The First Year

Happy Birthday to our Lil Miss!  I seriously cannot believe she is one today!  Where did the time go??  She has changed so so much and we couldn't love her any more!  Here's how she's changed:

One Week Old

One Month Old

Two Months Old

Three Months Old

Four Months Old

Five Months Old

Six Months Old

Seven Months Old

Eight Months Old

Nine Months Old

Ten Months Old

Eleven Months Old

ONE YEAR OLD!

All about Baylie Elizabeth Griffin

~She FINALLY got a tooth!  Every time she is fussy my mom says "Oh she must be teething..." so we have been joking that she is teething since she was literally three months old.  But finally last week she really was teething!
~She is a great sleeper!  She sleeps from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am!  She also still takes two naps for about two hours every day.  I'm one lucky Mama!  The exception to this is when she has to sleep in her pack'n'play, just forget any chance of sleep in that case!  She's getting better but she hates that thing!
~She is a really picky eater.  And she still LOVES baby food.  I'll try to feed her whatever we're having and she throws a fit until I give her baby food. Such a strange duck.  The exceptions are pasta, bread and bananas.
~She makes the FUNNIEST faces!  People always comment on how expressive she is and it's one of the things I love most about her!  Example:

~She is the happiest baby I know.  Again, we are so blessed.  She is hardly ever fussy or whiney.  She is on  a great schedule and as long as we stick to the schedule she is happy and content.  She loves to smile and laugh and we love her gummy grin!

~She is learning to talk really well!  So far she can say:  Mama, Dada, night night, buhbye, nana (as in banana), and no no!  Some of those she has only said once or twice but we're gettin there!  It is so fun to see her learning and growing.
~She loves to push buttons, literally.  Her most recent favorite is to play with car keys and push the alarm button because it's red!
~She does not like bottles.  She is ready to be done but she doesn't really like sippy cups either so that's a problem!
~She is a walking champ!  She still looks a bit drunken sometimes but she is doing really well.  She has been walking for over a month now and she just learned how to stand up without the help of anything to pull on.

~She LOVES bath time and recently has become obsessed with not wearing clothes.  She runs away every time I change her diaper or try to get her clothes/pajamas on!
~She is not too fond of men.  Especially men with facial hair.
~She loves "pretties", necklaces, earrings, bracelets. purses, scarves, headbands, you name it she wants it! She is all girl, that's for sure!  Everyone always asks me how I get her to keep her headbands on, she doesn't mess with them hardly ever, probably because she has worn one since the day she was born! Literally!
~She doesn't like to cuddle. She wakes up ready to play and plays hard until she crashes in bed.  She is starting to think about wanting to cuddle every once in a while but mostly she just gives us the stiff arm when we try to hold her close.
~She is really ticklish.. when she wants to be!  She laughs and laughs when we tickle her and then she decides she's done and there's no more laughter.
~She is fascinated by the snow!  That will make Daddy proud.  She seriously stands at the glass door and just watches it.


Nate and I are loving being parents to this sweet little thing!  She makes life worth it and knows just how to cheer us up if we're having a rough day. We are so thankful that Heavenly Father blessed us with her and we can't wait to see what He has in store for her!

Christmas Card 2013

Let me just start by saying, I love Christmas cards! I love getting them, mostly.  And since I love getting them, we have started sending them!  I know it's not much, but I love seeing old friends and "catching up".  I like to put our blog address on ours so that those who want to know what is new in the life of Nate and Lynds can find out!

So here we go!  Let's review the last year!

First of all, and the best part, we have been parents for one year!  (Well not officially until tomorrow but still...)  Talk about the greatest thing ever.  Now, don't get me wrong, it has been hard at times and there have been a lot of adjustments made, but wow.  We love our Little Miss and we love being her Mommy and Daddy.  I won't go on about her too much.. tomorrow is her first birthday so check back for a special post ALL about her!  (As if that is any different from any other post..!)

This has been a year of moving and that will continue for a little while longer.  In January we moved from our wonderful condo in Logan to my Grandma's house in Kaysville.  She is being a fantastic example to all of us by serving a mission in the Dominican Republic so we were able to stay in her house until August. In August Nate headed to Missouri for BOLC (military speak for Basic Officer Leadership Course) and Lil Miss and I moved in with my parents.  In September we bought a home in Clearfield which we have been working to fix up so we can move in when Nate gets done in January.  We are so so excited to start this new chapter of our lives.  It just feels so right.  The house is a lot of work (we'll post before/after pics once it's done!) but every time we talk about it we just get so happy because we know this is where the Lord is taking us.

In February Nate started working as a freight broker for England Logistics.  Not too much to say about that.. work is work! It's a good job and we are grateful he was able to find a job so quickly out of school.

