So much fun

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted. I have so many cute videos I want to post! Ok, so for those who don't know, Mackenzie started walking! She took her first steps about a month ago. She's still pretty wobbling but she's constantly getting better and she tries constantly to walk everywhere. Here's a video of her walking towards me (she always goes right for the camera so it's hard to get pictures and videos):

She also LOVES bath time. She splashes and crawls back and forth. It's hilarious. So here's a video:

Lately she's been blowing spit bubbles. She makes us laugh so we got video of it:

Things have been going well here. Mackenzie is also learning to blow kisses and she gives lots of hugs, which is really cute. Adrian is doing well at student teaching. Things have gotten progressively easier for him, which is good. I've been keeping busy with crafts, work, and Mackenzie. I just auditioned for my one-act play that we'll take to competition.
This past week Adrian and I got to go on a date (thanks Clark and Michelle) and on Sunday we went over to Alex and Brittney's with a whole bunch of other people for a Super Bowl party!
Other than that, life has been pretty regular. Mackenzie is definitely the highlight of our days, providing lots of entertainment.

It's done!

It's official! I finished decorating Mackenzie's toy box. I have to give lots of credit to my neighbor Jessamyn though for helping my come up with the idea and going to the craft store with me and helping me get started. So here are the pictures:

Bronchialitis

Well this week has not consisted of much except taking care of our sick baby. At the beginning of the week Mackenzie woke up with a nasty sounding cough. It didn't seem to get any better. In fact, throughout the week it was just getting worse. She was more fussy than usual and had a runny nose. I noticed that one of her top teeth was coming in so I attributed everything to that. Finally, Friday night Adrian called me (I was at a theatre conference with my students-more on that later) to say that her cough was really bad and he was taking her to the doctor's. Apparently Mackenzie has bronchialitis (not bronchitis) and an ear infection. Poor thing. To make matters worse both Adrian and I have sinus infections. Not fun. We stayed home from church yesterday trying to recover.
As I said before, I was at a theatre conference. Every January I take my students to this huge conference where there a ton of workshops and plays and speakers. It's always a ton of fun and this year was no exception. We got to see Urinetown at UVU (great!) and Little Shop of Horrors at MVHS (not so great). We also had the opportunity to work with a couple Broadway writers and performers (Pasek and Paul) and the famous Ann Bogart. I also learned some magic "illusions" from a Las Vegas magician!
Here is Mackenzie getting out of her rocking chair. She loves to climb all over it. She stands up in it and leans backwards and it scares the tar out of me, but she loves it! I couldn't quite get the picture of her actually sitting in it:

And here she is with her cute ponytail riding on Daddy's shoulders. She's so funny:

And then finally, I was feeling crafty yesterday so I decided to make a board for family home evening assignments (hence the FHE). Here it is (the brown and white flowers have our names, except 2 cause we only have 3 in our family and above the flowers it says "prayer", "treat", "activity", "lesson", and "song" in green, but you can't really see in the picture):
And for those of you that follow my recipe blog, I am so sorry I haven't been as good as I should have in updating but know that my new goal is to be better! This week is Chinese!

Toy Story

As our collection of things has started to grow, Adrian realized that we needed a place for these things. Well the "things" I refer to are toys. Mackenzie's toys to be exact. So this weekend he built her a toy box. Granted, her toys don't even come close to filling up a fifth of it, but we figure now she has room to grow. So here is Mackenzie's toy box. I still haven't painted or decorated it yet, but I wanted to show it off anyway. I'm also open to suggestions on what I should do with it. Keep in mind that the colors in Mackenzie's room are light green and light pink with cute flowers. Ok, well that's what it's supposed to be. Anyway, here are some pictures. As you can see, Mackenzie is a big fan.

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...

