Facebook

I finally did it. I got a facebook. I swore I never would, but it is now the only way I have to keep in touch with a friend of mine who is going on a mission. So I did it. So if you have one too, and from what I have seen so far everybody has one, then look me up!

Happy Birthday Jenny!

Its my sister Jenny's birthday. I'm not sure if she would want me to tell everyone how old she is, but I will anyway. She is 30 today! Happy birthday Jenny, you are an awesome sister and mom.

Noelle "Talks"

This video cracks me up. Not only does she make her cute little sounds, but I had the camera held next to my face, and she didn't know if she should look at me or the camera, so she just constantly was looking back and forth the whole time. I love the confused look on her face :) You can tell she's just a little flustered by it.

Memorial Day Early

We celebrated Memorial Day on Sunday because the actual Memorial Day is a huge selling day for our company, so Erik works all day. It was really nice, our apartment complex has multiple public use barbeques, so Erik was wonderful and he grilled some hot dogs. We bought salads and chips from the store, so I didn't have to cook! So nice :) After we had our little family bbq, we met up with some of our APX friends and roasted marshmallows and had smores. Yum! As noted in the previous post, Monica had made a hat for Noelle, and I felt kind of bad because I didn't think she would be able to wear it for a while, since it is supposed to be summer. However, Minnesota doesn't disappoint. It wasn't really cold, but cool enough for her to need her cute new hat!
The "gang" (that sounds so cheesy). Erik, Jorgan, Stevie, Monica, Noelle, and Karalee. Jorgan is our lead technician, Karalee is his wife and our office secretary, Monica is Jorgan's sister and is also an office secretary, and Stevie is Monica's husband and also a technician.

With our friend Karalee

3 Months Old!

Can anybody believe my little baby is 3 months old! She is so big, I just weighed her and she is 13 lbs! Just about twice as much as when she is born. She is so wonderful, she is very social, always looking around at what is going on. She loves to snuggle into her blankies, and especially loves to snuggle with mommy and daddy. She has just recently discovered her fingers and that they can move, so it has been so much fun to watch her get better and better at using them every day. I love how quickly she learns and grows, but at the same time I am sad to see my soft squishy little baby slowly disappearing. I think she looks more and more like her dad every day, but her personality is definitely all her own! She has the best, most precious smiles and is capable of melting my heart numerous times every day, and she also is capable of going from happy and content to screaming mad in about 2 seconds. But it's still so cute when she's mad :) She will look me right in the eye and scream at me! Hopefully that little trick doesn't last forever... She truly is a wonderful baby, and our lives have been blessed in too many ways to count. We are in love with our little girl :)

In the cute little hat that our friend Monica (that's her with Noelle) crocheted for her.
Absolutely Precious!

Just One of Her Many Talents

Sitting up... almost :)

What Noelle's Been Up To

Our little girl just changes so much every day! She is so much fun to play with, she has started reaching for things in front of her, like hanging toys or her feet, and her hair is long enough that I can style it in little curls or clip a bow or flower into it (thanks again Julie!). She is so happy when she wakes up every morning and just smiles and "talks" to me all morning long. She is quite a vocal baby (I think) and it is so interesting and captivating to hear all her different noises that she makes.

She loves laying on her back and kicking her legs, but she still hates being on her tummy.

Look at those cute little curls!

My First Mother's Day

Was absolutely wonderful! It was such a joy to celebrate mothers day! Erik got me a very pretty bouquet of flowers and a card, and a gift card to Target! He surprised me with it in the morning. To be honest I actually thought he had forgotten because I came downstairs kind of early and couldn't really see anything, so I was kinda bummed, but he had hidden them in the kitchen when he got home the night before so I wouldn't see them and surprised me while I was changing Noelle. It was so nice. We went to church and our ward had roses for all the moms (that's me!) and it was our first week at church here in Minnesota so we met a lot of new people. Then we came home and Erik's company had a BBQ so we had a nice evening with friends. It was such a happy day :) Mother's Day might be my new favorite holiday.

Snapshots of Noelle

I was looking through our camera the other day and I found

all these cute pics that Erik had taken of Noelle. She is so alert

and active! And absolutely adorable I think. I just had to

put them up for everyone to see :)

The Como Zoo

This is the wonderful thing about where we live. There are parks everywhere and they are all different and unique. The Como park is just a few minutes away from our house and it is huge! It has its own lake, a golf course,a little amusement park, and a zoo and conservatory, along with the regular park stuff :) Noelle and I went to the zoo yesterday with some of the other APX wives and she slept through most of it, but I had a blast! I haven't been to a zoo in ages and it was just a little one, but it was so much fun. They had a primate house with some of the neatest little monkeys I have ever seen (sorry the pics of those didn't turn out). They also had lions and tigers and snow leopards, cougars, zebras and giraffes and his really cool looking deer from africa called a kudu. They also had a giant tortiose and an aquarium with all kinds of fish, penguins, and seals and sea lions. And they had a new part that was a "rain forest" with tropical fish and snakes and bugs, all in a big room full of tropical plants. There was a sloth in there too and he was grooming himself, making sure to look good for all the crowds :)

Lazy Lions. There were two more inside that you could see a lot closer. Lions are big!

Our buddy the giraffe. I felt bad that most of the animals couldn't go outside yet because the temp here doesn't stay above 50 degrees all the time. They are all still cooped up insideGrumpy Gorilla. Yeah, I wouldn't mess with him if I were you.

Mee-inn-a-su-oh-ta

Well we made it! The drive was long and it rained non-stop all day saturday for the entire drive. Rain gets old fast when it is all you have to look at and it gets really, really old when you've been staring at it for 17 hours (however it does keep the bugs away which means no nasty guts all over the windshield). Noelle was great though and hardly fussed for the entire trip. She was such a trooper and an angel and I am so proud of her. And we are now in the land of 10,000 lakes. So far it seems like a nice place. We live in a town called Roseville that is just to the north of Minneapolis. It is pretty, and will prob be even prettier when summer gets here and the trees and plants start turning green instead of winter-dead brown. Our apartment is nice too. It is a little older with older appliances too, but it is the biggest apartment we have ever lived in. It is kinda funny that the biggest places we live in are during the summers when we only have half of our stuff :) To be honest I haven't really heard anybody speak with a crazy Minnesota accent, but most of the people I have talked to since I've been here are from Utah. The lady who checked us out at the gracery store wasn't from here either, so I will have to do a little more observing to tell if people really talk like that here. It seems like it will be a nice summer. I am excited to go see the mall of america. Noelle and I will definitely have to go there soon.