Okay so now for the not so fun part of our year... living 1,277 miles away from each other.  On August 9th Nate hopped in the car and left for BOLC in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  I haven't blogged much about this because it's kind of hard.  I have tried to be so strong and act like everything is great, and most days we do pretty good, but it has truly been one of the hardest, if not hardest, challenges we have yet to face. Nate is learning the in's and out's of an Army Engineer.  He has class all day and sometimes extra things nights and weekends. There have been a number of tests and other things that he has had to complete and he has done great!  I am so proud of him.  He is truly my rock.  This has been hard on me, but I can't imagine what it has been like for him. He lives in a tiny hotel room, with no family or friends nearby.  He doesn't have much to do (which for those who know Nate, that is KILLING him to be bored all the time!) but he has made the best of it.  He has thrown himself into the ward there like no one I know.  He has had some really cool missionary experiences and has gotten to know some awesome individuals.  He gets to come home for two weeks for Christmas and then he goes back for two weeks and then graduates on January 17th!  We are beyond excited to be so close to finally living in the same home again, and a new home just makes it that much more exciting!

While Nate has been workin' hard at Ft. Leonard Wood, I have been workin' hard here!  I have been working a lot at our home, with lots of help from family.  It has been a great project to keep me busy and keep my mind going.  I have been having so much fun making this house into our home.

Whew okay so that's it for the "downer" part of the update.  I feel like it is important to share that.  Sometimes it seems like the internet (blogs, Facebook, etc.) are just used to show the wonderful, happy, fantastic parts of our lives, but I want to show our real life.  Which is wonderful, happy, and fantastic the huge majority of the time.  But I like to use this blog to really update family and friends who live far away or who we don't see much, and I think they deserve the good with the not so good.

But back to the good!

We had a really fun summer as always!  We had trek, which was such a huge blessing and can I just say, it was so fun to be able to have a calling with my husband!  Those are few and far between, but it was a blast and so great to have each other to lean on.  (Side note:  the Church is true.  We truly needed both of our skills to be able to pull Trek off, the Lord knows that and that is why we were both called, neither of us could have done it alone.  End side note.)  We also went to Lake Powell as we do each summer and it was so much fun.  Oh how we love that place!  We had various other little cabin trips and camping adventures, maybe one day we will grow up and have to work all summer instead of play but hopefully not!

We also had lots of fun in the fall!  Baylie and I were back and forth to Missouri a couple times and we had a blast!  Life on post is such a different experience, I am glad we aren't Active Duty because I don't think we would love it long term, but I'm glad for our little taste of it.  We also got to visit lots of places we never would have gone and it was great to be able to just spend time together.

Just some clarification on the whole military business.  Lots of people wonder what Nate's role is so let me explain!  Nate is a 2nd Lieutenant in the Utah National Guard.  He is in the 116th Horizontal Engineer company.  Now what that means is this, he goes to Drill one weekend each month and has AT (annual training) for two weeks each summer.  At Drill and AT he does a lot of different things, for example, this year at AT they worked on a road over a mountain at Camp Williams.  He is in charge of a Platoon of about 30 Soldiers.  We will never be Active Duty, we will never be "stationed" anywhere.  That's not part of the National Guard.  Another question people tend to ask us is if Nate will ever be deployed.  Yes, that is a possibility.  Ya never know what can happen.  But the military has truly been a blessing in our lives.  It may seem weird to say that but it's true.  I feel like I have always been just as patriotic as the next American, but since being married to Nate that has grown tenfold.  We have met so many people who have sacrificed so much for this great nation.  Nate always tells people he hasn't done much, but he has.  He, and every other Soldier who sign on the dotted line, have done more than a lot could ever do.  They are willing to give everything for this country.  We may not always agree with everything that goes on in politics, but at the end of the day we must recognize that we live in a land blessed by our Heavenly Father.  I am thankful for our freedom and those who fight to protect it!

Our year has definitely been unique, but it has shaped us and helped us to grow so much. They say "distance makes the heart grow fonder".  Nate and I have missed each other like crazy, and Lil Miss too!  I can't wait for her to really get to know her Daddy, and for him to spend every day with her!  When he left she was still a baby.  Now, she is becoming her own little self!  We Skype with him often but there's nothin like day-to-day life!

Here's to a new year!!  2014 will be a great year for us and we hope it is just as wonderful for all of you!  We are so grateful for our family and friends.  We have been blessed with a fabulous support system and everyone has been beyond amazing as we have needed them a lot these past few months!! All of our family has been so willing to help, and more importantly just be there.  So thank you!

Merry Christmas!

XoXo

11 Months Old on 11-12-13

I can't believe our Lil Miss is eleven months old!!  Where did the time go??  It seems like only yesterday she was born but at the same time I can't remember what our family was like without her!  I thought it would be fun to do a little update on her since it's been a while so here are some fun facts about our Little Miss Baylie!

~She is BUSY!  She never stops going.  She wakes up in the morning ready to go and just never stops.  She is a blast.
~She loves to eat!  Bananas and bread are probably her favorite things to eat.  She can be a bit picky but obviously she eats plenty!
~I am constantly amazed at how smart she is.  We can't trick her with anything!
~She is fearless.  She will do anything and go anywhere.
~She started walking about two weeks ago and is doing great!

~She is a great performer, she has lots of tricks and she does them pretty well on command!  Her latest favorites are clapping and she is learning to blow kisses...

Mostly she smashes her hand against her face until she can't breathe anymore then starts laughing.. we're workin on it!

