A Fantastic February!

Well hello blogging world! I am taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity of spending Spring Break at Erik's parents' house with internet access to finally put up some pictures! Hooray! Pretty much the only pics I have on my camera are from the month of February so that's what I'll put up :)
February was a very busy month for us! Erik's birthday was at the beginning of the month, but unfortunately I don't have any pictures :( We spent the weekend in Boise for our sweet niece Karlee's baptism. It was great to spend time with family! Then of course there was Valentine's day. I usually go candy crazy with this holiday, but this year decided to change it up a bit and we didn't get any candy at all :) Shocking I know!
To cap off our busy month, our sweet angel Noelle turned 2 years old on the 25th! Time has flown so fast and I still find myself wondering where my baby has gone. She is very much a little girl now! It is so much fun to be her mommy, she brightens every day. It has been a little bit different having a two-year-old. Although it really hasn't been as "terrible" as I thought it would be. A least not yet :) Our biggest struggle has been getting her to eat much of anything. She had a few months where she would only eat cereal and crackers, and of course treats, but even hardly any of that stuff. We were just starting to really get worried about how skinny she was getting, when I guess she finally had enough and decided to eat again. She's still pretty picky, but the beauty of being two is that now she can understand that if she eats what we want her to eat she will get a treat when she's done, and if she doesn't eat what we want her to eat, there will most definitely be no treat :)
For Noelle's birthday she was of course a very spoiled little girl again this year. She got cards and gifts from all our family, and she got to have two birthday parties- one with friends at our house and one at my grandparents' house in St. George. She got lots of toys and clothes and books, just what a little girl needs :)
Noelle is so big and capable now. She speaks so well, has so many words in her vocabulary, and loves to try and say any new words we ask her to say. She knows all of her cousins and family members and can name them all in pictures. She runs around and dances and tries to jump, but still can't get off the ground so it looks more like she's galloping along as she runs. I absolutely adore her! Some of the things I love most about her are:

• She still gives the best kisses
• She doesn't understand that hugs usually include putting your arms around people, so when other kids go to give her hugs it usually freaks her out :)
• She asks about what people are doing-- where's daddy?, daddy school?, daddy work?, grampa go?, things like that
• She notices sirens and car honks and other various noises and ever time makes sure I notice them too.
• She loves to point out any kind of truck, which there are a lot of in Cedar City :)
• She knows her numbers 1-10, knows about half her letters, and knows most shapes, but still doesn't understand colors lol.
• She says hi to the baby in my belly and kisses my belly, it melts me every time.
• She has finally started saying "love you"! Most of the time we still have to ask her to say it, but every now and then she will just bust it out all by herself and make me want to hold her forever.
• She loves to be tickled, especially by her daddy, and has the sweetest, most infectious laugh ever!

So this is a really long post, but now for the pictures (in no particular order):

She grabbed this hat and put it on all by herself. She usually hates hats so it was pretty surprising and she looked like a little hoodlum :)

Helping clean up the streamers from her birthday. She is a great helper!

Her favorite thing to do with the wagon my Grandparents gave her- read in it!

Grammy, Gampa, Noelley, and Mommy :)

Opening presents how fun!

Who doesn't love birthday cake and noise makers?

Trying oh-so-hard to blow those candles out!

She is the queen of fishy-lips. She does it all the time, mostly when she wants you to leave her alone, or when she does not want to do what you are asking her to do.

Doing beads at her birthday party. She loves it so much and loves seeing all the different colors and shapes of beads.

Blowing out her birthday candles at the party at our house. She only got one, oh well :)

Her presents were waiting for her when she woke up on her birthday. We were so excited for her to have them that we opened them before breakfast even.

She built a "fort" with her daddy and LOVES to go play in it.

In the fort with daddy. She looks so big. I usually don't go down in the fort much cause, well, it;s on the floor and my pregnant self and the floor aren't very good friends right now.

This was the first incident of beading with Grandma, the one that started it all :)

Daddy's Valentine's Day presents: Gloves and a Carbon Monoxide Detector :)

Noelle's Valentine's Day presents: bath foam, and a stuffed lion. She loves the huge eyes.

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 :)