Josh, Tiffany & Co.

*The Christmas Card cover was designed by Leora Sanford at Little Dreamer Designs. The best part about Christmas is the traditions that are associated with it. This is our 4th Christmas together and it has been fun taking our favorite traditions from each of our families and adding our own. I have a little list of my favorites: *Christmas Eve dinner has evolved to be Chinese food of some kind, because that is something we both absolutely love. *Open one gift on Christmas Eve, usually of pajama-nature. *Christmas Day breakfast is Eggs Benedict, we've made together. It is a special treat we save mostly for Christmas morning. *We sleep in (even Logan cooperated this year! He woke up at 7:00 , but went back to sleep until 9:00:) and open presents later in the morning, mostly because Josh and I aren't morning people. *We open gifts one at a time, but we give each gift, with a kiss, to the person we got them for. Usually some kind of an explanation of why we chose that gift accomp...

No Christmas pictures yet, I am still deciding about them, but Logan did turn nine months old two days before Christmas and I took some fun pictures of him. It is hard to believe he will turn one in just three short months. He still just sits around, but he is getting more and more squirmy when he is being held, so I know he is just going to be moving sometime. For now I enjoy that he is easy to contain and keep an eye one. He is eating table foods now, although I give him small pieces of things. He loves being able to feed himself. He is so handsome I just love to have Josh help me get him to smile for pictures. Taking pictures of Logan should be on my list of hobbies. And still, no matter how many pictures I have I think I will never have enough.

Here are just a few Christmas pictures of Logan. His pants were beginning to look like shorts and I was afraid his sleepers were going to inhibit his growth, because he could never stretch his legs out. I went through the clothes some friends gave us and found some things that fit very nicely. It seems for length he needs at least 12 months, but his is starting to add some weight, at least in his cheeks anyway :) It is true that everything at Christmas seems special because Logan is experiencing it for the first time.

Logan is getting his top teeth, and his sleep schedule has been thrown off a little bit. The other morning he was up early and being kind of fussy, so I decided to come into the living room. As I came around the corner I remembered we had our Christmas tree up with the lights on and it was the most beautiful sight. Being in the dark with just the light of the Christmas tree was perfect. I love Christmastime, there is nothing throughout the year that can compare to it. The reason December feels different than the rest of the year is all the traditions associated with Christmas. I look forward to everything that Christmas brings. This is Logan helping to decorate the Christmas tree.

I'll be honest, it is hard not to absolutely love Logan. He is just so cute! Josh and I are so lucky to have him as our son. He loves the camera and when I started taking pictures of him yesterday, every time I got ready to take his picture and he saw the red light come on he gave me the cheesiest smile. I got some really funny pictures. He has started doing this nasal laugh when he thinks things are funny. Josh and I always end up laughing at Logan when we are trying to make him laugh. He is so fun to play with! He is growing into a little man and he has started paying attention to details. He has really gotten that pincher grasp thing down, which means I am going to have to add vacuuming to my daily list of things to do. He is constantly surveying to find the smallest things to put in his mouth from off the floor. He also loves to mimic and has recently been doing the shaking and nodding his head thing, but we realized that he knows the nodding is yes and shaking is no.

The first snow of the season was serious. It snowed quite a bit on Saturday, and this wasn't the snow-and-then-all-melt-away. This snow stuck. We didn't venture to go outside though, because Logan and Josh were sick this weekend. It wasn't anything huge, just a little cold. I took a few pictures of Logan in his cute hat anyway. My two sick guys cheering the BYU football team on.

I absolutely love Christmas music. When the Christmas season approaches I can't help but listen to every rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and this year pretty much the entire Josh Groban Christmas CD that Kathy let me borrow (which has become my favorite Christmas CD, sorry Peter Brienholt :). I just couldn't resist posting this picture of Logan, it makes me so excited for Christmas! My mom gave him the Christmas outfit and hat and we had fun taking pictures of him. I truly love everything about Christmas and I feel like the season is in full swing, just look at Logan, he's ready for his first Christmas.

I love Thanksgiving, it seems that all my favorite foods are a part of the meal. It is funny that even though I love the food, I usually end up only eating the traditional Thanksgiving food on Thanksgiving. That is probably what makes it so special. I especially love Thanksgiving because it makes me think of all the things I am grateful for. Here are the top two: 1-I am thankful for my little family and the present time. I love going through life with Josh and Logan. Particularly that I am able to stay home with Logan and be a part of every new accomplishment, as simple as they may seem. 2-I am grateful for the gospel and the joy it brings to my life. I took these pictures a few weeks ago and I thought they would be perfect to wish a Happy Thanksgiving.

The time has gone by so fast! I am so lucky that Josh and I were married in the Provo temple 3 years ago. It is hard to remember what life was like before Josh and I were married! He is so perfect for me in every way. I am glad I get to spend my life and the rest of eternity with him. Josh is so kind and thoughtful. Our marriage has changed a lot in the last 8 months with the addition of our sweet little Logan and 2 completed Bachelor's degrees. I am the happiest I have ever been staying home with Logan and trying to take care of the house. I love the tradition of anniversaries, because it reminds me of how glad I am that Josh and I got married.

