The "count your many blessings" challenge results:

So... I must super de-dooper be missing Travis because I hardly ever blog, let alone twice in one day. But I'm BORED!!!!!!! And this stops me from eating more food... (For those who haven't heard Travis went back up Boulder Mtn. with his dad for a couple days because they both wanted another shot (haha) at getting an elk since their cow tags are still good)

So here's what I decided to distract my time with. Someone on Facebook put out a challenge to list one thing that you were grateful for everyday in the month of November. I was just going back through and reading them (again, I'm bored) and realized that I missed a few. So I thought a great way to end the month, and catch up on the ones that I missed, would be to post them all here so that EVERYONE (who also didn't have anything better to do) could read them all! :)

1. I am grateful for sunny days, even when they are a little chilly.

2. I am grateful for mischievous smiles that tell me Dani's brain is figuring something out.

3. I am grateful for the power of music, love the days when you find just the right song.

4. I am grateful for carrot sticks (sometimes) they hit the right spot. For the other times, I'm grateful for cold cereal!

5. I am grateful for the fact that my husband never complains about dinner.

6. I'm so grateful for the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. It is such a wonderful blessing to know that I can be with my family forever. It brings joy to my life to see all of the small, daily tender mercies that the Lord grants me and all of us as we continue to do what He asks of us.

7. I am so grateful for family days!

8. I am grateful for good friends. People who help me keep perspective and can always make me laugh.

9. I am grateful for sleep in opportunities after long nights. (Funny how sleeping in is redefined to 8am after you have a kid.)

10. I am grateful for slobbery, wet baby kisses from Dani when I go get her out of her crib in the morning. She is such a morning baby. :) (Not really sure who she gets it from though..)

11. I am so grateful for my partner in struggles and success, my best friend and confidant, my wonderful husband who always thinks of others before himself, and whom I love with all my heart! <3<3<3 :-D

11. (I had two grateful status' that day) I am grateful for the freedoms we have come to know as normal. I am so grateful for the veterans, past and present, that have, and do ensure that we get to keep them. I hope we never take those freedoms for granted. That we continue to recognize and appreciate how truly blessed we are. Happy Veterans Day!!! Thank you Veterans!!! :)

12. I am grateful for chocolate because without it I wouldn't have made it through today.

13. I am grateful for technology. I am grateful I don't have to spend hours daily doing laundry, cooking and cleaning. (Every other day is so much better!)

14. I am grateful for the beauty that comes with the change of every season.

15. I am grateful to have a husband that works hard all day/week/month/year so that we can have food and the occasional "toy."

16. I am grateful for the stars (you can actually see them where I live) that remind me that no matter how dark it is there is always room for glimmers of light.

17. I am grateful for super nachos from Alberto's and for a husband who understands my hankering for them.

18. I am grateful for running water. You never realize how much you use that stuff till you don't have it...

19. I am grateful for my family. For my parents and parents-in-law, for my brother and sisters and for my brothers and sisters-in-law, for my nieces and nephews, for my aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins. All those that watch out for me here on earth and in heaven. I wouldn't be who I am and I wouldn't be where I am if it weren't for you. Thank you for your examples and love!

20. I am grateful for Western medicine that has brought us life saving drugs such as ibuprofen.

21. I am grateful for good books.

22. I am grateful for the positive side of things, a.k.a. the "glad game."

23. I am grateful for sleep. You always appreciate some thing more when you don't have it.

24. I am grateful for the time that I spent teaching myself how to crochet and "knit" because I just finished the CUTEST beanie for Dani!! :)

25. I am grateful for good, deep, all body laughs.

26. I am grateful for good health.

27. I am grateful for good food. (Especially when you are feeding others and are worried about it turning out! whew!!!)

28. I am grateful for the peace that comes when we are in a trial that grants us the patience to last just a little longer.

29. I am grateful to be able to bend over! (Been having some back trouble the last few days and I'm starting to climb back, it feels GREAT!)

30. I am grateful that I took the "Count your many blessings" challenge. It made a big difference in each of my days to recognize one (sometimes insignificant) thing that I was grateful for.

