BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!

WOW!!! I have so many fun and exciting things to write about! Let me just tell you between being busy, lots of changes, and not having the internet for over 5 weeks (vacation and moving without internet) was a very large part of why this post has been a long time coming. Sorry, and truly I am the most sorry for myself. There were so many fun and exciting things that happened that now as I sit to finally write them down my memory doesn't serve me as well as I thought! I should write these wonderful memories down on paper so that I don't forget to document. After all this is our family journal. And the only place that I document our family's updates.

So needless to say things have been really crazy for us over the past 2 months!
What happened over those two months you ask? WELL...

Here is where it all began, decorating for Christmas. This is such a cute pic of Scott and Paige! Paige loved the ornaments, but wasn't interested in the lights. Which I was kind of suprized about, I thought that she would love them... oh, well :)

We discovered that we were moving to the Boise area at the end of November for Scott's new job, so we drove up to Boise multiple times looking for apartments. We collected boxes of various sizes all December long from many office supply stores and the hospital for our move.

Scott finished finals and graduated from nursing school, that was wonderful. Some of my family even made the trip over to Twin to see him walk and get his diploma. Thanks everybody for coming! It really meant a lot to us to have you there!
Here's a picture of Scott's graduating class...He's the tallest person in the back row!

Scott waiting to go get his diploma Here's where Scott recieves his diploma

One of our very best friends back in Twin, Bethany, took 6 month pictures for us of Paige, they turned out sooooo cute! I will post those in the next post.

We had multiple visits from friends and family which was awesome!

We got to have Scott's Brother, Chad, and his family come stay with us for overnight visits on their way to and from their trip up to Washington. (I totally forgot to take pics while they were here! :( Darn it! )

We also got to see some of our very best friends, Davis, Linda and their adorable little boy Gavin. They live in Virginia so this was a real treat for us. It was only suppose to be a day trip but on there drive back to Utah to visit with Linda's family the roads were too bad to travel on so they had to turn around and stay the night at our apartment. Which I can honestly say that I was really excited that they were going to be coming back to spend more time with us. Sad that the roads were bad, but still super excited! Here's some pics of their visit~ Can I just say, kids never are ready to take the picture when you are. When one is the other isn't and you know this is what we got, still really cute though! :)

We officially had our first Christmas together as a family. We drove to Blackfoot for Paige's first Christmas and stayed there for a week with my family. Needless to say she was very spoiled! Santa brought her a walker for Christmas, with Grandpa and Grandma Scott helped him out with this one. It has been great. She loves to sit in it and play.Helps mommy keep her sanity so that she isn't holding her all day long! :)Paige waiting with Grandpa Scott to see what Santa broughtWhat can I say... I have two children! Scott was so excited to look and see what Santa put in his stocking, doesn't he look excited!?!?Paige loved opening the packages... not to see what was inside, but so that she could listen to the paper krinkle and play with the remains. Typical! You spend the money on the gift and all they want to do is play with the packaging! :)Grandma and Grandpa Scott gave Paige a Leap Frog Learning Dog for part of her Christmas present. She loves it!Grandma got this super cute pink bike from Santa, it was really cool and vintage looking.She got so many fun things. And she even got to have her very first taste of solid food, if you can call it that :) Santa brought her a box of rice cereal for her Christmas breakfast. We even used the walker as her "high chair" for a while, until we were able to get her one. It worked out great.Look at my cute girl with her first remains of real food on her face... PRECIOUS!It was so fun to see the family during Christmas before our big move. We then drove back home to Twin for 1 day to pack and prepare to go to our next destination...

Pueblo, Colorado for a get together with Scott's family, where we stayed for a week ,which I thought was north of Denver, sadly as we were getting ready to leave the night before our BIG trip we discovered that it was south of Denver by about 3 hours :( Oh well, it was definitely worth it! What a fun trip. Here's Grandma Macdonald (Scott's mom) with all the girl cousinsJust hangin' out with mommy during scripture study

Next when we returned home we got some last minute moving supplies and started packing immediately... We got home on a Sunday night and started packing first thing Monday morning because we needed to be completely moved out by that same Wednesday, January 6th. Thanks to lots of great friends and family we were able to move out fairly quickly.

