Lexie's First Christmas

We had a lot of fun for Lexie's first Christmas. We spent a week with all of my family and had a great time. Lexie started missing her Daddy, but he showed up on Tuesday and we left on Sunday to come back home. Here are some pictures from Christmas Day.

Here is when Lexie first woke up Christmas morning.

The Christmas Tree with all the presents.

Lexie's favorite thing to do was eat wrapping paper.

Eating more wrapping paper after opening the singing glow worm from Great Grandpa & Grandma Hoyt.

Lexie's book that plays primary songs from Grandpa & Grandma Hoyt.

Ah, but we look lovely on Christmas morning. My mom gave us this nice Willow Tree statue of a couple with a baby. I love it!

Bryan likes to act like he's eating his presents for some reason. This is his new electric shaver that he was so happy to get since the old one was getting very worn out.

My brother Nate decided to act like Santa this year and got my brothers and sisters a Wii. Everyone enjoyed playing all weekend, but we all got a little sore from Wii Sports!

We hope you all had a great Christmas! I'm excited for the years to come with Lexie when she understands more and can enjoy everything. My sister Jen is almost 4 and just squealed with delight at every little thing. That's what makes Christmas the best!

Snow Bunny

The evening before I left with Lexie to spend Christmas with my family, we had some last minute things to pick up at the store. That night was frigid and we really didn't want to take a baby out in that cold air, but we remembered we had this cute snow suit that just fits Lexie so we bundled her up and ventured out into the cold. She remained very warm and was just so cute we had to take a few pictures.

This one is for Daddy

Lexie and I are at Grandma and Grandpa's house for Christmas. Bryan is going to join us tomorrow and we miss him very much! Today Lexie officially rolled from her back to stomach! I had just left the room to go grab something so I missed the first time, but Grandma got to witness the event and was excited about that! Later I was able to get her rolling over on video so I decided to post it for her Daddy to see (and for all of you to see also). Lexie sure has been a big hit over here with all of the people in my hometown and home ward. She is such a cutie!

Standing Tall

As promised, here are the stats from Lexie's 4 month Dr. visit yesterday. I guess she got some tall genes because she is measuring off the charts for height. We had noticed that clothes have been a little short on her, but things don't fit her around very well because she's not really chubby around the middle. Long and lean is what she is I suppose.

Lexie at 4 Months:

Weight: 14 lbs 3 oz (63%)

Height: 26 in (97%)

Head: 16 in (41%)

She also survived her shots pretty well. She was hurting a bit after I brought her home from the Dr., but after some Tylenol she was doing a lot better. By 10:00 p.m. she was smiling and playing with her toys and she slept almost 10 hours last night (she usually sleeps about 8 hours before getting up to eat). She has slept more than usual yesterday and today but other than that seems to be ok. Here are a couple of pictures I took the other day and forgot to post.

Lexie sleeping in her swing, clutching her toys.

This is Bryan after he decorated our tree. I'll have to take more pictures with presents under the tree.

4 Months!

Lexie is 4 months old today! She is growing fast and we will have her 4 month stats after she goes to her Dr. appointment on Tuesday. She is such a happy little girl (unless she has been sitting in church for over 2 hours and she's tired then maybe not so much, but who is happy at that point in time). She just keeps learning new things and has started to roll from her back to stomach. She can get all the way except for getting her arm under her, but she doesn't give up...she keeps trying until she's too tired to try anymore. She's been rolling from her stomach to back since she was 6 weeks old...we hope she doesn't get too mobile too quickly but I'm not sure we can do much to stop her. She already tries to scoot toward toys that are too far in front of her. We took some pictures of her tonight so here are a few.

Gangsta pose: Lexie says, "Yo Yo, Lexie in da howz".

When gang signs were banned, Lexie moved on to her

Calvin Klein melancholy pose.

Our cute, smiley 4 month old girl!

Lexie playing with her new favorite toy.

