Trip to Maryland!

So I wasn't able to go home for Maryland for Christmas but I had been planning for about a year that I would go home this January so that I could be home when James got back from his mission! So I'll write another post about all that went on with James coming home, but we did a lot of fun stuff while I was in Maryland and I had a great time seeing everyone!

Actually, a few days before I came to Maryland, my brother Daniel was flying back to school at BYU and happened to stop in Denver, so Jacob and I went to go visit him for an hour. He didn't realize I was coming though so I went through security and found him sleeping at his gate. Ironically the last two times I had seen him before that were at the airport too! So it was good to at least catch up and give him a chance to see Jacob. I'm hoping to see Daniel one more time though before he'll probably leave on his mission in the Spring once this semester is over.

So I was able to fly standby into Baltimore (thanks to Luke's mom!) and got in on Wednesday the 6th. And then my sister Erika had to leave for school at ISU early Friday morning so I only had just over a day to see her.
So it was just kind of funny that only a few days before James came home Erika and Daniel had to go back to school, so we couldn't all be there to see him come home. But I was lucky to be able to see everyone, just wish we could have all been there at the same time! It might be awhile until that happens since Daniel will leave soon for his mission!

Erika was happy to see Jacob though, all my sisters gushed over him as soon as we got in.

Julia with Jacob

Andrea and Jacob

It took Jacob a little bit to get used to my family, he still gets stranger anxiety and likes to cling to me like a monkey. But after a day or so he really warmed up! Andrea played with him a lot when she would get home from school everyday and so he started to really like her and think she was funny!

The first weekend I was out there we decided to drive around Annapolis. I had actually never been there before but it seemed like a fun place! It was absolutely freezing when we went though but if Luke and I are ever back in the summer we're definetly going to have to go back and check out Annapolis more.

Julia, Andrea, and me at the Bay


I loved all the colonial buildings

the state capital!

pretty spot at sunset

My first Sunday out there I went to go see Luke's side of the family- his parents, his Aunt Julie, and his cousins, Tyler and Ryan and Ryan's wife Jamie and their two kids Liala and Dax. We just had dinner and hung around together but it was fun for Jacob to meet Liala and Dax for the first time. The funny thing though was at the time Jacob was 9 1/2 months and Dax was 3 1/2 months but they were almost the same size!

Jacob let Grandma Brenda feed him

nearly the same height and weight!

Liala was really sweet with "John Jacob"

Jacob checking out Dax some more, kept trying to hit his face!

One person I didn't get to see that night though was Luke's Grandma Martha so I went to visit her a few days later when she got back from all her Christmas trips out west. I always have a good time going to visit Grandma- Luke and I lived with her the summer after we got married and we really have good memories of that time, so I always like going back to McLean to see her.

The last time we saw Grandma was when she came out with Luke's parents for Jacob's baby blessing a month or so after he was born, so he's grown up a lot since. And Grandma had so much fun playing with him!

Here's Grandma sitting on the kitchen floor with Jacob rolling a grapefruit back and forth, haha.

Jacob looooves remotes so Grandma let him play with her old ones just to keep him happy

Once James got home he wanted to do practically everything that he couldn't do on his mission- well within reason! But every night James and I would stay up way too late watching movies and stuff, and then by the time the weekend rolled around James said he wanted to have a dance party! I wasn't really expecting that from him, but I guess it was just another one of those things he couldn't do before and so we had to do it now. But it was actually soo fun!

Andrea hooked up her Ipod and blasted a dance mix and then we turned off all the lights and pulled out some glow sticks and flashing lights! Haha it was amazing! Even Jacob got in on the fun!

I couldn't let Jacob play with the glowsticks because he would bite them open so he played with this flashing light- he just liked biting it :)

Grandma sitting with Jacob

Halfway through and we were already exhausted- that's me on the floor, I think I'm out of shape because I was so tired! But then we kept going! We did get some pics with the lights off and our sticks glowing but they're not that great. But either way- it was way fun!

