Sammi is 9 months.

 I love this little girl. She makes me laugh so hard and I can't believe that she is already 9 months old. 

Sammi's cheeser smile.

She weighs 19.1 lbs and is 29.5 inches long. We have to move her to a convertible car seat soon because she's so long. She crawls, well, you've seen the video. But she does that up and down the hall, to the back room, follows me to the bathroom, etc. The only thing she pulls herself up on are the rungs on the kitchen chairs.

 

She plays with any toy that Ellie is playing with which only makes Ellie upset.  

 

Sammi rolling up in the rugs.

The teeth have started coming in also and she's a cute jack-o-lantern. The front bottom 2 are in, the top side 2 and the left top middle tooth. The right top middle tooth will break through any day now and I can see evidence of the top right, canine.

She is already working hard at communicating. She says "hhhhiiii-yyy" when I walk in to pick her up from nap time. Stef loves her "happy clam" wave. If you're really special, you get the wave and a super cheeser. Sammi jibber-jabbers all the time. Some days it feels like its none stop. Then other days, she replaces the talk with screaming.

Recently Sammi decided that she really doesn't like baby food so she spits it. But since she has only recently got teeth, things were tricky for a little bit. She really has a mind of her own.

I really love this girl. Both of them. They make life so happy and carefree. Some of the best things in my life.

Christmas

Oh how I love Christmas. Although I don't necessarily love the preparations for it though. Scheduling, shopping, long prep time tradition food, etc tend to try my patience so I try to focus on the real reason behind these tedious tasks. Even with the stress I always seem to enjoy the holiday.

 

Christmas Eve we enjoy a quiet dinner at home with some Christmas activities like Nativity bingo. The girls got new matching pj's.

 

The next morning we woke up, got ready, opened a few presents and took off to Wanship for Watterson Christmas.



 

Sammi is excited about her new farm. Can you tell?

 There we had some breakfast and opened presents.

Ellie had to put this on immediately and wore it the rest of the day.

 Some of the kids received new guns for Christmas so we had to go break them in. After shooting some 22's, we moved to the shot guns for clay pigeon shooting. Beware clay pigeons.

Merry Christmas Wattersons.

 After that we came back home for Gledhill Christmas. We ate dinner and opened more presents. Even with Ellie's excitement for her Tinkerbell dress, I think Jake's (and my) excitement for his gift won for the day. Devin made this awesome hitch cover for Jake with the Watterson family crest on it.

Christmas Day was the most relaxing one I have had in a long time. I love my family and am so grateful that Christ was born, lived a perfect life, and completed the Atonement so that I can live with Him and my family again after death.

Families are Forever

I love my family. All of them. We had both sets of family pictures done this year.

 

My family had theirs done just before my brother Jeff left for his mission. My wonderful sister-in-law took the pictures for us up in Wanship.

 

At the beginning of December, we took pictures with the Watterson side. Would you believe these pictures were taken within 50 feet of each other.

 

Are we a great looking bunch?

I am so grateful to know that we are sealed as a family so we can be together for more than just this life. We can be together forever as long as we do our best to keep the commandments of God and allow the Atonement of Jesus Christ to cleanse us from our sins.

Pre-Christmas Celebrations

 

Here I am again, playing catch up. Christmas is almost a full month celebration for us.

First comes the house decorating. Ellie helped Stef put the ornaments on the tree. Ellie actually put Jeff's ornaments since he's not here to do it.

 

Ellie's finished product.

Girls in Santa hats. Sammi really hates stuff on her head.

Later, we decorated gingerbread; a house and a train. Actually Stef, Ellie and I worked on the house while JT took the train on himself.

 

 

Finished house

Finished train

We also made it out to the Festival of Trees. This is almost become tradition. One of the board of directors was one of Jake's professors while he was completing his undergrad. We stopped by to talk with her and she told us that there are similar festivals all over the country but the one here in Utah is the only one run and supported completely by donations; trees, decorations, everything. Other places have tried to figure out how ours work but can't duplicate the results. Yea for Utah.

Next on the list was making candy with the Wattersons. We made it a little late this year cause everyone was sick the first time we tried to get together but we did get together at Kristine's house and made pretzels out our ears. I am so glad I married into a family that I like and that we can spend time doing things we enjoy.

Because of schedules and sickness, we weren't able to head downtown for lights until after Christmas. We still made it. City Creek was gorgeous and Temple Square had more lights than I remember seeing in quite a few years. Sadly, we were short on time and walked them in faster time than I thought was possible. I still loved it.

One thing that really made my holiday season was something Ellie said. A while back, I decided to make some blankets for Primary Children's Hospital. When Ellie asked about the fabric I told her I was making blankets to give to children who were sick and needed them.  Since that point up until the day we delivered them, she kept asking when we could take the blankets to the sick kids. She really helped me stay motivated to keep working on them. She still talks about the time we went to the hospital to give the sick kids blankets.

I love Christmas and family and mixing the two together.

Just for Jeff

This post is specifically for my younger (not little) brother Jeff who is currently serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Michigan. Here is a special shout out to you. Also, I will try really hard to keep my blog updated but in return you can't complain about my lack of letters. I don't have that much time between hearing Ellie say, "mama, mama, mama, mama, mama, mama" and  chasing Sammi around the house and keeping her from rolling up in mom's rugs or chasing Sophie out of her bed. Besides, not like you wrote me much while I was out.

P.S. I have been trying for the past 20 minutes to add some pictures and add another post or 2 but the site is acting funny. Hopefully by next time I will have something more interesting to read.

One Semester left

YA! Can I get a what, what? (Isn't that so old school?) There's is only one semester left of law school and I think everything is ready for graduation. At least I hope it is. Jake supposedly took care of all the hold problems with 3 different admissions offices since they can't share transcripts with each other. Yes, somehow Utah Law Admissions didn't have his official undergrad transcript from Utah. I assumed they could share or at least it would have come over from Denver with his request to be a visiting student. Hopefully there are no more surprises.

After that we (and by we I really mean Jake) have the simple task of finding a job.

Sammi's crawling

This is how Sammi crawls. She is getting pretty good at it too. Quite fast if she wants to be.