Give Thanks

Yes, it's a couple days past Thanksgiving and people are probably already have all the Fall stuff down and the Christmas decorations up (I did that today), but I can still post a blog about my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving.

It all started with my childhood.  Every year, without fail, Thanksgiving was spent with our family friends, the Bobo's.  One year we'd go to their house (wherever in the country that happened to be) and the next they'd come to ours (always in Aiken, SC).  We'd have our Graham-Bobo family line up which started in age, oldest to youngest, and then as we got older we added a line based on height.  Phil, the youngest in the Bobo family, ended up the tallest boy, and I, the youngest in the Graham family, ended up as the tallest girl.  Funny how that happened.  Anyway, when we were pretty young, we also used to do a pyramid. Description for those who don't know: biggest kids on their hands and knees on the ground with smaller kids on top of them in the same position in the shape of a triangle till we got one kid at the top which was usually me.  We have many photo albums of these lines and pyramids throughout the years and it's fun to see how much we've all changed and grown.  On Thanksgiving day we'd have a ton of yummy yummy food.  The next day we'd have leftovers, go to a movie, and eat pizza.  When the family who was visiting had to leave to drive back home, one of us would try to stow away in their car (which never worked! observant parents!) and the rest would run after the van as they drove away.  That's pretty much how it happened every year.  The oldest kids would drop out of the line as they left for school, went on missions, or got married, but we would still get together with them until practically all of us were out of the house.  Those were really fun times.  Sometimes I feel like I know the Bobo's better than my actual blood-family.  

Now, as we all have our own families we still try to find ways to get together with the Bobo's.  A lot of us ended up in Utah so that makes it a lot easier to get together.  My best friend growing up, Katherine, ended up marrying Phil, so that made it even easier to get together.  This year we had Thanksgiving with the Bobo's again.  We went to Katherine and Phil's house; another Bobo sibling was there along with two of my siblings.  We had excellent food and wonderful company.  It was like old times.  We even thought one of the young boys had stowed away in another family's van, which ended up not being true, but it brought back good memories anyway.  Phil made a comment about how he thinks our kids won't find out that none of us are actually related until they're like 14 which I thought was funny and really true.  We act like family even though we aren't blood related.  And I guess that's the point I'm trying to make with all of my rambling.  You can treat anyone like family, especially on Thanksgiving.  It's the time to come together to remember all that we're thankful for, eat good food, and enjoy the company.

Another reason why Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays is that this was the holiday 6 years ago that gave me the excuse to visit Brandon in Colorado while I was going to BYU.  We had met that previous August and I wanted to see him again.  Somehow it worked out that I would go out there along with one of Brandon's old missionary companions, and we'd stay for the weekend.  I'd really never done anything like that before, but I'm so grateful I did.  I'm also extremely grateful for Brandon's mom and dad who were willing to open their home to two almost complete strangers and feed them.  They're amazing.  That year, I also heard that they extended an invitation to all the single adults in their Ward who didn't have a place to go to their home for Thanksgiving dinner.  How wonderful is that!  I think that's a perfect example of their charity.  Brandon definitely learned how to serve with love from his parents. 

I'm thankful for this holiday so I can think of all that I'm thankful for.  So I want to give a big "Thanks!" to the following people:

• Everyone who've watched Kayla for us while we had to work or go on a date
• Craig Peterson and Phil Burnett for helping us get this wonderful home we now live in
• Mom who helped cover our tickets for going out to SC for her wedding
• Mike Graddy who is making my mother so happy and a lot less lonely
• Brandon's mom and dad for being so patient as they wait for opportunities to see their only grandchild (and for helping us improve our new home, you've done so much already)
• Katherine for hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year 
• Kayla for being so adorable even when she's sad
• Brandon for being the most amazing husband 

I could go on and on, but this blog post is getting long enough.  But I do have to add one more to the list: my Heavenly Father and my Savior, Jesus Christ, for creating this beautiful world that we live in; for giving us a Plan so we can live with Them and our loved ones again; for loving us even when we don't feel like we deserve it.  I Thank Them with all my heart.

So enough of my ranting and on to the pictures.  Clark, Lonnie, and MaKena stayed at our house for a few days, and I promised Mom pictures of the kids together.

Brandon wanted to show Clark our backyard, so they bundled up the kids and went out.  Can you see the family resemblance? :)

MaKena and Kayla

They look so different in sizes right now, but they're only 8 months apart.  As they get older I'm sure they'll become the best of friends (if we stay close enough to visit).