Ultimately, I am grateful for the Savior, for all that He has done for us and for the comfort it gives me to know that He is still there for me every day. I am grateful for my little family and for the love that we share and the strength we bring to each other each day. I hope we all have at least 30 things (small or large) that we are grateful for in our lives.

Hope you enjoyed reading these. I sure appreciate the time it killed for me. :) It was kind of fun to go back through them all and see them again. And it felt good to fill in the blanks.

Turkey (and chicken) days

Wow! We've had a busy couple of weeks! First, the bad news.. we were planning to go to my parent's house for Thanksgiving, as I mentioned in our last post. But unfortunately Dani got a cold the Sunday before Thanksgiving and her doctor said she would be contagious for at least the next 7 days. Since we knew that there would be other very small children at my family's house, we kind of uninvited ourselves.

We were REALLY disappointed at first because both Travis and I had been looking forward to going to visit my family and we've already set our plans to be with his family for Christmas. We realized though that staying home would be the responsible thing and decided we would just have to stop and see everyone when we went up for the Bates family Christmas party in December.

Travis and I realized that this acutally presented us with a unique opportunity. We decided to have our own Thanksgiving at home with our own little family. We were getting really excited about the idea, since we didn't expect an invitation anywhere else with a sick baby, when Travis' family invited us to come have dinner with them. (Insisted actually!) We were really grateful for the invitation but because there were going to be children there as well we tried to keep the visit short and just go for dinner. Dani was doing much better than expected so we did get to stay through a viewing of Monsters vs. Aliens. She didn't really get too fussy until she realized how tired she was. :) So many fun things when you go to Grandma's house! She tried real turkey for the first time (it was a hit!) and I think if she had a few more bites we could have turned her on to the mashed potatoes as well. It was good to visit with family and we were grateful that they overlooked Dani's runny nose. We're just hoping that it didn't hitch a ride home with any of them!

Because we had already started to set plans in motion to do our own family Thanksgiving we decided to continue on and do just a smaller dinner with a chicken instead of a turkey. (Let's face it, we'd never finish a turkey and I have NO idea how to cook one, so we stuck with our strengths.) Travis' cousin Jessie and her husband Adam and little girl Reagan came down to enjoy another meal with us. We had a good time together we were just sad that it was so short of a visit.

In addition to all the food I've been keeping myself pretty busy with crafts. I've been dabbling the last year or so with knitting. I've crocheted for many many years. My Grandma Todd got me started many moons ago and also gave me a book that has directions for every type of needlework imaginable. Knitting has alway intrigued me but illuded me at the same time. I finally decided that I was going to learn it. I've gotten progressively better and decided to try knitting a beenie for Dani for this winter. It really didn't start out well at all. I had only worked on it for oh... about 3 hours or so when I realized I needed to take it out and start all over! Thbbb!!! Oh well by the time I got it all figured out we had a pretty cute result. Travis came up with the idea of attaching ties so that we could strap it to her head! :) They really made it so much cuter!! And much more functionable haha!

The hat turned out so cute that I started experimenting with different colors and sizes and have now made a whole bunch of these little hats. I'm loving it! I would really love to get some more patterns and make some really cute ones for Travis and I too.

All in all we had a great turkey day and a great chicken day. :) Dani ate the chicken really well too. (I was just glad it was edible. I hadn't tried this recipe in over 5 years. Now Travis says we need to have it more often haha!!!) Dani actually pretty much insists on trying whatever it is that we are eating at this point. And to be honest there really isn't much that she has refused to eat. I hope that is good foreshadowing for the future!

This is Travis' and Dani's new game. They play hide and seek around our little coffee table and Dani LOVES it!!!!!

Dani's still got a touch of a runny nose but hopefully it's on it's way out. Doesn't look like she's letting it get her down too much though does it! haha

Well we hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well.

Till next time..

Catch up!!

Yeah, ok, it's taken me WAY too long to update, I know and I am sorry. Wow! We have a lot of ground to cover here... Ok, we'll start at the beginning.

