Snow Days!

It has been snowing like crazy! Now that is has stopped it is super super cold. 

Let's just say...Lyla loves the snow, but her parents are ready for spring!

Too bad it's only January.  Just glad we have a big house to stay warm in. :-)

Lyla begs to go outside a couple of times a day.

When it's below zero we don't go out, but when it's a little warmer we get all bundled

and head out into the cold.

Lyla loves her snow pants and her princess hat.

Lyla likes to run around in the backyard, but this day the snow was frozen so every time

she took a step she would sink in a little.

She kept falling down, but she loved it.

Lyla loves to sit in the snow and dig.  This girl loves to dig! 

She will spend forever just moving snow from one place to the next.

She also likes to eat the soft, fluffy snow!

She gets a shovel full and then says, 'Yumm...taste!"

(Which is what she says when she likes how something taste)

I try to get her to just eat the snow that no one has stepped on or driven over. 

Lyla likes to help her Dad even though she really just gets in his way.

Our driveway and side walk is HUGE!!! 

I have gone out a couple of times to shovel (when Scott is at work and wont be home until late) and it takes FOREVER!!!  It's really good exercise, but a lot of hard work.

We are ready for it to stop snowing. For some reason Burley City doesn't scrape the roads

 I think it must cost too much, but it makes it really hard for us city folk without huge trucks get around town.

Lyla and I have been doing lots of crafts to keep us busy.

She loves to paint. I love having my craft room. (I can't make all the mess I want!!) ;-)

 She really loves to show her Daddy her crafts when he gets home from work.

I have been working hard on making the house feel like ours.

It is taking a bit, but I couldn't wait to paint Lyla's room!

I have been waiting to paint her room for 3 years! :-)

It was so much work, but so much fun!

Lyla loves it and says "Butterfly" every time she goes into her room.

Lyla's toy corner before and after. I love the little cut out in the wall. The top shelf has a doll from her Great-Grandma Lindstrom, Great-Grandma Duckworth,  Grandma Ward (my mom) and Grandma Lindstrom (Scott's mom). In the other corner she has a windmill my Grandma Ward made me. All we need is something from her Great-Grandma Zobell.

Here is Lyla's closet and window before and after.

I love her Lyla letters and the flower by the window!

Over by Lyla's bed before and after.

Lyla loves her butterflies!

I was worried when I started painting that the pink would be so light it wouldn't show up, but now that it is all finished I think it is the perfect color.

This room screams LYLA to me!

It's all girly and fun.

Lyla has started doing some really fun things I wanted to share.  She is nodding her head to say yes. When she leaves something in her room she tells it to stay there and then when she comes back she tells it that she missed it. :-) 

She kisses everything!!!

Life is WONDERFUL!!!
I LOVE MY LYLA!!!

New House

We bought and moved into our new house in Burley, ID two weeks before Christmas.

We are loving it!  There is so much space and it's so fun to decorate.

We started with taking down the ugly, fuzzy (yep I said fuzzy) stripped wall paper in the kitchen.

Scott is in the process of taking carpet out (of laundry rooms and bathrooms) and replacing it with tile. 

This next week we I am going to paint Lyla's room pink! It's going to be amazing!

Lyla is liking the fact that she can run around.  

I like the fact that when she makes a mess it's just in one room and not the whole house. :-)

More pictures to come as we finish projects!

Lyla loves her huge backyard.

I can't wait until spring/summer when we can really enjoy our yard.

Our first Christmas in our new house!

On Christmas Eve we let Lyla open her pj's.

As soon as she got them open she jumped up and gave me a hug and thanked me.

She is so sweet.

Christmas morning!  Lyla was so excited when she looked down the stairs and saw all the presents!

(Oh and Lyla picked out my pj's) ;-)

Watching Lyla open presents is the best part.  She was so excited about every thing. When she opened presents I would tell her who they were from and she would thank them (even though they weren't there).  She wanted to open everything and play with everything all at once.

No we did not get Lyla a cat.  We talked about it, but I think we will wait until her birthday in July.  

This is one of the many stray cats that hang out in our backyard.  

Whenever we go out to play with them they run away. 

 They seem to like us as long as we are inside and they are outside. 

 Lyla loves them and calls all kitties Miss (That is my mom's cat's name). 

Lyla loves the snow...until her hands get cold and then she melts down and we have to get inside as fast as possible.  She loves to use brooms and dust pans to move the snow.  I wish it wasn't so cold.  

We are loving our new house.

We are excited for the New Year and all the new adventures that will come our way.

We got our family an elf.  Scott named him Melvin.  

It's really a girl, but Scott decided that it should be a boy. 

Lyla really likes to find him when she wakes up.

The 1st day Melvin was eating Lyla's breakfast.

The 2nd day Melvin built a house for himself.

Building houses for her toys is one of Lyla's favorite things

to do with her toys.

Lyla's favorite Christmas song is "Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer." 

She has me sing it all day long, but now she is helping and singing some of the words to the song.

We are signing on our house tonight. Can't wait! 

It's going to be great! I want to get my Christmas decorations up!   

We went to Utah this last weekend and Lyla finally saw her first snow of the season.

She had so much fun playing in the snow with Bella.

She also likes to help clean the snow off of the cars.

Someday we might get snow at our house...I am okay if we don't. ;-)

Making cookies!

Lyla loves to help me bake. She likes to climb up on her 'stairs' and pour everything in.

After each time she poured something in she'd look at me and said, 'Taste?'