Our week was pretty crazy. Thursday we headed over to tend my younger siblings because my Mom was in the hospital. She was able to come home Friday night and I'm glad she is ok. I'm so grateful I have such an amazing Mom and I'm grateful for all she does for me and all 9 of her kids, her son-in-law, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter who really loves her Grandma!

Lexie's Boyfriend?

Ever since college my friend Kirsten and I have joked about having our kids marry each other. When she had her baby boy Britton 5 months before my baby girl Lexie was born, we knew it was just perfect! Who said arranged marriages don't work out. :) This week Kirsten was passing through with Brit so they stopped to see us.

Here are me, Kirsten, and our cute babies.

And here was the first meeting of Brit and Lexie...I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Aren't they SO CUTE!

Our Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving! We are very grateful for our many blessings. I am grateful for Bryan who is the best husband in the world, and I'm grateful for my cute, sweet baby Lexie! We spent the weekend with my family and had a great time! Of the 55 in my mom's family, 50 of us were at Thanksgiving dinner! I am the oldest granddaughter and 2nd oldest grandchild, so I can remember back in the day when our family gathering was well under 20 people. But it's great to have so many awesome family members to get together with on holidays such as Thanksgiving! Bryan had the camera that day so I feel bad there aren't pictures of him, but here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving day.

Mom and Lexie having fun after dinner.

This shows how big of a group we had at the church for dinner.
These pictures show us all playing the "Left, Right" game at our Christmas party we had after Thanksgiving dinner.

Saturday was my brother Nate's 10 year class reunion. One of my best friends Tiff was in his class so after the reunion, she came to visit me at my parent's house. It was so much fun to see her because I haven't seen her for a couple years. This is me and Tiff with our babies. James was born just a month after Lexie and is Tiff's 4th! So good to see you!!

These are a couple outtakes from our Christmas card photo shoot.

Isn't she such a cutie in her Christmas dress?!

Our little Family
Friday we also got to spend time with my mom's family again. We had fun visiting and a lot of us were able to go to Madagascar 2. Lexie got to stay with Grandma and Great-Grandma while Bryan and I were able to go to the movie with a lot of the kids and other family members. It was the first time I have ever left Lexie, even though it was just for 2 hours, but I survived and actually had a lot of fun!

We hope you all had a fun and safe Thanksgiving weekend! I think Lexie is a little sad to be away from her grandparents, aunts and uncles. Our house is so quiet compared to my parent's house and Lexie loves lots of people around. At least Christmas is just around the corner!

Just Too Cute

Yesterday after church we took some pictures of Lexie in her cute red and white dress that she has almost outgrown. A few of the pictures were just too cute not to post so here they are...enjoy!

This is Lexie looking up at me talking and laughing. So cute! We were using the bunny to make her smile and we were basically done taking pictures, but then Bryan captured this moment.

Lexie is now reaching and grabbing things.

So here she is reaching for her feet.

She loves putting everything in her mouth. Mmmm...yummy dress!

I just like this picture. Such a cutie!

I Can See Clearly Now

So I have a confession...I hadn't been to the eye Dr. for over 5 years. When I got my new Driver's license over 2 years ago I barely passed the eye test at the DMV. Maybe that scares all of you who may be on the road when I'm out there...in fact the Dr. said "I hope you didn't drive here". :) I had been stretching out my contacts to get by, but finally I forced myself to get an appointment. So the contacts I had been using they actually stopped making that kind 3 years ago so that tells you how old they were. I really like my new eye Dr. and the appointment went great and the best news is - I CAN SEE NOW! It's like a whole new world has been opened up to me. I can see road signs, people's faces from across the room, and I can even see the time on my clock in the bedroom from the bathroom! One of these days when I have enough money I would like to get lasik, but until them I love having contacts in the correct prescription!

Sunday we went to our new ward for the first time. We LOVE it! It's nice to have a smaller ward, and because we are all new to the ward, everyone has been great to get to know each other! The best place I got to know some of the girls in the ward was in the mother's lounge during Sunday School. A group of us had a fantastic time talking and I know this is just what we need to make some new friends!