We officially moved on Thursday, January 7th. Scott drove the Uhaul with one of our cars on a trailer and I drove our other car up to Boise with Paige. My wonderful father and nephew, Jake, drove all the way from Blackfoot to help us move from our Twin apartment into our Boise apartment. I tell you what they were lifesavers because it would have just been Scott, me, and one of very best friends, Zach, that lives here in the Boise area moving everything in if they hadn't been there. Thanks Dad, Jake, and Zach! You guys are awesome! We were supposed to have some members of the Elder's Quorum helping us move in but we only had two show up when we were pretty much done. It was a Thursday so I am sure that they were all very busy, week days are not always the best days to move.

Between all that and unpacking and settling in, Wow! We had a big couple of months. And I can't believe how much Paige has grown! She is just becoming her own little person with quite a personality! I will post again in a few days with more updated pictures and Paige's 6 month pics!

Halloween Pics and some exciting news!

OK, OK... so I totally know that not only was Halloween over 3 months ago, but I figured better late than never! This was a post that I had originally written back at the beginning of December:

December 2009~

So, here are some pics that I took of Paige for her first Halloween...

Carving Pumpkins~

Paige was Tinker Bell and I was Wendy. Scott had to work :( so, he wasn't there to see her all dressed up and I wasn't able to take any pictures of the both of us, but Paige was way cute so I just took some of her. OK I shouldn't say some, cause if we had a film camera I would have taken over 2 rolls! :) But she was so cute I couldn't help myself.

You can even see some of the glitter on her forhead in a few of the pictures. She had to have fairy dust... after all she was Tinker Bell! {:-)

SO CUTE!!!

Alot has happened in just the past couple of weeks...

Scott will be graduating next week! We are so excited!

Scott had a few interviews this past month and he recieved a job offer... And he took it! We will be moving to the Boise area at the begining of January. We will be renting an apartment until we can find a house that we would like to buy. Oh, so many new and exciting changes!

We took Paige in for an appointment to see the Dr. because she has been so incrediably cranky and when I say cranky I mean like a completely different child that has turned into a BEAR! We thought that she was teething, but nothing was helping and it just kept getting worse... We thought that it might be acid reflux so we took her in to see what the Dr. had to say. We went in and sure enough the Dr. said that it was acid reflux. He gave her some medication and she has been feeling so much better. Poor thing we felt horrible to think that she has been in pain for so long and we didn't know :(

Paige loves to walk around while we hold her hands. It's so fun to watch her cute little legs and feet trying to take steps.

She is also doing this silly thing where she holds her feet and legs straight up in the air... I don't know that I would have the stamana to hold my legs up for as long as she does:)

Here's a pic-Silly Girl!

Paige is going through a growth spurt right now so she is waking up to feed every few hours at night... so much for sleeping through the night ;) Oh, how I miss those 8 hours of undisturbed sleep!

We went to Blackfoot for Thanksgiving to visit the Scott Family... Scott had to work Thanksgiving and the two days after so we had an early lunch and then he went to work and left Paige and I there and came back and picked us up on Sunday. We went Black Friday shopping... and out to breakfast afterword, It sure was a fun weekend.

~Ash

END OF POST

Anyway... this was the end of the post for December 2009.

Alot has happened since this post! Things have been kind of crazy around here... I will tell you about them in the next post!

4 months old and teething... we think :)

OK... So I really have been slacking. I wanted to get this update up last week, but just kept putting it off. Paige is doing great!

~She just turned 4 months old on TUESDAY! (Wow, feels like she just barely tuned 3 months a few days ago!)

~She now holds her head up all by herself, with very little wobbling.

