I think it went well....

Today I took Anna for her first visit with Santa. She reacted like I thought she would...cried. Santa must have thought I was upset because he tried to comfort me saying next year would be better. I thought it was funny and hadn't expect anything different.

You should see the other guy....

Here is Anna's beautiful eye. Doesn't it look like she has been in a fist fight? She has had a rough week. It started with four days of the stomach flu involving throwing up and diarrhea. That was fun for everyone. Then there was the pinching fingers in a closet door, hitting her head on a corner of the fridge, hitting her head on the corner of the wall, and getting her hand stuck in a block container (raccoon syndrome - didn't want to let go of the block but couldn't get hand out with the block). This didn't hurt but it made her mad and me laugh. :) To finish the week off she got an eye infection - hence the picture. The good news is it is looking much better today. It has been a weird week because usually she doesn't get hurt. That is the fun part of getting older and finding your way in the world.

Happy Halloween!

Here is a little snapshot of our Halloween fun.

Here is Anna and I dressed up for pack meeting.

This is Anna and Matthew carving pumpkins. Actually this is as close as she got. I stripped her down to avoid any stains but I wouldn't have had to since she didn't get close to any pumpkin.

Happy Birthday Anna!

Anna turned one last Thursday (the 15th) but we celebrated on Sunday with family members who live in the area. Anna was a little overwhelmed by the 20+ people singing happy birthday to her and as you can see it brought her to tears.

She opened presents from family and had help from Mom and eager cousins to get it done.

But as you can see, by the end of the night she was our smiling little princess again!

Latest Tricks

As we approach Anna's 1st birthday here are some of her latest tricks.

Walking with help

When no one will help you walk you have to use toy containers to help you get around

Whenever the fridge opens Anna crawls as quick as she can to try to get there before we close the door and the light goes away.

It's Official!

Anna is always up on all fours doing the standard crawl. She has found you can move a lot quicker that way and get into more things. If she disappears she is good to respond when I call her name so it is easier to find her and see what she is into. She definately keeps me busy and on my toes.

She's moving

Anna is mobile. Actually she has been that way for a month or more but she is getting better and quicker. She isn't crawling but doing a half crawl. I call it her solider crawl. She uses her arms to drag her lower half around. The bad news is that her shirts get very dirty but it gives me more motivation to mop the floor often. :) Yesterday though I thought she was going to do a real crawl but no luck. She is also walking - if we have her hands. I get scared when I think of her walking on her own. It is only a matter of time. I guess we will have to break down and baby proof the house.

Anna goes to the fair!

We took Anna to the Utah County Fair last Saturday. We introduced her to the sheep which went well until one with a wet nose touched her hand and she flipped out. We may have ruined her relationship with sheep forever which would make her Dad sad. We will try a petting zoo next.

Girls Party!

Anna and I spent last week in Idaho Falls with the Shurtliff family (Matthew had to stay home and work). On Thursday we sent the boys off to the woods and the girls partied at Mom's. We spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday watching the six grandkids (of course), making bread (Emily O taught), making freezer jam and canning raspberries. For fun we went swimming, watched a chick flick, Mom took us to dinner, we made fresh strawberry shakes (yummy - thanks Heidi), and had late night talks. We had four of my sister-in-laws (the two newbies didn't come), the six grandkids, plus Mom and I. It was a ton of fun. Anna and Jerika (Vance's baby) kept taking things from each other which was funny this year but next year it may get interesting when they are all in the "mine" stage.

9 month visit

Well, the dreaded day of the Dr.'s visit arrived. Anna weighed in at 13 lbs and 3.5 oz. (.09 percentile) and is 25 .5" tall (3.13 percentile). The Dr. didn't freak out as much as I thought he would but he did do an iron test and she was fine. So she has one month to bulk up and we are supposed to go in and have her weighed. This is the only time in her life she will be told to eat lots and gain weight. She is so much fun. She talks quite a lot and is moving in her own way (sliding on her bum). She can get to her hands and knees to crawl but then panics because she doesn't know what to do. Both Matthew and I have shown her how to work the arms and legs but it hasn't caught on yet. I am ok with that. It keeps her semi-stationary.

Whew!

So here is our family update. We have finished with our summer travel - almost. We spent last week in Portland visiting with Matthew's parents and introducing them to Anna. Since she is 9 months old (tomorrow) we thought it was about time they met each other. I think with all the new people Anna has met this summer she is finally relaxing about only letting Mom hold her. She let Matthew's parents, siblings, and nieces hold her without fussing. When we were in Idaho a couple of weeks before she even let my great-aunt hold her!

The 4th of July is my most favorite holiday next to Christmas. This 4th we were flying to Portland and so I didn't get to do the usual celebration events. Luckily, my cousin Kari lives in the Portland area and invited us to their house. We had a lot of fun playing with her family and friends. Kari (the sweet girl) spoiled Anna rotten! Of course I still had to dress Anna in a patriotic outfit for her first 4th!

Although I (with Anna) may be going up to Idaho for a girls party (sister-in-laws and Mom while the boys camp), and we will be up in Idaho in September for my Grandpa's 90th birthday - it is better than traveling every other weekend.

