My birthday! Lydia's First Meal! & We have a job!

This is a picture of the messiest/funnest day of Lydia's young life! Her first meal of zucchini and her first dessert of strawberries! :D It was the best! She loved it! It was her 4-month birthday and so we decided to blend up some yummy food for her. She LOVES eating and grabbed the spoon to bring into her mouth when we filled it with food! :D

Mitchy learned this song, Coldplay's "Clocks" after seeing the sheet music once, and I'm so glad he did because it's one of my favorite songs ever! He played it for Lydia while I got her food ready. :D

And here is the video of her first meal: zucchini!!!

And here is the strawberry dessert!

That's not all she eats in her high chair (thank you Grandpa and Grandma Steed for the high chair! we love it!) Lydia also eats spatulas and whisks with the occasional snack of watermelon juice:

We just love having her sit at the family dinner table while we eat meals, and she loves it too!

Last week, Mitch flew out to Washington State to have an interview with Microsoft! He had his first interview with them here in Provo, but then went for his next ones at their campus in Redmond. He had a great time touring in the Seattle area.

The iconic Space Needle:

Inside:

At the aquarium:

At the beautiful Seattle Temple:

The city:

Pike Place Market fish-throwing! :D

Mitch had a lot of fun touring on Wednesday, and the interview was pretty long on Tuesday. It was like a four-hour-long exam where at each of the four interviews, they gave him a programming problem, asked him to code it on a whiteboard, and watched him as he coded it. Needless to say, when he called me right after he finished, he was pretty tired! We are so excited and very thankful that on Thursday, he got the job! :D He is pretty excited to begin! And we are excited to begin our adventure in Washington!

The sign we made for him on our door when he come home at 1 in the morning!

September has always been a very special month for me and for our family. It is not only my birth month, but it is the month when Mitchy and I first started dating back in 2012 and pretty much when we decided that we wanted to get married. 

A picture from our first date:) We hiked Stewart Falls in Provo Canyon:

My birthday is also the day last year when I found out we were pregnant with little Lydia after having seen a fertility doctor and trying to get pregnant for almost a year. This is a hard struggle for any who face it, and even harder for those who have faced it for years. I learned from this experience that the decision to have children is truly between a couple and the Lord and that God's timing is more important than any plans we make. I know that though we cannot understand sometimes why things happen the way they do, as Nephi says in The Book of Mormon speaking of God, "I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things." 1 Nephi 11:17

I also know from personal experience that, "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it." Isaiah 25:8

This year for my birthday, we went out to one of my favorite restaurants: PF Chang's! Then we invited the ward and some family for ice cream in the quad! We had my favorite, mint chocolate chip from the BYU creamery! It was so fun to see friends and family. :) After that we went out to the grassy softball field in Wymount and watched the movie Inside Out! 

I had been wanting to see it forever and it was such a treat to see it on my birthday on a big screen while we sat on the grass.

I was totally amazed that Lydia stayed awake pretty much the whole time and watched the movie intently! We snuggled inside all of my blankets; it was cold!

The next day we went to the Stake pancake breakfast! This will be our last one in Wymount :( but it was great! We're so thankful to our Stake leaders for putting it on for us. We took this picture on our way, all dressed up in white and blue, ready for the BYU football game later that day!

That evening we went to Bombay House for some AMAZING Indian food with Mitch's family! I LOVE curry! It was great as usual.

Mitchy made me a chocolate cake and put trick candles on it, haha! That was fun...and smokey! :D

I've also missed my laptop from my school since I stopped working and had to give it back. I've totally been converted to Macs...and it's funny that Mitch will be working for Microsoft...haha, but that is my birthday (and Christmas) present this year, a Mac computer and the headphones that came with it for free. :) It's been pretty great!

Saturday night after cake and such, we watched the BYU football game! We love football season, even more now that Tanner Mangum is the quarterback! Too bad they lost the game on Saturday, but they still did a great job against UCLA who was ranked number 10 at the time!

Here is Lydia watching the game with daddy!

And Mommy:

and in her crib with Nemo and Yoda! :D

We made mint Oreo shakes for the game using the A&W mugs my brother James got for us! Thanks again!

More fun happenings:

Lydia's first time on a walk in her stroller facing front:

She had so much fun! I think she finally realized why we like walks so much because before she was always in her carseat facing the sky, which is only so interesting after a while. :)

It's been getting pretty cold, so we have Lydia wear long sleeves a lot more, 

which means lots of footie pajamas at night! She is so cute!

This is pretty much my favorite picture ever. Lydia is always smiling at me, and I at her, but this is a picture of it and I could just look at it forever!

Here is a cute picture of Lydia and daddy on the couch:

Here is our Pinterest "month by month" picture for her 4-month birthday:

Lastly, Lydia sat up on her own for the first time on Wednesday! 

And again today! Good job, Lydia!