That face is so classically Graham.  She looks so much like Clark with those adorable ears!  And Kayla looks a lot like me.  I'm thinking the Graham genes are pretty dominant! More kids will tell! 

I think this is the closest we were able to get the kids together.  That's a good thing right now because they'll just hurt themselves otherwise. 

It was so much fun having them at our home to relax and play games.  We will be planning more of these as much as we can.  I love our family.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!  Make sure to give thanks to those you're thankful for!

Service and Fun

One of the things I admire about Brandon is his selfless love for others.  This usually translates into doing a lot of service for others, even random strangers.  He'll help someone move their broken down car to the side of the road, wake up early on a Saturday morning to help a family move, or even chase down some dogs that ran loose from their master.  This last bit of service introduced us to our neighbor, Anna.  Brandon got to talking to her, and we found out that she's from Brazil (Rio to be specific), she's waiting for her green card to come in while her husband works in California to keep the steady income they need for that whole process.  Later we find out that their landlord here was kicking them out earlier than they expected and they hadn't found an apartment yet to move to.  Practically without hesitation, Brandon offered our back yard to her two dogs, our garage as a storage unit for her stuff, and our spare bedroom to Anna while she looks for a dog-friendly place to live (and that's a hard thing to find in this area!).  They were really grateful and eventually accepted his offer.

So last week Anna stayed with us.  We weren't sure how long she'd be here; she said a month at the most, but it only ended up being about a week.  She used to work in California and Seattle as an au pair with two different sets of twins, so she knows babies, and she fell in love with Kayla.  No surprise there!  Kayla makes it really easy to love her.  She told us the day after she moved in that Brandon and I should go on a date and she's watch Kayla for us.  So we took her up on her offer and went on the first date in a very long time without Kayla.  We went to lunch and then the movie "Wreck it Ralph" which was a lot of fun (the date and the movie).

During the week, she took Kayla to the park while Brandon and I were at work.  They both loved it.  Anna took her camera and took some amazing pictures.  Here's a sample of a few of my favorites.

 You can see a little in that middle picture Kayla's top front two teeth coming in. so cute!  Anna's an amazing photographer!  It was so much fun having her here and telling me of her experiences of taking care of twins.  She's an amazing woman.  

She found an apartment in Provo at the foothills of the mountain.  It's got an amazing view, but quite a steep hill to drive up!  We moved her in on Saturday with the help of some fabulous men in our Ward. 

So thank you men for helping a total stranger.

Thank you Anna for being so amazing with Kayla and a friend to me.

And thank you Brandon for being so charitable to bring someone into our lives that ended up benefiting everyone. I love you.

Halloween Parties

This weekend we went to our Ward's Fall Festival.  There was chili, games, trunk-or-treating, and costumes.  We saw a bunch of cool ones: an Alice and Wonderland family, Batmans, ninjas, Indiana Jones, Hugh Jackman dressing as Wolverine, and the traditional witches, ghosts, zombies, and princesses.  It was all great fun.  First we ate so we could get our costumes all dirty just in time for the games and trunk-or-treating.  We signed up for giving out treats in our trunk.  So, I grabbed practically all of my Halloween decorations around the house and arranged them in my trunk.  It was kind of depressing see how much space I still had in my trunk after all my stuff was in it...it looks like I need to get more for next year.  But I was well stocked with candy.  Who cares about the decorations when there's chocolate!

But the most exciting thing about the party was dressing up for it. Brandon had this wild scheme for our family's costumes.  I had my doubts.  I couldn't possibly see how I could make it work.  But as luck would have it, I found a way.  Needless to say, he was very very happy.

Any guesses?  Yes! I'm Luigi, Kayla's Baby Mario, and Brandon's Yoshi!  Nintendo Family!

I couldn't figure out how to do Yoshi's head.  I was browsing Amazon and found that hat.  You can't see it really well in the picture, so here's a better view.


Once I saw it, I knew I had to have it and make Brandon's dream of being Yoshi for Baby Mario Kayla come true.  The tummy, seat, and tail to finish off Yoshi was pretty simple.  Thank you Hobby Lobby.  The tummy is a large foam pad cut-out.  I used elastic string over the shoulder to attach to the seat.  I used smaller white and red foam pads for the seat.  These smaller ones were sticky on one side so it was easy to attach together.  For the tail I cut two pieces of cardboard, stuck two green foam pads on the outside, but some cardboard  between them on the wider side, then glues the tips together.  I did it this way so that it wouldn't flop around and stay pretty secure on his back.  Sadly, it ended up not being wide enough, so I had to safety pin it to his shirt (also found at Hobby Lobby).  I also found the red and white hats at Hobby Lobby.  They also had some iron-on letters.  One was already in red, so that was easy for Mario, but they didn't have a green "L"s so I bought a green fabric marker and colored it myself.  I think it all worked out pretty well!  I am very proud of my crafty ways. 

