Mom look at me!

 Owen is getting so big.  I love how at four months he's being more engaging and enjoying reading books, standing all of the time instead of sitting, and smiling and laughing a lot.  I love how parents goo and gaa to get babies to respond, even though it looks ridiculous it's a sign of love.

 

Story one from this week.  To work out  I run on the treadmill but also do Zumba on the wii... which I look absolutely ridiculous... Owen was in his Bumbo with his little rattle and he started screaming.  Owen's little finger got caught in the little ring, I was right there and got it out and just held him as he cried.  It's pretty much the first time he's been hurt and holding him I could feel so much love and also sadness for his little finger.  I just love my little guy, and yes his finger is ok and this picture with his rattle was before the incident.

 

Story two, daddy time. First of all, Owen loves facing us to study our expressions and loves playing as Dad lifts him up over his head.  Love these two.

 

 

Story three, Jordans.  Who said dressing boys was boring, well I proved them wrong.  Dressing boys is the best, Owen has a sporty look (like below) and a dresser trendy look.  Shoes are so cute for little boys, I made just to get at least one cute pair of shoes for every size.  

 

Zilio's Artisan Pizza

My family wanted to go try somewhere new for dinner so we stopped at the new Zilio's Artisan Pizza restaurant in Sandy, UT.  The pizza was SOoOo good, it's now our favorite pizza place to go to!  With it's Italian environment, we loved the design in this restaurant from the history of Zilio's on the walls and its design and artwork.

Zilios has 17 different pizzas and the prices were amazing at $6.50 a pizza for whatever kind you want.  We got four pizzas to try and split with our friends.  I haven't tried a Bianca pizza before (pizza with no sauce and just cheese) but I tried the Mama Zilio's Berry Pie and it was seriously so good and my favorite pizza.  We also had the Pig & Pineapple, Four Meat and BBQ Chicken (my second favorite). I love how these pizzas were made and they were a decent size so I was filled up and had leftovers.

Here are the pizzas at Zilio's

Marinara Pizzas

Three Cheese, Traditional Pepperoni, Marinara, Calabrese, Vegetariano, Margherita, Italian Sausage, Four Meat, Pig & Pinapple, Patata Pie

BBQ Pizzas

BBQ Chicken, Sweet Styled Pulled Pork

Bianca Italiano Pizzas

Pizza Bianca, Pear Pie, Bianca Arugula, Sorrentina, Mama Zilio's Berry Pie

Our travel buddies :) Always up to try new things with us, we've been excited to eat at Zilio's and invited them to come with us.

BFFs, see you guys soon!  Thanks for joining us for an awesome dinner at Zilio's!

4 Month Owen

The day Owen turned 3 months he started sleeping through the night. He usually goes to bed 10-11pm then sleeps 6-8 hours, Wales up for a feeding, then gotta to bed for another few hours. One of my favorite parts of the day it's hearing his little voice in the monitor and getting him out of his crib. He always has a huge smile on his face and sometimes squeals because he's so excited to see us. 

Owens neck is strong and he loves sitting up in our arms and the last few days straightening out his legs and standing up on them all of the time. He loves sucking on his hands and bringing them close to his body when he laughs. He's playing with more toys and starting to grab for them. 

This month I was sick for a week and was so glad he didn't get it, his cradle cap was getting worse and after we tried everything, a prescription worked and his little head looks great. It looks like blonde hair is coming in on the top but the hair in the back is red so we'll see what color it will end up!

Top 5 places to purchase Birth Announcements

There are so many cute places online to buy birth announcements, I had no idea where to start and many places were so expensive!  I got my newborn photos (shoutout to Lindsay Wright Photography who did an amazing job...info below) and had no idea where I should go for birth announcements.  After my research, I have come up with my 5 top places where to buy cute announcements.

1) Simply to Impress

I hadn't heard of Simply to Impress until I was browsing online and saw their awesome prices.  This is the place I ended up purchasing from.  Their birth announcements had so many cute designs and the quality of the announcements were very good along with the printing/color.

2) Minted
What I liked about Minted is that you can upload a picture and then it shows your picture on every birth announcement so it's easier to pick out which announcement will look the best.  I think Minted had the cutest designs but the prices were steeper then what I wanted to pay for.

