at least 1 year out of the next 4. In the mean time, I'm thankful that we've lived so close so that we've been able to attend easily the past 3 years.

Now we are in Vacation Recovery Mode. Lydia zonked out during her late morning bottle today, and stayed that way most of the day. Pretty sure if we didn't have anything else to do, Robert and I would have done the same.

Here's to getting motivation to get back to the grindstone!

P.S. For those of you Lymanites that might be interested, Jordan Balmforth made a slideshow of videos and photos from the past 40 years of MDB. It's on youtube, so go to this link http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLB3F77DE678DD69B8 or just search on youtube for "MDB 40 Year Retrospective." There are 11 parts to it, for a total of almost 2 hours of footage.

Lydia at One-Year-Old!!

Weight: 21.5 pounds (54th percentile)

Height: 30.75 inches (90th percentile)

Mobility: She can stand on her own from a sitting position and sit very slowly back down, but almost never when we are trying to get her to stand, it has to be of her own accord. She will walk along things or if we hold both of her hands, sometimes we can get away with just holding one hand, but other than that she has no interest in walking yet. She LOVES to crawl, so I think she just doesn't see how walking is any better. I keep expecting it any day though.

Personality - Ms. Independent: She is happiest when she is left alone to do as she pleases - play with whatever she wants, explore, eat what she wants all by herself when she wants to, etc. She rarely enjoys to be held for extended periods of time, sometimes not even short periods of time. She'd rather be on the floor playing, which is nice for the increasingly pregnant me, but I miss my little baby that loved to snuggle. Also it's not so nice when trying to get her to sit still during a 3 hour block of church every Sunday. Only 6 more months til nursery! Sometimes she doesn't even need toys to keep herself entertained. Just room to roam, and her voice. (As seen in the video below) She's a LOUD child, and the more excited she is the louder she gets, which too often frightens other small children ;)

Food: This is still a battle, but thanks to Robert making it his personal goal to make her eat again, she's doing a lot better. We just have to feed her on her time, not ours. She also will snack off of anything we are eating, as if it's cooler to eat our food than her food. We're currently transitioning from formula to whole milk, and are looking forward to the money that will save us :)

Words she says: "Hi" = Hi - This is her favorite. She'll say it over and over to every person she sees until she gets a reply, and then normally a few more times after that. This also makes church very fun.
"Eoh" = Hello - She says this when she's holding a cell phone up to her ear. So cute!
She has lots more syllables "Ma ma" "Da da" "Yeah yeah" etc. but hasn't put them to use in any particular context yet.

Words/phrases she recognizes and will respond to: "Where's Lydia?" - She covers her eyes and plays peek-a-boo.
"Patty-cake" and "Toss it way high" - She claps all the way through the patty-cake rhyme and then throws her arms in the air at the end.
"Popcorn Popping" - This one takes her a few times, but eventually she'll open and close her fingers and move her arms along with me at the "popcorn popping on the apricot tree" parts
"Love, love, love" - She'll give hugs and snuggle us or her dolls/toys
"Mouth" and "Tongue" - She'll point to them.
"Bye Bye" - She'll wave, and it's a cute pageant style wave too :)
"YAY!" - She'll clap her hands
There are others, but those are the main most consistent ones.

I still can't believe she's a year old already, and soon we'll have 2 of these crazy kids around. It's been a fun journey so far. I hope it just gets to be even more fun :)

Swing Swing!!

Lydia has found a new love -- Swinging. We took her to the park a couple weeks ago and had a blast. I think it's more of an exhilarating thrill ride for her than anything. She clenches on so tight to the sides that her knuckles turn white, but she smiles and laughs the whole time. The video is too dark to see much of what's going on, but you can hear her excitedly bouncing around, laughing, and making all sorts of happy noises.

There were a couple of homeless guys there that Lydia wouldn't stop saying Hi to, and there was a young couple kissing the whole time. She chose not to talk to them. It was a fun adventure. We've been to a couple more parks since and she's enjoyed it just as much.

AZ Trip Part 3 - Other Fun

After Lydia's party, we went out to dinner with all of my married siblings. We had WAY too much fun to the point where we were laughing so much they wanted us to leave. We shared all of our 1st kiss with our spouse stories. They're all hilarious! Everything from black cats to bad breath to golden snitches. I'm telling you if we wrote a book, it would be a bestseller.
This is my sister Katie, me, and my sister-in-law Becky (Scott's wife) outside of the restaurant after the workers gave us enough hints that they wanted us to leave. We're all preggars and due in August. I also realized I haven't done any "baby bump" pictures yet, so this is me at 24 and a half weeks.

And for kicks and giggles, a Charlie's Angels pose. If you ask me, Katie and Becky are way too cheery to be Charlie's Angels. ;)

We tried out Lydia's swim gear since it was plenty warm enough weather down there. Lydia absolutely loved it at first, but then Robert accidentally splashed her a little in her face. She wanted nothing to do with it after that. We'll try again when it gets warmer here in Utah.

