Day 8 - A Favorite Song

Tim
- Someone Exactly Like You
     This is mine and Rachel's song. One of my favorites. I feel like it accurately describes how I feel about Rachel. I didn't exactly travel all around the world. But, I guess in my dating prior to getting married I was always searching for something that felt right, that felt different. When I started dating Rachel I felt that, and that is when/how I knew that I should marry her. So, I may not have traveled around the world, but I did my share of searching and I feel like I was searching for someone....exactly like [her].j  :)

Day 7 - Something I want to buy

Tim
This one is really, really easy. A House!!! I absolutely want to buy a house. Hopefully by the time our contract is up (around July) we will have found something and be ready to purchase. We'll just have to see.

Day 6 - Something I Bought Recently

Tim
1. Rachel's Christmas Present
2. 13 Amplifiers for work
3. A $100K plus upgrade to the sound system (for work)
4. New Wardrobe [except that is my Christmas present and I'm not supposed to know about it.... :)]

Day 5 - Top 10 Pet Peeves

Tim
 1. Smoking/Cigarette Smoke
 2. People who don't pay attention to what they are doing and/or their surroundings (drivers, people at stores, etc.)
 3. Feeling unappreciated
 4. Having people ignore me when I am talking
 5. Smoking/Cigarette Smoke
 6. Stupid drivers
 7. People who don't pay attention
 8. Smoking/Cigarette Smoke
 9. Smoking/Cigarette Smoke
 10. Smoking/Cigarette Smoke

Rachel:
 Well, I don't really have 10 pet peeves I only have one big one; smoking. I hate smoking and everything associated with smoking. The only other thing is when people use sarcasm in place of humor. Usually it isn't funny, it is just hurtful and children never understand it.

Day 4 - Something I crave

Well....that is really easy. Since I have been doing P90X and haven't had anything with sugar in it except maybe 3 or 4 times for the last 3 months.....I really crave some chocolate, with chocolate, and more chocolate and maybe some ice cream too. (I know, I missed this by a day. Sorry). - Tim

Day 3 - A favorite Photo

So, I'm sure that this probably includes any photo from the web or one that we've taken ourselves. I have so many, just that we have taken it is hard to decide. So,  I think I will pick one of my most recent favorites.

This was taken just over a month ago when Rachel and I were in Hawaii. I think it looks as good as a lot of the postcards that they sell. Tell me what you think.

Day 2 - A picture of you last year and now and how you have changed since then

Tim

  Let's see....a year ago. I was fat, out of shape, over ate all the time and was pretty much just in a bad place physically. Now, I have almost completed P90X, have dropped 40 pounds, and I am in close to the best shape of my life.

Has it really been that long......

So, as you can obviously see from our past blog list....it has been about 5 months since we last blogged on here. So much has happened in that time I couldn't imagine even trying to catch up on all of it. Perhaps we will at least put some pictures and some milestones back in. But for now, we saw this on our friend's FB and Blog and thought it might be a good way to kick start our blogging again. So....as you can see to the right we have listed items for a 30 Day Blog Challenge. On the day indicated Rachel and I will each attempt to blog about the item listed. Ready or not, here we go.........

Day 1 - 5 things no one really knows about me (Tim)
 1. My left foot is bigger than my right foot
 2. My first kiss came 3 months before my 16th Birthday. I remember nearly every detail of it.
 3. I read the entire Twilight Saga books....and actually enjoyed them. Until the last book when she totally butchered the story.
 4. I average 3-5 bowel movements a day
 5. At one point in the last 7 years (all post Mission) I weighed as much as 285 pounds and as little as 195 pounds. I now weigh a comfortable 225 pounds after losing 40 pounds doing P90X. Though, if you didn't know that last part you either a) Are not my friend on FB b) Do not use FB or c) live in a cave and don't know about my other blog

Day 1 - 5 things no one really knows about me (Rachel)
 1. I don't really like Mexican food (unless it is smothered in cheese and sour cream).
 2. The only person I have ever kissed is Tim.
 3. I love all things miniature.
 4. Ceramics was my all-time favorite class in college.
 5. I love to push buttons whether it is the keys on the computer, buttons on my phone, calculator, a cash register and so on. Just love to push them. Don't  know why I just love to do it. I also love to feel really soft things too.

Daniel Crawling

Here it is folks, as promised. Enjoy the video.

So, it is amazing how much can change in just a few short weeks. This video is literally some of Daniels very first crawling steps (or are they scoots?). Now, just barely two weeks later he is moving around so much we can't keep him out of anything. He goes from the living room all the way down the hall into the bedroom. He sees the bathroom door left open, and he is at the door in no time (yes, for some reason he seems to really like the bathroom).

We will have to add more pictures and maybe try to get another video of him crawling, and of him pulling himself up onto the furniture. And, today (May 4) I noticed him actually moving from one piece of furniture to another.