On my last day home in MD it was Martin Luther King Day and so my sisters were off school so we decided to go to DC and check out the American History Museum- it seemed fitting for the holiday! Too bad my dad still had to work, but my mom still took us kids down.

And it was Jacob's first ride on the metro!

I don't think I have ever been to this museum before, or at least I didn't remember it. It's crazy that I've lived in Mayland my whole life and there's so much of DC I feel I haven't really seen! So I was actually excited to see a lot of the exhibits. One fun exhibit was the one about the American Presidents. There was one spot where you could stand at a podium and look like you're the president with real presidential video clips behind you.

And when we first noticed this, we saw a little boy, probably 7 years old, and he got up to the podium and threw his hands up and shouted, "It is time for change!" Haha we were all laughing so hard! But then we realized there was also a screen on top where you can read real presidential speeches or whatever. So Julia, Andrea, and James all tried it too.

haha, Julia is so cute

Andrea reading her speech

nice presidential smile :)

And when we were done with the museum we took some pictures on the mall. For a January day, it was absolutely beautiful! It was a great day to be downtown!

And a couple other random pics from the trip...

Once James got home, my parents took James, Jacob, and I out to lunch. James and I kind of joked around that every time we went out and I was carrying a baby around people probably assumed we were a couple. At least one Target worker thought James was my husband, it was kind of funny, but weird at the same time haha.

Jacob was always trying to get out of this little chair and climb onto the table! This one was funny though because he kept putting his foot up and down, it didnt even look like his leg was connected, just kept popping up on the table, haha. Guess he's flexible like his mom!

Grandma was able to put Jacob to sleep our last day there, aww

Saying goodbye! James was nice enough to take me in to the airport. We were laughing when this lady took our picture because once again we knew it probably looked like we were a couple- but I did want a picture with my new RM brother! I'm so glad I was able to come home to see James and all the rest of my family- on both sides! I had a really great time- lots of fun memories already!

New Mexico!

The day after Christmas we took a 5 hour drive down to Albuquerque, New Mexico to visit Luke's first roommate from BYU-I, Clay. I would tease Luke that this friend "Clay" must be made up since he talked about him all the time but I had never met him. Luke wasn't able to go to his wedding when we were dating, and he wasn't able to fly out to our wedding but they claimed to be best friends still. And they would talk on the phone and I would hear all about him, but still had never met him after all these years. So since we still had time on our break Luke insisted we go down to visit Clay and his wife so that he could meet Jacob and I.

We were coming in Saturday evening and the sunset was just beautiful!

Sunday we didn't do too much, just went to church in the morning, and then we went and checked out the Albuquerque Temple.

Clay and Luke talked and reminisced the whole weekend

what a cute couple...

warming up to give me a kiss

Jacob saying hi to the dogs outside. They needed to stay outside almost all weekend because they were all over Jacob... and I was kind of scared of them... haha

On Monday we went downtown and checked out some little street shops and tourist stuff. We had a good time! We also went to an Imax theater and learned about the stars- it was neat!

Jacob trying on a little wildlife hat

Luke tried to get a snowcone but they were clearly closed :)

Luke trying on something in the store, being silly

I found a little seat drum- it was cool!

Luke with the "Navajo"

Us both with our navajo friend

Jacob wearing a Krispy Kreme hat- we had several doughnuts that weekend too!

A storm was coming in Tuesday and so we left early that morning. This is what it looked like as we were leaving- kind of pretty. We had a good weekend! I think Luke had a little more fun catching up with Clay but it was nice for me to get out for awhile- I had never been to New Mexico before, but we enjoyed the trip!