As for the rest of the clothes, I was able to find most of them pretty easy.  We already had an overall dress and a red shirt for Kayla, so all I needed was some red pants for her.  I found green pants for Brandon, and they're so comfortable he wears them all the time now.  As for my overalls, it took a bit of time to find. I think they were the hardest, to be honest.  I finally found them at DI.  Even though it was a little big, it wasn't hard to adjust them.  You can't tell in the picture, but it's actually an overall dress.  So Kayla and I match!  And because it was a dress going to my knees, I needed some green tights to complete the ensemble.   I think everything worked out very nicely.  The only bad thing was that I forgot the mustache I bought!  So I'm glad Halloween's not over yet!

After the Fall Festival, we went over to a friend's apartment for their party.  They had a lot of really cool Halloween treats, and people were carving pumpkins.  It was a lot of fun.  Kim took pictures of us and posted them on Facebook, so you can go there to check it out.

Overall, I'd say it was a very fun weekend.  I can't wait till Halloween!

Family Visits, Conference, and Hair

It's been an eventful month.  I had my 26th birthday.  Not much happened, but I'm totally okay with that.  Brandon took me out to lunch and dinner and gave me tulip bulbs to plant.  The other half of my present was to watch Kayla while I planted.  I was able to get it done last weekend. Yay!  I'm excited to see how it will turn out next Spring.  I'll be interested to see what else pops up in our garden come Spring...

Clark, Lonnie, and MaKena came to visit us for Conference Weekend.  It was a lot of fun.  We found out that two babies cannot sleep on the same floor level.  No one gets any sleep that way.  So we switched up the sleeping arrangements on the second night and it was much better. 

As for the actual Conference, I thought it was fantastic.   By the end, I feel like there's a general theme that most of the speakers talk about either in depth or briefly.  I felt like a major theme this Conference was family and keeping the family values strong in the home.  Very good stuff!  It was also so exciting to hear about young men being able to leave for their missions as early as 18 and 19 for women.  I love seeing the Church grow.

Some other exciting news is that I found out that Kayla's hair is long enough to pull back and do something with!  I tried it out yesterday, and here's the result:

Cutest pig-tails ever!

We found out that Kayla gets stir crazy, and if she doesn't get to play outside, no one's happy.  So I took her to the park yesterday.  There's one by 1200 N and 200 W in Orem that I really like because I can get on the playground without too much difficulty.

Kayla found this tunnel and went most of the way in.  This was one area I let her explore alone.  There was no way I was getting my butt stuck in there!

Such a happy baby!  You can't tell from here, but she finally got her third tooth (the top one) in.  The other top one should be coming soon, but it's such a relief that they're finally coming in.  Those first two came in at about 10 months.  She's about 14 now, so it took a while...She'll be able to bite and chew a bit better now.  It's going to open up more food possibilities.  She's been pretty picky lately, but she has no problem communicating that she doesn't want to eat something: she throws it on the floor.  Floor means, "No, Mom, I don't want that anymore.  Give me something else to try before I decorate your floor again!"  Hopefully one day she'll be able to communicate with words; it's usually less messy that way.

Five Years Together

On September 22, five years ago I married my eternal companion and best friend. We've been through a lot together, and a lot has changed in the last five years. Our family has grown, and we're getting settled in the Utah area.  Life is overall is looking pretty good.

Since we recently bought our home, Brandon and I decided to not do gifts for each other this year.  I still wanted to do something, so I decided to make him s'more themed foods.  I made some indoor s'more treats.

We had those the night before and throughout the day.  Since our anniversary was on a Saturday I was able to make him breakfast.  I found a recipe for s'more waffles.  They were delicious.

Brandon's parents came into town that weekend to see Amanda's BFA show (which was awesome!) so they got to spend some time with their grand-baby. That let us do some stuff around the house that needed to get done. Yay for marking more stuff off the list.  It was really great having Brandon's dad here to help him around the house.

That took up most of our afternoon, but we were able to go out to eat together.  It may not have been the most romantic anniversary, but I loved it all the same. Five years down, many many more to go.

I went looking for a picture of Brandon and I together, but couldn't find anything recent, so I decided to put in a cute picture of Kayla playing with her birthday present from her great-grandparents.  She hasn't quite figured out how to push the vacuum, but she likes the buttons!