9 Month Stats

Height: 27 1/4" - 10-25th Percentile

Weight: 18 lbs. 9.5 oz - 10-25th Percentile

Head: 46 CM - 50-75th Percentile

Daniel 6 Month Pictures

Sorry it took so long to get these up. I know, I know, it has been nearly 3 months since these were taken. Our little guy is growing up so fast. We had a wonderful opportunity to have some friends from our old Ward in Provo take these pictures for us. We have always loved their work, so we feel fortunate that they happened to be in California for a wedding the weekend that coincided with Daniel's 6 months. We want to thank Fife Photography for these wonderful pictures. Hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

The Last Few Weeks

The last few weeks have been pretty busy for us: Valentine's Day, Tim's Birthday, day at the Aquarium and so on. Of course we have lots of pictures so I will keep this short and just let you see some of the fun we have been having.

In November we had family pictures taken and although we gave people a family picture we wanted to share some of the other shots.

We also haven't shared many pictures of our cute little guy so I wanted to put some up of just him.

Valentine's Day

Tim's Birthday

Day at the Aquarium

What a crazy hectic week!!

So, in an effort to keep up my end of the bargain, I am again blogging on Friday night.

An update on Daniel first.......

We can add the following to the list of foods that he has tried: yam, applesauce. He actually really likes the yams. He ate two "helpings" the first time we gave it to him. For the applesauce we put just a little in with his oat cereal. He seemed to like it, but we think it might have made him break out, so we are going to lay off for a few days and then try again on that one.

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And an update on my week...............

The week started off with more conference call/online demos. I am still in the process at work of trying to find some scheduling software to help make my life a lot easier. I am working with the two people who schedule in Salt Lake for Temple Square. We also have a Business Analyst that has been part of the team. We finally have it narrowed down to the last two. We have a "live" online trial for one of them currently, and the other one should have a "live" trial for us Monday or Tuesday of next week. On top of 3 or 4 Conference calls this past week I also had 5 Production Meetings for upcoming events. And, to add one more thing, I had someone from the Finance department come out to do an internal audit. Mostly he just followed me around for the day and asked questions about what I do and how things work. He seems to think that he gathered valuable information. He did have a few things that we discussed that might be able to help me out if we can get any of them to come through.

I now have 7 Steinway Grand pianos in the building getting ready for the piano competition that is taking place next week. The total value of these pianos is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000 or more. I just hope that none of the members (mostly the youth) decide that it would be a good idea to carve something into these expensive pianos since we showed up a few weeks ago and discovered that someone thought it would be a good idea to carve "I love Jesus" and "Ne 2:11" into one of the pianos.

February is one of the craziest times of the year for me. Almost as busy and crazy as Christmas time if you can believe that. Hopefully things will start slowing down a little about the end of March. We'll see. We are closing the building down beginning May 1 this year during the week while they work on a new roof and some seismic upgrades. I think as a result everyone is trying to cram everything they can into the first few months of the year and the weekends during the summer. I also have my first requests already for February of 2011.

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I would like to take this time to throw a few "shout outs" if you can call them that.

Happy Birthday Kendra!!

Happy Birthday Isaac!!

Until next week.

Daniel at 6 Months

So we took Daniel in for his six month check-up today. Here are the stats:

Height: 26 inches - 35th Percentile
Weight: 16 lbs 13 oz - 30th Percentile
Head: 14.5 CM - 5-0-75th Percentile

What can I say about the little guy. He seems to really like to just sit back and take everything in. He doesn't really talk much, but he really likes to make sounds (sound effects more). He seems to try and copy Hannah sometimes. He is sitting up on his own and has been for a couple of weeks now. He still falls over occasionally, but I think that is to be expected. He can roll from his front to back and can almost go from back to front, though he doesn't do it very often. He hates his tummy, so we have a hard time putting him on it....and Hannah always seems to maul him every time we put him down.

His growth has tapered off quite a bit, but he is still healthy so there aren't any real concerns there. We have started feeding him "solids" recently. He didn't really like the homemade rice cereal so we switched to oats. He seems to like that pretty good, at least until we ruined him by mixing banana in with it. He has eaten banana, and corn. Hasn't had any reaction that we can tell. The Doctor did suggest that we up it from once per day to at least 3 times per day though. That will probably get him growing more rapidly again.

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I know that we have been total slackers on the whole blogging thing lately. I have a really good excuse....just let me come up with it.

Seriously though, we were without the laptop for nearly two months after the hard drive failed. Luckily I had backed it up about a week before and we didn't lose any of the really important stuff (pictures). However, it made it much more difficult to blog even though we have another computer because that would've required going into the "office" to use the desktop, and that just didn't happen.

We have about 1,500 photos on our memory card that we need to get uploaded, so we will hopefully be adding some pictures soon.

The Holidays were great. A lot of partying and travel. We were exhausted by the time we got into the second week of January. Things have finally slowed down some, but we have Valentine's and My Birthday coming up in the next two weeks, so we'll see how things go.

One of my goals for this year is to start (as of right now) blogging approximately once per week at the very minimum. That way no one can complain that they don't know what is going on or that we never update the blog.