Thanks, Grandma Snow

For Christmas, Grandma & Grandpa Snow got me a set of books and this cool poster. I love the colors, and Mom says it’s good to have the ABCs on my wall where I can see them every day.

Thanks!

Love,

Aiden

Congratulations!

Since they are “facebook official,” I suppose I am not letting the cat out of the bag by saying

CONGRATULATIONS!

 

I’m so excited for you guys! I can’t wait to see you two tie the knot!

Wow

Tonight I watched this video: http://radio.lds.org/eng/programs/conversations-episode-26

and it made me cry. Yeah, I’m a weeper.

Then I made Isaac watch it (okay, most of it… he’s not quite as mushy as I am)

and then I spent the rest of the evening rolling around on the floor with my baby and husband and even the dog because you know what? It really is such a blessing to be a mom.

Thanks for the reminder, Stephanie.

http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/

Ten Months Old!

Poor Aiden. We didn’t do anything very fun for his ten-month-day. This week Isaac went to the dentist to suffer the wrath of the drill, Isaac’s Grandpa Hanson died, and we entered the early stages of having our bathroom torn up because we have unknowingly had a leak filling up our floor. (sigh) It’s been a rough week.

We sure are glad to have our sweet little ten-month old along for the ride though! He is quite the trooper about cutting his first top tooth right now. Mostly. At ten months…

*He has two and a half teeth.

*He is cruising around furniture more comfortably, and his balance has improved a lot recently. He will sometimes take a step without holding anything, just to get from one handhold to another, but he’s not really walking.

*He loves food. He will sit pretty nicely at the table as long as he has food, and he is much better at getting cereal or puffs or bits of banana into his mouth than he was a month ago.

*He reaches for anything and everything within his grasp and gets tired of things quickly, so we are always looking for something new to let him check out.

*He smiles really big for people he knows and reaches out his hands to them. He is also pretty content sitting with people he doesn’t know as well, at least for a while.

*He likes to splash in his baths and play with toys in the water. I won’t let him have any bath toys with holes that could potentially collect water since I saw this news report on sludge in bath toys (*shudder*), but he loves his new alphabet pieces from Aunt Teresa. Thanks, Teresa!

Oh, and Sophie has this protective thing where she won’t leave his side while he’s in the tub.

*He smiles for the camera, and usually then he tries to come get it. I have to be quick and keep untouchables out of his reach at ALL times.

*He says “mama” when he wants to come see me, particularly when he is hungry. I don’t know that he knows that’s a name, but he does it consistently, and I think it’s cute.

Happy ten-month-day, Aiden! You’re turning into such a big boy!

Why I love Photoshop & Lightroom

Have you seen that commercial about The Cloud giving some lady the family nature never could? If not, you really aren’t missing out, but it is kind of a good point that digital photos and imaging make it a lot easier to end up with a pretty great picture than was once possible.

For instance, I started with the following picture, which is pretty dang cute of everyone except Aiden, who smiled much better for other pictures.

so I head-swapped him. I also cropped it and warmed it up a little. Much cuter.

Then I had this one from family pictures. I had the camera set on auto because I really haven’t practiced enough to be confident with manual yet, but I wished later that I had tried at least on some shots because auto was a little all over the place; some were so overexposed they were not even salvageable. So sad. Thankfully, some of them turned out pretty cute. It’s hard to get 16 people facing forward and looking ready for the camera at the same instant, you know?

Voila! Head swap success. (and cropped and warmed again)

I have the ability to get a little artsy with Lightroom if I feel so inclined, and it’s so easy!

I can even do something disgusting like this… (okay, officially I did this about 8 years ago with another program)

and now that I have frightened you all, I will go back to just cropping.

mostly ;)

Little Friends

These two played pretty nicely while the mommies and daddies played Ticket to Ride: Europe and chatted. Thanks, Jon & Danielle, for having us over!

Tonight Aiden played with Naomi, who is about five weeks younger than he is. I was hoping he would give her this flower, but he was more into just waving it around to himself. :)

Naomi was super cute about smiling for the camera, but Aiden just ignored me, lol.

Nothing is Safe

Someone has been very interested in EVERYTHING he can get his hands on lately… cups of water, anything of the dog’s, books, magazines, cords of any kind, tablecloths, laundry baskets, trash cans, you name it! Here is just one of the weird places he has crawled this week…

and the beginning of yet another session of “empty all the shelves within reach!”

He keeps us on our toes, but isn’t he cute?

Aiden’s First Plane Ride

Last week we were able to make a trip to Tennessee to visit with a whole bunch of family! It was Aiden’s first time on an airplane, and I have to say, he was a very pleasant passenger.

It was also his first time to see snow, but this hardly counted because it was so little, you can’t even see it in the picture. If you look really hard, you can see one tiny flake near his left foot.

Aiden saw his Great Grandpa and Grandma Hanson; Great Uncle Denis & Aunt Nora; Grandma and Grandpa Snow; uncles and aunts Kevin, Emily, Jon, Whitney, Matthew, Stephani, Sarah, and Teresa; and cousins Grace, Anne, and Oberlin! It was quite the party.

sorry Grandpa! I hope your face has recovered from Aiden!

Many of these family members he was meeting for the first time, and I thought he was pretty friendly. He wasn’t a big fan of hanging out in the play yard, regardless of whether he had a cousin there to play with him.

In general, they seemed to get along though. :) Can you tell which one is 27 days older?

The four little Snow & Bylund cousins

We had lots of fun playing games, talking, visiting the zoo, seeing some Memphis sights, and just enjoying one another’s company.

It was a great trip, and while it is nice to be home, it is sad to have to go back to work and get right into the daily grind again. Thanks to our gracious hosts and to everyone who tolerated our CA internal clocks and sleep schedules.

Happy New Year! May 2011 bring us all many more great memories!

Happy New Year, all!

2011 is bound to be a great year. It has an 11, after all.