Photo Op

So we have a good friend that lives above us that is just amazing. She is the one who took our family pictures this last time. She also crocheted a scarf for me and then taught me how to do it! The brown one is the one she made for me and I made the white one.

Anyway, she is so great and watches Steven whenever we need her to. One of the times she was watching him, she just randomly took some pictures of him, and they turned out SO adorable. He is obsessed with the red bike he's on. Every time we go outside (even if we're just going to the car) he runs out and yells, "bike!" and runs towards the stairwell where the bike is kept (since it actually doesn't belong to us). It's cute, but also a little inconvenient since we don't always have time to play with the bike, or sometimes there are other kids using it. Oh well...

This last picture is one we just took yesterday on the way home from buying Steven new shoes (since his feet are so fat that we seriously tried on at least 10 pairs before finding some that actually fit him).

Videos

So I wanted to post a few videos that we've taken recently. This first one goes along with my last post. The really funny part is the girls that are behind me squealing about what a "perfect" boy he is. I thought it was hilarious. Also, I don't think I talked about his hat when I posted the last pictures, but it's pretty much the coolest thing ever. My parents brought it back from Ireland for Steven, and this boy loves it. Seriously. As we're walking out the door he points to it, grunts a lot, and then points to his head. He won't go out without it.

 This next video shows how good Steven's gotten at talking! ok, not really. He really has gotten so much better at it (he can say mom, dad, light, hot, mine, juice, please, eye, and probably others I'm forgetting), but he's gotten in the habit of, whenever he can't say a word we want him to, just saying "but[t]" instead...

Steven also always wants to see everything that's going on. Because he's still so little, he figured out that if he climbed up on a chair, not only could he see a lot more, but he could get into a lot more stuff too! One night while we were making lasagna, he wanted to see what I was doing, and then proceeded to "help"...

Life is wonderful, as always, and Steven just makes me laugh all the time. There are a few other things he's been doing that we couldn't catch videos of. One is not eating dinner unless the food comes from one of our bowls/plates. Because of this, if we get him his own bowl, we have to take his spoonful and put it in our bowl to trick him into thinking it came from there. Then, when we're done eating, we pour his bowl into ours, and he eats the rest of it just fine. Another thing Steven has gotten really good at is diaper changing time (which is such a relief). I can tell him to got get a diaper and he'll go to his room, get one, and then come back and lay on the floor in front of me so that I can change him. It's so great. He also loves getting in the shower with us, so whenever we turn the water on, he comes running in the bathroom, tries to take off his shirt, and when that doesn't work, and lays on the floor and just points to his pants/diaper and grunts, indicating that we need to take them off. It's adorable, but slightly inconvenient when we really just wanted to take a shower solo... I'm sure there are a million other things, but that's what I can think of right now, so that'll have to do!

Part 2

So here is part 2 of all the catching up I have to do...
The week of Thanksgiving, America, Tyler, TJ and I went to VEGAS to see The Lion King! It was so much fun. TJ and I had never really been there before (more than just passing through) so we decided to go for 2 nights so we could do more than just see the show. The Lion King was still definitely the best part, but we did lots of other fun stuff, too. One thing we were sure to make time for was a little shopping. While doing so, I needed to stop by Sephora to get some make-up. While in there, America and I saw a bunch of false eyelashes and decided we needed to get some to wear to the show that night. Tyler then convinced us we should get crazy ones. After much debate I decided, "what better place to do something crazy like this than vegas??" So... we went a little crazy... (our camera batteries, of course, died when we got there, so I apologize for the qualities of the following pictures, taken on our phones)

We ended up snipping off most of the excess feathers even before the show that night, but it was still fun :) Another awesome thing about going to The Lion King there was that our seat were in the very first row. TJ especially loved that because he had an amazing view of the pit. He might have spent almost as much time watching the people in the pit as he did watching the actual performance.

Right around that same time, America and Tyler actually moved in with us. We were a little nervous about there being enough space, but it ended up working great and we LOVED having them with us. We were so so sad when they left at the end of the semester. Steven loved having them around too... especially Lloyd

When Christmas time rolled around, we didn't really want to set up the tree since we weren't going to actually be home for christmas. We also didn't think a toddler and a dog would do very well with the tree/ornaments within reach. We wanted to put something up, though, so we decided to just put up the top of the tree (set on our kitchen table), some lights around the ceiling, and a few other choice items that we couldn't live without.

We also decided that we should make a trip to the Hogle zoo to see Zoo Lights. We had done this with Kelly and her family before when they had been in AZ, and didn't really think about the obvious difference there would be between the two - the weather. We still had a good time, though :)

America gave Steven her gloves to keep his hands warm which is why he looks like a monster...

We spent Christmas in IN with TJ's family and had a great time! TJ got to go to a Colts game with his brother and Dad for his birthday, we celebrated Randy's birthday a little early, and just had lots of good quality time together. I, of course, forgot my camera, and so these are the only picture I have, taken on TJ's phone.

Steven has all of a sudden become sporadically interested in watching shows on TV. He has never seem interested before, but one morning when I was getting ready, I came out of the bathroom to find this, even though the TV had been off when I had gone into the shower...

And it was turned on to Sesame Street and everything!

Also, Steven is becoming more and more musical every day! He loves playing on the piano that we are lucky to have in our home until the end of the summer (we're watching it for some people that left for the semester), and is getting better and better at playing the drums!

With Morgan and Conner, the kids of one of our friends from the ward - and Morgan loves to play the "pLano"

These last pictures are actually taken on stage with TJ's drum set he plays with the Young Ambassadors. I think Steven could be part of the show, don't you? :)

So I dropped the ball again.... sorry. I told TJ today that I need him to make sure that I have time on sundays where I can do some blogging, because otherwise it probably won't get done. This is obviously something I just really struggle with. So, because there's so much to catch up on, I think I might break it up into 2 posts. I don't want to overwhelm all of you.
So first, there was Halloween. It was really fun and Steven went trick-or-treating for the first time! He was super cute and even though he obviously couldn't say "trick-or-treat" at the doors, he would always sign thank you afterwards. He dressed up as a lumberjack and TJ even made him a little hatchet he could carry around. I had to dress-up also (for work) and so I decided I wanted to be a lumber[jane?] too! It was actually a really fun costume (I don't like costumes that are too fussy) and I got a little prize at work for it :)

We also went to a haunted house again this year. It wasn't quite as good as last year, but it was still really fun. We went with Katie, Mckay, America, and Tyler so it was a fun group :)

 The other thing I'm gonna cover in this post is our family pictures. They turned out soo good! My friend Nicole who lives above us took them and she did an amazing job. I think it helped that Steven loves her, so he smiled at her a lot. We had gotten some taken back in May, I think, but we didn't have the rights to those, so we couldn't use them for christmas cards or anything. So, it was a good excuse to get some new ones, and I'm so happy we did! Sorry, there are a lot I'm putting up, but these aren't ever 1/4 of all of them, so it was hard to choose favorites!