3) Vista Print

I have used Vista Print before and have really liked the quality of their printing.  Their pricing for birth announcements was very reasonable but they definitely had less variety and had more basic announcement designs. 

4) Tiny Prints

I love the cute styles and backs that Tiny Prints had.  They are owned by Shutterfly who I love purchasing my photobooks from, they always have some kind of discount you can find online and their products are great.  They had a lot of cute patterns and backs and more options to add multiple pictures.

5) PearTree Greetings
I liked the creativity and designs in PearTree Greetings.  The website was easy to use and the announcements were definitely unique and cute!

Good luck with purchasing your birth announcements!

These pictures of mine were taken by Lindsay Wright Photography.  She did an amazing job and I could go on and on about the professionalism, variety of props and backdrops, and time she spent with our little one.  For pricing and information go to: http://www.lindsaywrightphotography.com/blog/.  She is located in Utah and has some great deals for Valentine's pictures which you can check out on Facebook as well.

Blessing Day

It was so fun having everyone over to celebrate a birthday and blessing. Here are some pictures from that day.

So I ordered his suit way too close to  Christmas so I was worried it wasn't going to get here on time but I loved it so much.  Umm, by the way, why do girl blessing outfits have tons of variety and are so cute and most of the boy outfits are all the same or look like sailor outfits?  Well I loved this mini suit/tux and it came right before his blessing except... it was enormous!

I quickly looked in the stores and had no luck so the night before I took off a few inches in the pants and suit.

Baby's First Christmas and Christmas Traditions

Wow December flew by!  We had such a fun Christmas time and I'm already sad to take down the tree and stockings and can't wait for next year.  We have some fun traditions and this Christmas felt a lot different having little Owen in our lives.  Even though he has no idea what Christmas is or the traditions we did, we felt Christmas and our traditions were more meaningful having Owen in our home.

Tradition 1: December Serving

Throughout all of December Chris and I before going to bed would talk about how we served that day.  In years past we had a calendar of December and would write down the service we did that day.  I think I'll go back to that next year, but anyway, it was great trying to have others as a top priority and thinking during the day how we could help someone else.

Tradition 2: White Elephant and Santa

With Chris' family we have not just a white elephant, but create white elephant gifts that tease other family members and that could have meaning to something else that happened during that year.  Anyway, the family loved Key and Peele's East/West Youtube so..... we created our own with our faces (I'm the first picture, Chris is the second).  

During white elephant Santa comes... I know him!  Owen was so good.

 And, here we are in our ugly sweaters.  I love O's little smile in this one.

Tradition 3: Christmas Eve

So we celebrate birthdays and Owen's baby blessing in our family.  The day was filled with family (my family was in town as well) and we have fun being together then before we go to bed we open one gift which has pjs (and a book and toy for O).  We cuddle up and read Luke 2.

Tradition 4: Santa Cookies and Elves

One tradition we started this year was making cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve.  We also got a visit from Buddy the Elf (our Elf on a Shelf) who watched if Owen was being good this December.

Tradition 5: Scavenger Hunt

When Santa comes, he leaves a new ornament on our tree for each person.  After we open our gifts, we find our ornament which has our first clue to our Santa gift.  There are about 6-8 clues and then you find your gift!

Tradition 6: Gratitude, looking Back 2013

I know it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of presents on Christmas day, this year on Christmas for almost an hour we took time to think of what Christ has done for us this past year and how he has blessed us. This is definitely something we want to continue, we talked about what happened that year from the goals we set to our trips, to the many trials and the many blessings.  

We are so blessed and are grateful for the Christmas season to celebrate the birth of Christ, and remember how He lived his life and how we can follow His example.  I'm grateful for these and other fun traditions to not only help our little family get closer together, but to get closer to God.

Nursery Designs for Owen

So, I think I finally can reveal Owen's nursery.  My husband wanted a sports theme but looking online for inspiration I swear nothing was subtle with a sports theme, it had to be over the top and everywhere you looked.  I wanted to have hints of a sports theme but have the nursery have a traditional cute look so... here we go!