One of my favorite things to do is hold Logan in front of the mirror and let him tap his hands at the reflection of himself. He jabbers and laughs and looks from himself to me and back to himself and smiles. We do it almost everyday and I was starting to notice how dirty my mirror was getting. I was going to clean it, but I remembered when I worked in Preschool I loved to do see art projects with this little poem with a painted handprint next to it: Sometimes you get discouraged Because I am so small And always leave my fingerprints On furniture and walls But every day I'm growing -- Much bigger every day And all those tiny handprints Will surely fade away So here's a little handprint Just so you can recall Exactly how my fingers looked When I was very small Needless to say I had Josh take a picture of the mirror before I cleaned it. Sometimes the simple things, like looking in the mirror everyday, are the important things in the end.

We decided it was about time for Logan to start practicing picking up food on his own, so I bought the Gerber graduate stars (although I still break them in half!) and we have been letting him work on getting them in his mouth. It has been hilarious to watch, and surprisingly he hasn't gotten all that frustrated, but he is getting much better. At first he was still trying to rake them with all his fingers so he would end up with two hands full of little pieces of food and none in his mouth. He is starting to use the pincher grasp, but he still doesn't always let go of the piece of food so he ends up with a very mushy piece clasped in between his thumb and pointer finger. His second little tooth came up a few days ago, and he has started trying to bite with the little teeth. He does get some in his mouth which happens at the very beginning of the video, it always makes him smile! I love watching him develop through every little step of life. He has also started nodding and...

Hey guys, go Cougs! I just love getting Logan dressed for the day. I figure that soon enough he will have an opinion about the things he wears, so I am going to take advantage of the time I have now where I can dress him in whatever I want! When I was getting him dressed this morning I remembered there is a game today, so I put his little cougs shirt on with his jeans and thought I just had to take a picture. We missed the past couple of games because we were in Logan doing family stuff and I just know Logan is excited because he gets to have a little 'guys night' with his dad watching the game.

Logan is about 7 1/2 months now, and he tends to mimic more and it has been really exciting! I feel like he is starting to communicate with us and he is growing into this little man who has opinions and preferences. I am really lucky, because he is very laid back and is very content most of the time. Don't get me wrong he does cry believe me, although he saves a lot of his crying for home. He always cries when he can tell his baby food is almost gone. He loves to eat pretty much anything we give him. One of my favorite times is just after he wakes up in the morning and after his naps. He wakes up bright-eyed and happy. I come in and say hello and he stretches and smiles. I just love it. He does have a new little trick. He started clapping and I got a clip of him doing it on camera.

Logan's first tooth finally popped up a couple of days ago. It is the bottom one on his left. It is so funny because he is always rubbing his tongue across it. The tooth right next to it is going to come up pretty soon, because the gums are all swollen. It was pretty much impossible to get a picture of the tooth, but if you had a microscope to look at this picture you may be able to see the glimmer of a tooth. The holidays seem so much better this year, because Logan is experiencing them for the first time. We got a pumpkin and when we got home I let him play with it for awhile. We cleaned it out last night and I let him stick his hands inside, but he wasn't all that interested in it. I sat him on the newspaper, and he did love crinkling it the whole time I cleaned out the pumpkin. His hands were all black, but I think he had an excellent sensory activity! This is Logan's Halloween Costume. He is "the training Rocky" or "stair running Rocky". We...

On October 26 (we have been counting down) we went to a little party at BYU for the release of leopard, the new operating system for Macs. It was on sale, and I told Josh earlier that if we were going to buy it eventually we might as well buy it when it is brand new. They also had fun little games and Logan got a stuffed leopard just for going and looking cute. It was pretty funny, because they had a little guessing game. There were three different jars and Josh and I made a guess for all three. At the end of the night they announced the winners and I guessed 427 for the jar on the right and there were 424, so I won the jar. They announced another jar, and finally they announced the winner of the jar on the left and it was Josh! (I can't remember how many were in it :) So the two of us took our jars, slightly sad because we didn't win the free copy of leopard, but we did each have a little consolation prize. Father and son, each happy because they got their own leopard.

Every year there is a pumpkin walk up near Logan where I grew up. I was excited that we were going to be in Logan while it was going on this year. I went with Logan last Friday, the 19th and took a lot of pictures, because the weather was supposed to be stormy and I didn't know if Josh would be able to see it. Luckily, it didn't rain all day and Josh was also able to go. Logan slept through most of it both days. He did wake up in enough time to be in the cardboard cut-out pictures at the end! My nephew Peyton, and my sister-in-law Chelece painted the first pig on the left at their neighbor's house as part of the neighbor's entry. I had to take a picture for the Cougs. Logan didn't even cry at the witch. Sesame Street was definitely my favorite exhibit. I just love all the little details they put in all the little booths. Now you can feel like you were able to see part of the pumpkin walk, although I realized I didn't take any pictures of the ornately carve...

This is my favorite picture from the zoo. It is the ball at the entrance. It was funny, because the giraffe had to spread its legs out really far to pick up the stick, from off the ground, with its mouth. I snapped the shot just as the giraffe was standing. I assume Logan liked the zoo, although our communication isn't very good yet. I made Josh put his hand up against this little sign. It doesn't happen very often that Josh's hand is the smaller of two hands being compared.

I have some fun pictures to post, but I haven't had time to yet. We have some friends that have posted a couple of our recent adventures. Our trip to Hogle Zoo with Russ, Vhari, and Genevieve and my sister's travelogue of the trip to Logan.