Christmas time in Wisconsin

This post is just a little late (exactly one month) but Christmas this year was wonderful. This was our second Christmas on our own, but our first one in China doesn't really feel like it counts. So this was our first Christmas alone with our little family. We have talked about what we want Christmas to be like for our family and how we want to mesh the two families traditions and what we want to do that is all our own, and It was nice to have an opportunity to try it out. Things did not quite go as planned because Madelynn's 13 month old self had a much shorter attention span than our ideal plans required. Trying to read the Nativity story was really funny because Madelynn did NOT want to sit and listen to it.  But it was still nice to give it a try and have a calm and peaceful family Christmas. Luckily McKay brought out his guitar and played a little bit for us. That always captures Madelynn's attention.

We went a little bit overboard with the Christmas presents for Madelynn. We had a lot of fun buying hot wheels cars for 2 months before hand. Every time we went to the store leading up to Christmas we (McKay) would search the toy cars and since they are less than a dollar we would pick up a couple. When Christmas day came and we unwrapped them all and counted we ended up with 77 toy cars... I know, Its crazy. But Madelynn has an amazing collection of toy cars. She also got some barbies, a play kitchen with food and dishes to go along with it and a big girl car seat which she is loving! She also got a really cool rocking horse that makes noise and moves its head and tail. It terrified her initially, but now that she has figured out how to press the buttons to make it move and make noise it is one of her favorite toys.

After we opened presents on Christmas day we went over to our friends the Songsters house and had Christmas brunch. It was a lot of fun. It was kind of nice to have a break in the day to socialize a little bit. Madelynn also had fun with their kids. She likes to follow the big girls around and pretend like she is a big girl too. She also always enjoys their cute little boy who is the same age.  Thanks for having us over Stephanie!

Here in Wisconsin we had tons of snow over Christmas break. We had a little over 2 feet when Christmas rolled around so we also spent a little bit of time out in the snow. Not too long since that short 13 month old attention span kicked in along with being a little wet and cold. It was such a nice and relaxed Christmas. I had all of the fixings for an awesome Christmas dinner which we didn't feel like making on Christmas day because we just wanted to chill, so we had a wonderful Christmas feast on the 26th. I look forward to all our future Christmases with our little family.

Now here are some more happy pictures of our Christmas Happenings

House Guests

Over the last two months we have had lots of family come to visit us. We have been lucky enough to have both sets of parents come and visit us as well as McKay's sister Cecily's family and my sister Melissa. We have never really had house guests before. With the exception of living in China we have always lived somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes away from both of our families. If one of McKay's sisters came in to town they stayed with his parents or sisters, not with the little brother in the one or two bedroom apartment. It has been both exciting and stressful having house guests. It has been awesome that we have had the chance to see so many of our family members even though we moved so far away. I guess they must love us and miss us and think we are awesome or something like that.

Playing host and hostess multiple times over the last little while has given us the opportunity to be tourists as well. In planning fun things to do with our family we ended up getting to do the fun things too. We have gone down to a cheese factory called Alp and Dell cheese in Monroe WI multiple times now and taken their brief tour. We have also visited a little Swiss town called New Glarus multiple times and visited the cute shops there and eaten at a Swiss restaurant called the Glarner Stube and at a Swiss bakery and a chocolate and cheese shop. New Glarus is always worth the 30 minute drive.

We also got to go visit the House on the Rock which is about an hour away in the middle of the country. That place is bizarre. It is a seriously crazy place. It is very interesting and there is a lot to see, but there is a slight creepiness factor too it. They guy who built it did not seem to be 100% in his right mind and some of the things he collected were just a little weird. I would recommend seeing it once just for the novelty of it, but since we spent 4 hours walking through the actual house and all of the exhibit halls each time I think 8 hours of the House on the Rock are more than enough for me. The coolest part of the House on the Rock has got to be the infinity room. It is like a hallway lined in glass that just out over the forest for about 200 feet and has nothing below it holding it up. I am scared of heights so I had a hard time with it, but the view was incredible.

We have also had the chance to visit the Madison Zoo, the Wisconsin State Capital, The shops downtown around the Capital including a specialty cheese shop, The Wisconsin Veterans Museum, a Frank Lloyd wright building called Monona Terrace,  a couple of other shopping centers in Madison, the UW Madison Business school and a lot of different restaurants. We also spent a lot of time at our house playing with Madelynn. She LOVES having people there to play with her and constantly pay attention to her.

Thank you everyone who came to visit us. It was wonderful to see you and it was fun to get to experience a little bit more of Madison with you.

Now here are some of the pictures:

5 years!

