Baby Girl Thurman!

Our little sack-o-bones girlie :) They assured us it was definitely a girl, though the view wasn't as good as with Noelle. It is so fun to get a little preview of how our angel is growing.

Great-Grandma and Grandpa's House!

We love living so close to my Grandma and Grandpa Gau. They live in St. George and we try to see them at least once a month. Here are just a few pics of some visits with them.

Noelle loves helping my grandma water the bushes with this little watering can :) She thinks it is the neatest thing!

There is a little water play park by their house so while the weather was still summery we took Noelle to play. She had lots of fun!

Halloween, a Wedding, and Some Other Things in Between

Well I finally have a chance to put up some pictures! We have had a very busy fall, with lots of fun and family. For Halloween this year Noelle was a fairy. Not super original, but I had been feeling too sick with my pregnancy to put together something really great this year. She had tons of fun though. We went to a trunk-or-treat, a Halloween carnival, AND we went trick-or-treating. Noelle LOVED getting candy from people. Usually she is so shy, but not if there's candy involved!

I love this picture. This is at the sheep parade that Cedar City does every year, which just happened to be on Halloween day this year. She looks like an angel :)

My little brother Aaron got married to his lovely bride Christina! What a cute couple they make :)

Noelle and cousin Anya. Haha neither of them was really enjoying taking pictures.

This pic cracks me up. The first time Noelle ever played with these toys this is what she did. She put each person in a mode of conveyance and lined them all up on the couch! Funny girl.

Noelle's first haircut. Her Grandma Thurman was so nice to give her just a little trim :)

Noelle LOVES LOVES LOVES stickers! We have so much fun with them, she is so cute!

I don't know why this picture is sideways, but I just think it's super cute! Love those eyes.

Holiday Score!!!

Man I love the holidays! Thanksgiving was wonderful just getting to eat and spend time with family. This whole week has been great! And today I had a great time out finishing up my Christmas shopping with my dear momma. AND just happened to get an awesome holiday score too! We had just walked into Kid to Kid and were looking at some dresses and a lady came up to my mom and asked if we wanted this Crayola art easel she had. I guess she had brought it to the store to try and sell it to them but they wouldn't take it and she really didn't want it anymore and didn't want to lug it home and have it take up space there, so she just offered it to us for freeeeeeeee! I couldn't hardly believe it, I never get stuff for free. So now I have this great easel in perfect condition that retails for about $55 new that we get to give Noelle for Christmas :D :D :D What a great week it's been!

Hey Look!!

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In case if you didn't know yet, we are expecting! Little Thurman baby #2 is in the way :) This pregnancy has been completely different from Noelle's, which makes me think it is a boy ;) We will hopefully find that out around the 13th of December! Our due date is May 10th, so we still have a long way to go, but I am about 14 weeks along and in my second trimester. The funny thing is that I know of 5 people (including myself) who are due withing the same week as me! So if I ever get to putting pictures up on this blog again, I'll be sure to get some when my belly starts growing and when we get an ultrasound I'll put that up too :)

Noelle's Kind of Fun

So sorry there are still no pics up. It is just so hard to take the time to bring the camera all the way to school and wait for them to upload when I would much rather be at home sleeping, eating, playing with Noelle, etc. But I just thought I would write a little bit about the fun things Noelle has been doing lately.

She is a chatterbox. She has some real words, her vocabulary is growing daily, and she knows several body parts, but she still just mostly chatters away in gibberish and then looks at us like we should have some very profound response to the obviously profound statement she just made :)

She LOVES to read her books. We go to the library to get some new selections almost weekly, but she still loves her old favorites too. Reading is her favorite way to play. (Although some of that might have to do with our abysmal toy selection. Good thing Christmas is coming.) And her favorite way to read is in Mommy or Daddy's lap, having us read to her then her read to us :)

She is learning to sing! She loves trying to sing the ABC song whenever we are reading her ABC book, or the Baa Baa Black Sheep song (which coincidentally are the same tune) when we have that book out. She doesn't quite get it right, but it is close enough that we can actually tell what she is trying to sing. She also makes up songs to sing to herself while I am doing housework :)

She loves playing in drawers and cupboards. Which has been a bit a trying thing for us. We have been able to teach her, for the most part, which drawers and cupboards she can play with and which ones she can't. With the exception of her clothes drawers. She used to rip through them every day with delight. I say "used to" because we finally got smart and put child locks on her drawers. We put them on all the drawers except her top one because she won't be tall enough to reach that one until she's five. We thought. The morning after we put the locks on was Sunday, and Erik and I were both VERY pleased that Noelle had seemed to sleep in until 8:30! She usually is up by 7 or 7:30 at the very latest. But Sunday seemed like a huge blessing. Until I wandered into her room to find that she had, in fact, been awake for quite some time, and she had been very quietly pulling everything she could reach out of her top drawer, which she could pretty easily reach from her crib. It was so funny we couldn't even be mad. But now that drawer has a lock too :)

She just continues to delight us with her sweet nature and willingness to give Mommy and Daddy hugs and kisses every day. I feel bad that she is so scared of everybody else, whether they be a stranger, a friend, or a family member, but hopefully that will start to change as we get to spend more time with family during the holidays. She is the light of our lives :)

You Think Halloween is Scary? Read This!!

