Quick, Blog Before the Holidays Come!

It's starting to become "that" time of the year...the holidays.  Don't get me wrong, I love the holiday season, but it's hard.  Before December has even started, almost every weekend is booked.  I'm getting stressed just thinking about it! 

So, to combat the stress, here are some cute pictures and updates on our family. :)

This picture is of Tyler teaching Kaylee to do the dishes.  This was one of her favorite nights in a long time and it was fun to watch her and her Baba (Daddy) interact and have fun together.

This week Kaylee decided she no longer wanted to wear headbands on her head, she wanted to have a belt like her Baba.  She couldn't get it all the way up though and it stayed that way until I noticed before changing her diaper.

Kaylee was Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween.  Tyler and I were gone during her first Halloween experience--a trunk-or-treat at my parent's ward.  We were in Utah where Tyler was defending his thesis.  But, she went with my parents and was apparently very scared of all the costumes and things.  We took her trick-or-treating on Halloween night though and she had a blast.  After every home she would see what candy she got and try to eat it.  It took a lot of persuading for her not to eat it all on the street.  When she got home she had quite a pile (at least for an almost two year old) and she was super excited.  She did not want to go to bed because there was too much candy around!  For Halloween, we also had a small family party with my family.  We did one of those spooky feeling activities, I don't know how else to describe it.  We had my niece feel things blindfolded and told her they were scary things.  She was grossed out, but had a good time in the end!

Tyler is finally all the way done with his thesis!  Woohoo!  It's been a long time coming, but we are finally there.  It feels like we have started real life now.  We have a cute baby, a house, Tyler has a real job and I work a few hours from home once in a while.  We are doing well and so excited to see what the next step in life will be for us.

Well, that's all I can think of for now. I'm putting up some of my crafting on the blog, so don't forget to look in the craftiness section.  I've been having a lot of fun!

Fill a House with Love and it Becomes a Home

A little over two weeks ago we bought a house!  Yay!  Tyler and I both thought the process of finding and purchasing a home would take forever and we therefore planned on living with my parents for a few months...or more.  But, the first weekend we were in Boise we went house hunting and we fell in love with the first house we saw (one that we had also been eyeing online before we even got to Boise).  Every other house we looked at we compared to that one.  After another day or so of looking and praying, we decided to buy the first house we looked at.

Once again, we thought it would take a while to close on the house, but we closed on the house in less than a month.  We also thought the process would be more painful and time consuming for us, but it was relatively pain free and I felt like we did very little.  Maybe Tyler and I just had a warped sense of what buying a house would entail because we had never done it before, but it all worked out for the best.  Everything just fell into place for us and we were very blessed.

Let's just say moving into a home that is 4 times as big as the apartment we were previously living in took a very short amount of time and the house still looks very bare in some areas.  But, we knew that when we moved in.  We have been able to find some second hand furniture (like couches and other things) on Craigslist, we have been able to DIY a few other things and we have been going to garage sales like hoarders.  Craigslist also has a great free section, I've been taking full advantage of that section.  :)

I'll have to post pictures at some point--I was going to do it today, but it's rainy and cold, so I can't send her outside to play.  Everywhere she goes on a rainy day looks like a tornado has been through.

Oh yeah, we also got the garlic smell out!  Hooray!  The day we got the keys, we spent most of the day cleaning walls, baseboards and rented a carpet scrubber and cleaned all the carpets.  The house now smells good, but the garage doesn't smell so great (but it's not horrible).  The previous owners were a Korean couple, so I have an inkling that they made kimchi in the garage.

As a side note from the house, we have very exciting news (no Mom, it's not a baby)!  Tyler FINALLY has a date to defend his thesis--after months of waiting!  He will be defending on Friday, October 27 at BYU.  If you want to come and watch, let one of us know and we will get you the information.  Also, if you can't get a hold of us, we did get new phone numbers.  So, if the area code isn't 208, then you have the wrong number, so email one of us for the right number.  I'm pretty sure almost all of our contacts were transferred over, but just in case we missed anybody.

Well, we are all well and enjoying life!  I will post pictures soon.  Love you all!

