Our LOVE Day!

We celebrated our Valentines Day a day early because Corey and my brother in laws and my dad made special plans for us but it worked out better to do it on Friday. So, on Friday when Corey got home from work he surprised me with these gorgeous flowers. So sweet!

Then we went and dropped Raylee off at my parents house where my little sister watched all the kids for us so we could have a night out without the kiddies, and then we went and had a super delicious dinner at The Roof at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I think we all ended up finding out where we were going before hand.

I haven't ever been there before and it was definately the nicest place I have ever eaten and had the best view of the temple. It was lots of fun to get dressed up and go somewhere nice and I can't say enough good things about the food. It was absolutely amazing and we all stuffed ourselves as full as we could. I was really excited about trying the creme brulee because I've never had it before and have heard amazing things about it, but I was kind of dumb and tried it after I had a mint dessert and so it tasted kind of weird to me. I will definately have to try it again. Anyway, everyone else loved the creme brulee and this picture only shows a portion of all that we ate. I guess we were all trying to get our fill of fancy food like this since we don't get it very often.

The view of the temple from up there is gorgeous and so of course we had to snap a couple pics!

On the actual Valentine's day, we just had a lazy day at home and had a little movie marathon. Corey was sweet enough to watch a bunch of chick flicks with me, although I think he likes them as much as I did. I am a lucky girl that my hubby loves me enough to do all this for me!

Guilty as Charged Tag

1. Sometimes (or a lot of times) when I read a book to Raylee, especially if it's like the 100th of the day or a really long one, I only read the first page and the last. I don't think I'm going to get away with it for much longer!
2. If Raylee wakes up before I am ready to get up I bring her back to my bed and lay there and play with her there until I'm ready to get up for the day.
3. I watch Judge Alex almost every day.
4. I have no self control when it comes to sugar. If there is any sort of dessert available I eat it for breakfast, and lunch every day until it's gone and then I'm sad when it's gone.
5. I feel guilty throwing food away, so I put it in the fridge as leftovers even when I know no one will eat it, and then it ends up staying in the fridge until it's covered in mold.
6. I have such a brown thumb that I can't even keep bamboo alive. I was looking on the internet to find out if you could bring bamboo back to life and one website said that bamboo is only one step above having a pet rock. I probably couldn't even handle a pet rock!
7. I love to buy shoes, but I hate wearing them. I never wear shoes in my house (and it's not to keep the carpet nice) and I've even been known to tell other people to take their shoes off because just looking at it makes my feet feel claustrophobic.
8. I make Corey do the laundry, and he's such a good hubby that he doesn't even complain about it.
9. Sometimes we don't eat dinner until like 8 or 9 at night. Last night it wasn't until 9:30. Most of the time it's because Coreys working late that night, but sometimes it's just because I'm lazy and I hate making dinner so I procrastinate.
10. I have started wearing spring clothes already in hopes that it will make it come faster. It doesn't, and I just end up freezing all day, but it makes me feel like I'm helping speed things up.


I tag anyone who wants to air some dirty laundry!

Are you ready for some Football??

Corey's family has some really fun traditions and a lot of them have to do with sports. Everybody in his family has picked an NFL team as their team and almost everybodys team is different. Corey's team is the Miami Dolphins, my team is the San Diego Chargers (I picked this team entirely based on the colors, since I knew absolutely NOTHING about sports.), and Corey is trying to turn Raylee into a fellow Dolphins fan although according to him she has no choice.

Every week during the football season all the adults do picks on all the teams that play that week and then at the end of the season the person with the highest total gets the money from the pot that everyone contributes too. All of these things lead up to the big super bowl party at the end where everybody comes decked out in their team gear. Corey's been wanting to get me Chargers jersey for a long time, but I keep telling him that I would rather spend the money on cute clothes that I will wear more than once a year. I have recently started telling him that he can buy me a jersey when the Chargers are in the super bowl. So far so good.

I really look forward to the super bowl party every year. Not so much for the game, as for the yummy food, the usually funny commercials, and the good company. This year was every bit as good as I was expecting! I didn't really care which team won, so I didn't pay much attention to the game, and unfortunately missed out on most of the commercials, but the food was delicious and we all stuffed ourselves silly!


I only took a few pictures and none of them turned out. It probably had a little something to do with the fact that Raylee had just woken up from a nap and was super ornery. I always pick the best times to snap a picture! Below is Raylee and her cousin Morgan who is about 10 months older than Raylee.

Daddy's Little Girl

Lately Raylee has been a real daddy's girl. She hates it when he leaves for work, and gets so excited when I tell her that daddy's home. She follows him everywhere and does everything that he does. Today as he was getting ready for work he was putting on his shirt and so Raylee pretended to put on a shirt. He did up the buttons so she buttoned up her pretend buttons. He wiped off a spot on his shirt, so she did the same. It was so cute!

Needless to say, she was sad when he left, but then she saw his shoes sitting on the floor and decided to go put them on. She thought she was pretty funny!

I've created a MONSTER!

It all started about a month ago.....

I was desperately trying to get some work in since I had been really behind on my hours, but unfortunatey Raylee had figured out that she could pop the keys off the computer and I couldn't distract her with any toys, so I put on a cartoon on for her hoping that I would be able to work for a few minutes in peace. She loved the cartoon and watched a lot more of it then I thought she would, so since then I have been guilty of putting on some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or The Backyardigans for her so that I could get a little more work in. I try hard to not let her watch too much TV, but lately it is getting harder and harder. She has figured out that I use the remote to put a show on for her, so she likes to find the remote and bring it to me with her big puppy dog eyes, and when I won't put one on for her she throws a huge tantrum (yep, she's gotten to the stage of the throwing herself on the floor while crying and screaming tantrums. So fun.). When I do put a show on for her she makes me scoot her chair over by the coffee table so she can sit in to watch her show.

I still put on a show for her while I work to help entertain her, but now I just get a good dose of tantrums and tears to go along with it and have also resorted to hiding the remote. The good news is that Corey has discovered that he also loves The Backyardigans and he and Raylee often watch it together.

Bringing in the New Year

This year for New Years Eve we had a little party at our house with some friends. We were going to go out to dinner at Chilis but when we found out the wait was 2 hours we decided to just get take out and eat it at our house. We had lots of fun playing games. The boys played Fifa on the playstation most of the night but the girls were able to convince them to spend a little while with us playing games.

Raylee had lots of fun with Bregenz. She followed him around everywhere and copied everything he did. It was super cute!!

Holiday Fun

After Christmas we hadn't had our fill family so we spent the next few days partying some more. We went up to Corey's parents house the next two nights to play games some more and had lots of fun minus two Raylee incidents where she bumped her mouth on a table and came upstairs with a mouth full of blood and the other was just a choking incident.

On Sunday after Corey got to speak in Sacrament Meeting we headed down to my familys for our annual Sleep Around the Christmas Tree. This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions that we have been doing for as long as I can remember where we have tons of yummy food and play games and then we always watch a movie and everyone sleeps around the Christmas tree. We are getting to big to all fit around the tree, but we still have an awesome party and spend the night and this year was no different!

On Monday we were also able to go sledding with my cousins. Every year in the week between Christmas and New Years we always do lots of activities with my moms family, but this year I was only able to make it to sledding. Raylee ended up being super ornery because she was in need of a nap, so we didn't stay very long but I still had lots of fun. After sledding we went back to my Grandmas for dinner.

I love the holidays and I had tons of fun this year, although it went by way to quickly!!

An Incredible Christmas!

We had a great Christmas this year filled with lots of family and fun! On Christmas Eve we went down to my aunts house to spend the night with my family. We had a yummy dinner and read the Christmas story, sang some Christmas songs, and then all the kids opened a gift from my Grandma Bird. Raylee did pretty good opening the present and had tons of fun playing with her farm puzzle.

After we left my Aunts we went to my parents house where we were spending the night and my dad surprised with an early present of getting the Guitar Hero World Tour for the Wii and we all had a blast playing that the rest of the night.

On Christmas morning we went out to the family room and discovered that Raylee must have been a good girl this last year because Santa left her some presents. She got a Cabbage Patch Doll and a Little People Noahs Arke set, and a whole bunch of goodies in her stocking. We gave her some clothes and an animal sounds book, and my parents gave her a Little People Car a little magna doodle, and a couple of Little People Books. Corey and I got a bunch of good stuff from each other, and my parents gave us a card table and lots of much needed food storage. Al and Baylens family gave our family some tonka toasters to use while camping.

