Together Forever

I am so thankful that we have the opportunity to be together forever.  That knowledge is the only way I can make it through loosing a loved one!  Brad's Grandma, Christia Barlow Smith, passed away last week.  She is now with her husband who she has been missing for almost 33 years.  I'm sure she is happy to see him again!

She was such a great example of health and happiness.  On the day that she passed away she wasn't sick or in pain.  She spent that morning like any other, sitting by the fire and reading a book.  She was a nurse and so she knew the importance of reading, eating right, and walking.  She wanted to be able to walk for as much of her life as possible.  So she would always walk.  I think it is amazing that she was 95 years old and still walking!

Brad and I were able to attend her funeral on Saturday.  A big thank you goes out to my parents who watched Aleah and Cade for us so that we could enjoy our time.  It was beautiful.  I really enjoyed learning more about her.  It was a bonding moment for me when I heard that her first two kids are 14 months apart.  What were they thinking, haha!

The last time were got to visit her was at the family reunion last summer.  We don't have any pictures of that.  When Aleah was two months old we went down to St. George and we were able to visit her.  I did get some pictures that time.

Brad, Aleah, Grandma, and Brad's Mom

Cade can walk!

On Christmas Eve Cade took his first real steps.  He was walking around while pushing a big red ball.  As he walked past me he decided that he wanted me to hold him.  I was just a couple of feet away so I decided to see if he would walk to me.  He did, he walked right to me!  

He has been doing little things like that ever since.  It has always been so short that I could never get it on video.  On Sunday he decided that he can walk now.  He was standing by the couch and wanted a toy on the other side of the room.  Instead of dropping down and crawling he walked over to it.  Yesterday and today he has been walking until he falls and then he will crawl the rest of the way.  I still haven't been able to get a very good video of it, but at least you can see him taking a few steps!

The password for the video below is "walking".

Cade Walking from Brad G on Vimeo.

Christmas and New Years Eve

Christmas and New Years Eve were wonderful!  Brad started things off great by taking the Thursday and Friday before Christmas off of work.  On Christmas Eve we loaded up our Jeep and drove over to my parents' house where we stayed for the next couple of nights.  That night we went up to Temple Square with my family.  It was so beautiful!  I loved walking around looking at all the pretty lights.

While we were watching the nativity Aleah knelt down next to Cade.  It was really cute.  They both enjoyed the nativity, story, and beautiful music.

Aleah has become quite a little tease.  We were trying to get a family picture and she would not look at my dad.  We kept asking her to look at Grandpa and smile.  She would just stand there laughing with her back to him.  Then she would look for one second and turn right back around and laugh.  I love the cute teasing smile he caught in this picture!

Here is the group picture.  My brother and his family didn't make it up to Temple Square.  They met up with us at my parents' house.

Christmas morning was so much fun!  Aleah is really at a cute age.  She was so excited and I think she was starting to figure out what was going on.  Cade wasn't too interested in opening the presents, but he loved playing with all the toys.

We stayed at my parents' house until Sunday evening.  Then we came home for our staycation!  I love staycations!  We started it off by putting together Brad's christmas present.  The kids loved helping him!

Then we sent him outside to try it out.  Luckily it snowed.

We did a lot of fun activities that week.  One of our favorites was going to the Living Aquarium and then out to eat at the Training Table.  I am not a big fan of hamburgers, but I love The Westerner minus the mayo!

We all loved watching the penguins!  Aleah talked about it for the rest of the night.

On New Years Eve we spent the day with Brad's family.  Brad's brother and his wife made a family amazing race for us.  It was amazing!  We had a lot of fun driving around Provo and Orem figuring out all the clues.  We would have won if we didn't stop for some ice cream.  We were at the BYU Creamery, I couldn't help it!  Let me tell you, we had some later that night and it was worth losing the race over.  I hope that becomes a tradition!

That evening my parents and my Grandma Bushman came over to our house.  We had dinner, put the kids to bed, and then the party really got going.  We had fun eating some yummy Christmas Pudding (I don't think I have ever had it before), eating the before mentioned super yummy ice cream, watching Knight and Day, ringing in the New Year with those who live on the East Coast, drinking some yummy sparkling cider, and talking about our New Year's resolutions!

The start of the new year is always a fresh and exciting feeling.  I have some good resolutions this year.  I hope that I can become a better person as I accomplish my resolutions!  As always, I am so thankful for my family and the fun time I have with them on the holidays!

A few things...

I am way behind in my blogging.  My goal is to catch up over the next couple of weeks.  Here are a few random things that I want to share.

We got Aleah and Cade brooms because they love to help me sweep!

Cade had spaghetti for the first time and loved it!  Now he will not touch it.  He is a very picky eater, but he makes up for it in cuteness.

Cade loves to push Aleah's shopping cart.

For the last few weeks Aleah hasn't had gymnastics.  I could tell that she was missing it because she would run into her room and get her gymnastics suit, bring it to me and say, "Gymnastics!"  So we would have gymnastics.  I love it!

It is always fun when Aleah and Cade play together!

Happy Birthday Aleah!

On December 12th our sweet Aleah turned 2 years old!  We had a wonderful day with her.  Two of her cousins had birthdays the month before so I think that really helped her to understand what it was all about.  When she woke up I gave her a princess crown and told her happy birthday.  She got so excited and wore the crown all morning.

We had a party for her with my family that evening.  The theme of her party was the alphabet.

I made an alphabet scavenger hunt for all the kids.  The prize at the end was a sticky hand thing and a punching balloon.  Aleah wasn't too sure about the sticky hand thing.  She loved the punching balloon!

We had dinner, and watched a movie that Brad and I made of clips from the last year.  It was really amazing to see all the changes and all the things she has accomplished in the last year!

We opened presents and then it was time for her to "blow out the candle".  I had been preparing her to blow out her candle on her cake by practicing with her every night while she brushed her teeth.  I would sing the birthday song and then hold out my finger and tell her to blow out the candle.  At first she just laughed and thought that I was so silly.  Once she got the hang of it we had to do it many times every night!  So when I told her that it was time to have cake and blow out the candle she got so incredibly excited.  She went running to the kitchen yelling, "Blow out the candle, blow out the candle!"  The pure joy and excitement that was coming out of her at this point was amazing!

We are so blessed to have Aleah in our lives!  We have had the pleasure of spending the last two years with her and we have loved it!  Aleah is such a sweet girl.  She is a wonderful big sister.  She is very loving and fun to be around.  We sure do love her!