SEPTEMBER

By the end of August Dani was full on, hands and knees crawling and it wasn't long after that that she learned to stand. By the end of September she was pretty efficiently walking around the furniture and even trusting herself to stand for a few seconds at a time. We spent most of the month busy with third crop but Dani and I did make it away for a quick trip to Salt Lake for my Uncle Eric's wedding. We missed Travis (Dani kept looking around for him and then looking back at me with a little pout. She was so happy to see him when we got home!!) Daddy and Dani have a very special bond already. It is so sweet to see! :)

Have I mentioned how much she loves my camera???

OCTOBER

We got away for a few days for the anual elk hunt on Boulder Mountain. Dani and I lasted about 5 days and then Dani really needed to be back in some familiar surroundings. Up until then she did much much better than I EVER expected. She is such a trooper.

Travis stayed for another 4 days after we came home. We really missed him! When he got home and was unloading his stuff from the camper Dani would just sit on our little landing by the front door. She'd follow him back and forth until he'd finally brought everything in and then she just sat on his lap perfectly content for a good long while till it was dinner time. Unfortunately all that extra time on the mountain didn't result in any meat in our freezer. Travis is going to take another stab at it here in a week or so. Right after Thanksgiving he and his dad are heading back up the mountain to hopefully get something before their tags run out.

One of the main reasons Dani and I came home so early is because she was stung by a wasp TWICE on her face! :( Thankfully there was another mom with kids there that had some Children's Benadryl and after a small dose we quickly ran into the trailor where Travis and D.J. gave her a blessing. The swelling was all but gone by the time we got home a couple hours after it happened. Thank goodness for the blessing of the preisthood!!!

For Halloween we went as a little farm family. Travis and I dressed as farmers and Dani was a little piglet. We had a great time running around visiting family and friends and ended the night with dinner with Roni and her kids.
Dani also got to participate in her first pumpkin carving. We stripped her down to her diaper and jsut let her go crazy in the gunk. She was unsure at first but had a really good time once she warmed up to the new "surroundings." (We covered our floor with a plastic tarp so she could access everything more easily and we could consolidate clean up! Worked SUPER GOOD!)

NOVEMBER (so far)

Dani's doctor told us at her 9 mo check up that there isn't much that she can't eat now just milk, honey, and things that would be a chocking hazard so she has gotten to try a whole host of new foods! She is an excellent eater. We have been so blessed. What a wonderful baby she has been.

These are Travis' dog tags. Basically one of her most FAVORITE toys! haha

She also grew out of her carrier this month. She loves her new carseat!! :)This last week she took her first steps!!! They are the beginning of many falls and tears and smiles for success I am sure and we are so excited!!! She has such a sweet personality and we can't wait to see even more of it emerge! We are excited for Thanksgiving. We get to spend it with my family this year. YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY!!!!!

Dani is doing really well at responding to sign language. She still hasn't shown us any signs yet but she definitely recognizes them and knows what they mean.

Well that should catch you up in a nutshell. I'm going to try and be better at doing this at least once a month. :) (Wish me luck!)

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

What we've been up to..

"Okey-dokey" here we go! Thought it was about time we updated our blog and let everyone know what was going on. August was a busy month for us. We got the opportunity to go up to Salt Lake a couple of times to visit my family under the "excuse" that I had two sisters getting married!! :) It was so good to spend some time with my family and I am just so so happy for Lauren and Sarah! They both have such wonderful eternal mates.

We got the opportunity to hang out with some friends and enjoy ourselves a bit before we hit third crop. It was nice. We're in full swing now and have one more week and a little to go and then we'll be planning for the elk hunt! :) YAY!!

Dani has been super busy. She's a MOVER! So so very curious and so so very FAST! She started crawling and then decided that her scoot/crawl was more productive to get her from there to here. She has since then figured out that there is definite speed pros to the whole "arms and knees" crawling and now it's sometimes a challenge to keep up! :) She just started pulling herself up to stand a couple days ago and is pretty good at it already! I can't believe how fast she is growing. Travis is trying to keep her from exploring through his legos! :) The solution was to set up a baracade of sorts but as you can see she still found a way to see what was going on />

We are teaching her sign language and although she can't quite form her hands to show signs to us yet, she does recognize some of them when I ask her if she is "all done" eating for example. It is so neat to see her smile and recognize that we are communicating on some level. She is just getting so big and I don't know what to do to keep her small! I guess we're not supposed to. A friend of ours pointed out that that is exactly what kids are "programmed to do." He's right. I should be happy about it and I am in some ways but still sad in others.

