Turning Over A New Leaf

I have decided that I really need to start keeping up my blog again. It's a good way to keep a record of  our lives.

A brief recap since my last post:

We are living in Texas! We have been here for about a year and a half now. We bought a home in April and really like our neighborhood. The warmer climate was really different at first, but we were spoiled quickly and don't miss the ice and snow too much any more!

Mark is still working as a geologist for XTO energy and loving his job.

On 12-15-12, we welcomed our daughter, Rachel Anne, into our family. She was 7 lb 14 oz, and 20 inches long. She is such a blessing in our lives. We love to watch her grow and change every day. Last week at her 2 month appointment she was already 11 lbs 15 oz and 23 inches long!

Rachel and I joined a local moms group and have been enjoying meeting other moms and kids from our area.

Here are a few pictures of our beautiful little one!

Grammy

I need a break from the unpacking... from the overwhelming feeling that this move has given me in so many ways, good and bad...  I've been thinking a lot about my "Grammy" lately.  She means so much to me.  I just want to share a little bit about her and about why she means so much to me.

1. When Amanda and I were little, she came to the farm every summer and watched us while mom and dad were in the field.  She cooked for us, cleaned the house, and made sure that we didn't get into too much trouble. : )  Some of my earliest memories of her are that she loved to watch "Sewing with Nancy" and "This Old House" on PBS every afternoon.  My mom has told me about one night when she and my dad farmed early into the morning to try and get all the wheat in the ground before it rained.  Grammy waited up for them and had dinner waiting when they came home.  She wouldn't have considered anything else.   She will go on parts runs for my parents when they can't do it themselves because they are so busy on the farm... also, she always does call it "the farm."  To me, it's just home, but to her, it's always "the farm."
2. She has always said that she would like to do something with interior design.  She says that's what she'd do if she had gone to college, always followed by "but I never did like school."  What she doesn't realize is that she has done a lot of things to help realize that dream.  She has made curtains for Amanda and my room at home and given us things of her own to help make our own homes more beautiful.  Twice, without being asked, she has made a new valance for the window above my mom's kitchen sink.  In addition to all of this, her home is beautiful.  It's simple, but beautiful.  She pays such attention to detail and it shows.  She ties in all of the little elements of a room and makes it look outstanding.  She changes her shower curtain & bath towels a couple of times a year to go with the season.  I have always liked this.
3. If I am staying at her house and I leave my brush out on the bathroom counter, she will clean it out for me.  It's probably one of her pet peeves to have a brush with hair stuck in it.  It's something she's just always done and if she ever didn't do it, I'd wonder what was wrong!
4. Grammy is a fantastic sewer.  My mom always says that her sewing teacher in high school would have called Grammy a "perfect seamstress."  She has mended clothes for our entire family too many times to count.  She recently mended a pair of shorts and a shirt for me, and made me some pillow cases to match a comforter that my mom and I made when I was in high school.  She wouldn't accept my money when I offered it.  She altered my prom dresses and she made my wedding veil.  All it takes is a phone call to say "I was wondering if you could..." and she'll always say "Oh yeah, I could probably do that."  She also makes a lot of her own clothes.  She makes beautiful blouses and jackets for herself.  I wish I had just a fraction of the talent for sewing that she does.  She's not afraid to conquer any sewing project.
5. Her flower gardens have always been so beautiful.  I don't have one ounce of green thumb in me, but she can make those plants look amazing.  The last five years or so, she's lived in an apartment in Cheyenne and so she doesn't have a place there to plant her garden.  My parents have asked her to plant flowers and tomatoes in our flower beds next to the house.  Every time I come home, I look forward to seeing what it looks like.  I can see her attention to detail in the placement of every plant.
6. She has always supported my cousins, Amanda and I in whatever we did.  She has literally attended countless basketball games, volleyball games, track meets, concerts, birthday parties and graduations of her grandchildren.  When I was in high school, she lived about an hour and a half away from my school.  She would spend the night with us so that she could go see me sing in a concert.  That meant so much to me!  She continued to support my singing in college by coming to concerts in Laramie.  She has been at all of the important events in my life.
7. She loves some good gossip : ).  I can always catch up on what's been going on after talking to her for a bit.  
8. She cuts her own beautiful, naturally curly white hair.
9. She's always at the center of any family get together.  She will make the phone calls, organize the date, time, place, and what each person is supposed to bring.  That's not a job for everyone, but she's always been good at it.  She organized a get together this summer simply for the reason that Mark and I were leaving for Texas and she didn't know when we'd all be able to get together again.  That was great.
10. As I've gotten older, I've really come to appreciate her in a different way than I ever did before.  The summer after I graduated high school, I lived with her and worked in Torrington.  Ever sense then I think we've been closer.  We'll call each other at least a few times a month to catch up or ask each other something.  I stop by her place whenever I can.  
11. Something else I admire about her is her ability to speak her mind and stand up for what she thinks, even if it's not popular with everyone.  She knows who she is and what she thinks.  She makes me smile.  She tells it like it is.  She loves me and I know she worries about me, because she'll always ask me to call her when I get to where I'm going and if I forget, she'll call me.  I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to become close to my Grammy.

In the Midst of Moving.......

Oh my goodness, LOOK at all of these boxes!  Surely this can't all be ours?!  I can't even imagine what it would be like to move with kids!

I'll blog about it all in a couple of weeks, after we get there!

P.S.  I don't envy anyone when they have to move, and that's especially true when it's us!

Cleaning Out the Camera Cobwebs (Part 2)

Amanda and I had some fun when Mark and I were home around Christmas making a blanket fort using the couch and some chairs.  Here are some pictures of our finished product : )

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On one of our trips to Grand Junction, Mark and I took a drive up on the Colorado National Monument.  It's so beautiful, and from the top you can see the whole valley.

Cleaning Out the Camera Cobwebs (Part 1)

I have a lot of pictures that I want to post, but most of them are a little old and I wasn't sure I wanted to make separate posts of a lot of past events, and so I'm going to share these photos in a couple of posts to fill in some gaps in my inconsistent blogging. 

We had a nice visit with Jeremy, Susie, and Xander the middle of March.

He wasn't a fan of the green beans!  : )

Silly boy...

Mark thought he'd try to give Xander to the bear at Bass Pro Shops : )

We dressed him up like a little bandit.

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A little while after our visit with the Sheffield's, my good friend Shanda, her husband Royal, and their daughter Emryn were here for a friend's wedding and they stayed with us.  Shanda and I went to church together and then she moved away when we were 16.  It was so nice to catch up with her and spend some time with her family!

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We have been seeing a lot of our friends and their little ones.  We've also been to visit our other Godson, Wynter.  He was born on Valentine's Day and he's already so big!