Another project we completed this past week was switching out Lexie's wardrobe. She has outgrown all of her 0-3 month size clothes so we had to switch them out with her 3-6 month's clothes. We had already gone through and labeled the boxes with the sizes so that wasn't hard, but we did have to wash them up and sort them by undershirts, PJs, outfits, dresses, etc. It was kind of sad to say goodbye to the cute, small outfits, but it's fun to look at the new outfits she will be wearing also. Lexie is getting really tall, so some of the 3-6 month outfits with feet in them she can barely even fit into at just barely 3 months old. She's just growing up way fast! Here are a few pictures I took today in one of her new outfits...thanks Colette!

Looking Good!

What a Sweet Face

Lexie with her Bunny Friend

I hope you all have a great weekend and a wonderful Thanksgiving! I can't wait!

3 Months!

I can hardly believe our little Lexie is 3 months old today! I'm going to apologize in advance for the amount of pictures on this post, but I just couldn't choose so I hope you enjoy them all. Lexie is such a happy little girl. She loves to babble all the time now and gives us lots and lots of smiles every day! She is growing so fast and is now somewhere around 13 lbs (we don't have a scale to get an exact measurement) and she's over 24 inches. She hates "tummy time" and will roll over just about every time you put her on her stomach...unless she is too tired then she just gets really mad. She loves music, and singing time is always a hit. She likes a lot of songs her new favorites are "5 Little Ducks", "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam", and she loves the songs from Mary Poppins which she just recently discovered, especially "Steppin' Time". She also likes reading stories and she will probably be getting new books for Christmas. Yesterday she started putting toys in her mouth which she hasn't really done before. She LOVES to put her fist in her mouth and has just recently discovered her thumb which we hope won't become a habit we will have to help break. We are so happy Lexie joined our family 3 months ago and we look forward to continue watching her grow and learn new things.

Our Smiley 3 Month Old!

Her Serious Look

Just SO Cute!

Proof of how much she loves the thumb. She will pull out her binkie and stick her thumb in her mouth while still holding the binkie.

Lexie kind of got Christmas early. She inherited some of Jen's baby toys like this farm toy. She loves to whack the rings that hang down and make the music play and the cow move. She also likes playing with the things on the side like the black and white ball you can see in this picture.

The Big Split

So today was kind of exciting because our HUGE WARD FINALLY SPLIT! Actually, what happened was they took part of our big ward and part of another big ward in the stake and created a new ward. We just happened to barely make the cutoff and are in the newly created ward. They couldn't really do the split based on geography because of priesthood requirements and everything so there are little chunks of houses in different places that are in the same wards now. We are super excited because our ward has been so big that it has been impossible to get to know people and we keep getting asked if we are new even though we have been in the ward well over a year now. This means that Bryan got released from the EQ presidency, and it will be interesting to see what new callings we might get. Because our ward is new, the only callings there are at the moment are the bishopric members. Oh, and we are changing buildings from the church close to our house to the new stake center which is a really nice building so it should be fun...but we'll have to leave 5-10 minutes earlier to get there on time!

That's about all that's new with us. Just about every week at church a stranger will come up to us and tell us how cute Lexie is...they go on and on and well, what can we say...she is a little cutie! Bryan is thinking about legally changing her name to "Cute" or "Cutie" since she basically thinks that's her name because everyone calls her that. Here are some new pictures of her we took today.

Bryan calls this the "Alfalfa" picture because of the hair. It had been a long day at this point in time and the curl was going a little flat.

This is Lexie's "Model" pose

I love this picture because Bryan was playing with

Lexie's hands to get her to smile. So cute!

