Christmas In Pahrump

Sorry that this post is a little delayed, but I thought I would share. This year was my first Christmas away from home. Besides missing my mom's Christmas breakfast casserole and the snow I honestly felt right at home. We drove down the day before Christmas Eve and were able to stay for the whole next week. We had a lot of fun spending time with family and greatly enjoyed the long vacation away from school and work. Unfortunately, like most people we are not the best at remembering to take pictures but here are the few that we did take from our trip.

I was feeling very crafty this Christmas and decided to make most of the gifts to our family. 

Collin helped me tie a fleece blanket for Carter. I used Carter's school colors, gold and maroon, which made for a nice cozy blanket that he could take on all his sporting trips.

Here is Collin in his new cardigan! With his new cardigan and glasses everyone says he looks like an official psychologist now.

Among all the homemade gifts I made, I made Lily and Olivia little aprons to go with the play kitchen they got last year for Christmas. These probably took the longest to make but thankfully Hanna helped me with them. I made all my other nieces some skirts which I'll have to take a picture of Mia in one to show you how cute they turned out!

Here we all are dressed up for church. As you can tell from the photo the weather was truly nothing I have ever experienced on Christmas, but to be honest the warm weather was rather nice. 

Not only did we enjoy spending time with family, we also enjoyed LOTS of good food-- so much so that we both gained five or so pounds! Luckily I can attribute some of those pounds to my baby.

Also over the break Collin and I celebrated our two year anniversary! While marriage does come with its difficulties, the past two years have truly been blissful. I couldn't be more thankful for everything I have, especially for my loving husband who does so much for me. I love all the times we have spent together and am anxious and excited for the many more years to come. 

Planning for Baby

Another semester has gone by and a new one has begun. We are excited to say that it is Collin's last semester at UVU and he will be graduating in April! He has really enjoyed his experience at UVU and has greatly excelled in his classes. Also he recently found out that his research group was accepted into the National Conference of Undergraduate Research that is being held at Weber State in March. If all goes well with that he and his group might even go as far as getting their work published! I wish I could say I was graduating this April as well but working has slowed me down some. Fortunately, I will only have three classes left to take after this semester and an internship and then I will be graduating as well. We've just finished our first week of school and are both really excited about our classes this semester.

Besides school, all is still going well with the pregnancy. We had another ultrasound last week to check up on how our baby is growing and developing. She is healthy and growing big. Between school, work, and the holidays Collin and I have hardly had time to start planning for our baby. We realized the other day that our baby is due in just three months and we have nothing, so we decided to devote the day to baby shopping. Although we still have a couple months left to buy everything we'll need we went out today and looked at some cribs and rocking chairs. We haven't settled on anything yet but we found a lot of good options. One thing we have settled on for sure is the name Adilynn (although the spelling is still on debate).

I've been debated for awhile if I want to make the bedding or buy it all, but after some prodding from my sister I've decided to make it. Hanna has helped me a lot and has given me some great ideas that has really got me excited. Plans really seem to be taking off now and the excitement of our baby girl just keeps growing. Below is the quilt that I've decided to make. I ordered the pattern online and bought some cute fabric today and am thrilled to see the final product-- it is going to be so cute!

I found this vintage baby quilt pattern on Esty. It sounds like it will be super easy and I just love the frayed edges and the wrinkled vintage look of it. 

Hanna found this adorable vintage carnival fabric at some store and I immediately fell in love. I've decided to  use it as inspiration for Addie's nursery. Below is some fabric I found to use in the quilt that goes really nicely with the carnival fabric. I haven't quite decided what I want to do with the carnival fabric, but I was thinking about maybe making a crib skirt out of it and then framing some of it to go on the walls. I also think it would be fun to frame some of the artwork Hanna was able to find as well.

That is pretty much all for now, I'll be sure to keep everyone updated how everything turns out!