One Century Old

My Grandma Mason turned a whopping 100 years old on Sunday! Woohoo! Even though she isn't too thrilled to still be around I was pretty excited to see her hit that milestone. We got the family together to celebrate. Here is a picture of all of us, it's a small family. My grandparents only had two kids, my mom and her twin sister Lynda. Her sister also only had two kids. So there are a total of 6 grandkids on my mom's side. Besides my grandma and us, my cousin Barbara (yes she is named after my mom) and my uncle Dick are pictured. (My aunt Lynda died a few years ago and my other cousin Richard couldn't make it to the party.)



A Tongan lady from my parents ward made my grandma a lei and a thing for her head. (I have no idea what that is called.) Here she is sporting them.

We began the night by admiring this truck my uncle restored. He likes to restore old cars. Then we had a delicious dinner with 2 desserts. A lemon coconut cake courtesy of Carol Ann and a chocolate ice cream brownie cake courtesy of Jen. Both were fancy and fabulous.

After that we played a rousing game of Jeopardy with questions about my grandma's life with my mom as Alex Trebek.



I never really think about what my grandparents life was like before I existed, its neat to find out about their life before they were grandparents. Just think, my grandma lived through 2 world wars, the great depression, and saw the invention of tvs, computers, cell phones and so much more. Some interesting facts about my grandma:

1. Her and my grandpa worked at competing oil companies and had to secretly date, elope, and then they lived separately for the first year of their marriage. Crazy how much things like that mattered back then.
2. Her family was one of the first in the neighborhood to get indoor plumbing when she was a teenager.
3. She had a tumor the size of a football on her kidney and her incompetent doctor treated her for arthritis. Luckily, before it was too late she switched doctors and was then properly diagnosed. We were lucky she made it to age 50, let alone 100.
4. Her first kiss was to a missionary. Scandolous.

Here are us cousins pictured with grandma.

All of us girls through 4 generations.



Look At That Hair!

99% of the time that we go out in public we hear the phrase "Look at that hair!" I'm not going to lie, I don't get tired of hearing it (although I do run out of responses for it). Family and friends will tell you how cute your kid is no matter what. Whether the baby has Dumbo ears or a nose the size of Texas, loved ones will still tell you how cute your baby is. But when strangers stop you at church, the grocery store, and the doctor's office to ooh and ah over your baby you know there is some truth to it (and I'm not at all biased!). Just for fun I thought I would share some of Conner's hairdos, the good and the bad. Unfortunately, no matter how much he is smiling when I grab the camera he is usually too fascinated with it to smile for the pictures.

Here is your basic comb over.



Here is the modified Alfalfa sprout. He has some unruly cowlicks in the front that cause this style.

Cade calls this the Corporate Executive look. A lady at church called it a Surfer Dude. I call it ugly.

The Wild Man. I had some fun with the blowdryer one day.

The Jimmy Neutron (wet and then dried)

The faux hawk.

Enough with the hairdos. Last night when Conner woke up to eat I picked him up and noticed his pjs were quite wet and so was the blanket he was wrapped in and the blanket he was laying on. I didn't think it had been THAT long since his diaper had been changed and I wondered how it had soaked through so much. When I opened up his pjs I found that he was quite "exposed" and his diaper was completely off, balled up under his legs. I have no idea how that happened but suspect it had something to do with how someone (aka daddy) had put on his diaper before bed. No pics of the event due to the graphic nature.



Just an Update

Well there's not a lot to report around here. Just a lot of feeding, changing, and trying to get Conner to sleep and then doing it all over again. And again. We are pretty excited that Conner started sleeping for about 6 hours straight in the night. It came just in time too because Cade and I were really getting close to losing it. Cade's been wishing I was pregnant again because I'm a lot nicer when I'm not weeks behind on sleep :) Now we would just like it if he would take naps laying down in his crib and not in someone's arms or his swing and go to be before midnight. We got one laugh out of Conner (of course it was in his sleep) but he is smiling now and will play on the floor for awhile so this whole parenting thing is starting to be a little fun and not all work.

At 2 months Conner now weighs 10 lbs 14 oz (21st percentile) and is 22 inches long (12th percentile). And with a head circumference of 40 cm it's in the 81st percentile! We've decided we have one smart cookie on our hands. (Ok I know, head size doesn't determine smarts, but its better than just calling him fat head.)

Oh happy day, we're using the bumbo! He isn't really proficient in it and falls to the side, but it works well enough to get a couple of dishes done or eat with two hands.

Sorry mom, I know I promised pictures but it turns out I've only taken these two since my last post. I guess I take after you in taking pictures. :)

Happy New Year!

Our new year's weekend started off with a great snow storm. It was enough to totally cover the ground and stick around for a few days but not enough to have to shovel :)



Then we headed for Hurricane, Utah. We decided to go through Las Vegas so we could avoid all the snow in Flagstaff and on the reservation. So we made a stop at the new bridge at Hoover Dam. Unfortunately while you drive across the bridge you can't see much of anything but you can park and walk across. It made my legs shake a little but was fun to see.



We made it to Utah around 8:00 on New Year's Eve and spent the evening with Cade's cousins playing games and catching up. On Saturday Cade and the other guys spent the morning rounding up cows and transporting them to another field that wasn't covered in snow so they could eat. It took about 3 hours to get a calf that escaped while it was being loading up. Of course Cade had a great time. Later in the day we visited his Ewell grandparents. On Sunday we drove to Cedar City and visited Whit and Tiffany. Nothing too exciting on this trip but it was fun to see everyone again and see the area covered in snow. We were also terrible at taking pictures and only took these two pictures with grandma and grandpa Ewell. Hopefully we'll soon start taking pictures again that don't all revolve around Conner.

Christmas Weekend!

We had a great Christmas this year doing our usual routine. After waiting all day for a package to arrive (a present Cade had ordered) we finally left for Mesa at 8:00 on Wednesday night. On Thursday we spent all day finishing our Christmas shopping. Friday we had lunch at Carol Ann's house, visited Grandma Joyce, and then had our fondue Christmas Eve dinner at my mom's house. Before opening presents this year Ashley decided that the kids should act out the nativity. She had the bright idea of putting the star from the top of the tree on the ceiling. Sadly, it fell during the production onto baby Jesus, aka my baby Conner. Thankfully he wasn't stabbed to death and we were able to carry onto the presents. Its fun having little kids around for presents, they get so excited, even if they do get jealous and want their siblings' presents all the time.

Conner excited about his first Christmas present - $2 from great grandma Johnson

Not quite so excited for books

Ashley with her See's

Jen with her food storage

Grandma Mason



After that Cade and I left for Cottonwood. By the time we got there and ready for bed it was 1 am. Conner woke up to eat at 3:00 and before we could get back to sleep it was 4:00 and time to get up for presents again. I might never understand why the Johnsons still get up at 4 when there are no kids anymore. Its so much easier to enjoy your new "toys" all day with at least 5 hours of sleep. After enjoying our Christmas day Cade and I went home to get ready for Conner's baby blessing the next day. It was one of his worst night's sleep. For some reason he cried most of the night and we were already so exhausted, it was terrible. He was still crying in the morning and I thought for sure the blessing would be a disaster, but thankfully he fell into a deep sleep on the way to the church and slept perfectly through the blessing (and the rest of the day). We had a great time seeing all of our families and appreciate everyone coming out to his blessing, including Cade's friend Tara that we didn't get a picture of.

Our handsome boy

A funny face

Rodgers family

 Johnson family

Our little family