It's been too long.

I have been so deprived from the blogging world for basically the past two months!
We were sooo busy on our VERY long vacation, and now I am up to my ears in pictures!!!

I'll post (kinda) in reverse (so when I publish my blog into a book it will be in the right order), so I hope it makes sense!

I'll post our Hawaii trip & other pictures that happened earlier in the month later.
-----------

Just before Christmas, my friends & our hubbies got together for an "ugly sweater party." Well, apparently we didn't get the second memo that the whole ugly sweater part, was canceled. So, we were the only ones wearing ugly sweaters...it was hilarious. Thankfully, we wore normal shirts underneath. Matt's a good sport though.


My best friends: Liz, Andrea, Me & Dani


This was at the Johnson family Christmas party, which is always chaos with 30-some odd people (mostly children), but always very fun! Here I am sporting my new head-band beanie thing, that I won, apparently this thing is a new, VERY trending thing right now in Utah.



A few days after Christmas, our best friends from Cleveland, came to visit us at Matt's house. They were in town with some family. It was so fun to see them in Utah!


That night we headed up to Farmington to visit Matt's 95 year-old Grandpa Hess. After, we stopped at Temple Square to see the pretty lights.


Later that week, Matt's little sisters came with my whole family up to Soldier Hollow, in Park City to go TUBING! It was so fun! It was very cold, but a blast.








After tubing, we had a potluck lunch at the lodge with hot cocoa to warm up.


One of the biggest highlights of the whole trip was to see Cameron (Matt's little brother) come home from his mission. He left two years ago, to the Torreon, Mexico Mission (the day before Luke was born). We drove up the airport Dec. 30th, just before midnight & just as it turned into my birthday (hah) Cam walked out! It was such a neat experience. I've never been there to see a missionary, in my family, come home. It was really awesome. (It's also funny, because Cam & I are only about 9 months apart in age...weird!)


I love this picture. It's my mom-in-law & Matt & sisters watching Cam walk down (before they were allowed to run to him). Their faces tell it all.

It really was such a sweet reunion (at a very late hour-notice Luke a bit out of it). I wish the rest of the family could have been there. And now I understand why everyone cries at these things. :)


I know this one is out of order, oh well.
Our little Lukey on Christmas morning. It was fun this year because he opened & played with his presents. Although, he was very, very slow at opening them & lost interest very quickly. In fact, we had to keep chasing him back into the front room, where we were opening presents. I think he got bored too fast.

Uncle Cam brought these awesome cowboy boots back from Mexico. They were so cute on Luke.
Sorry about the bad picture.


Last but not least, me on (the day after) my birthday! The day of, was great, we just forgot to take pictures. Matt took me to lunch at Tucano's (SOOO yummy!) & that night we had a very fun New Year's Eve party at Matt's house. So, the day after, my family threw me a little birthday party/good-bye party for us. We had some yummy pizza & delicious cakes that my sister made! Thanks Mandy, they were awesome!!!

We flew back to Cleveland late Sunday (Jan 3rd) night.

*Our house is freezing. In fact, Luke just might be sleeping in our room for the rest of the winter, because his room is the coldest & our space heater died. :(
*It hasn't stopped snowing since we've been back. (2ft+)
*I'm afraid we won't see the sun for the next two months, at least.
*As always, we are having a difficult time getting back to a normal sleeping schedule. Luke just woke up from his "nap," I guess you could say, at 8pm.
*And the best news is.....LUKE learned how to climb in & out of his crib the next day! So, we are now trying to train our little toddler how to sleep in a toddler bed. (Not what we had in mind).

Even when Cleveland isn't so great, we are very happy to be back in our own beds (even if Luke is in the middle). We get to wear "new" clothes (that we haven't been wearing for the last two months). I get to cook in my own kitchen, where I can find what I'm looking for. But the best parts are that Luke loves all his toys, like he's never seen them before & our house is baby-proofed, so he can run wild...oh & he doesn't get lost in our house. :)

A HUGE thank you to Matt's parents & my parents & to all of our siblings & babysitters!!! Luke LOVES all of you & lists almost everyone in both families names daily. We LOVED, really, being home. You are all great & love you all so much! We had a great Christmas & feel so blessed to have such great families!

Greetings from Paradise

ALOOOOOHA!!

Matt & I are enjoying the heat & soaking up as much sun as we can while we're here in Hawaii! We are having a blast. I just wanted to quickly upload a few pictures. I have A LOT of blogging to catch up on when we get back. Enjoy!
Aloha!

So busy.

We are having so much fun & staying EXTREMELY busy here in Utah. Our family has been great! Luke LOOOOVES his aunts, his "papa's" & cousins. I'm afraid he'll never stop asking for "ager (adrienne) papa's house" once we leave.

Here are some things we've been busy doing:
-Interviews (Denver, Denver, Houston, Phoenix w/ Utah & Hawaii still to come)
-Jumpin' Jacks (twice!)
-Photoshoots up the wazoo! (8 so far)
-Holiday preparations.
-Getting ready for finals.