And boy did we get one! It snowed so much in Wisconsin while we were there. Well that and freezing rain. Lots of ice everywhere. Anyway, Christmas break was great! We had so much fun with Adrian's family. Here are some highlights:
A Great Surprise. Adrian's brother (the one and only) surprised everyone on Christmas Eve when he showed up with his family. They live in Georgia and we didn't think they were coming but they showed up! It was really awesome. I had actually never met Arthur (or his family) before so I really enjoyed getting to know them. Plus he and Adrian spent some time together and it was great. Sonny (his wife) is awesome. And their kids are great. Mackenzie absolutely fell in love with Lil Art.
Nativity. This year we had a transgender (and very active) baby Jesus. Since Adrian and I had the youngest baby we were asked to play Mary and Joseph with Mackenzie as baby Jesus. And of course she just hammed it up for the cameras:

Playing Santa. So Adrian has quite a large family and all except 2 spent the night Christmas Eve. Only one of the cousins is old enough to know about Santa so it was so fun to sit with the other parents Christmas Eve and stuff stockings and talk and have fun. We played games. Great fun.
First Christmas. Ok, so I know Mackenzie had no clue what was going on (she actually took a nap during present opening because, well, it took us like 2 hours to open all the presents with the whole family-24 people), but it was so much fun. She would get so excited for the wrapping paper. Plus, she acutally really loves her gift from us. Here she is with it:
And here are some more Christmas pictures:

Birthday. For those of you who don't know, Christmas is my birthday. And this year it was my golden birthday. My in-laws were so great and really went all out in cooking and everything to celebrate. They're awesome.
Anniversary. Three years baby! Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, but that's ok. We went to this huge hotel down int he Dells where we played mini golf and rode on a ferris wheel (all indoors). Afterwards we went to this really yummy south pacific restaurant. We finished off the night by staying at Adrian's aunt's cabin and watching Transformers 2 by the fire. Thanks Becca for taking Mackenzie for the night!
New Year's. We let all the kids stay up. We all played games and there were prizes for the kids. Really it was so much fun.
Family Pictures. Since we were actually all together we took some family pictures. We took pictures of all the individual families, but here's just one of ALL of us, including Adrian's Grandma:

There were other random fun things (like shopping and crafting) but this post is already incredibly long so I'm going to stop here! If you're still reading way to go!

The Week Before Christmas

Ok so I have so much to update on that I decided to split it into two posts. So here's the first.
Getting ready for Christmas break was stressful but fun. Stressful simply because Adrian had finals for the 18 credits he took this past semester. Yeah, he's pretty much crazy, but he had to in order to be able to student teach this semester. Which brings me to some great news: Adrian actually got hired to take over someone's internship for his student teaching this semester. Internships are paid (Hallelujah) and are usually a year long. But since this teacher is leaving in the middle of hers, Adrian is taking over and only has to do the semester before he gets his license. Yay! It hasn't been too exciting for him yet because the teacher doesn't leave until the end of the term (next Thursday) so he's just been working on lesson plans.
Christmas season also meant that Mackenzie had to meet Santa for the first time! Here she is:

She seemed a little unsure, but there were no tears. She's actually really good with strangers so I wasn't too worried. Isn't her dress adorable? :)
I also decided to set up a little drum set for her in the kitchen. Here's a cute video of her banging away:

She thoroughly enjoyed it. Plus she loved being in the kitchen in general since usually we don't let her in there very often.
Another exciting thing was that our very close friends Clark and Michelle got married! We got to go to their sealing ceremony, which was so nice. We're so happy for them. Plus I'd also like to say that I called it from the beginning. Anyway, here's a picture of the happy couple coming out of the temple:

Projects

So over the past couple weeks I've taken on a few craft projects. I like being crafty, even if I'm not the greatest. My mom is really talented and does a lot of toll painting and I'm thinking of making a few things to put in a bazaar with her next year. So here are some of the projects:

A cupcake stand! Yes, Jessamyn I totally stole this from you! Thanks! This is actually a present for someone. I'm not 100% satisfied with it though because I need a sharper exacto knife to cut the foam to make it a bit smoother.

A Hair Bow! This was so easy to make! I just used wired ribbon, hot glue, and a bobby pin. No joke, it probably took my about 5 minutes total to make. I think I made like 5 with the spool of ribbon I bought!

A Wall Clock! So this isn't so much crafty as it is decorating. I saw this on TV and I have this big blank wall and all these pictures. I wanted a creative way to display the pictures, so here it is! I jus tbought the clock unit at the craft store and decorated it to match my living room (brown and pink).

Picture Boards! I actually made 4 of these and they are all different. They're presents for my nieces and nephews. Once again, super easy. These are something I would definitely be willing to make to sell if there was interest. Ok, I would sell any of these (except the wall seeing as how that's not really a craft.

Anyway, I'm done bragging. If you have other craft ideas or you want to know how I made mine, let me know!