Christmas

Christmas this year was so much fun. Gabbie really got into opening the presents and loved all her new things. We got a ton of stuff at DI (its like Goodwill for all of you guys back east) that was perfect for Gabbie. The look of pure love on her face the entire day made me think how lucky we are to be parents and how pure and innocent children are. It's no wonder Heavenly Father asks us to be like children.

Gabbie wearing her new jammies that she got to open on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning started with Gabbie opening her presents, then Kyle and I going through our stockings. We have a tradition in our family that we take a certain amount of money and we'll go shopping to fill the other persons stocking. It can be things that are serious or things that are funny and make us laugh. It has turned out to be something that we really look forward to and it helps us to think about someone else more than ourselves. This year, Kyle got a mix of practical, needed things, joke things, and fun things. I got a lot of joke/practical things.

Gabbie is playing with one of her new toys. Its this rocket ship thing that has 4 layers you can take off and re-build. On the bottom is one of those shape games where you have to put the shape in the right hole. She is slowly working up to doing that but she mostly just likes to make it fall apart and then dump all the shapes into the top of the container without fitting them into the right spot.

Kyle got a new BYU hat in his stocking, socks, ties and this lovely elephant balloon that is one of those where you hook the end on your finger and try to hit the balloon as many times in a row as you can.

Gabbie got a new Barney movie in her stocking, bibs, and socks. She also got some bubbles, abc cards, and crayons.

She loves the bubbles...

Gabbie was opening her presents really slow so Kyle decided he needed to show her how to open them really fast.

Opening presents...

Santa brought Gabbie a new frog toy. It's a bouncy ball covered with the body of a frog. She loves it. The whole morning she just wanted her frog. We had to take it away and put it up on the couch because she didn't want to open anything after she saw the frog. (Santa didn't wrap it so she saw it right off the bat)

Kyle's 'faked' excitement for his new Christmas PJs. I was too lazy to wrap them because he already peeked and knew what they were.

Gabbie and Mom showing off Christmas Pjs.

My mom and dad in VA sent Gabs a package for Christmas and in one of the boxes she stuck a picture of my little sister Taylor. Gabbie saw the picture at the bottom of the box and she stopped everything she was doing to look at the picture. She kept pointing at Taylor and then looking up at me as if to say 'Mom, I know her!' It was very special for me because we don't get to see my family that often and Gabbie has only met Taylor twice. Now this picture sits over her bed beside a picture of Kyle's little sister Lacey. Every morning when Gabbie wakes up she will point to the two pictures on her wall and smile.

We had to break out the mittens and hats because it started to snow almost every day. It took so long for the snow to come this year and I was anxiously waiting for it so winter would start. Then when it did finally come, I was ready for it to be spring time after about 2 days of non-stop snow. Doesn't she look so cute in her hat and mittens!

Opening Grandma and Grandpa Campbell's Christmas presents...

Thank you to everyone who helped make our Christmas wonderful. We are so thankful for the thoughtfulness and caring that each of you showed to us and we want you to know how much we appreciated it. We love you guys.

Reindeer

During the Christmas season, we went to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point. Gabbie absolutely loved it. She was so excited to see so many pretty colors and to see the different ways that the lights were used. After seeing the lights, we stopped and got out into the freezing cold to see a couple of reindeer that were up front at the water tower. It was way too cold to do that so we only stuck around for a few minutes then raced back to the car.

Kyle's car picture as we were heading into the lights...

Can you see the excitement in her smile?

I was smart enought to steal the only other blanket in the car that Gabbie didn't have wrapped around her and use it for myself because it was so stinking cold.

The reindeer we froze to see...

Kyle and Gabbie trying to warm themselves up by the little tiny fire.

It was a fun experience to see the lights and the reindeer but maybe next time we will just stay in the car for the lights, or bring warmer clothes.

Happy Birthday Gabbie

Gabbie turned one year old on December 4. We celebrated her birthday on the 5th because Kyle had to work on the actual day. She was super excited to see the presents and birthday cake. These pictures are in reverse order but we started out the night with lasagna for dinner. Then we had the cake and opened presents with Grandma and Grandpa Christensen.

Gabbie opening her first present. She needed her dads help. Notice both of their mouths, she is so much like him.

trying to open some more presents....

Grandpa Christensen wearing the decorations from the cake.

Gabbie is enjoying her cake. She was pretty hesitant about picking it up and eating it when she first saw it but then she realized that it was cake and she started chowing down.

Gabbie accidentally put her foot in the side of the cake and had frosting on her toes. Kyle thought it would be fun to make her eat it off.

Her beautiful cake. It was a two-layer cake that had strawberry filling in between the two layers.

Wearing her new pjs on her head for fun.