Christmas 2009

I was happy to have a white christmas this year! There's something nice about moving in and then having snow on christmas. Actually I think it reminded me and Luke of when we first moved to Colorado. We had just graduated at BYU-I in December of 2007 and then drove our two cars out to Colorado shortly after. But we hit a wind storm going through Wyoming and were stuck for a day, but luckily we made it into Denver the night before Christmas Eve. And when we woke up Christmas morning there was snow everywhere, a fairly big storm had come through and we were just so grateful that we had made it into Colorado before the storm did. And we just had a small apartment with no furniture or tree or internet or TV but its one of my best Christmas memories! And so being in a new home this Christmas and getting snow, even though the snow came the night before Christmas Eve this year, it still felt very familiar.

And now we have a driveway to shovel! I think Luke enjoys shoveling, at least he'll do it several times to keep up with it. And so Jacob and I would go outside too and watch him, and Jacob loved sitting out in the snow and watching dad shovel!

diligently watching his dad

me and my happy baby :)

outside again on Christmas Eve and all the snow we got

tasting the snow

laughing at his dad shoveling again :)

my table centerpieces

my chocolate pudding pie

My favorite christmas tradition growing up has been that on Christmas Eve we would have rice pudding. And the Danish tradition is to drop an almond into the pudding and then dish it up for everyone, and whoever finds the almond in their pudding is the winner. And the winner in our family would usually get a chocolate almond candy bar. It's just a lot of fun! But only having two of us that would eat it, and Luke is not even so sure he likes it, I didn't feel like making it this year. So my "substition" was chocolate pudding... but it somehow turned out hard and discusting. So I just wanted to say I'm never doing that again, and maybe I'll stick to my traditions from now on!

ready for christmas eve dinner!

showing Jacob his stocking

staying up late on Christmas Eve

his PJ's say- My 1st Christmas

our tiny nativity set

our tree was basically dead by Christmas, but it looked prettier at night

and basically all these presents were for Jacob!

opening his presents Christmas afternoon

(he slept in really long Christmas morning!)

all he really cared about was climbing on top of the presents to look at the ornaments :)

Once we got all Jacob's new toys set up though he loved them! This one in the picture above is probably my favorite because he can stand at it and it plays like a million songs and keeps him pretty occupied, at least for awhile. But I have to give the credit to Luke's parents, they were great in helping us get some gifts for Jacob this year. Luke did get a new cell phone as a combined birthday and christmas gift- that was all he wanted! And I got some stuff for the house, and I'm promising myself that I'm going to get new glasses- I've had the same ones since high school!

Anyway, we didn't really care about gifts this year, we just felt so blessed to be in a new home, and with a beautiful baby, and with each other. Luke had two weeks off for the break and so we were happy to just spend time together and we had a great Christmas!

Luke's Birthday and lots of Cookies!

Happy Birthday Luke! He turned 27 this year. For some reason, all the sudden 27 sounds reallyyy old. But it was kind of a low key birthday this year, all Luke wanted was a new phone, so he picked out the new Sprint palm pixi. He loves it! And then a few days later we went out to Outback to celebrate.
Right after Luke's birthday he went on his two week Christmas break. So since we weren't going anywhere this year for Christmas and didn't have any real plans Luke decided that to fill our time we could make lots of cookies!
I made these snowflake cookies a few weeks earlier on a "snow day" and brought them to a ward christmas party. I had fun decorating them though because I wanted to make each one different!

The rest of these cookies were all made in two days and then we delievered them to some friends.

ginger cookies- Luke calls them molasses cookies

Andes mint cookies- we melted andes mints on top and swirled them around. The mint made them taste just like the Girl Scout cookies Thin Mints!

Luke and my favorite- oreo cookies! Luke made these especially for some friends that have liked these before. They weren't really Christmasy though so we just colored the icing!

Here were our peanut butter cup cookies- our twist of the Hershey Kiss cookies

All the cookies ready to be divided out- but this isn't even including the little sprinkled sugar cookies we made last! We had soo many cookies!

All ready to go! We had so much fun making these together and then taking them to our old friends! I think we just wanted an excuse to see our friends from the old ward, but it was fun to do something nice for all of them right before Christmas :)