Christmas!

We had a great Christmas this year! The festivities started on Christmas Eve. It is tradition to get together with the DeWitt family and as always it was a great evening full of lot's of laughing and Mexican food. The annual gift exchange was full of lot's of inappropriate gifts wrapped in entire rolls of duct tape! Jesse's brothers and sisters and mom and dad are so generous when it comes to gift giving, and they spoiled Graham big time. He got some really cool gifts that Jesse has really enjoyed playing with:) I forgot to take pictures this night, oops.

Christmas morning was spent at our apartment. Jesse and I decided to get ourselves an original, refurbished iPad (because we aren't quite cool enough for the iPad 2 yet). We got each other a few other little things but the iPad pretty much sums up our Christmas to each other, well worth it if you ask me. I am really cheap and decided this would probably be the only Christmas I could get away with not getting Graham too much. So I took some of the toys that I got at my baby shower but hadn't brought out yet, and just wrapped those and put them under the tree for Graham. He was thrilled! What I should have done is just put balls of wrapping paper under the tree, then he really would have been in heaven. On a side note, aren't his little PJ's so cute, they have little Santa's on the feet!

After opening presents at our house we went to church with my parent's in their singles ward (it was 45 minutes!) and then opened more presents at their house with my whole fam. As usual, my mother went overboard and bought all of us way too much, including Graham. I would say the theme this year in the Powell household was gift cards, which we are still reaping the benefits from! The big surprise of the day was to hear that my dad bought a boat! Well a third of a boat, he went in on it with a couple of his partners at work. They have been talking about doing it for years, so I really never thought it would actually happen. Who wants to go to the lake this summer?! We ate way too much food and finished the day off with a much needed afternoon nap. I am so grateful for our wonderful families who are so generous and quite frankly just fun people to be around!

And of course, I am grateful for the opportunity to celebrate the birth of our Savior and to remember His life and all He has given to us. I wish it did not take a holiday to put me in a Christlike mood, but I guess that is what New Year's resolutions are for! 

Half a Year

Graham is 6 months old, no wait, he is actually 6 1/2 months old. How did that happen, my child can't possibly be over half a year old. Time is moving too fast, I need it to slow down. Graham is in such a fun stage. He can sit up but he can't quite crawl yet. Which means he can entertain himself but can't move around and get into things! It is wonderful. He has been rocking on his hands and knees lately so who knows how much longer this bliss will last. Graham weighed 18 lbs. 12 oz. (70%) and was 27 3/4 inches (90%) long at his 6 month check-up so he is still going strong! Here are a few things you need to know about Graham:

Graham is bald. Very bald. He has a few whisps of hair and they are pretty much white so he still might as well be bald. Luckily, he has a nice round head. His dad is also sort of bald but he still got a pretty awesome girl to marry him so I'm not too worried about it.

Graham LOVES baby einstein. As you can see in the picture above he is mesmerized. Everytime that little worm comes on the screen he starts laughing out of pure joy, it is hysterical. I try to only let him watch it once every other day. But he's watched it twice today and it's only 3 in the afternoon so I guess that's not a hard and fast rule:)

Graham could spend all day outside. He loves the feel of grass and the taste of leaves. As soon we walk outside he immediately gets quiet, it's like he's trying to take it all in. He is always up for a ride in the stroller, and we even took our first trip to the zoo the other day. He loved watching all the little kids run around (he couldn't quite spot the animals in their natural habitat).

Graham has blue eyes and they are beautiful. While shopping for Graham I have found myself trying to pick out items that will make his eyes "pop". This means that I am crazy, but it also means that his eyes are awesome and just might break a lot of hearts someday.

Yay for Graham! And yay for Jesse who just finished his last final! 2 more semesters till he graduates with a masters, I like him too.

Gramburger

So it turns out that I am not very good at blogging. I'm sure this is not a surprise to anyone that knows me even a little bit. Part of the problem is that I don't like taking pictures (however I have improved 200% since Graham has arrived, another part of the problem is that I hate using blogger and it usually just puts me in a bad mood, the other problem was that I was in the middle of coaching high school volleyball and that seems to monopolize a lot of my time.

However, our season is over and the other two excuses really don't hold up very well when I take the coaching aspect out of it, so here is my attempt to be better!

This was Graham at 3 months. As you can see he is quite large. Huge, huge cheeks that were very kissable and the most gigantic thighs (he gets those from Jesse). This was the first time we put him in his bumbo and his legs almost didn't fit.

At 3 months he was smiling more often and pretty much eating his life away. He was so sweet and cried for two reasons and two reasons only: hunger or exhaustion. Those were the days:)

Here is Graham at 4 months old. You may be asking yourself what he is staring at. . . it's the TV. This was when we started to realize that Graham LOVED the TV, he would have stared at it for hours if we let him. We always tried to situate him so that he couldn't see it, but as you can see from the picture he pretty much outsmarted us every single time.

Graham finally started to roll over at this age. It took him a little longer than most babies, I think just because his body was enormous (that's what I tell myself anyway). He could only roll from his back onto his stomach and 2 months later he still can not roll onto his back. It's possible that my child is a little slow:)

We started feeding Graham rice cereal at 4 months. He wasn't sure what to think about it at first but after a few weeks he got the hang of it. A lot more smiles at this stage and even an occasional laugh if we were lucky. Still as sweet as could be, I can only pray the rest of my babies were like this kid the first 4 months!