Our House: The Project List

It has been one week since Brandon and I have become official home owners.  We signed the papers Aug 30th, the day before the deadline.  Talk about cutting it close!  Since then, we've steadily been making a long list of projects that we need/want for the house and yard.  Brandon's got the grass nearly resurrected.  Just in time for it to hibernate for the winter. :)  And I've been working on the inside of the house.  I think almost everything has its place except for a couple boxes and all the pictures.  Those, of course, go last.  I've put some up just for the sake of keeping them out of Kayla's reach.  I was doing just that to a set of orchid canvas pictures.  There were nails in the kitchen walls so I put them there.  And as I was looking I decided I really liked them there.  I really liked the colors, so I'm going to use them for the walls in the kitchen.  I'm so excited to finally figure out what I'm going to paint in there!  It's been bugging me for a while.  I don't know when we'll paint everything yet; it's on the lower end of the project list.

   

The biggest project that's happening soon is the driveway.  For those who have seen our driveway, you know it's a bit of a mess.  It's mostly gravel with some spots of random cement. We're having a friend from our old ward come in and fix it up.  By the end, we should have a nice long cement driveway with a patio.  Brandon's super excited, and I'll be glad to finally put my car in the garage.

All in all, life's staying pretty busy, but we're happy.  Brandon has a lot of projects lined up, and I'm always busy trying to keep up with Kayla.  She's loving the space in the new house.  Her favorite thing to do is to push stuff around the wood floor.  So cute! 

Here's a picture of Kayla helping Daddy put frost spray paint on the bathroom window.  She got up there ALL by herself! Silly Girl.

Brandon got a video of Kayla helping me weed the garden. She's such a big help!

By the end of the day, we were pretty tired. Kayla was happy throwing dirt and getting into everything, but she was a trooper, a dirty trooper.

So I think our yard is slowly coming together.  Hopefully by doing all this hard work now, we'll be that much more ahead next summer.

Coming Up-to-Date

I'm sorry I've been remiss in posting.  My last post was almost two months ago...I didn't realize it'd been that long.  But between family reunions, moving, vacations, and Kayla, things just get a little busy.  So I'm going to try to give a basic overview of what kind of life we've had in the last two months.  Get ready...set...Go!

July 

We started off the month with going to Clark and Lonnie's baby blessing of our new niece MaKena in Idaho Falls.  It was fun seeing them again and watching Kayla interact with her.  

I know Lonnie looks so sad in this picture, but it's only because MaKena was so sad; she was sympathizing.  This was the only picture I found from that trip.  We went out to eat on Saturday with all of the Graham family that was there.  It was a lot of fun.


Later that week we went down to St. George for the Hedquist Family Reunion to celebrate the 4th of July.  We started off swimming at Grandpa Ab's and Grandma Renee's pool.

Kayla loved being in the water and swimming with Daddy and Grandma.  She's a fish, just like her Mama.  It was nice being in the pool because I'm convinced St. George is one of the hottest places on earth.

This is the best picture we got of the Ab & Renee Hedquist family (minus uncle Jason because they hadn't gotten there yet).  It was so much fun to see everyone.   

This is everyone at the Golden Corral for dinner before we went to Tuacahn to see Aladdin.  So awesome!

  

This was Kayla's first attempt at eating her own strawberry.  It was very cute, but very messy.  Uncle Kris and Aunt Cathy was sitting across from us and they thought she was so cute!  And she just hammed it up for them. That's my child... :)

One of Kayla's favorite things to do at the condo was to climb up on the glass coffee table and sit/stand on it.  It made her higher up, which in her opinion is the best place to be.  The higher the better!  Would have almost given us a heart attack if she hadn't done it to us so many times before.

The last full day we were there, we went to the camping ground where Uncle Jason's family was staying.  We ate dutch oven dinner and dessert there, so yummy!  Kayla loved playing outside.  She likes getting dirty.  At one point she was shoving her hands in the dirt and pebbles, grabbing a handful and throwing it in the air.  When I got home and changed her diaper, she brought them with her as a souvenir. Silly girl.

This was the morning we left to go back home.  Mom went with Jessica to catch her flight the next morning.  So this was her saying goodbye to her grand-baby.  Kayla's wearing the outfit that her grandma gave her.  It's so Mom!  We had so much fun!  Thanks everyone who was there to make it so!



Later in July we had another family reunion to go to.  Thankfully, it was in the area.  It was for Brandon's side of the family.  And his mom got to come down for it! 

This is a 5 generation picture. So cool!  The reunion was just one day, and we had this picnic for dinner.  There was lots of food and music.  So good!

