HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BABE!

My dearest James-

I love you for so many reasons. To put them all down in writing would take a lifetime. I am so happy and lucky to call you my husband! I can honestly say, the past 2 years have been the happiest in my life. Thank you for just being you... and that makes you perfect for me! I love you honey!

My dearest Keri!!

What a lovely suprise to find a partially written post here this morning. I love you too and appreciate everything you do for me. We truely where blessed 2 years ago to become husband and wife and now we have David and (insert name). We are truely creating our own famly here in a little place called Kanab. Happy Anniversery!!

Fantabulous Weekend

We had such a great time this past weekend! Thanks to Ange & Craig for coming to visit us in our wee-little town.

The five of us had a blast taking a warm September trip to Lake Powell on Saturday. Good times!

We kept smiles on our faces all day... despite running out of gas on the way home and having James & Craig syphon gas out of the wave runners! Yuck!

It was a weekend full of laughter and Ange getting her DJ fix in enough to last until Christmas. :)

Thanks Ange & Craig! We had a blast!

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

It's TRUE! This is not an April Fool's Day (in September) or some cruel joke to our families and friends. James & I found out yesterday that yes... we are expecting our second child! Hooray! Despite the shock-and-awe factor, we are very excited to make David a big brother! And for all of you impatient people, no, we are not finding out the sex this time. I promised James last time that if he let me find out with David, that we would have the gender surprise for the second. So, we'll all just have to wait until the end of May to find out.

Thanks for everyone's continued love & support! And Steve, thank you so much for the flowers! They look beautiful on the table right next to the ones James gave me yesterday! :)

St. Louie Trip

Oh, how nice a vacation is to the body! James, David & I had a great 10 day vacation in the big cities of Salt Lake and St. Louis! It began with a great football weekend in Salt Lake with my family, including our first experience of an unexpectedly intense 8 year-old football game. Craziness! My nephew Dayne is only 8 years old but has been begging his parents to let him play little league football for 2 years. This year, they finally gave in. We got to witness his first "professional" game. I say professional, because that is definitely how the atmosphere felt. I watched each of the SEVEN coaches yell at players and call out plays like they were fighting for the Superbowl. Whew. I felt like saying, "Hello! They're 8!" I asked my brother if it bothered him watching the coaches yell like that and he classically responded, "Nope. It's football." Okay, bro! The game was fun to watch, especially when Dayne ran for a 60(ish) yard touchdown, but I think I'll try to keep my kids off the football field until they are just a tad older. :)

Our next adventure was my family's annual (okay, this is only the second year, but it's quickly becoming a tradition) Fantasy Football Draft. This is my first year participating in the family league, cleverly called the West Christiansen Football League. My, my how intense this gets. I joined each of my 3 brothers, my dad, James & sister-in-law Audrey for a "friendly" draft in Nate's new house. Honestly, it was hilarious. There were a total of 5 laptops out in the living room as each of us eagerly awaited our next picks. I was so excited to have the second pick. Ironically, I think I ended up with the worst team. Rookie!

Now onto St. Louis! We had such a good time. It was a week full of relaxing with each other, spending time with family, good ol' big city shopping and meeting new people. (Hi Gloria!) Not to mention all the time we got to spend at the dentist office. (Thanks again Steve!) The second day we were able to take David to his first St. Louis Cardinals game. We had fun, despite the rather bad loss to the Brewers. Oh well, maybe next year Cards. Jenny, Sam & Will were able to join us in St. Louis from West Virginia on Thursday. What a blast! David was excited to meet his Uncle Sam and spend more time with Aunt Jenny and his cousin Will. Will and David are only 6 months apart and you can tell they are eager to be able to play together really soon. David just isn't quite big enough yet. But it was cute watching Will give David hugs and kisses. We did celebrate Will's 1st Birthday! Hooray! He is such a cute & smiley little boy. Good work Sam & Jen! It sure was a good week to spend some good quality time with James' dad and the rest of the family. We feel very fortunate to be able to visit our families that live so far away. Thanks for your help to get us there Steve!