Thanksgiving was awesome. We spent it in Phoenix with Rachel & Charlie. We leave to Hawaii this week & we are very excited, but will definitely miss Luke. I'm not sure that he'll miss us though....he REALLY REALLY loves Matt's mom & little sister.
This vacation is FLYING by. I can't believe that when we come back from Hawaii, Christmas will be the next week! We'll be back in Cleveland before we know it. Fourth year is going by much too quickly.

I have some pictures I need to post. As for now, that's just a little update on us!

Time Out For Women

This past weekend my mom & sisters & I gathered together to have a little bit of a girls weekend. We spent two days at the event, "Time Out For Women," a conference put on by Deseret Book. Some of the speakers we heard from were Elder Nelson's wife (Wendy Watson Nelson), Sherri Dew, Kris Belcher, S. Micheal Scott & a few more. Also, singer Hillary Weeks & violinist, Jenny Oaks Baker, performed. Both did an AMAZING job & I can't wait to buy some of their music...maybe Santa will bring me some! :)
All of it was so inspiring & uplifting. These women were hilarious too! Some stories I laughed so hard that I cried! I can't wait to attend another Time Out For Women. Holly, Jenny, Me, Susie, Mom, Angi & Adalee
Here we are on day one. Although, we didn't feel complete missing our sister Mandy, who couldn't come down from Boise. We really did miss having you there!!!

Little Adalee was the only baby girl with us. I just CANNOT get over how darn cute she is!!! She is so happy, I could hold her all day.

The first night we spent it at my sister Jenny's house, she lived close to Salt Lake, that way we didn't have to get a hotel. We played our "favorite things" game. We all brought an item that is one of our favorite things, under $10 & then played a game where we kind of swapped. Everyone went home with something new. It was fun, we'll have to play again!

Day two.
Notice Jenny's cute scarf? That was my favorite thing I brought, I love it!

My two cute sisters, Susie & Jenny w/the babe.

For lunch on day two we ran across the street to the Olive Garden & had the worst experience! I never knew you could have a bad experience at the Olive Garden. Anyway, a long story short, we ended up getting about three meals for free-including mine!

It was a short weekend spent together as women, but it was a lot of fun!
I'm so grateful to be a part of such a great family, filled with so many amazing women that I love to be around. Thanks for such a great weekend girls!

And thanks to all the hubbies & babysitters for watching all our cute kiddos!

He's a funny kid.

This funny little boy really likes to get into things.
Lately we've caught him putting our tooth paste in his mouth & Matt caught him licking his deodorant. Gross! They were both in his mouth for a second. Don't worry I swear we usually put things up high & we don't usually let him get into the more dangerous things, that we'd have to call poison control. :)

The most recent one happened yesterday.
I jumped in the shower & I usually shut the door, turn on a movie & he's our little couch potato so he doesn't usually even notice I'm gone. I left the door open & I hear him come in & I could tell he was doing something. I peeked out & noticed the tooth paste was gone, again!
At first I yelled his name about 20 times & nothing. Then I thought, "I'll just hurry & finish up." And then the thought occurred to me, "What if he smears it all over the couch & carpet & everywhere!" Because he totally would. So I had to jump out of the shower, with soap in my hair, grab a towel & chase the little guy down!! He was already starting to smear in on the coffee table.
Boys.

Even though he can be a bit of a little rascal, he is still our favorite little guy & he is so much fun.
His most recent favorite words/phrases are cool, oh really, wow, cute, thank you mom, stop mom. He is talking so much. I starting making a list of words he says & there are well over 50! This boy is just growing too fast! He is so smart. I've noticed when we drive past our friends houses he says, "Lily house," "Parker house," or "Jason, Marilyn, Baby house."
Every day he does more & more that just amazes me of how smart he is!
He is now really getting into books, which we love! He's never liked them much until now. We'll sit and read books for a half an hour.
Many of you know that Matt was in Seattle for a few days interviewing. It went very well, he really liked it there. We were a bit lonely without him & Luke was very happy when his daddy came home. He loved playing in his suitcase with "T" & playing with daddy.

Luke & I leave in a few days to fly home to Utah & then Matt will join us the following week. We are very excited to be with our families for all of the holiday festivities for the next two months! We're excited for Luke to play with all his cousins, aunts & uncles & his four papa's (he thinks they are all papa's). I'm especially excited to meet my newest nephew Oliver!

Oh & we are also looking forward to our trips to Phoenix, Denver & Hawaii-while we're there.

Halloween 2009

We started a yummy family tradition this year. I think every holiday tradition we've started has to do with food. For those of you who really know me, I lOVE breakfast foods. We have brinner all the time around here. We decided to make some yummy pumpkin spice pancakes to eat each Halloween, for dinner. Mmmm they were good!

On Halloween evening we stopped at our friends house for a little bit. They did the cutest thing, they had a trick-or-treating pit-stop for people they knew. You could stop & warm up on your way trick-or-treating. They had hot apple cider, treats & all sorts of fun stuff. It was such a great idea. After that we joined some other friends to have pizza & watch a "scary" movie, but since all of us (at least me & Matt) are not fans of scary movies, we watched "Wait Until Dark." Unfortunately we couldn't finish it, since Matt had to catch a flight at 5am the next day.



We all decided to dress up the last minute as cowboys-lame, I know. But it was cute too, well with Lukey. He made such a cute cowboy.



And, I'll say, Matt makes a fine cowboy himself!



Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!