The night before we came home was Mountain View's Rock-and-Roll Review. Robert's sister Aly and my sister Aubrie are in the same choir and they did a Queen Medley. Aubrie told us she had a solo. Usually the solos at these things are short maybe 5 second things. She failed to mention that her solo was HUGE. Basically the whole song of "Somebody to Love," and it was, in my opinion, one of the best of the night. I videoed it, but she would kill me if I posted it, so I'll just post this photo snapshot of the video so you can all see her rock star cuteness.

Then it was time to journey home. Lydia loved being front facing so much more. This picture is also taken in our new used 2002 Chevy Blazer. We couldn't really fit 2 car seats in our Prizm so we needed something a little bigger, and we got a sweet deal on it. It has a few quirks that we will maybe need to fix sometime in the near future, but I think it will end up being a great car for our growing little family for the next few years. An additional plus is that it's red so I have an extra excuse to bug Robert about not speeding (you know, since red cars tend to get pulled over more often).

It was a wonderful trip. We aren't sure when we are going to make it down again, and we miss our family already. But as always, it's good to be home too.

AZ Trip Part 2 - LYDIA'S FIRST BIRTHDAY!!!

Our baby turned 1-year-old!!! I cannot believe how fast the past year has gone! Here she is being cute that morning.

After a fabulous baby shower for my sister Katie, we went right into Lydia's birthday party. Here are the cakes I made for it.

Robert was insisting that I make a whole 9x13 cake just for Lydia. We finally compromised that I would give her just an 8-inch round, so hers is the one with a candle in it. It's a good thing too, as you'll see later.
On to opening presents. She got a big ball from the Alder's

An umbrella stroller from Great Grandma and Grandpa Richardson, which she LOVES. The outfit she's wearing is from them too.

Among other things (swim suit, swimming towel suit, swim diapers, electronic learning phone) a front facing car seat from Robert's family.

This is one of our presents to her. We got her a pool floaty, a dress, and a learn-your-shapes toy.

A push and go alligator toy from the Tyler family.

A musical butterfly and lotion from Great Grandma Hall.

She wasn't a fan of me taking the toys away to open the next ones. She was very confused and frustrated by it.

The final present, from Aunt Christi, got one of the best reactions from Lydia. It was a doll. Lydia's face just lit up and she started snuggling it right away.

Great Grandma Johnston had to take a picture of Lydia and the doll with the gift giver, Aunt Christi.

Then it was time for singing "Happy Birthday" and eating cake. Lydia was very concerned and overwhelmed with the over 50 people singing to her. If the song was much longer she probably would have burst into tears.

The eating (or lack of is more like it)

Once I put some homemade strawberry ice cream on the plate, she got a little more interested, but not for long.

Shortly after the following picture, Lydia decided she was done and flipped the whole cake off of the high chair. Robert was close by and caught it, but not without it breaking apart .

So happy to make such a mess :)

The aftermath. I'm glad she flipped it off the high chair. It made it look like she dug into it a little more.

So tired after a full day of partying! :)

The next night we visited with some friends at the Garners' and Natalie, when remembering that Lydia's birthday was the day before, whipped together a quick birthday cake, pulled out party hats, and even had a small present she gave her. Lydia thanked her by pooping on her carpet (nice, I know) I don't know who makes me smile more in this picture, Lydia or Holly? ;)

Happy Birthday sweet baby girl!!! I'll post more about her stats and what not after her doctor's appointment this Thursday.

AZ Trip Part 1 - Aly's Harp Concert and Dad R's 50th

We just took a week and a half trip down to Mesa. We killed lots of birds with one stone while we were down - Palmer May Day gathering, Mother's Day, Aly's Harp Concert, buying a car, Katie's Baby Shower, Lydia's Birthday, Mountain View High School's final choir concert, and more. It was oodles of fun!

Aly's harp concert. She's AMAZING!!!!

Dad R's party was a surprise. His birthday is actually not for another couple of weeks, but we were there and saying it was a Friday the 13th party was the perfect cover up, so we seized the opportunity.

Granddaughters Brooklyn and Lydia with the old man. He got several "getting old" presents - Prune Juice, Depends Diapers, Denture Cream, and a Walker. The funniest present of the night was this...

And yes, it's for exactly what you think it's for ;)
Happy Birthday Dad!!!

Lydia's One-Year Photoshoot

A couple weeks ago we had a little photoshoot for Lydia that we're counting as her 1-year-old pictures. Thank you to our friend Autumn Curry for taking the time to be our photographer and editing most of these for us. These are just a few of my favorites. There were so many to choose from!

Two of my favorite things in the world!

These are for you Lizzy! Squid with her squid :)

Squid eating her squid :)

I think this picture is so fun!

HAHA! I think her face in this one is saying, "When will these crazy people stop taking pictures of me?!?"

Thanks again Autumn!!!