I am cute!

Our little Emmy girl is getting to be so smart! It's so fun to watch her learn. She has been learning her colors the past couple of weeks, and it's so stinkin' cute to watch her pull out a block or a hair clip or whatever and tell us what color it is. She has also been learning her animal sounds. Her favorite is the chickie that says "peep, peep". She can do all her puzzles really fast and when I came out of the shower the other day, I found that she had built these all by herself...

She is also starting to put words together like, "help you" "oh no!" "here you go" "shoes on" "books back" "get you" and my personal favorite, "Love you". Sometimes it surprises me at how she associates things. For example, we said we were going to church and she said, "Nursery?". Or when we say we're going to grandma's house she says "cookie?". And she folds her arms like a pro during the prayer.

She has also started repeating things which is so fun. Like how we taught her to say, "I am cute!" It is hilarious! Check it out.



What a silly little girl.

Lent

Matt and I are giving up sugar for Lent. That's 40 days from yesterday til Easter of no treats. I did this last year in May and it was a good (although challenging) experience, and so I decided to do it again. We're not Catholic, but decided it was a good idea. Matt has declared that he gets 2 exceptions to this rule. 1) Costco cake for his birthday, and 2) Donuts on moving day. I have declared that I get 2 exceptions as well: 1) I can put a little bit of sugar or some type of sweetener in my oatmeal and 2) If we somehow win a vacation in the next 40 days, the deal is off.

We have also started doing Jillian Michael's Ripped in 30. It's only Day 2 and I'm dying.

Happy Lent!

Build A Bear

Yesterday my mom, sisters, sisters-in-law, and I all went to a Build A Bear party. Yes, 6 adults all over the age of 20 at Build A Bear to get our own bear. Not for the kids, but for us. It was a blast. Our hostess said she had never had an adult party before. It was great!

First we picked out our bear skins.

Then the hostess made us do all these crazy things like put the skins on our heads and stomp around the store chanting silly things.

Then we stuffed our bears.

And put the hearts in.

Then we bathed, brushed, and fluffed them.

And dressed them.

Then we put them in their "houses" to take them home.

And named them and printed out their birth certificates.

And then we took them out to lunch.

It was great! We had so much fun. If you go to Build A Bear, I highly recommend scheduling a party. We got a hostess all to ourselves and got to do lots of fun things with her as we made our bears. We didn't have to wait in the huge long line for the stuffing machine either. Plus, she gave us a free bear that we all got to autograph, and we got a 25% discount on all our stuff.

We had been wanting to do this for a long time even though we are obviously not small children and so for Christmas we all got gift cards so we could go make a bear. It was a great day at Build a Bear!

Bountiful Baskets

So in an effort to accomplish my New Years resolutions of eating more fruits and veggies and doing better at meal planning, I decided to try out Bountiful Baskets. If you don't know what it is, it's a produce co-op where you basically sign up to buy a bunch of fruits and veggies in bulk with like 40 other people and then share them among the group.

It's $16.50 each time you do it. You can do it every week, but I'm thinking I might do it every other week because you get a ton of stuff that should last for 2 weeks. Here's what I got this week...

 -9 oranges
-6 apples
-2 lemons
-1 pineapple
-4 mangoes
-6 bananas
-5 yellow squash
-1 head of lettuce
-1 bunch of spinach
-6 tomatoes
-2 giant cucumbers
-12 jerusalem artichokes (this should be interesting...never had these before!)

And then I planned the menu around what I got. (You don't really know what you're getting until you show up to pick it up.) Also, I found this really awesome menu planning system here. It's basically an Excel document where you populate the categories (dinner, lunch, side, etc.) with stuff you actually cook. Then it gives you a drop down list of each category so you can choose what you want for every meal, every day, for a week at a time. The categories are not exactly what I wanted, so Matt is editing it a bit for me so that it will have the exact categories that I use. I'm pretty excited about it. This is Week 1, so we'll see how it goes.

My honey is the best

Happy Valentines Day! I have the most wonderful honey ever. He works so hard for us and is a wonderful daddy to our little girl. He does everything he can to help make me happy and I love him a whole bunch.

For our special dinner, I made a ham. My first one! Matt got a gift certificate for a ham from his work for Christmas and I finally got around to making it. (P.S. I was shocked at how much this ham was. $55! But luckily for us it was free.)

If anyone wants some ham, come on over...we'll be eating ham for the next week. I also made quinoa, salad, green beans, and rolls. It was yummy!

My honey got me the best Valentine's Day present ever...Tahitian black pearl earrings!!! I seriously have always wanted black pearls. I don't know why, but black pearls are really the only piece of fine jewelry that I've ever wanted. They are so pretty and I love them. He also got me some grape soda in bottles so we could make some adventure badges with the bottle caps (like on the show Up). How cute is that?

And he also got me some of these...

I feel so spoiled. I got Matt this lame-o video game that he really wanted. He was super surprised though and loved it. And Emmy made him a silly card. She kept wanting to put flower stickers on it. :)

Anyway, it was a great Valentine's Day, and I am lucky to have such a wonderful honey!

My next 30 years

On Monday we handed over our life savings. I probably will never again see a check this large with my name on it so I had to take a picture.

We signed this mountain of papers.

And now we are homeowners. Well, technically not for roughly 30 years.

Oh yeah, also on Monday I got a job offer to teach an online class at BYU-Idaho. I will be teaching a leadership and ethics class starting in April. I am really excited to be getting back into teaching and working with college students. I have missed it a lot. But I love that it's only part-time and I can do it from home.

The biggest waste of $25

On Saturday we decided to take Emily to the Children's Museum. We thought she'd love it. Boy were we wrong. She liked this Plinko ball wall thing for awhile...

But would get mad if other kids came over and took the balls.

And then proceeded to throw a fit everywhere else we went in the museum. She tolerated these gear magnets for about 2 minutes and then threw herself on the floor for another fit.

She didn't even want to go back to the Plinko wall. So we left. After only 30 minutes. What a waste! To her credit, I do think she is getting another tooth and was extra cranky that day. But still!

One little monkey

One little monkey jumping on the bed....



I hope she doesn't fall off and break her head!

Just a girl and her dad

Emmy is one lucky girl to have such a fun daddy.

New addition

We have an exciting announcement! We are expecting a new little addition to the Lively family. Here's a picture for you all to enjoy....

IT'S A HOUSE! We are very excited to finally have a house of our own. We are scheduled to close on Feb. 22 and then we move in March 24. (Since the owners' new place won't be ready til then, we made a deal that they can stay and will be paying us $50/day.)We're a little bummed that we can't move in sooner, but since we don't have a contract at our apt, we can be flexible. And we'll make a little extra cash.

The house is almost exactly what we wanted. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to find a newer house in a nice neighborhood that doesn't have an HOA or isn't clear out in Booneyville that is in our price range? Hard! Anyway, it's bigger than what we need now, but it has plenty of room for us to grow into someday. (And plenty of room for visitors! Hint, Hint.) It has a great fully-fenced yard, a completely finished basement, the carpet is new and we don't have to do a single thing to it before we move in. Sure there are a few things we'd like to change down the line, but nothing pressing.

Here is a sketch of the floor plan.

So far everything is going really well. The inspection, appraisal, and loan stuff all went well, so now we are just waiting for the title company to get everything together for us.  Please pray that nothing bad will happen to us like it did last time we were about to close on a house. And keep March 24 open on your calendar so you can come help us move! :)