Today we went walking along the Provo river trail with some friends from our neighborhood. Lilah loved having some many kids to run around with.

She also loved throwing rocks and sticks into the river. We were gone for quite a long time and she did better than I would have expected.

We actually found a little bat sleeping under a tree and Lilah loved looking at it!

Yet another race Ryan suggested Tom to sign up for. We are going to miss the Smiths and the adventures they get us into!

Can I just say I am loving this age!? Lilah is a little over 22 months. She is really busy, and the crazy emotions are tiring, but the good times are so fun! Here’s what Lilah is up to right now:

She loves counting. She can make it to 11 by herself, then needs some prompting and can usually pick it back up from about 14 to 20. I count a lot out loud with my personal training clients, so she gets a lot of practice. She’ll count along with me during reps and we all think it’s so cute.

Talking, Talking, Talking. She strings about 3 words together well & sometimes tries to do more than that, but it usually comes out a little like gibberish. For example: “Yer’s birds fying n da sky,” “Yer eating bugs… yucky.” “Da airplane s fying away.” She surprises me all the time with new words she’s learned. The other day we went out to color with side walk chalk. Our babysitter had drawn a bunch of shapes on the ground. Lilah surprised me by pointing at each one of them & telling me what they were. She knew; circle, square, triangle, star, & rectangle! She also loves to spell out her name. This came from side walk chalk too. We showed her how to write it out so many times that now she tries to do it by herself. The drawing usually just consists of lines and dots, but she get most the letters right all the time and all of the letters right some of the time. She’ll say, “L – I – L -H! Lilah!” or “L – I – L – Lilah!” or sometimes “L – I – L – A – H! Lilah!” She gets so proud of herself.

Talking on the phone; whether there is a real person to talk to or not. The other day Tom actually took a phone away from her because he thought she had actually called someone because of the way she was talking. I need to get this on film. She picks up the phone, says “hello,” then waits a minute then switches between saying “yes,” “u huh,” and “OK,” with pauses in between. Then after a while she’ll say “good bye,” and put the phone down. She always looks so serious and business-like while she’s doing it, and it’s so dang funny.

Being a little helper. She wants to “help me” or “help you” with everything I do; whether it’s making the bed, folding laundry, preparing food, weeding, unloading the dishwasher, etc, she wants to help. This means that everything takes l-o-n-g-e-r, but I’m grateful that she wants to help. And I feel like if I take the time to teach her now then she’ll be a lot more likely to continue later.

Here she is “helping” daddy put fertilizer on the lawn:

Wanting to do everything by herself. Some of the things she insists on doing are: dressing herself (this can be a rough one. She’s great at putting her underwear & pants on, but has a really hard time with her shirts), going to the potty all by herself (she’ll go without me even knowing & walk back to me with her potty bowl… I love it), walking everywhere, doing up her buckles (stroller, highchair, etc), eating, and the list goes on. She is very independent and stubborn, and we are trying to help her develop the positive sides of those qualities. I love this side of her, but it is tricky sometimes to figure out how to help her do things herself so that she gains confidence in her abilities.

Great with nursery. Will bolt out of the chapel as soon as the closing prayer is said; whether we are following her or not. She runs in there and doesn’t look back. We used to just go in there half way through to take her to the bathroom, but now she’ll walk up to the teacher and say “I have to go potty,” when she needs to.

Doing great with her please & thank you’s. She’ll even use them at neighbors houses when I’m not around, and I’m so grateful! This is something we’ve really tried to stress. She’s also getting really good at saying excuse me when she bumps into someone, burps, or toots. Sounds more like “be bein.” funny…  She’s also starting to say bless you. Just today, when I sneezed she said “bless you mom.”

Favorite color is purple. She wants to eat out of a purple bowl, drink out of a purple cup, and wear a purple shirt, all the time. She still doesn’t know all her colors, but she pretty good with blue, green, brown, pink & especially purple.