I just had to post saying WE HAVE BEEN MARRIED FOR 5 YEARS!!!!! Sometimes 5 years seems like no time at all, and other times it feels like we have bee together forever. Isn't time a funny thing. It is one of the most constant things we have but it certainly does not feel that way. 5 years in childhood seems incredibly disproportional to 5 years in adulthood. Anyway, I have loved these last 5 years of marriage. McKay is a phenomenal husband and father and friend. We are lucky to have found each other and to get to spend our lives with our perfect match. I love you McKay! Happy 5 year anniversary!

Madelynn's First Birthday

So I am a slacker and this post is over a month late, but I had to write about it. Ever since we learned we were going to move to Wisconsin I always had this weird hangup with the fact that Madelynn would move just before her first birthday and was sad that she would have to spend that special day away from all of our friends and family in Utah who love and care about her. If we had still been in Utah there probably would have been like 50+ people invited  just among the family and close friends set (that's what happens when your families only live 15 minutes away from each other). I kept being saddened by the idea that we would have just moved and wouldn't have time to make any friends and that no one would even care about the fact that my special little princess was turning one. I know I was being irrational because she would not even remember at all and McKay would be more than happy to not entertain an enormous group of people, but I was still a little sad.

So when Madelynn's first birthday rolled around I was very happy that my parents were able to come visit us from Utah and that my sister in law Cecily's family was able to make the 3 1/2 hour drive to come to the party. Knowing that there were some people there who truly love and care about her was important to me. We also invited a few of that families that we had gotten to know here. It turned out to be a much smaller affair than I had been planning in my head, and a little bit less organized because for some reason when more than half of your party guest are under the age of 8 things get a little crazy! Here is a picture of the guests that were still around when we thought about taking a picture.

I had fun making a pretty birthday bunting banner for Madelynn and making her a small pink birthday cake that she got to smash. I wanted her birthday to be the first time she tried cake, but alas, she snuck some cake crumbs off of the floor when I was baking another cake a little while before. I had planned to do a pink and grey elephant party because I am crazy and bought her Halloween costume back in August, and since I bought her an elephant costume and her birthday is on Halloween... I planned it around her costume. I even designed my own party invitations to match the theme. I also had a lot of fun printing off photos from each month of her life and turning them into cupcake toppers and hanging them on the wall with her birthday banner.

I know McKay's eyes are closed in this picture, but it is the only picture that had the birthday banner in it.

Like I said, It was a much smaller party than I had planned in my head, but it went over really well. We had lots of food and since we took a trip to the cheese factory the morning before her birthday party we had a bunch of cheese and crackers. I even cut some cheese slices in the shape of an elephant! We played a couple of games including pin the tail on the elephant and pass the parcel and had a lot of fun. We also played a game where each of the kids had a balloon and they couldn't let it touch the ground. The older kids loved this, but when one of the balloons popped Madelynn freaked out and started crying. She is still a little bit afraid of balloons.

We were able to catch her reaction to the balloon popping in this picture, how sad is that little face?

When it came time to sing happy birthday and eat cake, Madelynn was not to sure about things. With everyone standing around her and watching her she was a little bit nervous and cautious about the cake eating process. She eventually dug her way through about a third of the cake and a lot of it ended up on her face and on the floor. We all go to eat cupcakes and let Madelynn have her cake all to herself.

This is the only picture we got of her smiling with her cake

Spending her Birthday With Grandma and Grandpa

Madelynn had a blast opening up presents. She just barely figured out that wrapping paper rips like regular paper, and ripping up paper is one of her favorite things to do. Thank you all who gave her a birthday gift, they were wonderful.

That night Cecily's family was able to stay the night so we got to have cousins sleep over! I think that will be more fun for the kids when they are old enough to sleep over together in the same room, but it was still fun having them stay in the house.