The Whirlwind of Everything

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of everything happening all at once.  So, let me catch you up on our family movements:

1)  In the beginning of August, Kaylee turned 18 months and started going to nursery in church (that was a miracle if there ever was one)!

2)  In the middle of August, our family moved to Boise.  The plan is to stay with my parents until we find a house (see #4).

3)  At the end of August, Tyler submitted his thesis.  We are still working on a date for his defense (go figure).  But, we are hoping for October--so it'll probably be in December...

4)  The same day Tyler submitted his thesis, we put an offer on a house.  After a lot of back and forth, we finally accepted their third counter offer. 

Yes, the home is much bigger than we need, but knowing how my husband loves to move (*please note the sarcasm*), we decided we needed a home we wouldn't grow out of for an unknown number of years.  We're very excited.  So far, everything has come back great, the loan approval, the inspection, so all we're waiting for is the appraisal.  We have a closing date of September 29th.

There are some funny things about this house, the first is that we had our eye on this house for two months before we got to Boise and we were sure it was going to be gone by the time we got there--it wasn't.  It was the first house we went and looked at in person.  It smells like garlic...The current owners are Korean and make a lot of food with garlic.  We don't mind the smell, but my mom hates it!  She wants to rip up all the carpet and paint all the walls to make the smell go away.  I think opening windows and cleaning the carpet will do just fine.

So, as you can see we moved in with my parents and no more than a week later we put an offer on a house.  Now we're in the process of purchasing the house, finishing Tyler's thesis, starting Tyler's new job and hoping Kaylee will get used to change quickly.

Kaylee has had a bit of a hard time with all the changes and is very clingy and super feisty.  I'm sure she'll be happy once she gets to play in her own backyard and has all her toys back.  One great thing about living with my parents is that she is around her cousin a lot more.  She has more than tripled her vocabulary since being here and jabbers away constantly.  I don't think she could be any cuter, but I'm probably a bit biased.  :)

I'll try to post some videos of her talking soon.

Kaylee likes climbing in the doll house, but then she gets stuck.

Kaylee is all ready to go to church!

Independence Day

There is a video at the bottom of the post, so feel free to skip to the end if the post is long :)

Phew, July 4th was a busy day for us.  It started off at 5:45 when we woke up to go to breakfast at the balloon festive.  A friend of ours gave us some free breakfast tickets, so our family and a couple we are good friends with went and ate breakfast while the hot air balloons were getting up into the air.  Kaylee loved the hot air balloons.

After the balloon festival, we made our way to the parade route where there were already hundreds of people who had slept in the street overnight.  By then it was 7:30 and the parade wouldn't start for another hour and a half so we walked up and down the street to try to find a good spot where Kaylee could see.  We found a decent spot, but by the time the parade had started, that spot was getting very hot.  So we had to move partway through the parade.  We didn't watch the whole parade, but walked home early so Kaylee could get a little bit of a nap in before our other activities.

At 11, we packed up again to go to a park in Orem and have lunch with some more friends.  Tyler made some awesome barbeque chicken at the park and we ate and the kids played at the park.  I loved the concept of the park (although by the time the kids were playing, everything was burning hot).  It was an inclusion park (meaning kids with wheelchairs) could play on just about everything too.  The kids had fun, but they got hot super fast, so we made sure they drank tons of water and didn't stay out for very long.  When we got home, it was time for everyone to have a nap.

We all slept for a couple hours before getting dinner ready for us and another friend.  She came over and we ate and did some small fireworks.  We did the fireworks at another friend's house (so we didn't bug our neighbors at our apartment complex).  Kaylee wasn't too sure about them at first (she screamed when we did them), but she loved them when the neighbor of our friend started setting off his big fireworks.  Kaylee sure did love the pop-its though.  She laughed hysterically each time she threw one and it went off.  There is video of her laughing at them here:

Attempted Summer Break-in

Today we had a scare, and by we, I mean me.  I was at home in the back bedroom.  The lights in the kitchen/living room were off and the blinds were closed.  It basically looked like nobody was home.  As I was sitting in the bedroom, I heard the doorknob turn as someone tried the door.  I froze, thinking maybe Tyler came home early to surprise me.  No such luck, the person walked away and I continued work on the computer.  A minute later, I heard the same sound, only it sounded like someone was trying to break down the door.  The doorknob was turning and the door was jiggling back and forth.  Then, it stopped.