 'COOKIES!'

'TASTE?'

Rolling out the dough.

She loves to frost and put sprinkles on.

Making cookies with Lyla is so much fun.

We are so excited for Christmas!

We can't wait to move into our NEW HOUSE in 2 weeks (hopefully sooner) 

and put all of our Christmas decorations up!

A fun fall morning!

This morning Lyla and I went to the park by our place in Heyburn.  It's not very big, but they have bears carved out of wood that Lyla likes to say hi to them.  We also played on the slides and dug in the dirt.  

Lyla liked having the park all to herself.  

She was running around screaming and having fun.

On our way back to the car she had to say bye to the bears and give them a kiss.

When we got home we had some hot chocolate, listen to Christmas music 

and decorated a turkey with beans and noodles. 

Lyla loved her hot chocolate and kept saying, "Humm...hot chocolate" over and over.

She noticed Santa on her mug and now she will tell you what Santa says if you ask her.

The morning was so much fun. She was laughing and talking a ton. I love getting to spend lots of time with my Lyla.  We are getting so excited for Thanksgiving next week.  We can't wait to see Scott's parents and two of his brothers.  Lyla and I got to have an early Thanksgiving with my family last week.  I love the holiday season.

 My Lyla is the GREATEST!!!  I love her more than anything.  She is getting so big and learning so much. The other day while I was carrying her at the store a lady said, "Wow she is just about the same size as you." Yep, my two year old is 2 feet away from being as tall as me. I am sad to say this, but she is no longer a baby.  Lyla has the sweetest personality. She is also a little crazy! She has started talking even more. She is so polite and always says please and thank you. She will continue to say thank you until you say you're welcome.

 She doesn't always like to get her picture taken, but this is the face she makes when she does. As you can see in the picture she was eating goldfish...one of her favorite things to eat.

 She loves to help me make things in the kitchen. When ever I am making something she wants to help me mix it. We made sugar cookie dough one night and then I baked them the next day and let her frost them. She kept licking the frosting off the cookies. (Don't worry she ate all of her own cookies)

Lyla LOVES to watch shows. It's the first thing she says when she wakes up in the morning or after nap. I promise I don't let her watch that much...I guess that's why she always wants to watch them. Her new favorite is "Rar" with is her way of saying she wants to watch a Land Before Time movie. It's a good thing there are at least 10 of those movies and that they are on Netflix. Lyla always has her kitty with her and now wants to have her pillow and blankie with her to watch a show. Lyla has a part she likes on her blanket that she always looks for and when she finds it she rubs her nose with it. Now when she grabs her blankie she says, "Part" while she looks for her one favorite spot. 

My kid loves stickers!!  I hear moms complain about stickers, but I love them.  She hasn't really put them on anything that I couldn't get them off of. She usually just puts them on her face. And if she has stickers on her face then you must have some too.

Isn't she so beautiful?!?!  We went for a walk by the snake river close to our house. This girl loves being outside playing in the grass, dirt and water. She picked all of the weeds in the grass, climbed on big rocks and threw little rocks in the water.

Lyla having fun running around and spinning with her Daddy.

I HAVE THE BEST KID IN THE WORLD!!!

We have had a fun busy September!!

 Lyla is learning so much! She is saying so many new words everyday.

Her new favorite thing to say is "BYU!" She repeats it over and over!

 To celebrate Scott's birthday we went to Tucanos is Salt Lake and the next day we went to Lagoon for my parents work day.  I haven't been in so long! We took Lyla on almost all of the little kid rides. They have way more now. I think Lyla was nervous, but she never got scared. The pictures below don't really show how much fun Lyla and D' had, but they did. We took Lyla on a ride that spun super fast and the whole time she was asking me if she was okay. She kept saying, "kay? kay?" She is super brave! It's so fun having a little kid that isn't afraid of anything and that is tall enough for rides. It was cool having moms point at Lyla and say to their kids, "Look that little girl went on the ride and had fun."

We found a new park by our house. Lyla loves digging in the rocks!

I know I am a purple girl, but I love this little girl in PINK!!!

SCOTT PASSED THE BAR!!!

I am so proud of my husband! He is amazing and such a hard worker.

Next week we are heading to Boise so Scott can be sworn in for the Bar.

We are so happy to be completely finished with school.

Cousin D' and Aunt Meggie came to visit! We always have so much fun with them.

They are moving to Colorado Springs in a week or so. We are going to miss seeing them all the time, but we have plans to visit a lot.

We had fun going on adventures and playing at parks. Lyla and D' were pretending to be kitty's the whole time. Lyla is now walking around saying, "D'? Aunt Meggie? Home. Oh no." She says this at least 10 times a day.

I have been trying to find new, fun, learning things for Lyla and I to do.

Lyla loves playing in water with bubbles. She played for almost an hour.

She loves painting in the tub. Her leg was stained blue for a day or so, but she had fun.

I got Lyla some finger paints. When she paints she gets really calm, quiet and concentrates really hard.

I hung her finger paint picture on the fridge and whenever she sees it 

she says, "Mine" with a big smile on her face.

We got Lyla snow boots and she always needs to where her hat and scarf.

I think she is ready for the cold weather.

We are really liking our new town. We have been very busy every weekend for the past two months with going to visit family, going to the Lindstrom family reunion, having people visit us and taking adventures. This last weekend was our first weekend just the three of us. We had so much fun.

Lyla playing in a cool tree.

Lyla getting a drink! She is so silly and fun!

I love my little family!!!