So as you can see from the picture above we had a little impromptu visit from Jolynn and Matt! They had a layover in the Phoenix airport and so Graham and I decided it was time for Graham to take his first trip to the airport and have lunch with the Page’s at the Chili’s in the food court. It was a short visit but so worth it! Jolynn finally got to see my huge baby in person and I got to here all about how her kids are doing. I can’t believe Sydney is old enough to be in pre-school!

Jolynn and I aren’t great phone talkers (I believe as they were leaving we vowed for the 16th time to be better at calling). Even though our phone skills may be lacking, every time we get together we just pick up right where we left off. As I was driving home from the airport I started getting a little bit nostalgic about my days at BYU. Sometimes I can’t believe I spent 4 ½ years there, it almost feels like it was all a dream or some alternate life. Some of my college roommates had a little reunion up in Utah a few weeks ago; obviously I do not live in Utah so I was not able to attend. However, Jolynn informed me that it was an absolutely marvelous evening; which I could have guessed from the pictures. Anyways, I was thinking about how everything has changed since college (graduation, jobs, husbands, kids, locations, etc…) but when we get together it’s still the same (for example: taking a picture huddled in a princess castle at 1am).

Last Christmas Jesse and I decided to take a trip to Utah and go snowboarding. This was to make up for our honeymoon that was literally 36 hours long because I had to be back for what I would soon learn was the worst job in the world. I took Jesse on a little tour of the campus and all the apartments I had lived in. It felt very weird to be back there, it was strange to think that all the students there had no idea that this is where I lived and went to school for 4 ½ years! I’ve been bothering Jesse a lot lately with the idea that there is a time and a season for everything in life. I have so many wonderful memories of BYU and I wouldn’t trade the experiences I had there for anything, but our winter trip definitely reinforced the fact that the time and season for BYU in my life had come and gone.

I realized as we were driving past all my old apartments that it was the friends I had that made BYU so great, that’s why it didn’t feel the same to me: none of my friends were there either. We weren’t your typical girls and probably didn’t have the “typical” college experience, but it was perfect for me. I am so happy that the time and season for great friends is never gone! So to any of my old roommies: if you ever have a layover in the Phoenix airport give me a call; Graham and I will meet you for lunch at Chili’s!

And what kind of blog post would this be without a solo shot of Graham! I mean Jesse and I are decent looking people, I'd describe us as slightly above average. So how did we make something this adorable? I wish I knew:)

I also forgot to add that we went to Firebirds before going to Gestures. It was delicious, I got salmon which is very weird for me, but I loved it. Perhaps I will try it again. . . next year.

Jesse and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on August 5th. I must say it has been a year I could have never seen coming. Jesse had two very difficult semesters of school, I got a job that was just awful (I can't think of any other way to put it), and just when I was thinking about quitting that job we found out we were pregnant and needed the insurance! I can confidently say this has been the hardest yet the best year of my life. Marrying Jesse was the best decision I ever made and I'm looking forward to many more wonderful years!

The above picture is us at Gestures (We decided that Jesse with plan the odd year anniversaries and I will plan the even ones, he did a great job). This was the last thing we did in the evening, but for some reason this picture came up first.
We walked around Barnes and Noble for a little bit while waiting for the comedy show to start.

Jesse found this gem.

which contained this gem, it makes me smile everytime:)

Just watching Monday Night Football with my little linebacker

We barely got his legs through there

Does it get any cuter? I probably kiss those cheeks 100 times a day.

The annual first day of school picture. Jesse is getting his masters in mechanical engineering from ASU, smartypants.

Oops

There was supposed to be video that went along with that previous post, I will try and get that up at some point. It is as I said. . . Hilarious. So here are some pictures to look at instead.

On another note, Graham had his 2 month check-up a week ago. It was kind of a rough one for the little guy. It was during his eating time and even though I had brought a bottle just in case, it was cold and he was having nothing to do with it. At this point the doctor had just walked in and Graham was not a happy camper, the doctor wanted to check his weight again so as I stood up Graham's head hit the doctor's elbow. It wasn't very hard but I think it scared him because he absolutely lost it at this point. I'm talking absolutely hysterical screaming, it was so sad.

The station where they weigh them is in the middle of the office, so needless to say my child and I were a little bit of a spectical. The doctor finished his check-up, in which I didn't hear a word he said over Graham's screaming. Then the nurse came in to give him 3 shots! Poor guy just could not catch a break. So after screaming for 30 minutes straight, we went home, had a big meal and I let him sleep for 3 1/2 hours (normally not something I do, but I felt so bad for the little guy).

Despite our rough outing at the doctor's Graham is doing great! The doctor made the nurse weigh him twice because he couldn't believe he had gained 7.5 lbs in 2 months! He currently weighs 15.5 lbs. (97th percentile) and is 24.5 inches long (93rd percentile). Jesse and I are not large people so I'm not sure where all this growing is coming from, but we sure do love our enormous G-ram:)