St. George vacation

Dan and I decided we needed a little vacation to "get away," and St. George was the place! It was warm and had some important people we needed to visit and introduce McKenna to. Here are the highlights from our trip.

She "helped" us drive.

First, we visited Dan's Webster Grandparents. They adored their great-grand daughter and she loved to grab their faces. :)

We also took McBaby swimming for the first time. Unfortunately, the hotel's indoor pool was closed for repairs. So, we ventured to the outdoor heated pool. The air temperature was in the low 60s, but the pool temp was nice and warm!

Oh, and just a little bright.
Check out this swimsuit babe by a beautiful waterfall!
Swimming kind of wore her out... sweet little thing loves her daddy.
We also visited the Church History sites down there. Here's the inside of the St. George Tabernacle and its pretty chandeliers.

The balcony seats were not the original seats. In fact, they were taken out of the Salt Lake Temple.
Me and my girl at the pulpit. Fun Fact- Every Prophet of the church has spoken from this pulpit! (Except for Joseph Smith and our current prophet Pres. Monson.)
This is Brigham Young's Winter Home. The green paint was actually quite stylish for the early 1870s.
We also had to introduce McKenna to Dan's Mission President and his wife,

David & LaDawn Clove.


On the way home we stopped in Cedar City to visit the statue of Dan's ancestor Francis Webster. And this is McKenna's "thrilled" face about the 3 hour drive left ahead of us.

Home!

Because I teach at a year-round elementary school, every nine weeks I get a three week break. I get to be HOME with my little girl non-stop! I haven't been able to do this since going back to work in Jan. I get to stare at this beautiful face all day! This also means I take a TON more pictures than normal. I can't resist!

Tummy time. (Blurry- cause she moves :))

"I rolled over. Now what?"

The bald spot continues. No, I didn't use scissors.

My Favorite!

In other news, I think she wants to learn to roll from back to front. What do you think?

She also loves to "help" daddy when he's on the computer.

Daddy's getting really good at making McBaby LAUGH! It's music to my ears!

I also wanted to post a video of McKenna crying- just because. She makes some pretty cute faces when she cries. This is in the evening right before bed time. Can't you tell? :)

Pow-wow

Part of Dan's job of recruiting potential foster parents is to set up booths at community events to "advertise." The latest event was a Pow-wow at Utah State University. Because this event was up in Logan, and McKenna and I didn't want to be home all day without our dad, we went with him! (AND so he wouldn't miss us so much.) :)

Here's the lovely booth. Here's the handsome man (work shirt and all) with our girl.
Unfortunately, McKenna's been a little sick this week. This is right after she sneezed. I know it's gross, but I was trying to catch a picture of a snot bubble. Those can be kind of cute. I know... still gross! One of the good things about her being sick is she's super cuddly. (She's reading the sticker on my chest that says "vendor.")
Also, because she was sick, she managed to take a peaceful nap in spite of all the LOUD drumming and chanting going on. Here she is under the car seat cover I made for her. Cool lighting, eh?She's still so adorable- cough and all!

Here are some shots of the dancers in their Native American garb.

This little girl's fabric is Dora the Explorer.

In other news, lately McKenna's tummy time has looked like this. Instead of keeping her arms out in front to prop herself up and then eventutally roll over, when placed on her tummy she immediately put sher arms to her sides and lays flat on her face. She seems content for a while. :) Silly girl!

4 Months Old!

McKenna had her 4 month check up today and is doing GREAT!

These posts are mainly for bragging and journaling about her development :)

Weight 13.3 lbs. -50th percentile (2 pound increase)

Length- 25 in. -90th percentile (1.5 inch increase)

Head Circ.- 16.4 in. -75th percentile (.5 inch increase)

2 shots- cried for maybe 30 seconds. Even though the rest of the day hasn't been too pleasant, Tylenol has helped some...

Here's her cute zoomed-in face! X5 :)

Happy girl!

Skills:

• Loves to touch the books I read to her. Even if it is to try to eat them, this makes mommy SO happy! As a teacher, I can't wait for her to show even MORE interest in books!
• I put her to bed wide awake and she can put herself to sleep with relatively little fussing!
• Speaking of sleep- she usually sleeps from 9:30pm-2:30am and then 3-8am (during her BEST nights). Dan is wonderful at rocking her back to sleep if I don't think it's time to feed her yet. :) He's an AMAZING DAD!
• She loves to put weight on her legs for "long" periods of time.
• When she sits in our laps she does not want to relax and recline anymore. She uses her tummy muscles to sit herself up and look at the world around her.
• She's shown quite a love for music already. I have a hard time nursing her while watching Music and the Spoken Word because she wants to look around and see where that music is coming from. When I sing her to sleep at night she coos right along.
• She seems to be learning how to fake cry to get attention (which isn't necessarily a good thing).
• She gets distracted by the camera which makes it hard to capture her cuteness!
• She's using her hands so much now, batting and grabbing. Everything she grabs goes straight to her mouth.

Here's a video of her playing!

Here's McKenna making the same faces daddy's making. When he smiled, she smiled. When he was serious, she was serious. Funny girl!

Sewing!

Dan's mom bought all of the girls in our family sewing machines for Christmas! I've always wanted to learn to sew and I'm very grateful for her giving me the capability to do so now more easily and conveniently than I could have before. Of course I could have asked MY own mom to teach me the whole time I was living at home... I regret that never happening. Different priorities at the time. I guess I'm becoming much more motivated now that I'm a mom and feel the need to become more domestic. :)

This is almost exactly what my machine looks like.

My first day of sewing consisted of getting to know the machine and playing around with the types of stitches on a scrap piece of fabric. It even does button holes!

For my first real project, I decided to follow a new little trend and make a car seat cover. This is basically the same thing as throwing a blanket over the car seat to keep baby warm and protected from the elements, BUT it's cuter, it won't blow away, and is made to keep the handle exposed for easy carrying.

The finished product! Thank you Sarah Jane (Dan's sister) for being such a great teacher! You can buy one of these for somewhere around $30 and I'm pretty sure I made it for less than $20. This was a great FIRST sewing project because the lines didn't have to be straight. :)

McKenna seems to like it too. We hope to get some good use out of it before the beautiful Spring weather comes and we won't need it anymore.
Any ideas for an EASY second project???

(Side note) Dan had these beautiful tulips delivered to my work for Valentine's day! I love you!

Harlem Globe Trotters and more

That's right! Dan surprised me with dinner to California Pizza Kitchen and 2ND ROW tickets to see the Harlem Globe Trotters for Valentine's day! Not only were our seats 2nd row- they were right behind the Globe Trotters bench! It was our first time seeing them perform and it was outstanding!! They were so talented and entertaining. Great fun for everyone. Here's where you can see how close we were.

McKenna was a champ! These are what her eyes look like right before...

this. Bless her heart. It was SO loud. But she slept for a good 30 mins.

Here's the "more" part of the post. I'm no photographer. But our little girl makes ANY picture a good one! (At least that's what I think.)

I love these darling overalls on her!

Here are the cutest cousins around! Whitney (almost 2 months) McKenna (almost 4 months) Kate (almost 7 months).

During family games (Yatzee-noisy dice in a cup), Uncle Brian has such a calming influence on McBaby.