Mow some things about Madelynn at 1 year old:
-She weighs 20.5 pounds and is 29 inches long
-she loves to eat cheese, rice, noodles, crackers and pears
-she has 10 teeth!
-she started walking exclusively 1 week before her 1st birthday
-she love to play with cars and dvd's
-she likes to nod her head yes and shake her head no. It is always hilarious when she does this in an appropriate situation
-the only thing she will say is "yeah". Any other words she has learned have been shelved and Yeah is the only thing she wants to say.
- she loves animals, especially ones with fur she can pull
-she love to pull mommy's hair... we are working on that one, ouch!
-She likes to go outside
-She cries whenever daddy walks out the door to go to school
-She is enamored with the bathroom. She loves to play in toilet water, unroll and shred toilet paper and bath time is her favorite
-She likes to dance, she does this by stepping repeatedly in place or spinning in a circle. She mostly dances to music from Bollywood movies.
-she likes to play in the kitchen cupboard and the dishwasher. She likes to pull thing out of them and put her toys there instead.
-She likes to play with older kids. She follows them around like a little puppy dog
-She really likes to play peek a boo, especially under a blanket
- she also likes to play chase, especially if you are chasing her.
-She likes to pull a big cheesy grin that closes her eyes, scrunches her nose and shows all of her teeth
-she likes to sit in boxes. Whether it is empty or not, she loves to climb in.
-she puts anything an everything in her mouth. If she shouldn't eat it, she inevitably finds it and sticks it in her mouth. Coins and leaves are her favorite.
-she likes to watch mommy cook and sometimes "helps"
-she loves to empty bags. She empty's the contents of her diaper bag almost daily. It is always a struggle at church to stop her from digging into someone elses bag!
-she likes to watch the show Yo Gabba Gabba and Blues Clues
- she hates wearing hats. Seriously hates them.
- she stopped taking a binky on her own when she was 9 months old, but now she sucks her thumb again instead.
-she likes to turn the page when we are reading books
-she LOVES to unfold laundry and throw it on the floor. That makes my life a little difficult.
-she likes to snuggle up with mommy under a blanket on the couch while I watch a movie
-She is a sweetheart with a fiery temper brewing under the surface
-She is our amazing baby angel princess and we absolutely adore her and couldn't love her any more!

Happy Birthday Madelynn!

25

I am 25 now. I don't know if I am supposed to feel different or something. I don't I just had to remark on the fact that I am now a quarter of a century old. Does that make me an adult now? I don't know if I will ever feel like an adult. Being married, graduating from college,  having kids, moving across the country, establishing a life. Done. Maybe I will feel like an adult when we have more kids and own a home. Probably not. But that is okay. I am only 25.

P.S. It was a wonderful birthday spent with my two favorite people in the whole wide world!

Endangered DVD's = A big task for me

Our DVD's are in trouble. Madelynn started to take an interest in them just a little while after we moved. I don't know what all of a sudden made them so attractive. They have been on the same bookshelf for her entire little life, but it was not until recently that our shelves full of DVD's seem to call to her, beckoning her to pull them of the shelf and then do unspeakable things to them. Those unspeakable things include throwing them, desperately trying to open the case and get the disc out, scooting them across the room under one hand as she crawls across the room, and my absolute favorites, putting them in unkempt piles and then sitting or standing on them.

Once I realized that our DVD's had become endangered I took it upon myself to figure out how to save them. I know I will not be able to save all of our DVD's from our little princesses destructive grasp,  but I can try! I initially tried to come up with ways to block the shelves from her. I put her walker in front of the shelf thinking it would keep her away. Boy was I wrong! She used her walker like a step stool and would climb on it and get to the DVD's she couldn't reach before!

Then I started brainstorming contraptions I could make that would make it so that we could access the DVD's whenever we wanted, but would not allow Madelynn to get them. I started thinking about using tension rods and bungee cords and drilling holes in various places... all of those ideas fell flat. So, I decided, what the heck. I will let Madelynn keep wreaking havoc on our DVD's and just make digital copies of them all. That way when she breaks a disc I can just go  burn a new one and put it back in the case. 

After doing tons of online research about copying and burning DVD's and getting past the copyright encryption I found a couple of programs that are free that are working for me. I downloaded DVD Shrink and IMG burn and they have been working wonderfully for me. There have only been two Movies so far that they couldn't copy. Sadly, those two movies are ones I really cared about copying, so I found another program that I got a free trial of called Magic DVD Ripper that was able to copy them. I only have 3 trial uses left on that program and we may just end up buying it, but I am cheap and won't do that until I absolutely have too. 

I have now delved into the realm of backing up DVD's and I am already a little tired of it. I don't know if I will ever really get through all of our discs before I get super bored. We have over 250 DVDs and I have copied 28. Seriously, I have a lot to go. Also, we will run out of storage space before I can copy them all. Oh well I will do what I can to help my poor endangered DVDs.

She's on the move!

Madelynn decided that she wants to try and walk now. She has been standing and balancing on her own for about two weeks now and occasionally taking a step or two from one object to another. Well last night she decided to take things a step further.

Here is one of the few pictures we caught of her standing

We were sitting on our family room floor playing with some toys while McKay was doing some of his never ending homework when out of the blue Madelynn stood up on her own and took a couple of steps before she fell over. We were so proud of her! Luckily McKay was able to see it happen too. we were both clapping and using our silly high pitched parent voices to tell her good job. After that she just kept doing it over and over. She stood up and walked more in one evening than she has in the whole rest of her little baby life combined! I was so happy that she kept going because it meant I was able to catch some steps on video!

Here is the video. It is a little bit long and please forgive the silly high pitched mommy voice. Aren't walking babies so cute!?!