Baby Annabelle

Back in February, a friend of ours did a photo shoot of Annabelle. I just got the pictures today. Here are a couple of my favorites. I'll be posting all of them on Facebook.

Annabelle is 1!

Annabelle had her 1st birthday on Saturday! We had a small family party to celebrate. I had planned a cute pumpkin themed party and we had bought decorations, favors, and other stuff for the party, but then we ended up getting sick and had to cancel it. Jason was staying with us and Liz came over, though, and we still had fun. The above picture is from her opening presents. I'm pretty sure that I have a very similar picture from my 1st birthday. She was really cute and had so much fun opening her presents.


I couldn't figure out how to turn this and I don't want to keep trying. Sorry :)! It's me helping Annabelle blow out her birthday candle. She really wanted to grab the fire because it looked so cool.

Annabelle had her 12 month check-up today. She is doing great! She is 20 pounds and almost 30 inches. She is really catching up to Joseph now.

She is almost walking; we can get her to take about 3 steps on her own. She is just always climbing on things and making messes and exploring. She is such a wonderful and sweet little girl. We love her so much and are so glad that she is part of our family!

School Stuff

I can't believe that I've blogged this many times in one month! I've been trying to stick to a schedule in order to keep my sanity, so I've been giving myself time to get ready for bed and do some of my own things. It's helping.

Tomorrow I start my third class. It's Music 101, so it should be really easy. I have to attend some concerts as part of the class, so I will probably go to some of the free ones on campus. I am hoping that it won't add too much extra weight to my already full schedule.

We've been discussing what to do next semester. Mitchell will only be taking 12 credits required for full-time, but he will be gone from 8 am to 7 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays as well as having an evening class on Tuesdays. He also wants to start doing some freelance work so that he can build up his work experience. I don't know what I am going to do. Mitchell suggested that I only take 3 credits and we just pay for the class from the money he gets. I want to take more classes because I'm excited about school and I want to learn things, but I'm also worried about the stress that school causes. We are going to continue talking and praying about what will be best for our family.

New Calling

I just got a new calling at church. For a year, I was a visiting teaching supervisor, but now I am on the Relief Society weekday activities committee. It's exciting because I just love planning activities and things. The first activity that I am a part of is this Saturday. It's going to be crazy because Annabelle's 1st birthday is on Saturday as well and I've been planning a party for her. Saturday is going to be a busy day.

The activity is about organization and decorating, which are 2 of my most favorite things. I'm even going to be doing a little presentation on organization in the home. I'm excited about it because it's going to be lots of fun.

I'm also super excited about Annabelle's birthday party. It's going to be cute and fun. There will be a lot of family and friends to spend time with. I just have to make sure that I don't get stressed out planning and preparing for everything.

A House Full of Sickies

We have been a house full of sickies for the past 2 weeks. It has not been very fun, but it could have been much worse.

It started with Annabelle acting cranky around the weekend of General Conference; she even threw up twice. A few days later, we noticed her eyes were all pink and goopy. We took her to the doctor and she was diagnosed with bacterial conjuctivitis (Pink Eye) and an ear infection. We picked up her antibiotics and started her on them; she has 2 more days left of those.

Then Mitchell got a sore throat, and then a stuffy nose and a cough, all of it causing him to miss 2 days of class. Then he woke up with an ear infection. He went to the doctor and got some antibiotics. Two days later, he got Pink Eye, so he missed another day of class. He's still in the difficult process of catching up on his many art projects for his classes.

And I got sick, too, of course. I got the sore throat, the stuffy nose, the cough and the ear infection, plus the Pink Eye. I missed 3 days of class because of it. My ear is still plugged and my voice is just getting back to normal (I nearly lost it for a couple days). My mid-terms with this week, and I felt so far behind. Thanks to some quick studying and, especially, some answered prayers, I ended up getting good grades on both exams! It feels great to be done with the first block and starting fresh with the second.

Joseph has managed to get away without getting sick at all. He just had to be kept inside and bored because no one could take him out to play. He's happier now that he can play outside.

Finally, a Good Day

Life has been very busy and stressful for me the last 2 weeks. I've been concerned with how I would make it through this next semester. Sadly, General Conference was not the relaxing and uplifting weekend that I wanted it to be. I was only able to really listen to Elder Scott's talk because the kids were eating breakfast. After that, everything just got insane and I didn't get to listen to another talk well enough to know what was being talked about. I did get some snippets, which I am grateful for, but I ended the weekend feeling more stressed than when it began.

Last night, I sat down and decided that I was going to write out a schedule for myself and work on not getting stressed out. I didn't really follow my schedule today, but it has been the most peaceful day that I have had in a long time. I slept in (I have no memory of my alarm going off even though it did), but just went with the flow when the kids woke me up. I decided to skip classes so that I could spend time with my family, which I haven't been able to do properly for a couple weeks. I got some studying done, cleaned my living room and vacuumed under all the furniture, and played with the kids outside. It was nice to just do some regular things.

I've been stressing about my classes a lot. I tend to freak out if I'm not doing perfectly in my classes, but I've been having a difficult time doing my classwork and taking care of my children and home at the same time. I have finally reconciled myself with the fact that I will have to sacrifice having A's in class in order to keep my sanity.

I hope that I am able to keep this outlook and attitude towards life so that my depression doesn't take over, especially while Annabelle is teething.