~She has officially grown out of all her newborn clothing and pretty much skipped over her 0-3 months' clothes in a matter of a week. So we are now in 3-6 months and a few of her larger 0-3's still fit, but not for long! I tell you what, she is growing like a weed.

~ I have decided that there is ONE rule in our house... NO MORE GROWING UP! I know, I know, impossible to keep but it still stands! Makes Mommy feel better :)

~She LOVES bath time, she has started kicking and splashing while in the tub. It is so cute.

This one's kinda fuzzy, but it was so cute!

~She now laughs for long periods of time... LOVE THIS! The other night while I was changing Paige and getting her ready for bed I started singing a beat to her and she just started cracking up. So, I ran out into the front room and showed Scott. He started doing it... and here's a video.

~We are pretty sure that Paige is now teething. She likes to chew on everything. Her hands and thumb are her favorites. And this is a common site around our home lately... if she is wearing long sleeves, which is almost all of the time now (it's getting pretty cold around here) She will pull it off with one hand and chew and suck on the sleeve leaving it sopping wet!

Monday for our Family Home Evening activity we were going to go the corn maze on campus so we all dressed warm and headed out, but when we got there it started raining and it was pretty cold. :( And we didn't dare take Paige out in the rain with it being so cold and all. We were just going to carry her cause it would have been pretty ridiculous and funny to try and push a stroller through a corn field -And I would know :) I can just imagine... ha ha! But her is a cute picture that we took of Paige right before we left.

We went to visit the Fam in Pocatello and Gpa and Gma Scott in Blackfoot a few weekends ago and the sun was shinning in her eyes on the drive over so I let her wear my sunglasses. This a cute pic of her wearing them.

OK so this was like three weeks ago, but I couldn't resist!!! About 3 Sundays ago we looked out the window and what did we see??? No, not popcorn popping on the apricot tree. SNOW!!! Couldn't believe it! OK, yes I can. This is Idaho after all!

This week has been a great and eventful one...Paige is Growing!

HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

~Paige is offically 3 months old tomarrow!!! Wow, three months went by soooo fast. Too fast! :)

~Grandpa and Grandma Scott came to visit this last Saturday and we picked lots of peaches at an orchard in the Twin Falls Canyon (ok, mostly Grandma and Grandpa... Paige was a little grumpy, in other words: SUPER HUNGRY! So I did a lot of watching from the nice air conditioned truck. I felt pretty guilty) And neat side note: The thermometer in my parent's truck read that it was 111 degrees in the canyon!!! It was sooooo HOT! As we were driving up and out of the canyon it read that it was in the Low 90's... Yea, Twin Falls is a lot hotter than I thought! :)

~Mom and Dad even showed me how to can peaches (we made 1 batch, 7 bottles)... lots of work, Wow! But it was worth it! With three of us it went pretty fast, I can't imagine how long it would take with just one person. My mother was reading a comment out of one of my cookbooks on canning and it read: 'There is something deeply satisfying about looking at a row of jewel-toned jellies, scarlet tomatoes or golden peaches that you've just "put up" or canned yourself with produce from your garden or farmers market.' You know it is true ~ I felt pretty good, even more after I made some homemade jam out of the left over peaches. Yum... and what goes better with jam than a warm slice of homemade bread. Yea, I was pretty proud of myself. And Scott even got to reap some of the yummy benefits!

~Scott is officially a third way through his LAST semester of nursing and starting into his preceptorship section...
(He will be shadowing another nurse for about a month apx. 108 hours is required)

~We went to the parade of homes in Twin Falls and got lots of fun ideas for our own home... someday :) A girl can dream right?!?

~Paige is getting into more of a schedule, pretty predicable now. Yea!!! And she is sometimes sleeping through the night (hey, better some then none right?) And even better... it's like 10 pm to 6-8 in the morning! 8 to 10 hour stretch is great!

~Paige is grabbing at toys and getting more c00rdinated with her hands. She is so fun (the highlight of my every day!)

