There's No Place Like Home For The Holidays!

For a while I have been meaning to post picture's of our new little home but never really got around to it. So when I had decorated the house for Christmas, a few weeks ago, I decided to go ahead and do that! I love Christmas and the decorations! People think I'm crazy when I start putting my Christmas out the first week of November but I like to enjoy my decorations so I always put them up early!

So here is a tour of our new little home! We love it here! It's quiet and much bigger than the last apartment!

This is the view of the living room from the front door:

And this is my favorite feature of our apartment, the wood burning stove! It saves us on so much electricity and keeps us nice and toasty!

Our Christmas tree! It took me 4 hours to put this thing together cuz you have to put all the branches in individually and then light the whole thing, and then decorate. But I think it was well worth it cuz it looks pretty great!

Our enertainment center with my nativity scene on it!

My little night stand next to the door

the kitchen

Our little desk area (And you can see the bathroom door and hallway to the bedrooms)

Coat rack and door to the laundry room

And the view of the front door

Our bedroom. It's kind of plain but I have lots of plans for it as soon as I have extra money!

And yes, we have a Christmas tree in every room!

Claire's room

Her little tree and snowflakes

And the little glittery trees (that match the snow men on her tree) on top of her shelf! I had bought these years ago for the day when I would finally have a little girl. So I was really excited to get to use them this year!

So that is our home! We are decked out to celebrate Christmas and enjoy the rest of the holiday season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving because we sure did! This year Joe's mom (Meloney), grandparents, and his great-grandma were able to come visit and we had a blast with them!

Joe's mom flew in to Salt Lake on 21st from New Jersey and we drove down to pick her up. It was great getting to spend the extra time with her in the car plus we got to go to In-N-Out! But by the time we reached Pocatello, Claire had decided that she had had enough of the car and just cried the rest of the way home. I don't really blame her though, we had driven to Salt Lake and back to Rexburg all in one day. So by the time she decided to have her melt down we had been in the car for almost 8 hours. Not super fun but having Joe's mom here for Thanksgiving was well worth it! We hadn't seen her since our wedding (over two years ago!) and this was the first time that she was able to see Claire, so it was really great to see her!

So for the rest of the week we just enjoyed being with Joe's family! Joe's grandparents arrived from Nevada on Monday night as well with his great-grandma or Granny as everyone calls her. We enjoyed hosting for the week in our little apartment and played games, cooked yummy food, and went shopping. Meloney took me shopping at JC Penney and we bought Claire a TON of clothes. We went grocery shopping at Winco for Thanksgiving dinner. And Joe took his family on a tour of BYU-Idaho's campus and especially the new I-Center. Meloney and Joe's Grandma cooked Thanksgiving dinner in my little kitchen and Joe was kicked out a time or two cuz he was in the way. Haha mom kept yelling at him to get out of her kitchen. It was funny though that it was really our kitchen but he obeyed her anyways. haha

And Claire enjoyed all the attention she was getting from the family, especially from her Grandma! I loved that mom would get up with Claire at night when she heard her crying or let us go to bed early and she would put Claire down for bed. It was so nice to have a little break and she enjoyed getting to love on her only grandbaby!

She really loved Granny too! It was so sweet to watch this little 5 month old loving on her Great-great Grandma who is 94 years old. She kept leaning towards her and talking to her and kissing her. It was really cute!

It was a great Thanksgiving week but it ended too quickly because we had to drive mom back to Salt Lake on the Friday after Thanksgiving. But it was wonderful getting to see her! And it was good timing because Kayleen had had Baby Seth on Wednesday and so I got a chance to see her and my new little nephew! (I forgot my camera so I don't have pics of him but he is so adorable!)

Here are the photos from Thanksgiving!

This is five generations: Granny, then her son Dan, then his daughter Meloney, then her son Joe, and then his daughter Claire!

Grandma and Claire, Claire is passed out in her arms! She was so tired!

Claire and her Great-Grandma

Our little family

Joe and his mom

Claire and her great-grandparents

And all of us with mom!

5 Months!

My baby girl turned five months a little while ago and I can't believe it! She is starting to get to the "fun" age and Joe is having a grand time playing with her and getting her to laugh! She has grown so much in the last month, here are some new things that she has learned and her stats:

- Claire now wears 9 month clothing!!! She is just so long that everything she owned was way too short in the arms and legs. So Grandma Meloney took us on a shopping trip and we got a TON of clothes for this little girl!

- She eats rice cereal twice a day now and she loves it! When you put her in her high chair she will start smacking her lips, she knows what is coming!

- She also has TWO teeth! They are both on the bottom in the front and I think she is getting her top ones in too. But she keeps biting her fingers and it ends up with her crying, so hopefully soon she figures out that she shouldn't put her fingers in there. :)
(if you look closely you can see her teeth in this pic)

- She has completely grown out of her swing and moved into her new Jumperoo! She loves that thing and has finally learned how to bounce in it. :)

- She has started saying "Da da da da da" when Joe is around, I don't really think she knows what it means but Joe is convinced that she is talking already. :) She loves her daddy though!

- She has also found a new favorite toy...mommy's hair. She thinks it's great to try and grab it all the time and she has such a good grasp that she even pulls it out. I swear I'm going to go bald in one spot really soon!

- She likes to hold her own bottles, although she gets kinda bored with it after a few minutes so we still feed her.

- She puts herself to sleep for all her naps and bedtime but if she doesn't have her purple blanky and paci you can forget about her falling asleep.

- And she sleeps through the night now! Yay!!!! It has been amazing to sleep a full night without having to get up and make a bottle.

- And we have found that she is EXTREMELY tickleish on her back and neck! It is the funniest thing because she will try so hard not to laugh but her whole body is just squirming!

- And I love it that she still loves to be cuddled! We love our little Claire Bear!

Happy Halloween!

We had so much fun celebrating Halloween this year! We had the family party a couple of weeks ago and we took Claire trick-or-treating on Halloween at Grandma's house! It was fun getting to dress her up and to have two different costumes. For the family party she was a red butterfly but on Halloween she was a pink butterfly. She looked so cute but she wasn't really in the mood to take pictures. Oh well, at least she let me take them and didn't cry! :)

And while we were at Grandma's, Aunt Sasa, Uncle Stan, and Sammy showed up to trick-or-treat as well! It was fun getting to see them and see Sammy as Charlie Brown! He looked so cute and he showed us how good he is at crawling now! I didn't get a picture of Claire and Sammy together but they both looked great in their costumes!

Claire as a skeleton during the day....

...and a little pink butterfly at night!