During the day, Grandma got to have Kayla all to herself.  Brandon, Amanda, and I went to SLC to watch the musical Wicked.  Brandon and I had seen it back in 2007, but this was Amanda's first time.  She had so much fun!  I'm so happy she liked it.  It's one of my favorites.

A week or so before Brandon's mom came into town, Kayla really started walking on her own.  She'd been able to take a few steps here and there, but she didn't get it down really well until about mid-July.  Her Grandma got quite the exercise following after her.  She's so cute learning to walk on her own.  She tries so hard to be Miss Independent.  But she'll still want to hold your hand for support.  I love her so much.


August

So far, I think August has been our busiest month, and it's not over yet!  The first weekend we moved from our apartment to our new house.  Unfortunately, we still don't own it, but we're getting close.  I'll make a separate post with more details and pictures on that later.  I hate packing everything up and moving.  It's why we haven't done it in the 5 years we've been married.  I'm glad we're in the house now, but getting there was so stressful!  And now getting unpacked is pretty crazy, too. Despite that, I love our new home.  There's so much room for Kayla to run around and play in.  She's not quite running yet, but she's getting there!

For Kayla's first birthday, we decided to drive to Ft. Collins, CO to celebrate it with his family.  That week was also Brandon's graduation.  He decided not to Walk because we were traveling, but congratulations to him for finally being done!  That Sunday at Mom and Dad's house, we had a family get together to celebrate all the graduates this year: Olivia from high school, Shannon for her Associates, Brandon for his Bachelor's, Amanda for her Bachelor's, and Kayla for her 1st Birthday.  Congratulations everyone!

We ate delicious food (no surprises there), opened presents, and played Quelf.  All in all, it was a very fun evening.

Grandma bought a whale pool for Kayla.  On the last picture, you can see where the "head" is spouting out water.  Kayla very much enjoyed it.  She was in the pool more often without her swimming suit than not...so there were a lot of saggy diapers. :)

We celebrated Kayla's birthday in stages and with different people.  Everyone wanted to celebrate with us, and that made us feel so happy.

This was her first cake.  Grandpa picked it out (this one was the cutest, he said), and Daddy tried to teach her how to blow out the candle. Cute!

 

Present time!  We're still teaching her to open them up, but she's getting there!

There was a stuffed lion inside!  The first thing she wanted to do was to taste it...or kiss it, depending on how you see the picture.  Either way, I think she liked it.

Presents from my mom.  Love the hat!  She also got a little purse and a tiger that wraps around her arm like it's hugging her.  She also got tons and tons of clothes, and most of those were dresses. Loved them!  I think dresses work the best for her because she can't really wear pants.  They're so big on her! And when they finally fit around the waist, they're too short! So, it doesn't really work for her.  Shorts, skirts, and dresses are the best!

I think the best part about the trip was that Kayla got to play with her grandparents.  She's their only grand-baby so far, so she gets all their attention, and she loves it.  Grandpa's such a tease!  It took her a while to warm up to him, but by the end she was smiling her cutest smile at him, and I think he just loved it. 

The trip was way too short, but we must go back to work.  And there was still a house for me to clean and prepare for the next party!  This time it was a joint party with Katherine and Phil's little girl, Amy.  Her and Kayla's birthdays are about a week apart, so we wanted to do one together.  We're hoping to make a tradition out of this while we're both still in the area.  So we invited our families over to celebrate with us.

And there are the little birthday girls! Kayla's wearing one of her birthday dresses, and being as cute as ever.  Amy was so quiet compared to the mayhem of the other children, it was really fun to watch her, too.

My old boss, Brad's, wife makes cakes as a small business at home.  She made this one for us.  I love it!  It was carrot with buttercream frosting.  She did an amazing job!  She was excited to try making it in the shape of a butterfly, and it turned out fantastic!  And yummy too!

The whole time they were eating, Amy kept trying to steal Kayla's cake! It was one of the funniest things I've seen!  But Kayla's didn't fuss about it too much.  She's a sharing girl.

Surprisingly, she didn't get too messy eating.  The frosting wasn't smeary enough for other people's tastes, but I liked it just fine.  She can still look cute and messy without being a complete disaster.  I like smaller messes to clean up.

So I know this has been a REALLY long post, but I wanted to share it all.  I had a hard time selecting the best-of-the-best pictures because there were so many cute ones!  So that's been our life the last couple months.  There's still lots to do and friends to play with.  Brandon's been busy making movies and resurrecting our yard.  We'll get there eventually. 

Thanks everyone for your love and presents to Kayla.  We love them all!  We love y'all!