Raylee had lots of fun rocking her baby on this little rocking chair my mom has.

A little later in the morning my sister Alison and her family came down from their house and all of the grandkids opened their presents from my parents.

At about 2:00 we left my parents and went up to Coreys family. We stopped at his grandparents house and visited for awhile, and then went his parents house where we got tons more gifts. Raylee got a Tinkerbell Barbie and some clothes from them. Corey got some shoes and a shirt, and some treats, and I got a breadmaker and some smelly bricks for my candle warmer thing (hope you know what I'm talking about because that sure didn't make any sense!). Jaime and Daniel gave us a new game, and Bella gave Raylee a set of Pooh Bear Books which Morgan helped her open.

Then we spent the rest of the night playing games, and had lots of good food.

It was a great day! We ended up staying the night in Tremonton because we didn't dare drive home because of the terrible road conditions. All in all it was an incredible Christmas, and I can't believe how blessed we are!!

Ho Ho Ho!

I have been so excited for this Christmas because Raylee is a little bit older this year and has a better idea of what is going on. She loves the Christmas tree and gets excited everytime I turn on the lights, and she also really likes Santa. One of my Christmas decorations is a little stuffed Santa Clause which Raylee absolutely loves and carries around with her everywhere. I taught her that Santa says Ho Ho Ho, and so now every time she sees a Santa she says Ho Ho Ho (which really sounds more like Huh Huh Huh).

Because she loves Santa so much, I thought we would try to take her to see Santa this year, and hoped their wouldn't be a huge meltdown. We ended up going to see the lights at Willard Bay and at the end they have a spot where you can see Santa and his reindeer. Raylee ended up screaming for the minute she was with Santa, but it was worth a shot. This Santa looks a lot like her doctor and sounds a lot like him too (maybe they're related?) and so maybe that's why she was terrified of him.

Maybe next year will be better!

Raylee at 15 months

I was pretty lucky for Raylee's first year because Corey was the one who filled out Raylee's baby book, and he did it every month and wouldn't leave any line blank. Well I guess now that the baby book is completed it is up to me to keep track of all the new things (good and not so good) that she has been up to, so here's Raylee at 15 months:

• She is now a pretty speedy little walker. She still wasn't walking that great at 13 months (still just taking a couple steps at a time) so I had a little talk with her and told her she only had until she was 14 months to start walking and she was an obedient little girl and by 14 months she was walking all by herself.


• The only word she really says is "dat" (that) and I hear that one word about 3oo times a day while she points to what she wants, and hi. She doesn't say mama very often (although she can) and her daddy comes out as da (which sounds very similar to dat).


• She knows what a bee, snake, elephant, bear, tiger, llama, and beaver say and she's learning more all the time.


• She loves to put anything around her neck (like a necklace) that she can and this habit makes me VERY nervous. She also loves to put things (such as cookie cutters on her wrists like bracelets. What a little girlie girl.


• She now has 12 teeth, and those 4 molars were doozies.
  Her favorite book is Ten Little Ladybugs, but she loves any book especially if it has animals in it.


• She loves to do the actions to itsy bitsy spider, and loves me to sing patty cake, 5 little monkey swinging in a tree and loves to play peekaboo.


• She has become a picky eater, especially with her vegetables.


• She is a little copy cat. If we are sitting a certain way, then she will try to copy where our hands our exactly. When there is a group of people folding their arms for a prayer, she will fold hers so she can be like everyone.


• She is a little daddy's girl. Whenever her daddy leaves, she goes to the garage door and tries to get it open so she can go with him.


• She loves balls. Corey got her a little soccer ball and she loves to go around and kick it and throw it.


• She is not a great sleeper. She had started sleeping through the night again, but then she started getting all her teeth so she now wakes ups anywhere from 1-4 times a night much to my dismay.


• She loves to dance. She always hears the music in everything, and there are a lot of times I don't even here it until I look over and see her dancing and she's got some great moves.
  She can point to her: head/hair, eyes, nose, tummy, and toes.

This list could probably go on and on forever so I will stop now, but our little Ray Ray is learning SO many new things everyday. She is a sweet girl and can always put a smile on our faces! We our SO lucky to have her in our lives!!