Talia 2 Year Old Pictures:

Our beautiful girl is 2 years old:

Girls weekend, mccord in Seattle/Vancouver

Friday night:

- chasing and hide and seek

- Hair bows and dresses

- sitting on kitchen floor eating melted chocolate with our fingers

- tootsie rolls and running in the front yard.

- bubble blowing

- shared ice cream cup

Cheap Date Nights:

Lately we've been doing a lot of free or very cheap date nights. I thought I'd post some of the things that we've been doing. Maybe it'll help us in the future if we need ideas for free/cheap date nights.

1) Temple Night!

2) Rom-Com Appetizer Date:

3- HeroClix battle. Our teams working together to defeat a big villain, rather than killing each other we worked together. :-)

4- indoor S'mores with friends and YouTube videos. 

5- ❤️Experimentation Night of Love.❤️

6- Pizza Pie Cafe ($5 buffet coupons)

7- Big Bubble wands with Talia for the first time.

Ideas to try:

- Board Games

- "Play like a child date"

- Nurf gun fight

- picnic at "the peace gardens"

- reinact the first, 2nd, or 3rd date.

- do what your parents did for their first date. 

- $5 Karaoke

Mother's Day 2014

Golden Spike National Park

8 Year Anniversary

McCord's dad, Paul, always gets his mom, Kandi, a bouquet of flowers for their anniversary. McCord did the same for me this year. The pink rose represents Talia and there are 8 daisies. One daisy for each year we've been married.

I thought I'd post this to show how lucky I am to have such an awesome husband. We love each other more and more as time goes on. We truly are a great team!

(For our anniversary, we are going to Promintory Point to celebrate. Post to come later)

Yard work - bringing us together

After asking neighbors to borrow their lawn mower for 2 months, we broke down and bought the cheapest lawn mower we could find with a bag ($200). Happy Birthday to me, Mother's Day, and Father's Day.

We don't have any tools to do anything around the yard so I am proud to present my work of weeding the flower bed with a kitchen tablespoon and a glass plastic pitcher of water.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It's amazing what a little cleaning can do. I didn't plant any flowers or anything, just weeded and cleaned it up.

McCord has done the same with our grass. :-)

We're so proud!

Talia's Birthday 2 years old

Lisa's 28 on the 28th!

My brithday this year was just wonderful, as it is every year.  McCord is so awesome and makes every day special, especially birthdays.  He bought me some small gifts (sunglasses, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. cup) that I got on my birthday.  He also arranged for babysitting and we went to Tucanos Brazillian Grill for dinner with Tristan & Sarah, and Cory and LeAnn Pehrson (from the Woodledge ward).  It was so awesome.  I got phone calls from everyone on both sides of the family.  It was awesome.  Family party was the sunday after my birthday. Big thanks to all those presents:

- new outfit for spring with blue capris and fun stripes orange and blue shirt from Mom & Dad. My mom also made me beautiful sunflower valance for my kitchen window.

- Downeast gift card from Justin & Alesa

- $ towards my lawn mower from D & Britt.

- calendar for 2014 from Mauri

- Time Out For Women tix from Courtni and Kandi.

- gardening gloves and new spade, small rake and small pruners for my yard work and sore hands. From Angie's fam.

- Jo got me a new doorbell. Jared cooked me dinner and brought me a flower and cleaned my kitchen including dishes. 

Feel loved by ALL the family! I am so so blessed. Love to all my family!

I got some lovely emails from people I decided to post for journal entry reasons:
Email from my hilarious brother Nate, who is currently on a mission:

Dear Lisa Mae,

 

I love you more than a fat boy loves a twinkie, more than McCord loves Daredevil, more than Angie loves dancing, more than Adam loves dogs, more than Jared loves Lacrosse, more than Joe loves drumming and more than I love Ultimate.

 

True Story.

 

You are the best sister I could ever ask for Lisa. You are my best bud and Im stoked to hang out with you when I get back home. I love my sister Lisa and I brag to people here about how we never got in fights. You da best! I always remember your birthday because its 8 days from mine and you're 8 years older than me. So... this should be Happy 28th!!

 

Love you Lisa!

 

- Nate

 

P.S. I made you an acrostic poem. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

 

L oving

I ncredible

S uper cool sister

A bs of steel

 

Here is the lovely email that I got from my mom, she is so awesome:

 

Happy Birthday Lisa Mae!!

 

 

I LOVE YOU!!!  I am proud of you.  Thanks for being the loyal, tender and loving daughter that you are!  I think you are beginning to see how much a mother can love her child and just have the most sincere desire for that child to be happy and have the things she needs to become who God created her to become.

Now as an adult child, my ideal for you remains the same.  I wish for you to be happy and have all the things you need to become who God created you to be.  I see you making great strides forward and nothing brings me more joy.  

 

I will never forget the feeling of holding you in my arms for the first time, admiring your dainty features, long finger, tiny toes and beautiful eyes and face.  You were born beautiful and still are just as beautiful.  I hope you will always remember the meaning of your name.  Lisa= consecrated to God.  This I know will help you draw near unto Him and help you to develop an even deeper love for Him as you consecrate your life to Him.  I challenge you to read your patriachal blessing today or this week and feel and remember what God has given you and desires for you in this life.  