Well that is what we have been up to for the most part. I am still working on my transcription class and I am hoping that I will be done by the beginning of next year and will be able to find work that is conducive to me staying at home with Dani and still somehow "keep house." (I put it in quotes cause I don't know if you could call what I do keeping house. (: )

Hope things are going well for all of you out there. Till next time...

Blessed

I'm just feeling so blessed today. I've been trying to make the blog better (adding pictures and little marriage and baby tickers) and the more that I look at pictures of my little family and reminice about all the time that we've had together, the more I realize how truely and wonderfully blessed I am to be married to a man who is not only my best friend but is someone that will listen to me, play games with me, tease me, (let me tease him), and stop on the side of the road to pick my favorite flowers to bring home to me!! In addition to all that he truely loves, and respects me. (How lucky am I?) In addition to all that we, together, are so blessed to have such a wonderfully happy, sweet, and beautiful daughter!!! She can always make me smile.

It's so easy sometimes for me to get caught up in life and responsibilities (not that they aren't important) but sometimes (a lot of the time) I forget to stop, enjoy the sunflowers and count my blessings. I have so many of them. I could sit here and list them but I think your time would be better spent to take a minute and think about some of yours (rather than read about mine) I'm sure a lot of them will be the same anyway!

Have a happy, happy day!!

The "waving idiot" escapades

Apparently, there are a couple of stories from back when Travis and I met and started dating that not everyone has heard yet. I realized this weekend that my grandpa missed them and have now realized that there are others that haven't heard them either. I figure this will cover the ground more quickly and efficiently for those who haven't' heard. As embarrassing as they are, they are pretty entertaining and they need to be told... :) They will help you understand why we are, well, the way we are.

Travis and I met country line dancing in November of 2007. But the "cute meet" part of the story goes a little something like this: Me, living in St. George. Trav, living out on the Buckhorn flat in Paragonah. We had a mutual friend, Jen, that was opening a country line dancing place at the Electric Theater in St. George. We both were asked to come help get everything set up that first night. Travis was going to help teach some basic line dances and swing dance moves and I was going to help by taking money at the door. Because of this we were supposed to arrive early and unfortunately for Travis he didn't know where this place was. I was already there and he called another mutual friend of ours, Jen's sister Heather, for directions.

She was having a lot of trouble trying to direct him to the Electric Theater. He was close and so I told her that I would go outside and wave and point to the building so he could find it. I told her to tell him, "Just look for the waving idiot." "Ok," she says, "you're close, just look for the waving idiot!" (THANKS) :) I was on my way back in and asked her who it was that she was on the phone with. (Travis and I didn't actually know each other at this point but I knew who he was. Everyone called him "Cowboy." He had a really good reputation in the "dancing circuit" and he was (is) HHHOOOOOOOOTTTT). When she told me who she was talking to all I wanted to do was HIDE! But Travis got there and came in and thanked me for helping him find the place and then he just kept hanging around me. (WHY?) (I was the waving idiot and I really couldn't have been THAT entertaining to talk to..) At any rate I left that night feeling pretty special because this really cute guy that EVERYONE wanted attention from was paying attention to me!

The next week he got my number (it was a Tuesday) and he mentioned that he was coming back down that weekend on Friday to go dancing at another place out in Washington and asked if I wanted to go. (I'm no dummy) Of course I wanted to go! :)

Friday comes around and I haven't heard from (and wasn't really sure who's turn it was follow up) so I sent him a text to see if he was still coming down. He said that he was and we decided to meet in Washington at the dance. (For those of you who know St George, I was living in Bloomington Hills.)