~Paige is also smiling and laughing ALL the time, absolutely LOVE IT!!!! Scott and I think that she is just the coolest, greatest, awesomest thing ever! Yea, we pretty much are in love with her! How can we not! She's the GREATEST!

So here are a few pics of this week...

Paige smiling! She was sitting in the bumbo watching me do the dishes and she kept smiling at me so I just had to take a picture!

Here's another one... this one's a close-up~ Look at those dimples, just like Daddy!

She's getting so much better at holding up her head. Way to go Paige! :)

Paige grabbing her lion hand puppet... so cute love these!

~Our sweetheart!~

A video of Paige the other morning... She was grabbing at a toy on her play gym and there are some fun coos in here too. She really enjoys talking right now and experimenting with her voice!

Paige Updates~

Paige is getting so big! I can't believe how fast they grow! We went to her 2 month appointment and the Dr wanted us to do around 1 hour of tummy time each day. We have been trying to do lots of tummy time with her, and she absolutely hates it!!! So, we have to do like 5 minutes at a time... and if she is doing ok we try to do more. I think the most time that we have done at one time is 15 minutes. And sometimes we can't even get to 5 minutes, she gets herself so worked up she starts crying really hard and gags herself. Poor girl! Needless to say, mommy is very emotional during tummy time~ I can barely stand it. Here's some pics of when she was doing a pretty good job.

She's starting to roll... She can now roll from her tummy to her back. When she's not crying to get off her tummy she is rolling over! Here's some pics of the roll.

The other day when we were eating we put her in her Bumbo so she could sit up and look around... this is how she fell asleep~

We went to the park a few weeks ago to shoot off bottle rockets... Scott and I made a launcher and went to try it out and this is a video of her sitting in the stroller~ Excuse the spit up at the end (SORRY!) But there is a cute smile in there so I just couldn't resist!




Top 5 things that I love about Paige:
(there are too many to count, so I figured that I would just write down 5):

1. Her amazing smile and how it can make my day all better.
(I went into check on her this morning as she was sleeping, and she opened her eyes and when she saw me leaning in over the crib she got the biggest smile on her face and it just melted me! :) It was so precious)
2. Her Laugh
3. She is starting to make talking noises, and she will try to carry on a conversation with you.
(It is so cute, Scott gets her really going. ~he talks to her in "baby talk"~ We say something to her and she will respond. SO CUTE! Wednesday after Young Women's we had a board meeting... and Paige talked almost the whole way through. It was sooo cute! Even some of the ladies had to stop and laugh at her cause she was being just so darn cute!)
4. The spirit that she brings into our home.
5. Holding her in my arms and cuddling with her.

On another note... Wednesday Night I had Young Women's and Scott was working so I took Paige with me. It was such an inspiring activity. It was a combined activity and the Beehives were in charge. They asked a gentleman to come and speak on journal writing and how important it is for your posterity and for yourself to have these records. He asked us to think about whether we had ever kept a journal, and unfortunately I have never been good about consistently writing in one. He stated that his passion for journal writing started when his brother sent him a packet in the mail. Enclosed was a book of remembrance that his grandfather had written, who had past away only 2 years previously. When he opened it up it appeared that his Grandfather had started, but had never finished. He read what was enclosed and was swept away into his Grandfather's past... it was incredibly interesting, only it ended too soon because it was only a few pages long. He wished that his Grandfather had continued to write so that he would better know who he was. So, he set a goal that he would write about his own life so that his posterity would know who he was. He has completed this record and has continued to write every single day. He stated that he now has about 45 journals full. Isn't that incredible!?! He writes about all of his daily activities, those of his children, grandchildren, and himself. He also puts in his daily entries how he saw the hand of the Lord in his life. He stated that this helps him notice even the little things in his everyday life that are examples of how much Heavenly Father loves each and everyone of us. He read to us a few of his entries, and oh how fun it was to listen about his life. He did state however that his daughter keeps a journal through blogging, and I thought... Hey! I'm doing that. (kind of) I just need to be better. So, I have set a goal for myself that I will post more so that we have a better family record. Anyway, just something that touched me this week...