 

Hope you have a Happy Day on this day of your birth.

 

All my Love, 

MOM

EASTER 2014

We are blessed to have this wonderful time of year. To remember our Savior and all he has done for us is truly a reason to reflect, repent, and be grateful with full hearts and full faith.

This Easter weekend was full of so many activities.

1- Zoo with Grandma Trudy and Grandpa

2- Easter Bunny Morning:

3- Easter Sunday with the Days:

4- Playing with cousins, trampoline, and much much more.

5- she got to go to the soft play tunnels at the Fun Park.

6- visit the countryside and see a cow farm complete with dozens of baby calfs up close.

8- Baby animal days with cousins and grandparents:

What an Easter we had! Just so blessed to have had a good time on Easter bunny day as well as Easter Sunday. 

Close with an awesome picture for posterity reasons. Happy Easter 2014 to ALL!

ComiCon Salt Lake (FanXpo)

San Francisco & San Jose Weekend

SL Lions Opening Weekend!

Talia, 23 months (Apr 2014)

Baby Book Entry (Talia 23 months):

STATS: 23 lbs (20%), height (30%)

1- Moved to a twin bed with ease

2- Loves coloring, stickers, bubbles.

3- understands English and Spanish

4- Favorite TV shows: Curious George, Sofia the First, Dora (English & Spanish)

5- Favorite Movie: Tinkerbell movies, Peter Pan, Frozen.

6- Favorite activities: Playing outside! "Gofer game". Slides. Dirt. Bubbles.

7- Favorite color: blue? (She likes the blue crayons)

8- Favorite toys: San Jose Fish, Curious George animal, Mega Block Legos, anything to climb on.

9- current words: bubbles, ball, moo, sock, shoe, mama/dada, car, grandpa, star, George, Dora, Nala, doctor, house, bath, uh oh, eyes, hat, snow.Copa, casa.

FIRST WORD (English/Spanish): Dada/papa.

10- Behavioral: clever, forgiving, cries (only for 3 seconds), obedient, sensitive to guilt trips. Not much time out/spanking needed. Only takes 2 "no's" and then she doesn't do it again. Folds arms nice and eyes for prayers. Brings blankets to parents when we are sick or cold. Loving! Gives hugs and kisses ALL the time. And sometimes to total strangers/visitors (like the missionaries). Gives high fives and "chocola's" to everyone at the doctors office waiting room before leaving.

11- competitive side: enjoys watching the horse races on the Sofia show. She claps her hands and yells "Go go" to the TV. She also does this for Jazz games and other sporting events. :-)

Talia 22 months - March 2013

Texas Roadhouse, Miscarriage #1:

So lucky we got 2 family activities this month. Our family activity was a celebratory dinner @ Texas Roadhouse. McCord and I got the specialty steaks with mushrooms. Talía got a lot of peanuts, Mac & cheese and mashed potatoes (which she loved and it lasted a whole week). She also got a special lemonade and we got virgin margaritas.

Personal journal entry:

Dinner was to celebrate the + test of Baby #2. This baby ended up being a "failed pregnancy" that was finalized on April 10, 2014 (9 weeks). What a great learning experience it was for our family both physically and spiritually. We have felt blessed to have the love and support of family (both sides) and most of all our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ! Our faith and love has only grown stronger through the experience!

Amy - Broken Into, Illness struck our family

Our bad luck with cars continue...Amy was broken into last night. Thankfully no damage was done to the car, but the perpetrator left everything in a complete disaster. Everything from the trunk was stolen including our 60 piece Emergency Car Kit that we got this Christmas. Most important thing that was taken was McCord's blue bin full of his Ultimate equipment, discs, and gear. We're very sad about loosing that bin and it may cost us $300 to replace.

In other sad news: illness has struck our household. Talia was sick and throwing up in top of cutting her incisor teeth last week. Yesterday McCord caught the flu and has been in bed all day. He doesn't get sick much but when he does it's BAD and cometely incapacitates him. I have no time to get sick because I am too busy with work and taking care of the other sick family members. Prayers that I don't get sick because that's the last thing we need right now. Also prayers for McCord and Talia so they can be well soon. And curses upon the villain that stole our stuff from our car. 😉

MARCH 21ST: update on "musical cars":

Last 3 months we've been playing "musical cars". We've had 3 new cars, one crashed, one we sold then repossessed for nonpayment, one we bought and then sold again. = "Musical Cars"! 

Amy is now SOLD! We paid $1630 for her and sold her for $1250. We sold her to get our '02 Camry back, which has had $3500+ work done on her. Hopefully we can get trade in value for zippy (yes the buyers fell through for zippy) and then plus the money for Amy plus our tax return and get our good, nice, reliable, fixed up Camry back. Prayers being said and fingers crossed...

Hogle Zoo - Family Activity!

We went to Hogle Zoo (SLC) for our Family Activity in March. It was super awesome! We went in the morning so all the animals were active and most of them being fed. It was so much fun to see all the fun varieties of animals and see Talia's reaction to them all.

Talia's favorite animals: monkeys/baby monkey, elephants, peacocks. 

McCord's favorite animals: hawk that a trainer carried around we got to see up close, rhinos, baby elephant

Lisa's favorite animals: baby elephant, monkeys, and all the animals that were awake. :-)