Loves anything “Petty” (pretty). She asks me constantly to wear frilly dresses (or my shirts), earings, bracelets, necklaces, bows, etc. She also loves going clothes shopping with me, especially if we are looking for something for her. She’ll stick right with me (most of the time) and try things on. When she gets something new on she’ll let out a little gasp… and say “oh cute,” or “oh petty.” She’ll also tell me I look pretty or cute when I have something girly on as well.

Loves her sunglasses we got her for Easter. They were $2 and I just couldn’t resist. And now if there is ever any amount of sun shining on her she insists that she needs her “gasses” “eyes…. sun… shining.”

Still loves singing. She will ask us to sing the “I’m so glad when daddy comes home” song over & over again, but she’ll tell us what name to insert. Some of my favorites have been; hippo, Girl (just plane girl), monkey, Lilah, etc. Tom and I are usually laughing too hard to finish, but she loves that too.

Still sleeps with a pacifier! Aww…. I’ve gotta get that figured out. I just don’t wanna mess up my amazing little sleeper. Not ready to give up nap time.

She gets scared quite easily now. She doesn’t like the lawnmower, weed-eater, vacuum, too much tickling, scary faces, people growling, people fake fighting or joking around, cars “cars.. get you!” big slides, big crowds, hot things, etc. She’ll put her hands out, tense up and tell me she’s  scared. It’s really cute actually, and we can usually convince her that it is OK and she doesn’t need to be afraid.

She wants 2 of everything. 2 crackers, 2 peaces of bread, 2 cucumbers, etc. If you hand her 1 of something she’ll look at you and in a very serious and convincing tone she’ll say “two…” It sounds more like “you need to give me two,” not really a question, and it’s so funny. But the nice thing is, she doesn’t care, if you break what she has in half, to make 2. She just wants one for each hand.

There is so much that she is doing right now that I couldn’t possibly write it all down! But I did write quite a novel, so if you made it all the way through then I’m surprised. We just love Lilah and the addition she is to our family. It’ll be fun when she can come back and read about herself, someday.

Thank you Heidi for setting this up! It was really fun to catch up for a few hours. Lots of fun developments in everyone’s lives. It was also a great excuse to visit the City Creek Center for the first time.

Here we are after dinner at Blue Lemon:

As you can see, Lilah loved the fountains!

I am trying to keep her from falling in by holding onto the back of her shirt…

Wish more could have made it! We missed you!

Tom went to the sand dunes on a camp-out with the young men in our ward. This photo pretty much sums up what they did all evening and Saturday morning. It looked like a blast! Wish I could have been there.

Tom got a chance to go skiing with some buddies from Trafficado, and they had a great time. Tom has wanted to go all winter, so I know he was grateful when Robert had extra tickets and suggested that they all make a trip.

They went up just in time too… Tom said the snow was turning to slush by the end of the day.

When Wicky (also affectionately known as “Grumpy”) told us he’d be coming out to visit at the tail end of Mom’s trip to Utah, we got really excited. It would be his first visit since our wedding, and first time seeing our new(ish) home. We also knew that he probably wouldn’t know what to do with himself all day, so I started thinking of some home improvement projects that we could work on together, and some that he could tackle himself while I was at work. This might sound selfish or rude to some (and perhaps was) but he’s a fantastic handyman and I figured he’d enjoy being productive more than sitting around fiddling his thumbs.

Thus produced a regularly-updated list on my phone that I titled the “Cat’s Cradle List,” named after 1) the 1974 Harry Chapin song, and 2) a long-standing joke between me and my dad.

“When you comin home, dad, I don’t know when,
But we’ll get together then, Son,
You know we’ll have a good time then.”

