Happy Pioneer Day! :D and Happy 2 Month Birthday to Lydia!

July 27, 2015

I can't believe that 2 months have already passed since our little Lydia joined us! She is SOOOO sweet! She loves being swaddled, grabbing my hair, :) looking around the room, taking naps in her little purple swing, and is absolutely TERRIFIED by the sound of my sneezes. Seriously, I sneeze once and she will start to wail! Poor dear! On the other hand, we can accidentally drop a loud dish in the kitchen and it doesn't even phase her! :) If she is fussy, all we have to do is lay her on the changing table and she is as happy as can be! She loves being changed and clean!

She wore her new dress to church for the first time this week! :D It only cost $5.00 on Amazon.com! :D I love great deals and she will grow out of it so fast anyway! I also got this Fuschia dress for her on Amazon too that she wore last Sunday and we matched! I love this picture of her because it looks like she's picking something off of her dress. :)

Here are some super cute pictures of her! Sometimes while I hold her on the couch and use my phone I've noticed that she smiles at the back of my phone...she is fascinated by it...the back of it. It makes for great pictures because she looks right at the camera, but it makes me think I need to give her more interesting things to look at like her colorful giraffe toy. :)

We went to the Bean Life Science Museum for the first time with Lydia! She was asleep the whole time, but we enjoyed looking at the exhibits of real stuffed animals. I saw one that was VERY interesting to me and I never knew this before, but Musk Oxen protect their young/weak by putting them in the middle of a circle they make with their horns pointed outward! Unified, they can protect themselves from the wolves who like to pick them off individually!

It totally reminds me of the baptismal font found in the Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! These oxen represent the twelve tribes of Israel. I think it's an important lesson in being united in Christ. :) In these fonts, we enter to be baptized, but instead of the person baptizing us saying our name, they say a name that you have researched and found from your family history who died without the chance of being baptized. They can then choose whether or not to accept that baptism in the spirit world.

Speaking of Temples, we got to go when my Dad was in town this week on a tour of Temple Square in Salt Lake City. I had never been on an official tour where you have guides and such, and one of the Sister missionaries who gave the tour was from Brazil! :) It was fun to spend time with my Dad there.

We ate at the Roof restaurant when we were there and though it was beautiful, it was a little much for Lydia. She was tired and hungry and she doesn't eat very well in public, but it was still really fun. :) Above is the view from the restaurant of the Salt Lake Temple as the sun was setting.

While my Dad was here we also had dinner at my Uncle Wayne's house with some of his kids. It was great to see them all and for them to meet Lydia for the first time.

Uncle Wayne and Lydia!

Lots of happy kids and cousins!

Bryan Harper's great photobomb :)

We also got to hike Bridal Veil Falls as a family and that was great! Then we got dinner at Bam Bam's BBQ (it's amazing btw, you should go there!)

Me and Dad!

Stuart, Summer and Family!

I asked an elderly gentleman to take this picture on my phone and I was quite impressed that he did such a good job, other than his thumb being a little in the way. :)

On Pioneer Day Summer made the most amazing dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, watermelon, cookies, and root beer floats!
Pioneer Day is a holiday celebrated on July 24th by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where we honor and commemorate the arrival of the Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake valley after their long journey across the plains of America. They suffered a lot in order to find a home where they could worship God in peace without fear of persecution. Many of my ancestors crossed and came to Utah including Mary Cook Brown Gillespie and her four sons. :)

We went to their house and played Star Trek Settlers of Catan that our family gave to Mitch and I in the back of our car on our honeymoon as part of our decorations. :) As you can see, poor Stuart (who was white) got cut off twice...once by Mitch (who is red) and once by me (the orange)...I had a lot of Tritanium and Dilithium, so I could build lots of starships and I pretty much orbited an entire planet just to do it...Stuart sure was a good sport though and he was winning anyway with all his victory point cards :D

I've also finished three more pages in my Book of Mormon quiet book! :D Here is the one for the Tree of Life. Their little hands grab onto the iron rod and they slide to the Tree of Life where you can un-Velcro the fruit and put it into their hands. There's also the angry people in the great and spacious building behind. The people on the rod were going to be Nephi and his family, but I decided to do our family, Mitch, Me, Lydia, and a little boy (that's not an announcement:)).

Here is the Brother of Jared page where Jesus Christ touches the small stones to make them shine to give light in their boats during their journey across the ocean.

For this page you take the little foam stylus and help Mormon to write the Book of Mormon on the gold plates. :)

This week also marked Lydia's two-month birthday as I said above. This is her two-month picture; we're taking her picture at each month old in the same spot so we can make a photo progression collage for when she turns one. :)