Paige's Photo Shot

Ok, so it has taken me a few weeks, but I finally am posting some pictures of Paige that our friend Bethany took for us~ They turned out so cute!

This one is probably one of my favorites of Paige... It's a really neat shot!

I love this picture... just goes to show that from this point on at least one of our children in every picture will be pulling a funny face!

Ok so this is one of my other favorites. I love this one of Paige... this is Grandma Scott's favorite!

Another favorite...

This one has got Paige written all over it, one of the faces that Paige is famous for ~

This is the only picture of Paige smiling that we have! Love it when she smiles... just makes me melt every time. She is getting in this really fun stage (well every stage has been fun) where she has started talking to us, laughing and smiling. SO CUTE~

She wasn't so happy when we took the pictures, unfortunately

Love this one with Scott holding her

I thought this one was super cool with the black and white and her clothes in color... very neat!

She looks so long in this one~
Ok so like every picture is my favorite! But when my favorite person is in all of them how can I not love every single one... Adorable! So, have I offically earned obsessed Mommy status yet? ;)

Our wonderful little Family...

K... so this one is not so good of Scott and me, but I absolutely love the look that is on her face in this one!!! That's probably enough pictures... there were lots more that I really liked but I'm sure that everone doesn't need to see every single picture that was taken.

Ok, maybe just Paige's Grandma and Mommy :)

Blessing Day!!

Paige Krystine Willoughby was blessed on the first Sunday of the month, August 2nd. What a wonderful experience! I cannot express the love that filled my heart on that Sunday. Just thinking about what an incredible blessing we had come into our lives on June 27th 2009 filled my soul with such love and gratitude for what an amazing gift God has given us. Paige has been the absolute best thing that has ever happened in my life (next to marrying the man of my dreams ;) I love being a mother and wouldn't trade it for the world. I don't know how I ever lived life, or breathed without her! I just couldn't help but think of the love that filled my heart when they laid her in my arms for the first time, or the way that Scott looked at her after she was born. I tasted a little piece of heaven that day. I knew that I would "love" her more than anything, but what I experienced was so much more than that... I experienced true pure love! I now understand the pure love that our Heavenly father has for each and everyone of his children. I am so thankful for my knowledge of the gospel and that we can be together as a family forever!

Paige in her beautiful blessing dress... She looked so cute. She really didn't like being in it though... I think that it must have been really itchy. (I don't blame her, I wouldn't want to wear it either :) Oh, what mother's do to their children to make them look cute!)

~ Pictures with the Family~

We had such a wonderful day~ We had lots of family come to the blessing...

Mommy & Daddy holding Paige, by the end of the day she was pretty grouchy... so she doesn't look to happy in this one. So Mommy was feeling pretty guilty for making her sweet little girl wear that itchy dress so we changed her into something a little more comfortable after church. To tell you the truth, to make it worse... we had to put her back in the dress cause I had forgotten to take any pictures of her in it, poor thing and she thought that she was safe, think again Paige! ;)

Spendin' some time with Uncle Dustin. (I love this one, super cute!)

Here's Scott's Brother's Family. The kids were so cute taking turns holding her. They drove all the way from Arizona! And Scott's sister even drove up too, from Utah. We are so blessed to have such supportive families! We just wanted to say thanks to everyone in each of our families for making such an incredible effort to come and visit Paige after she was born and for the blessing.

Paige with her cousin Mason... I absolutely love this picture. Mason was so cute with her, he just adores his little cousin. He always wants to hold her :)


Another lovely picture with Mom and Dad... and yes she is crying in this one. She doesn't cry that much (of course she just conviently looks grumpy when we take out the camera...)

~WE LOVE YOU PAIGE!~