By the time he arrived the list had 7 items, some of them pretty significant projects. By the time he left, we (he mostly) knocked out 13—some I hadn’t even begun to consider. Here are a few highlights:

• Front Door – Fixed a spot where the door latch was ripping screws away from the doorframe. Also replaced the entire doorknob & deadbolt hardware, so we weren’t limited to locking the deadbolt from inside, and so the two pieces matched.
• Hall Door - Found new longer screws to replace the short ones that were no longer gripping the hinges (which made the door catch on the molding every time we tried to close it)
• Doorbell - Our doorbell had been broken since the day we moved it. Dad fixed it. Now it wakes up Lilah and we’re considering breaking it again.
• Can Lamp – I was nervous that the wiring of the can lamp over our mantle was bad (burning smell after first use). Turned out there was nothing to fear, probably just burning dust (our house was really messy in its foreclosed state before we moved in)
• Kitchen Sink – Our first kitchen sink (that I had already replaced) used to leak and caused some water damage around the sink. The splashboard, in particular, was warped and had pulled away from the wall, making it easy for continued damage. Dad undertook the task of caulking all around the sink, filling the space where the countertop separated from the wall, and caulking all of that too. The end result looked terrific and works like a charm.
• Toilet - This was a big project we got to knock out together. A little while back I noticed some water collecting around the base of the downstairs toilet. Wicky thought the seal had been compromised, which led us down the path of removing the entire unit to survey the damage and implement a solution. To make a long story short, it turned out to be quite an involved project that involved hacksaws, PVC cement, multiple flanges and lots of guess and check. In the end we solved it, and it’s better than ever.
• Bathtub Linoleum – When we moved in, our guest bath looked like it had overflowed at some point, since the linoleum was warped and puckered away from the base. We had to be on guard every time Lilah took a bath, so that more water didn’t flow down that space, and potentially ruin the ceiling above our living room. One day I got home from work and dad had filled the space with a hardening foam, lined it with a wax rope, caulked it , and topped it off with a nice protective plastic strip to form a perfect seal. It looks SO much better, and keeps us from worrying all the time.
• Universal Remote – Who knew that our Dish Network remote could be programmed to perform all the actions of our DVD and TV remotes as well? Not I. He pored over the manual until he eliminated the need for 2 of our 3 remotes. Pretty awesome. Except I’ve since acquired a new blu-ray player, which means one step backwards in remote-ville.
• Water Purifier – I think he overheard me complaining about the taste of our tap water, because one day I got home and found a beautiful new Pur water filter mounted to the faucet. Immediate improvement. I even like our ice cubes now.
• Cabinet Alignment & Fastener - The aforementioned water damage that originated around the sink caused a problem with the alignment of two cabinet doors. He adjusted the hardware on those, and fixed the hardware on another door that Lilah had hung on and broken.
• Volvo Wash - Wicky drove my Swedish Driving Machine (read: Volvo) while he was here, and left it with a much-needed windshield wash, full tank of gas and other improvements.
• Sliding screen - The sliding screen on our back door has always had a tear and a bent frame. Wicky adjusted the frame, bought a couple rolls of new screen and redid the entire thing.

[Wicky fixing the toilet. Happened to be St. Patrick's Day]

[Me, doing the same]

Houston and Becca needed to leave for Arizona on Thursday the 19th, so we decided to get together a couple times before then. On the Friday before we went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse then headed back to our house for games.

We met up again on Sunday for dinner. It’s great to have warm enough weather to use the grill again. Thanks again Cathy! It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

We are really going to miss having Houston and Becca around for the summer!

Lilah with two of her favorite people. She didn’t want to sit anywhere but on Travis’ lap that night.

We LOVE having some family around! Now we just need to get everyone else to move here… lol But seriously, everyone should!

Lilah was so excited about Easter egg hunts this year. On Saturday morning we showed her a few videos of herself gathering eggs last year. We told her that the Easter bunny had come again this year and had hidden eggs all over the house. Then we took her downstairs to see!

Here’s a video of the excitement:

It took her a little longer to realize that there were actually treats in her eggs, but when she did, she wanted to stop and open each one when she found it. This year we used freeze dried strawberries, dates, raisins, and all-fruit roll ups. She was in heaven.

After our little hunt at our house we decided to go to the BYU hunt at the stadium. It was the first year doing it, and I was nervous about how it would all go down. It ended up running very smoothly.  They had the field split up into 2 sections. One section was for 3 years and under & the other was for over 3 years. I’m really grateful that I didn’t need to worry about her getting trampled by candy crazed kids. But even though she was surrounded by a bunch of kids her age she stuck close to me the whole time. She actually said she was scared a couple of times. I think the big crowd kind of overwhelmed her.

