March Madness

I could blame a lot of things for why I haven't posted a blog yet this year: my mom's wedding, work moving locations, Kayla, Brandon's busy movie making, work changing cell phone carriers which I was in charge of, Kayla, a new calling in the Ward, reading the Wheel of Time, Kayla...etc. All those things happened, but they're really just excuses for my laziness.  So I feel like I need to apologize for my neglect.  I love posting pictures of Kayla and giving everyone updates on the Ho family life. So, I will try to be better. Here we go...

At the beginning of March, it rained one weekend. That one event created what I am going to call Spring Fever and it spread to the Ho household.  I believed that since it rained, winter was over.  It's time for change and warmth.  So, the logical people we are, Brandon and I started working on the front and back yards. I started weeding my tulip garden in the front.  It took me three days during Kayla's nap time to get my one section done.  Brandon started working on the garden/patio in the back. It's a lot more work than both of us anticipated.  Brandon's gotten a lot of help pulling out a tree stump and redoing the patio/fire-pit area.  It's morphed into a Ward service project/BBQ scheduled for this Saturday unbeknownst to us until it was announced in Elder's quorum. I thought that was pretty funny, and we love having a party.  The more the merrier. Hopefully when it's all done, I'll show before and after pics.  I think it's going to turn out well.

Kayla's been growing and learning so much.  She hit the 18 month mark in February and she was looking really good and on track developmentally when we had the doctor checkup.  She's become Miss Independent. She'll spend 15 minutes trying to get her shoes and socks on herself because she won't let us touch them.  It's really cute except when we're trying to go somewhere and need to leave soon... :)  

She also believes that the Kindle Fire is HERS. We've got a few games on there she likes to play, and she's getting really good at them.  Her favorite game is My Little Pony. She also likes to play Angry Birds but shoots the birds the wrong way.  It's pretty funny to watch.  

Kayla's also getting her ABCs down really well.  She can repeat most of the letters back to us, and she's recognizing letters in the books she "reads" and other various places you see letters.  I've been really impressed with how quickly she's learning.  It's been a really fun experience watching her grow.

Of the three of us, I think Brandon's been the busiest.  Besides working at the LDS Motion Picture studio, he's got several independent projects going.  I'll list a few: 

• Working with his cousin, Steve James, on some music videos for children
• Finishing the post-production on his short film, Steamed Dumplings 
• Starting up a company called Cinema Book Trailer with a couple other guys. As part of an effort to get their names out there, he's doing a book trailer for Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. Here's a link to a book trailer one of the other guys did: The Maze Runner
• Finishing the post-production on his feature film, Missed Connections.  We'll go to the Premier showing on April 5th, so everything's gotta be done by then.

That's not everything but just the major ones, I think.  He's doing some script work on other projects he has in mind.  He's just crazy busy.  But what I think the most amazing thing about all this is that  he gets of work early so I can go to my meetings for my Ward calling, he's a Webelos leader for the Cub Scouts, and he takes the time to watch Kayla while I work in the mornings.  I know Kayla appreciates the time he spends with her.  She's a Daddy's Girl and I love that. I'm a Daddy's Girl, too.  Daddies are so very important to their little girls; it's a special relationship that everyone should have in their lives.

Now for what everyone's been waiting for: the pictures.  I took this one yesterday while Kayla and I were playing in the back yard.  It was her idea. Not mine.

 The stump came up to my chest and the fence came to somewhere by my head, so that might give you a reference for how far up she is.  Silly girl.

Here's one where I got her to look at me and smile. I was impressed that I was able to get the shot. I used my phone (which has a weird delay), and the sun was pretty bright.  If that's not adorable, I don't know what is.

More pictures and videos to come, hopefully, soon. :)

Happy Spring.

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.