So we live in sleepy, safe ole Cedar City. We have had a few interesting little encounters at our apartment due to the fact that we live near a bar. But we have never had anything really bad or scary happen to us. Until last night. It was so scary. I had gone to bed about 9 because I had to get up early, but Erik stayed up and I told him not to stay up late. At 1am I had to go potty and I woke up and Erik was still awake. I got up and got grouchy with him about staying up so late and made him come to bed. He got ready for bed, I got a drink and we turned off the living room lights (including bright Halloween decoration lights we had up in the windows) that were still on. We walked into the bedroom and I got into my side of our bed. Before Erik could even walk around the bed to his side, all of a sudden we heard a banging at our windows! We looked out and there was a silhouette of a person outside our bedroom windows, and he was trying to open them! It was so scary.
Erik ran out and pushed the panic button on the alarm and then called 911 and got his gun. I ran to Noelle's room and turned on her lights to make sure no one else was in there and grabbed her and ran to the living room. I guess all the lights and commotion scared the man away. But we are blessed and live very close to the police station (I will never complain about hearing sirens late at night again) and they were there in no time. They caught the man as he was trying to get away. Our apartment is the only one in a long row of old buildings that are all connected together and are full of offices and business. We suppose the man was just trying to find an easy window into an office and try to get what he could get. When he saw that people lived there it must have surprised him (even though if he had had any sense he would have looked around and seen our lights on only seconds before he tried to get in). The police were there for about two hours and we finally fell asleep at 4am.
We thought that was the end of it. Not so! We found out this morning that there was likely an accomplice who was apparently not apprehended, and that one of them had a gun! It was found thrown on the ground in a doorway of a business a few doors down as the employees showed up for work this morning. The night was scary, but finding this out has given me chills all day. I am so grateful that 1) the man did not try to get in Noelle's bedroom windows, which are right by ours, 2) the man was not able to get in at all, 3) that he just ran away instead of doing something awful, and 4) that we had such a quick police response. It was very scary, but we are all just fine. And now more anxious to graduate and move out of sleepy old Cedar City.
p.s. As we were waiting for the police to come up and talk to us Erik says "I bet you're glad I stayed up late tonight, huh?" Yes, I was very, very glad :)

Random Fun

She loves her daddy. Really.

Have I mentioned my child is gorgeous? Yes, I'm bragging.

Noelley's hair is just so pretty!

Stylin' ladies,

Gangsta lady,

Loving-all-her-bows lady.

You Won't Wanna Miss This!

Us girls being silly at dinner time! You can hear my friend Anee and me laughing at her, she cracks us up! Be sure to listen for Noelle's little fart right after I ask her to blow a kiss ;)



Finally video of her walking!!! She is doing so well, I'm sure that she will have the confidence to do it by herself in no time! How we love this sweet little girl. She brings the sun to our lives :)

The Thundering Waters!

More popularly known as Niagara Falls!!! The falls are only a half hour away from our house, so of course we had to visit! We had such a fun time! We only stayed on the American side, but there is a state park there and a lot of things to do. We went to the aquarium, Noelle loved seeing all the fishies in the tanks. We rode the Maid of the Mist boat all the way up to the base of the Horseshoe Falls. Noelle loved being on the boat and I was grateful for those lovely blue ponchos. Then we watched a movie about the history of the falls, and walked on a boardwalk called the Cave of the Winds up to the base of the American Falls. Again, I was thankful for ponchos (yellow this time) and the nice foam sandals they give you so your shoes don't get soaked (which they did on the boat). It was such a wonderful and nice day, everyone was happy and enjoying themselves. We had a great time!
The Cave of the Winds boardwalk. And lovely yellow ponchos :)

Wow we are so pretty :{

Canada on the right, American falls on the left!

On the Maid of the Mist boat.

That's the American falls in the background

The captain of the boat took this lovely family picture for us :)

The funniest thing happened at the aquarium! I had walked by this tank before Noelle and Erik and had seen all the big fish swimming all around in it. When I came back, Noelle was standing at the glass looking at the fish, and they were all on the other side of the glass looking at her! You can only see three of them in this pic, but there were about 7 of these monster fishes all piled on the other side of the glass staring at her. It cracked me up!