The whole field looked like they had shot cannons of candy across it. We brought Lilah’s basket and her treats from home, so that she could trade us anything she found on the field for a special treat for her. Luckily she still doesn’t really know what any of the candy was, so she didn’t mind handing it over for one of her treats.

We had a great time, and ran into quite a few friends from our ward and from college days.

Lilah in her Easter dress on Sunday morning:

Love her posing:

On Sunday we were able to focus more on the Savior. Lacey was asked to sing in church, and we were all able to be there. I forget how quite single wards are, and it was a little bit tougher keeping Lilah that quite. Lilah loved seeing Lacey up in the front singing. She sang “Oh Lord My Redeemer.” I was reminded of how much I enjoy a reverent song that brings such an amazing spirit to the room. It is one thing to be a talented singer, but it is a totally different thing to be talented, and more concerned about bringing the spirit than for praise from others. She was able to be a tool to bring the spirit to the meeting. I was happy to start our Easter day with something so beautiful.

We then headed back to our own ward and Lilah was very happy to be in nursery. She loves it! We had a nice quite day with our little family and I really enjoyed it. Happy Easter everyone!

First Lilah and I headed up to North Ogden on Thursday night to spend some time with Grandma & Grandpa Tanner. My parents & Cole were already there as well. We had a great time talking, laughing, eating, & being entertained by Lilah! She loves to be the center of attention & will do just about anything for it. She sang us songs, talked, did the splits, pretended to be a doggy, etc. Thanks again Grandma & Grandpa for making us feel right at home! Tom and I love visiting & so does Lilah. Tom joined us in the early afternoon on Friday & we headed up to the farm soon after that.

The rest of Friday was spent hanging out & catching up with everyone at the farm.

On Saturday we enjoyed the first conference session with Lilah running around from favorite person to favorite person. I don’t think she knew what to do with herself! She was so excited to be surrounded by so many people who love her. During the second session Lilah was napping which was perfect!

Lilah playing with one of my favorite old toys during the 1st session:

Sadly, Cole broke through the trampoline while we were there; with help from Houston & years & years of all of us jumping:

All of the girls (Mom-Tanner, me, Lilah, Lacey, Becca, Aunt Terri, Aunt Debbie, Grandma Haworth, Ashley, and Aubrie) went bowling on Saturday night while the boys were at Priesthood meeting. We actually had to keep score manually, because they did not have an electronic system there! It didn’t really matter that much, but it was just a good thing a few people knew how to keep score. Lilah had a blast bowling with me & would ask me “Lilah’s turn?!” every couple of seconds. Wait-a go Grandma for bowling with us! I was impressed!

Becca & Lilah waiting for their turns:

Lilah and I:

That same night, after the boys got back, we went to the Hunger games movie. I thought it was very well made & I think we all enjoyed it. Thanks to the Griffeths for listening for Lilah back at Grandma’s.

Sunday conference was much the same as Saturday. Lilah was awake for the first session & asleep for the second. I LOVED everything I learned in all of the sessions & am always surprised at how much of  a pick-me-up it is. Every message is so timely. I had a particularly painful weekend and felt pretty useless, but conference made all the difference. There were so many talks that seemed to speak right to me. It brought me a new resolve for patience, perseverance, faith, and hope. It was a perfect time to have a bad weekend ;-) And thank you Tom for being an incredible friend and doing so much for me. You amaze me with your kindness.

We had a big family dinner after the 2nd session, and we all ate some amazing food. Lilah & I were particularly fond of Debi’s sugar free/healthy strawberry shortcake!  After dinner a lot of people started heading for home.

Travis, Lacey & Cole messing around during dinner:

Tom and I stuck around a little later than most and we were very happy we did because, Lacey & Travis got ENGAGED! YAH!! We all knew it was coming, but had no idea it would be at the farm. We are so excited for the 2 lovebirds & were very happy to be able to celebrate with them right after it happened.

It was a great weekend!