11 Months

Camryn's birthday is coming up fast. She turned 11 months last week and we've enjoyed every minute she's been a part of our family. Her two front top teeth came in a few weeks ago and I think they make her look quite different.

The big announcement is that she's a walker now! Not necessarily full on running across the room but she's confident enough to walk around without being coaxed at all and can make it 5-6 feet before getting unsteady enough to plop down and start crawling. It's been really exciting to see her learning this skill. Avery was walking at about 11 months too.

Museum Trip

This morning I took the girls to the Milwaukee Public Museum downtown where we met up with some people from our ward for playgroup.

Avery had a good time looking at the dinosaurs, the bugs, the village shop windows, and especially the butterflies. They had a room with butterflies flying all around and they would land on you or you could hold one on your finger. Pretty neat stuff!

Here's a pic of Avery sitting on a giant beetle with some of the other kids:

Camryn was a real trooper and did a great job sitting in the stroller for most of the time.

It was my first time driving around downtown by myself and it wasn't bad at all. I think I'll be brave enough to go explore down there more often now. (Especially because the girls both fell asleep on the way home and are still napping!)

A Valentine's Day Story

Once upon a time, there was a silly mommy who thought it would be fun to take pictures of her girls new matching Valentine's shirts. The girls weren't so keen on the idea.

So that mommy tried to explain what Valentine's Day is all about - expressing our love and thanks to all those we love. She got a blank stares from one girl and a skeptical look from the other.

So she told them about all the candy and cards and treats little girls get on Valentine's Day. Hooray! We love Valentine's Day! they exclaimed.

And so that silly mom got her picture she needed to write a blog post and they all lived happily ever after.

Happy "Fullentime's" Day (as Avery says it) to all our loved family and friends.

Something Fishy

Camryn: Caught red-handed with a brand new bag of Goldfish, spilled all over the floor.

We Flu to Utah

Last week Merrick got flown out by Kohl's to recruit at the BYU Career Fair. Since the ticket prices were cheap, we decided to all go along! We left Tuesday and got back Sunday night. It was a quick trip but it was really nice to be back in our old stomping grounds and especially spend time with Merrick's family in Bountiful.

Wednesday was the career fair and Merrick was busy talking to people the entire time. He said it seemed like there were much fewer employers and more students than usual! It was an interesting experience for him to be on the other end, when he only graduated a year ago. But he met lots of good people and learned some good things from the experience. He even got his picture in the Deseret News!

While Merrick was recruiting I spent the day visiting friends in Provo with the girls. We all returned to Bountiful that night tired from a long day. Unfortunately Merrick and Avery both woke up at around 2:30 am that night and started throwing up! Yuck! They were both out of commission all day Thursday and I ended up going to my Grandma's house in Sandy for dinner with just Camryn. We had a nice time visiting with people and we got to meet my cousin Jessica's baby Kayden who is just 2 1/2 months older than Camryn.

Friday everyone was feeling better so we took some family pictures and hung out with the family, but I started feeling sick in the afternoon and eventually got the flu also. Merrick's siblings in college came home that night and we had a nice family dinner (minus me, who was very sick!). Saturday we did some group pictures and my grandparents and Aunt Shelly came over to see us before we left.

Luckily we were all feeling better by the time we got on the airplane on Sunday. I don't think the flights could have gone any better, except for the long 3 hour layover in Denver. Camryn slept during all of both flights. During the second flight, we turned on the DVD player for Avery and she fell asleep within 30 seconds, and slept the entire 2 hour flight! Hooray! The funny thing is, she doesn't take naps, but she took a nap every day that we were in Utah! I guess she was pretty worn out.

All in all, it was a fun little trip. If we hadn't gotten sick we would have been able to see a lot more people and do some more fun things but we were grateful to be able to spend time with family and friends.