We loved celebrating Gabbie's birthday. It is hard to believe that a year has already gone by since she was born. It feels like yesterday that we were bringing our little girl home. We love you Gabbie!

Good News

So for all of you that are not aware of it yet, I wanted to let you know that we are expecting.

Gabbie is going to be a big sister and she gets really excited when we talk to her about it. We haven't been to the doctor yet but according to our calculations, we are six weeks along and the baby will be due in mid-July around the 15th. We'll let you all know for sure after we have been to the doctors.

I have been feeling okay. So far I have been nauseous a lot and more tired than usual but I haven't actually gotten sick yet. There are a lot of food smells, like the pork tenderloin we had for dinner last night, that have made me feel kind of sick to my stomach and nothing sounds good to me when I think about eating. The good thing though is that even ice cream doesn't sound good so maybe I won't gain as much weight this time! At least that's the goal.

Thanks for all the congrats we have already received and we will keep you posted.

Halloween

Halloween was another first time experience for us this year with a child. We went to our ward Trunk or Treat and walked around for a little bit then went out to dinner and came home to pass out candy. Unfortunately, we only had a few trick-or-treaters so Kyle had to give the ones that came fist fulls of candy so we didn't have a ton around the house to munch on.

Our beautiful little sunflower...

Gabbie, Kyle, and our friends that live below us... Batman is Jacob and the skeleton is Shannon. They love Gabbie and talk to her every time we walk outside.

Daddy and the little sunflower at trunk or treating, checking out the costumes and decorations in the trunks.

Isn't she the cutest little sunflower? She did really well with keeping the hood on during the night. We were lucky to get so many cute pictures. Hope you all had a good Halloween.

New Hobbies

Gabbie has found some new interests recently...

Here she is playing with a ball that I had from teaching. She can totally pick the thing up with one hand and palm it (of course it is one of those squishy balls so that's not really all that hard).

Our next basketball star...

Another new adventure is getting hosed down in the sink after eating. It is much easier to do this lately than get her to hold still so we can clean her up. Unfortunately, she gets all wet when Daddy does it because he uses the sprayer and Mom just sticks her hands under the faucet to clean. But we can all tell from these pictures which one she likes the best...

Doing a piggy back ride with daddy....she loves these. Whenever we put her on our back for a ride, she thinks its so funny and wants us to go super fast. While we run down the hall with her on our back, she giggles her head off and then tells us to 'go' when we stop (this wears you out after running up and down the hall a few times with 20+ pounds bouncing on your back, or we are just really out of shape).

Gabbie rocking out...she's actually just playing with the headphones.

A new treat...Mom got a bag of candy from her Visiting Teachers and Gabbie wanted to have a taste of some of it. This is probably completely against good oral hygiene/care but I just had to let her have a small taste. She tried to suck the whole thing into her mouth. It was very funny to watch because she looked like she was trying to suck the last drop out of her sippy cup or bottle.

And finally, a fun picture with Gabbie showing everyone her two teeth. She has a super strong bite and if she gets your fingers in her mouth, beware!

I sure love introducing her to all these new things and getting to watch as she gets so much enjoyment out of such small things.

Playing with Mom and Dad

Gabbie has been playing with Kyle and I a lot lately and she is getting super fun to play with. Her little laugh when she is excited is the cutest thing to listen to.

Stripped down ready to get cleaned up after eating dinner... she makes a huge mess every time she eats so we have to wet her down in the sink to wipe her off.

Helping Mom close the window...

Playing with the buttons on Dad's shirt...

Daddy teaching Gabs how to do a head stand...

Now Gabbie's turn to show her talent...

Going for a ride in the laundry basket before we go fold the clothes...

Conference Weekend (a month later)

Well, I know I'm about a month late but here are the pictures we took when we went up to Park City for General Conference with the family. Kyle's brother Matt and his family came down from Idaho and spent the weekend with us. This was the only time I brought the camera out so we didn't get too many pictures. Here are Matt, Kyle, Jake, Abbie, Annie, Parker, Lydia, and Gabbie playing in the pool.

Riding down to the pool on Daddy's shoulders.

It's Official...

Gabbie has had her first time being sick. We put her to bed last night at her normal time and then she woke us up at 11:45 crying. I walked into her room and she had thrown up all over her bed, floor, and animals. While I cleaned up, Kyle held her and tried to comfort her because she was super scared and had no idea what was going on. I had to run to the store to get some stuff for her at 12 then we tried to get her to sleep again. As she was dozing off, she threw up again and had to be completely stripped down to her diaper. She finally fell asleep cuddling in my arms with a blanket wrapped around her. Luckily she slept the rest of the night.