I was scared, had someone just tried to break into my apartment?!  I got in touch with Tyler to make sure it wasn't him--it wasn't.  Then I called our apartment manager to see if she had sent maintenance--it wasn't anybody there.  It then sunk in, someone had tried to break into my apartment.  I peeked out the window, but of course, no one was there.  It was a full 10 minutes after the attempt had happened.  What do I do now?  Well, I decided that I needed to tell the police.

When I called the police dispatch, they weren't happy.  They told me my safety had been in jeopardy and that I should have called 911 immediately.  If I had called 911 right away, they might have been able to do something.  I hadn't called 911 because it had taken me a while to figure out what was going on.  I felt ashamed too, I had put my safety and the safety of my napping baby in jeopardy.  They told me they would increase patrols in our area and that if anything like this happened again to call 911 immediately.  So, I learned a valuable lesson:  911 is not just for situations where you are dying (as I previously thought), it is for any emergency situation (even an attempted break-in).

So, during this summer season (which is also called "break-in season") be safe and keep your doors locked.

Wedding Photos

My sister Lauren got married at the end of the summer last year and we finally have the photos.  I can't believe how small Kaylee looks.  She was about 8 months old when these pictures were taken.  The album can be found in the link here:  https://goo.gl/photos/q9HtVWa9p75wU8698

Dandelions

Kaylee wanted to pick some dandelions for Baba (Tyler).  She was so cute about it.  She wouldn't let them out of her sight.  She even wanted to sleep with them until she could give them to Baba.

End of Semester Celebration

It is now the end of Tyler's last semester of classes.  He currently has the entire summer to just concentrate on his thesis.  This is such a relief for him because the semester was so stressful.  He would often work from 8-5 on campus, come home and spend an hour or so with me and Kaylee and then continue his research until late into the night.

Near the end of the semester, in celebration of his upcoming freedom (sort of), we decided to take a family bike ride to a nearby park (Paul Ream Park) that has a playground and a bunch of ducks.  Kaylee had never shown must interest in animals--except dogs--so we wanted to show her there was more to life than an excited puppy.  Boy was she surprised and so excited to see those ducks!  The whole time she screamed at them in excitement and she actually said the word "duck".  It was pretty darn cute!

Photos of the ducks

Video of the ducks

Playgrounds

Kaylee Loves Playgrounds

Recently, for Kaylee, playgrounds have been the big thing.  She loves slides (the higher the better) and swings.  Here are some clips from our family videos of her playing at the playground.

Bean Museum

Bean Museum

For some strange reason, I can't get pictures to upload anymore onto Blogger.  So, we'll have to do without pictures for a bit until I can figure out what is going on.

Not too long ago, we went as a family to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum.  For those that haven't been, the museum is on BYU campus.  It contains many animal specimens that have been stuffed or preserved in some way--elephants, giraffes, bears, lions, bugs, etc.  They also have some showings of live animals like lizards and things like that.  We went to one of the live animal shows with Kaylee.  She got a bit restless while they were talking about the different animals, of course, but once the live animal came out (a giant lizard--can't remember what kind though) and she could touch a few other things (like a stuffed wolverine and owl) she was happy.  She liked touching the lizard, which surprised me!  She was scared of the stuffed owl at first, but then she wanted to hug him.  I really wish I could post pictures right now, because her facial expressions were priceless!  Soon though, I hope!

Pictures at the Bean Museum

Tyler Update

Tyler is progressing very well in his graduate program.  His professors say he is on track to complete his Master's degree in August (total of 18 months in the program).  On Saturday, he presented on his thesis topic (Usable Email Security) at the Student Research Conference and did a great job.  He will be doing research throughout the summer to finish by August. We're so proud of him and the work he is doing :)

 Tyler likes to study in odd positions, he's getting used to a desk in his research lab though

This is what happens when he thinks he has fixed a bug in his programming, but then the fix creates a bunch more problems.

Monson Blog

This is blog about our little Monson family created for our family and friends.  We decided to create this blog to take the place of Facebook and keep our family and friends up-to-date on our adventures. We love you all!