Our last adventure was the flight home. It started out great. In fact everything was going great until we were about to land in Salt Lake. The pilot announced that there was a storm in Salt Lake prohibiting us from landing. We didn't have enough gas to circle around until the storm cleared, so we had to detour to Provo for a "routine" fuel fill-up. Uh, ok. We landed and Provo and waited for an hour to get the okay to depart again. So, we refastened our seat belts and placed our tray tables in the upright positions, ready to take off. We felt the plane accelerate on the runway then immediately slow again and return to same place we had just been parked for an hour. What now? Apparently our anti-lock break system light came on, making it unsafe to take off on a wet runway. So, we sat for another 2 hours! Ugh! I will say, David did great. He just flirted with the flight attendants and other passengers. They finally gave anyone who was actually staying in Salt Lake the option to get off the plane if they had a ride home. And out my cell phone came. I was not interested in sitting for any longer on a parked plane. Especially since they had no idea how much longer it would be. Thank goodness my brother was able to come down to Provo and pick us up.

So, that was our 10 day vacation... in a nut shell. Sorry we didn't take more pictures. We were enjoying the relaxing aspect of our vacation a bit too much. :)

Happy Happy Birthday!!!

Well I am the worst brother in the world. Justin's birthday is tomarrow and I didn't send him anything. So I thought to redeam myself that I would pro-nounce to the blogger nation that its JUSTIN'S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRO!!!

Good Luck in your Last Year of School!!!

ps. tahsha could you please mention that this is here for him!!

Thank You!

I just wanted to publicly thank all of you for your very helpful comments to my "poor me" dilemma. It was a rough night for me when I wrote that blog and you've all helped me realize that it's a normal thing for new moms. I am so lucky to have so many wonderful friends & family (I consider you part of the family now Tahsha... welcome!) who would take time out of their busy days to help me boost my self-esteem a bit. You helped me more than you know. To say thanks, I'm posting a few new pictures of David. He's so dang cute, who wouldn't consider seeing him a reward? :)

These are a few pictures to show off David's "domestic" side. He loves to mow the lawn with James & help me with the laundry. He started eating oatmeal & rice cereal a few weeks ago & we started him on vegetables last week. He loves them! He puts everything in his mouth! He's getting so big! Can't wait to see you all soon! Love you!

Self Reflection

Hello to all of my diligent readers. Tonight is a night of serious self reflection. I don’t know what happened to me. As James & I were climbing into bed tonight, I was drowning in my own thoughts of inadequacy. Poor guy, he had no idea what was about to hit him. He tried to goof around and tickle me and I immediately began to cry. All of a sudden I had been blind-sighted by all of these thoughts that have now kept me up for hours. Why don’t I take better care of myself? Why don’t I love myself as much as I love James & David? I’m sorry to bore all of you and I will not at all be offended if you stop reading now. Writing is therapeutic for me, so I thought I would send these thoughts of mine into the blog world. I have been noticing things for a few days now and I think the gravity of them finally hit me like a ton of bricks tonight. I’m a people watcher. It is a wonderful habit that I am able to enjoy wherever I go. Lately I have been paying very close attention to those of my same gender. I see so many wonderful and amazing women every day. Mothers and wives who work hard at taking care of themselves and their families. They all have responsibilities and handle them with grace and beauty. Why can’t I? I’m not saying that I don’t take care of my family, because I do. I will admit that I am a pretty good wife and a very loving mother. But how great can I be if I don’t take time to care about myself? I always plan on getting out of bed early to go swim laps before James leaves for work, but I never do it. I always notice when I need to reshape my eyebrows, but I never get to it before it’s too late. I see the new gray hairs on my head every morning, but I still haven’t had my hair colored since last October. I have a full tube of mascara in my purse and another in my bathroom, but I can’t even remember the last time I wore it. I wear my hair the exact same way every day, a style that takes me a whole 5 minutes to do. But why? Is it laziness? Or do I really just not care about myself that much? I only have about 5 outfits that I wear, which I rotate every week. I use money as an excuse, and even though it is quite a good one, it is not the only valid excuse. I could try harder. I could maximize what I have. I just don’t know how. I am stuck in a rut. I don’t know exactly what kind of comments I am hoping to get from this blog. I just feel like I need some help. Maybe some tips on how to find some more “me” time and actually use it for myself. I’m not saying that I want to be unrealistically gorgeous, but maybe enough to sometimes make my husband take a second look at me or make myself smile in the mirror. Thanks for listening to me whine. Any comments would be appreciated.