We have Anna's 9 month visit on Friday. In Portland she finally broke down and started eating rice cereal and other items. I guess she decided I wasn't going to give up trying to get her to eat. So far she has had bananas, carrots, applesauce and yams as well as the rice cereal. Hopefully a couple of weeks of that has helped bulk her up so that the Dr. doesn't flip out about her size. We will let you what happens.

This is Anna trying food for the first time a couple of months ago. You can tell she wasn't too thrilled.

We have been home from our trip almost a whole week and I haven't gotten anything posted. Sad. We spent a week in the midwest. Started in St. Louis, hit Independence, Liberty (jail), Far West, Adam-ondi-Ahman, Nauvoo, Carthage, and back to St. Louis for the big wedding. Seven of the nine kids were able to be there and all but one joined us in Nauvoo. It was a fun trip with some crisis moments but what is a family vacation without those? :) Thank heavens for some borrowed GPS units!! So here are a few shots from our trip.

Nauvoo:

Anna's introduction to horses.

The happy couple - Mitch and Keri.

The best part about being the only girl in a family of boys is you are always surrounded by good looking men. :)

Anna's first swimming experience. Obviously not too successful. She loves baths but this water was a lot colder than her bathtub.

Pretty Flowers - for now

I am so proud of my front flower bed. I had quite a few flowers volunteer back from last year and just filled in the empty spaces. I don't know if it will continue to look this way through the summer so I thought I would grab documentation now.

And then there were two

It isn't the best picture but you get the idea.

Here they come!

So I felt a tooth coming in at the beginning of this month but it has finally come in enough to see. It was great fun trying to get a picture of it and keep her tongue out of the way. Yesterday I could feel a second one coming in right next to it, just not visible yet. Let the chomping begin!!

Family Photo

Here is the Shurtliff family photo we took in February. This is 8 brothers, 4 sister in-laws, 2 parents, 1 husband, 4 granddaughters (1 of which is Anna), 2 grandsons and a partridge in a pear tree. :) The two sister in-laws that will or have joined the family this summer are not in this picture. Can't be in the family picture until you are legally family. Back row (left to right): Kyle, Jarom, Quinn, Dad, Matthew, Vance, Bryce, Mitch. Middle row (left to right): Reese, Emily (Quinn's wife), Mom, Tamera (holding Anna), Heidi (holding Jerkia), Shane. Front row, kind of (left to right) Emily (Reese's wife, holding Kindee), McKay, Maylee, Peter, Julie. I hope that makes sense. If it helps "families" are wearing the same color. Mom, Dad and single boys are wearing blue but then the marrieds picked a color and dressed their family in it.

Trek to MT and WY

So we left Idaho Falls for Montana on April 15 feeling pretty good about the sunny sky. The further North we went, the cloudier it got. Here is what it looked like in Island Park. So we skated through Island Park and West Yellowstone and only had one really bad white out. We arrived safely in Billings but unfortunately the bad weather slowed us down so much that we weren't able to go and see Custer's Last Stand. Matthew really was looking forward to that and I felt bad we didn't make it there. The next day was all wedding stuff. I got this picture that shows everyone having a wonderful time.It was freezing! That is why we got married in August. We took a two hour drive to Burlington, WY for the reception after the luncheon and entertained ourselves for a couple of hours by taking pictures of the grandkids that were there. The three girls (Anna, Jerika, Kindee) and Peter (Shane's little boy). Vance's wife Heidi made all of the matching dresses and headbands for the girls. She did a wonderful job!!

The girls with their Dads.

The girls with their Moms
Notice how Anna is the same height as the girls even though she is two months older than Jerika. Of course Jerkia's parents are super tall and Anna's Mom is short. She doesn't have a chance.
Peter and the girls.

Anna loving all of the attention.

We headed back to Idaho Falls on Friday and went the Jackson Hole route and it was sunny the whole way. Anna was a wonderful little passenger, thank goodness. Hopefully she will be that good when we are in St. Louis in June.

We spent a day recovering in Idaho Falls on Saturday and back home on Sunday. Oh, and for those who know Kyle, here is a picture of the happy couple.

Anna Defies Gravity

Ok, so maybe that is an extreme title but hey...I am a Mom. As you can tell from the picture on the left Anna is sitting up! Of course I don't dare go too far from her as you can see in the action picture on the right, she is still not too stable. We will keep working on that part. Still trying to get her to roll over and lay on her tummy but I will take what I can get.

Kids are funny things

I don't have to much to tell but I wanted to post the latest pics of Anna. Anna is getting to be more and more fun. She has found her voice and is quite the talkative one. She definately didn't get that from her mother. :) On Sunday I was giving her a bath before church and had almost made it through with no tears. As I was getting her dressed she started crying like she had gotten hurt. I was a little confused and looked things over to see what could be the problem. I finally found it. She had put her hand up by the back of her head and ended up grabbing her hair and pulling it. I guess she didn't realize that she was hurting herself. Laughing I helped her unclench her hand and all was well.