Riding the trolley.

Independence Day!!!

What a fun weekend we had for the 4th of July!!

On Sunday after church we had a company BBQ with all of the APX people we are working with this summer. Since we all live in a couple different places it was fun to have everyone together to talk and play and have fun. The BBQ was at a beach, but sadly the beach and water were so gross and smelly that we could not go swimming!!! And it was sooooo hot and sticky, but we managed and had a good time. (I don't have nay pics of the bbq :( but might tomorrow)

After it cooled off a bit we picked one of the many free fireworks shows offered around the area, and I'm pretty sure we picked the best one! It was the best and most fun show I have been to in a long time, they did great! We went with our friends Zach and Anee, and Tristan and Sasha. Noelley did a great job staying up late and she loved the big pretty fireworks. It is so much fun to have her to celebrate holidays with!
Laughing at daddy :)

Eating Michealangelo. He was delicious!

Just waiting for it to get dark...

Walking down the big fun hill. Noelle is getting very good at walking but still doesn't quite have the courage to do it by herself :(

The fireworks show was at the University of Buffalo campus and as we were walking back to the car we saw this big bronze statue of a buffalo. We just couldn't resist going for a ride :D

On Monday morning our ward had a breakfast that wasn't quite early enough to beat the heat (that week ended up being the hottest Buffalo has seen for a while) but was still fun. There was a flag ceremony and free food, and you know we can't turn down free food!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!

Yes my friends, we have a winner for the First Word contest!!
Noelle's first real word was: (drumroll please).........
EAR!!!!!!
Yes, that's right, she can say ear :) It's so cute she has to work so hard to get the "r" on the end but she does it and she knows exactly what an ear is.

A couple people guessed ear, but the first one was my friend Katy Wilbur!! She will receive a very special prize from me! Thanks everyone for voting, this was fun :D

First Word

So Noelle has said her first REAL word that is not baby talk and actually relates only to the object that the word is and is not randomly babbled out for fun. It is an actual word with an actual meaning and it means the same thing to her as it does to the rest of the English-speaking world!!! Any guesses what the word is?????
Whoever guesses the right word will receive a wonderful prize specially from/made by me :)

Hint: It starts with "E"

War in Buffalo

We went to a civil war battle re-enactment!!! I've always wanted to see one and now I have :) This particular one was the battle for the Erie courthouse (yeah I know, the Confederate army actually got some troops this far north). It was kinda small, but still interesting. after the battle we looked around the museum that was hosting it. They have moved a lot of old buildings from the area to the museum grounds for restoration and preservation and they made a little village out of them all for the battle. It was fun. And of course, we forgot to get a family picture :(

The Rebels!

Moving some troops (in vain!)

We're winning!

We win! After the battle all the actors lined up and shot their guns and whatnot. The cannons were super loud during the fight, but surprisingly Noelle was not bothered by them or the gunshots.

Spectators. In pretty dresses.

This is called a crazy quilt. Apparently they were all the rage in the late 1800's. Basically you plan out this crazy mismatch of a quilt, then you embroider all the seams with different patterns, and for good measure embroider all sorts of flowers and animals onto the patches. And the nicer the fabric scraps you used, of course the more affluent you were. The museum had several of these on display, they were really neat to look at.

A Summer Misadventure

Last week Noelle, Anee, and I all decided to go to a couple of the Karpeles Manuscript Museums that are in downtown Buffalo. Just our luck, we went on Monday, the one day they are closed :) However, while driving to get to the museums, which were themselves very cool old buildings, we noticed so much interesting old architecture in the area. So instead of wasting a trip we decided to walk around and take pics of all the cool buildings and homes we found. I know this is a lot of pictures, but this is only about a tenth of all the pictures I took! It ended up being a very fun way to spend the afternoon :D

Above and below are pics from the same church. It was so amazing! You could tell it was built with absolute love and care by the people who would be worshiping there. I have LOTS of pics from this one building alone and if I was a professional photographer I could probably live my whole life just taking pictures of all the different details on this church.

Who would not want to live in this house?!?!

Or this one?

This tree was so big, I'm sure I looked pretty silly bending all different ways to try and get it all in one shot.

This fountain was on the grounds of another building we loved. We had to go in a gate and walk up a drive to see it, but all the gates were open, so we figured no one would probably get mad at us ;)

Above and below are from the same building, another old and awesome church! The fun thing about the area we live in is that there are old church houses EVERYWHERE!

This was and still is a Red Cross building. They have a new building built in the back of this one, but I'm so glad they didn't just tear this down and rebuild over it. The architecture was so pretty.

If you want to see all the pics we took I'll put them all up on my facebook. There really was so much!