So for all those parents out there, what are some things that you do with/for your children when they are sick? (especially when they are still pretty young)

Cool Website

So if you are anything like me, you might get pretty tired of cooking the same thing month after month. I found this super cool website through my ward's blog. It is called Every Day Meals (www.everydaymeals.com). We usually plan out our dinner menu a week or two in advance and we were starting to get pretty tired of eating the same stuff every few weeks and I love to try new things when it comes to food.

This website is awesome. It actually plans out an entire month of meals for you. You can look at things day by day, week by week, or monthly. There is even a place where you can add in your own idea for food instead of what is already on there. Another super cool thing is that the website will generate a grocery list for you (which you can then uncheck the things that you already have at home). There are also a ton of recipes on the site.

We have experimented with the menu on the site for the last couple of weeks and have really liked all the things we made. So, if you want a little less hassle in making and knowing what to make (which is what I sometimes struggle with) then check it out.

One last Obama Post

So, as it has gotten closer and closer to the presidential election, it has seemed that Christy and I have had to repeatedly defend the reason why we are supporting Obama considering that we both were raised in fairly Republican families and we live in a very Republican state.

After itemizing my reasons on Facebook today (at the expense of all of my friends who were spammed because I didn't realize that a notification would be sent for every comment I made to my "status" (I apologize again for the spam) to all of my friends) and realizing that the election is only 3 weeks away, I decided that it might be a good idea to rewrite those reasons here on our blog so that people can better understand why we, two people whose votes for Obama will really not make much of a difference considering we live in Utah, would be such big supporters of him.

In posting this on here, I want it to be known to everyone that neither Christy or I have anything personal against John McCain, Sarah Palin (although she does annoy me on a regular basis), or the McCain Campaign. We have been troubled at times by our perception that he twists the truth or tells half-truths related to Obama's history, but we want it to be known that the only real reason why we do not support him is that we believe that we agree more with Obama than we do with McCain on the direction that our federal government needs to go in the next four years.

We are registered Unaffiliates.

(While I (Kyle) am the sole author of this blog post and take full credit for it's content, Christy has approved that I put it on here and has let me know that she is in agreement with all of the points that I am going to articulate here.)

We support Obama because we believe that trickle-down philosophies of government (the belief that if we support the upper classes and businesses of our country, and ensure that they remain wealthy, their wealth will "trickle-down" to even the lowest within the country and the whole will prosper) are faulty. We believe that prosperity and wealth abound when we "take care of the least among us".

We also support Obama because he believes that our government should have it's priorities centered in America before we should spend billions of dollars overseas fighting undefined wars.

We also support him in that he believes that true Democracy extends beyond our own government meaning that he understands that we need to participate in discourse ... Read Morewith other governments and come to a collective agreement on a course of action before we make decisions that will affect those who may not live on our soil (like, for instance, invading a country that we believe might house terrorists or nuclear weapons).

We also support him because his education policies center around: making sure that teachers are some of the ones who define the assessment of student success (rather than standardized tests), Creating and supporting ELL or ESL programs that try to bridge the language gap for immigrant students by appreciating their native languages and helping them to find common language ground (as opposed to having policies centered around English being the rule (American Native Language) and ELL programs designed to bring the students to the standard), restructuring the tenure idea based on teacher input before assigning merit pay, and budgeting additional federal funding for education.

We also support him because we believe that America's gun control laws need to be reformed. Like him, I believe that there is a big difference between a hunting rifle used in the Utah back-country and an assault rifle used in gangwars in Metro America.

While we disagree with Obama on the position of abortion (We believe that Roe V. Wade should be overturned as we believe that the woman had a choice at the time of intercourse, that there are other options for not having to care for a child (adoption, etc.), and we believe that a baby is a person from the time of their inception), we still support him because we have the belief that the only influence that the president will have on the issue of abortion is his appointment of judges. Because we believe that history has shown us that Supreme Court Judges are independent beings and they often rule different than the way the president who appointed them might have thought that they would, we don't believe that Obama would really have that much of an effect on this issue.

We also support him because he seems to place a priority on diversifying America's Energy usage.

We also support him because he believes in a tiered tax code (that those who make the most money will pay the most taxes and have the least amount of tax breaks, those who make the least will pay the least taxes and have the most tax breaks) and he has... Read More promised that there will be no tax hikes for anyone who makes less than $250,000.

We also support him because I believe that he has shown (through his previous relationships) that he is willing to participate in discourse with people who he doesn't completely agree with and tries to see where they are coming from. In cases of people with extreme ideals and philosophies he has shown that while he listens to them he makes decisions to keep his perspective even after seeing theirs.

Anyway, while I don't think that this is an exhaustive list of reasons why we support Obama, these are likely the biggest.