Tagged...More than Once

Ok, I'll admit that I've been tagged several times and never filled them out because I'm one of those people that when I get forward emails I delete them and don't send them to the amount of people it says you should, lest you be cursed...they just kind of annoy me. So the tag thing is kind of the same. I see that I've been tagged and think well, maybe I should fill that out but then I just don't. Well, Colette tagged me on one that says the 7 weirdest/quirkiest things about yourself and I thought I might as well do this one so here we go. I know I'm breaking the rules by not tagging 7 people, but I don't want people to feel like they have to fill this out if they don't want to so I'll share mine and if any of you want to share yours on your blog who haven't already, go ahead. I think it's a fun way to get to know people.

1. I really stress about a lot of things, especially money. Oh, and it really bugs me when my bank reconciliation is off even a penny...I can't rest until it is perfectly reconciled. Maybe this comes from my years of working in accounting.

2. My toenails have to be painted at all times. When I was pregnant and couldn't reach my toes, Bryan was kind enough to paint them for me. They were a bright blue when I gave birth and my Dr. kept teasing me about my bright blue toes!

3. I absolutely HATE shopping. Going to any store can really put me in a bad mood. I especially get annoyed when everything on my list is gone off the shelves at the store like everyone had the same ideas as me that day. The only shopping I enjoy is online shopping for Christmas presents etc.

4. I LOVE watching sports! Football, Basketball, and especially the Olympics...I really get into them. However, Bryan does not enjoy watching sports so it's something I have to do without him. I got this love from my Mom and the two of us like to talk about sports so that's fun.

5. I have this weird thing when I do the laundry. The color of the shirt or pants has to color coordinate with the hanger it's put on. I know, a little OCD and weird.

6. I have a really sensitive nose and always have. I can't wear perfume or handle Bryan wearing cologne because it makes me sick. Imagine how good my nose worked when I was pregnant!

7. I keep in touch with a lot of my friends who now live all over the country. It's funny because some of my roommates are all in contact with me but not each other, so I'll update them on how everyone else is doing. The blog thing really has helped a lot of people re-connect though so I love that!

I hope you don't all think I'm too weird!

Lexie's 1st Halloween

Friday, Lexie celebrated her first Halloween. This year she was a cute little glow-in-the-dark skeleton. She got to go to Daddy's work so all of the people there could see how cute she was, and she also went trick-or-treating at SUU to visit some of Mommy's friends. Then we went over to visit Grandma and Grandpa Hoyt and some of the aunts and uncles where she got to do more trick-or-treating. Here are some pictures of Lexie in her costume looking cute!

This picture is of Lexie wearing her Halloweeen bib that Grandma and Grandpa Lyman gave her. It says "Too cute to spook!"

Thanks G & G Lyman!

This is Lexie and Aunt Jennifer (dressed as Snow White) trick-or-treating at Great Grandpa & Grandma Hoyt's house.

Here is our little family on Halloween!

I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween! We had a great weekend and a lot of fun dressing up our cute baby. Now we are looking forward to the next holiday...Thanksgiving!

October Fun

Here is our little Pumpkin looking cute! This is not her Halloween costume. It was her cousin Bethany's costume from last year, but we decided to dress her up in it just to take some pictures. We finally got this smile out of her, but as you look at the pictures of Bryan holding her, she didn't really enjoy wearing the costume, but she looks cute in just about anything.

Here are some pictures from our FHE tonight making Halloween cookies. It was fun making and decorating the cookies and they tasted great too!

One of Lexie's new favorite things to do is watch cartoons. She is fascinated by the TV and already has some favorite shows. Mostly she likes cartoons with lots of music. Her favorite show she watches almost every day is Super Why on PBS. She will watch and coo and try talking all through the show. Today we decided to try letting her watch Winnie the Pooh. She's very familiar with him since her room is a "Pooh" theme. She seemed to really enjoy the movie for a while until she fell asleep but here is a picture of her watching her movie.

Sorry, there are a lot of pictures on this post. This next picture is Lexie in her cool hoodie outfit. I just thought it was cute so we are sharing it. We hope you are all having a great October! We'll be posting pictures of Lexie's first Halloween this coming weekend. Hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween!