Christmas, New Years, Crawling and my new obsession!

Yes, it has been awhile since I've updated the blog. I'm sure you will understand why after reading this post.

Christmas was wonderful this year. We stuck around town and spent time with family and friends. It was a very relaxing Christmas but also a lot of fun. McKaylee loved all the paper and boxes, of course, but she liked her presents as well. Here are a few pictures of her very first Christmas.

Thanks Lisa and Lance for the hat and treats!
Bradley cousins.
Christmas morning

McKaylee loved the Christmas tree! She liked looking at the pretty lights and playing with the beads.

The week after Christmas we headed up to the Hatch's family cabin for New Years. It was very, very, very cold (-20° at times!). It was a lot of fun though. McKaylee put up with getting bundled up and riding in on the snowmobile. The ride put her right to sleep. She did really well up there except for sleeping....she kind of wanted her bed. We played lots of games, read books and of course welcomed in the new year!

Here are Trevor and Dad welcoming in the New Year!
The champion snowmobiler! He wanted to go all the time no matter what the temperature outside! Mean Uncle Trevor made him wait to go out until it was at least 0°F.

McKaylee loved her bath up there. She had so much fun splashing in the water and was the entertainment for the night.

Getting ready for bed and reading stories.
The oh-so-long and cold trail to the outhouse.

Thanks for the fun trip Mom and Dad Hatch!

Well, McKaylee is going crazy with her new found freedom. She has finally figured out how to crawl and it has been the greatest thing ever. She is soooo much more self-entertained now. She loves finding toys, following you around the house, climbing up on things....playing, playing, playing! We are still finding places around the house that have not quite been baby proofed, but I'm sure we'll find them all eventually. She has a funny froggy crawl sometimes as she tries to put her feet underneath her instead of her knees, but most of the time she's got it down pretty good. Here's a cute video of one of the the first times she crawled.



And now for my new obsession and the reason this blog hasn't been updated in months! For my birthday last November I asked my sister-in-law Alisha to teach me how to crochet. Little did I know what I was getting myself into! If there is such thing as an unhealthy obsession with crochetting, I think I have reached that point, but I am having so much fun! Here are some of the things I've created:

Mary-Jane baby shoes.
Baby boots.
Ear-warming head bands.
Hat
Headband with flowers
Blanket for McKaylee. It's not quite finished yet, but you can see the basics of it.

I have had so much fun making all kinds of things, and I'm not sure that my appetite will be filled until I've tried my hand at everything! I want to try something a little more complicated next, I'm thinking of a skirt or dress for McKaylee. Thankfully there's all kinds of things to try and make out there. Thanks Alisha for teaching me! I've had so much fun with it, even though it consumes all my free time.

And just to make you smile.....

6 Months Already!

I can't believe my little McKaylee is already 6 months old....and I'm late with this post, she's actually a week older than that. Incredible....it's hard to believe how much she's already learned. It seems like daily she is doing something new. Just in the last week she has mastered sitting up (even in the bathtub!), getting up on her hands and knees, and scooting backwards. She gets really frustrated when she starts going backwards, it is very contradictory to where she would like to go....the toys just get farther and farther away....

Here is an update on her stats from her 6 month doctors appointment. She is 25 1/2 inches long (30th percentile) and 13 lbs 7 oz (10th percentile). Her head has finally made the charts too and is in the 10th percentile as well. Her weight might be able to keep up with her height if she would hold still for more than 2 minutes, but she is just constantly moving!!! She does not like to sit still.

Well, my incredible sister-in-law Maria helped me get some pictures of McKaylee the day after her 6 month birthday. Unfortunately McKaylee was a little sick and kind of tired that day so we didn't get any smiles, but Maria showed her incredible camera and editing skills and we got some really cute ones.





This is what she looked like much of the time though....thus the red nose. Poor girl, I'm such a mean mom for making her take pictures. She will be grateful when she is older though, right? I love the abbandonded teddy bear in this picture.


Just for record's sake though, here are some pictures of her beautiful, oh so slobbery, smile.



McKaylee is such a joy to have in our family. She is a very determined little girl and I can already see her strong personality poking through. She is not going to be one to sit back and let the world move around her, she will be in the for-front moving the world along. She is so active and never stops moving (except when Baby Einstein is on). I'm pretty sure she will be crawling before Christmas and then we will really be in trouble trying to keep up with this girl. All I can say is watch out boy cousins because when she's in the room it'll be her way or the highway!
McKaylee loves to take baths, play with her blocks, read stories, play peak-a-boo, talk, be an indian, play with her binky, stand up, go for walks and sleep on her daddy's chest. We love you McKaylee!!!!!!!!!

Laughing! and the Pumpkin Patch

I didn't think they day would ever come, but we are finally starting to get some laughs out of McKaylee. They are rare and far between, but so much fun when they do come. We love you McKaylee!


We also took McKaylee to her first Pumpkin Patch with all the cousins this week. It was so much fun. McKaylee's favorite part was the corn stalks. She loved how crinkly they were and of course, how delicious they tasted.






This weekend we also took McKaylee on her first camping trip to Crystal Hot Springs. We took my siblings, Bryson and Kellilyn with us and it was so much fun. We took the family tent trailer and it worked great. McKaylee loved the hot springs and did really well with the whole camping thing, until the trains came by at 4 am and blew their horns. She wasn't so happy about that. We weren't brave enough to get pictures at the hot springs, but here's some at the campsite.

I said I was hungry a'nuf to eat a horse....

I said I was hungry a 'nuf to eat a horse, I didn't say nothin' about no veg'abuls.

Swimming, Football and Rolling over!

Well, we have had a busy weekend this last week, especially McKaylee! It's showing today too, she is just sleeping and sleeping! Hopefully she'll still sleep tonight :). The most exciting (or frightening) thing is McKaylee has taken her first step to being mobile. Last week she decided she was ready to roll over and she just hasn't stopped doing it. She only goes from her stomach to her back, but I know the whole 360 degree roll over isn't too far away. I thought for sure she'd do it once on accident and then probably not come upon the idea again for a day or two but oh no, she figured it out and rolled over and over and over. She probably rolled over 6 times on the first day! I was shocked. Now she does it almost on command. She really doesn't like being on her stomach and now I'll never get her to stay there for more than 30 seconds before she's rolled to her back.....it sounds like the end of tummy-time to me. Hopefully she'll still figure out how to crawl, maybe when she figures out how to get the rest of the way around. Here's a movie of her big move:


Friday night we took McKaylee to the rec center for the first time to go swimming! She loves her bath and doesn't seem to mind water at all, so we thought she would enjoy the pool. We started out slow, just putting her little feet in the shallow water but she seemed to like it and two minutes later we were in up to her waist! "Enjoy" is kind of an understatement of how it went.....she loved it!! We put her in the water and she just smiled and splashed and played. She was fun to watch. She especially loved going around in the river and just playing in the water while dad, Scott and I took turns on the water slide.



After playing for a while though, she got cold and so we wrapped her in her bathrobe and she fell right asleep, all worn out. So we put our feet in the hot tub while she took a snooze.



Our next big adventure was the University of Utah football game! Trevor's friend, Christian Cox got us tickets for the game in the "parent's" section. Wow, I have never had such good tickets! We were on the 40 yard line 5 rows up. It was amazing. We could actually see the players and not just little action figures running up and down the field. We were brave and decided to take McKaylee with us, with the resolve that if she wasn't good, I would just take laps around the stadium. Well, she didn't seem to mind the game at all. She loved all the lights and movements and was actually really good the whole time. She took a couple naps, played around, ate a bottle and was just the perfect little Ute fan. Everyone kept commenting on how cute she was, I am really glad we took her. Here's our little Ute!



Check out that view! Oh, and Big T Thurl Bailey was sitting just a few rows in front of us, that was pretty cool!.

And I just have to throw this one last picture in because it's so cute....I think she's going to end up like me, sleeping anywhere, anyway and anyhow she wants when she'd tired....

Three Month Pictures

I'm a little bit slow getting these pictures posted, McKaylee is already 3 1/2 months, but we were a little late getting the pictures taken and then I wanted to test out my Photoshop skills and see what I could do with the pictures. I honestly had too much fun playing around with them. I had my friend Anne come and take the pictures, she did an amazing job and just had so much fun with McKaylee. McKaylee wasn't the biggest fan of getting put in all kinds of places, but thankfully she gave us quite a few really cute ones amongst all her screaming. Well, happy 3 months McKaylee!!