The dance wasn't supposed to start for over an hour and at the time I wasn't home (I needed every minute available to get ready!) So we left and headed home. (I had my roommates with me). My car was FULL of friends and I needed to stop and get some gas. Anyone else have a "routine" when you fuel up? There were other people, as I mentioned, in my car and so I just grabbed my whole wallet and got out to fuel up. But instead of getting back inside and waiting for the pump to finish I set my wallet down on my trunk and finished up outside. Once I was full I climbed back inside and drove off. (This was at the new Maverick station behind the mall on the back way into Washington).

Got home, got ready, feeling pretty good.. got in the car and started for Washington.

Now, the "arrangements" weren't exactly clear. I wasn't sure if this was an actual date and if I should anticipate needing to pay or not. I knew I had some cash but I wasn't sure how much so I started digging in my purse for my wallet so that I could check how much I had. If I needed to I could swing by an ATM. (Some of you may have figured out what happened next). I realized that I never put my wallet back in my purse after I got gas and when I drove away from the gas station my wallet was still on the trunk! DETOUR!!!!

I ran back over to the gas station and the attendant tells me that no one turned it in. So now there are two options, either it fell off right away or it stayed on for a while. If it fell off right away it was probably stolen. If it had stayed on (I have a spoiler on my trunk) then it probably wouldn't have fallen off till I was going faster. The road that the station was on isn't traveled much, especially at night, so I go for a jog... (Yes, seriously). After a little ways I find a dollar bill, a piece of my debit card and finally the actual wallet, random change and my drivers licence. (Thank goodness that that was still intact. Can't imagine trying to explain that one to a cop if I'd gotten pulled over). My debit card was destroyed and I was LATE.

Probably the most ridiculous phone call I've ever made... "Hey, remember me? The waving idiot? (one more point in my favor) I'm a scatterbrain!.. Will you pay for our date?" :) He was already planning on it, of course, and told me to stop worrying about it and just get there. We had a great night and the rest is history. Travis married "the waving idiot."

I sometimes wish that I had kept that wallet. It would have made a good conversation piece if we had framed it or put it out for display somehow! :)

Giving it a shot

Alright everyone, here we go! I know I kicked at it for awhile... and whined saying that I would never do it.... well I'm doing it... starting a blog. I don't promise that it will be updated ALL the time but I am going to try and help everyone stay current on what is going on with us. (I just hope this doesn't become the "go to blog" that you all come to on those nights when you can't fall asleep in the hopes that by reading it your insomnia will disolve away!) :)

Just to bring you up to date, we are loving our life right now!! We have the cutest kid in the world, Danielle Renae (5 mo.), and are adjusting to parenthood "farily well." :) Dani brings us interesting surprises just about every day but we are learning, and we are loving her more and more. (If that were even possible). She is getting teasingly close to sitting on her own and rolls all over the place. She is also getting better at scooting which means I have some nesting and decluttering to do around the house to make sure she doesn't get into things that she's not supposed to.

She's laughing more and more spontaniously, just in the last couple of days, which is so cute! I don't even know what she finds funny most of the time but I love to hear her laugh. Dani has also started eating solids. She's liked everything she has tried so far except for rice cereal. That means her menu currently consists of oatmeal (usually with bananas), green beans, squash and peas.

I'm still working on completing my medical transcription certification. Once I do I will be working from home to help bring in a little extra cash. I'm excited about it. I'm really enjoying the class work and the test reports. I think I'll really enjoy working as a transcriptionist and it will allow me to stay home with Dani which is my main motivation.

Travis is still working for the farm. It's what he loves to do and we love that he is always close to home. I love that Dani gets to see him in the middle of the day. It's great that she gets some interaction with her Daddy since sometimes she is asleep when he gets up in the morning and when he gets home at night. She always gets the biggest smile on her face when he comes in the door. I love it! There are times that he HAS to be the one to feed her because when he's in the room that is where all of her attention is at. She sure loves her Daddy. Don't worry, she saves some of those smiles for me too. :)

I guess that is all for now. Hopefully I won't wait too long to get back on again and let you all know what is going on with us. (You 1am readers will get tired of putting yourself to sleep with the same stories). :)