~She loves to read books.  She will crawl over to find a book and then crawl up on my lap for me to read it to her.  It is adorable and about the only time she will sit still!  Her favorite books right now are the Care Bears books.  She also loves her touch and feel animal book!
~She hates cows.  It's really random but whenever she sees a toy cow or a cow in a book she gets really mad and crawls away.  We're trying to get her to get over that but she's pretty sure she hates them!
~She loves to talk on the phone!  ...And pretend everything is a phone.  Normally she has a pretty loud voice but when it's time for the phone she has the sweetest quiet voice.  She will use anything as a phone; real phones, remotes, random toys, but most the time, her hand is good enough!

~She crosses her feet like a little lady all the time!  She does it when she's sitting and playing, and everywhere we go, I look back in her carseat and her little feet are crossed!  It's stinkin cute!
~She loves her Mimi!  I'm not sure who is more obsessed with the other but if Mimi walks out of the room without Baylie, there will be lots of yelling!
~She has learned to say "Mama" and it's her favorite thing to say!  She says it all day long and I love it!!  We're workin on "Dada" but when I tell her to "say Dada" she just laughs and says "Mama"
~She loves to Skype with her Daddy!  She gets so excited when she hears his voice and loves to give him "moochies"

We are so blessed to have this little firecracker in our lives!  She keeps us on our toes but she is just the best and I can't get enough of her!!

Missouri: Part 1&2!

The Lil Miss and I have been lucky enough to go visit Nate twice since he has been at Fort Leonard Wood.  We did lots of fun things on both trips, so the easiest way to tell about our trips is with all the fun pictures! So here we go!

We'll start with Trip #1, we flew out the last week of August and were able to stay for almost three weeks!  The first week Baylie was really sick!  She got a bad stomach virus and was throwing up for 5 days, it was awful!  That was my first time being a Momma to a really sick babe, it broke my heart and I felt so helpless!  But she got better and then we were able to have lots of fun!

Baylie has LOVED the plane rides!  She is so curious

 For Labor Day weekend we went to a bunch of different places!  It was GREAT!  We started out by going to Springfield.  There is the largest Bass Pro Shop there so we spent a few hours walking around, it was massive!  It seriously made our Cabela's seem teeny tiny!

The bear greeting you at the door!

They had tons of cool water fountains and pools with fish and such.

This is the world record brown bear!  It was ten feet tall and was killed with a single arrow from 20 yards away!

 They have the coolest gun museum!  I'm pretty sure they have every gun ever created. Ever.  (K maybe not, but there were HUNDREDS!)  They had guns that President Roosevelt used on his Africa Safari and other guns from his collection, they had a whole section for Bows and all kinds of other cool things.

This was a really cool display of all the guns used by the US military since the Revolutionary war!  The coolest part is that none of them are replicas, they are the real deal!

 The next day we went to the Lake of the Ozarks!  It is a huge lake and it's kind of like Lake Powell out there so we had to give it a try!  We went to HaHa Tonka State Park (HaHa Tonka means laughing waters, kind of fitting considering all the fun people have there!)  We went on some little hikes since we didn't have a boat :(

Beautiful view!

 There are some really amazing castle ruins in the State Park.  It's a really cool story, but I won't bore you with it!  If you want to learn more, you can read about it here!

Some of the ruins

We quickly discovered that a lake really isn't much fun without a boat.. we are spoiled!  But we went for a swim anyway, the water was pretty dirty and there wasn't much of a beach so we didn't last too long but it was a nice break from the horrible heat!

We went for a quick dip in the lake!

St. Louis Temple!

Cutest carriage rides ever!  I wanted to ride so bad.

This was a really funny street performer down on the Mississippi River

 We went up to St. Louis after Lake of the Ozarks and it was a blast!  Nate being in Missouri has been a great opportunity for us to see places we wouldn't normally go to.  I don't think we would ever just decide to go to Missouri for a vacation so it has been fun to see the sights!

We loved the Gateway Arch!

 Back in the day, St. Louis was known as the "Gateway to the West", there is a really cool museum under the arch that talks all about Westward Expansion, I'm not usually into museums, but this one had really cool history stuff!

There was a crazy bike group there at the same time as us

On Labor Day we went to the amazing St. Louis Zoo!  It is huge and free and we had a blast!

The bear was Baylie's favorite!  He was so cute and kept standing up on his back legs!  She loved it.  

The monkeys were so funny!

We also went to Grant's Farm.  It was originally the home of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States, but then it was bought by the Anheuser Busch family and turned into the Budweiser farm!  They have the Budweiser Clydesdales there and then you take a little tram ride through the farm to get to a little village.  They have really cool animals on the farm, including albino elk which were freaky!  The little village is like a German village and it is so cute!  We felt a little out of place since they give away free beer so everyone else was walking around drinking but we still had a great time!

Baylie really took off crawling while we were there and then quickly started climbing.  She loved to climb up on my suitcase!

We also got to be there for my birthday!  I was so glad I got to spend my birthday with my little family!  Nate got done with training early so we were able to spend a lot of time together.  We went bowling and then out to dinner and it was a great day!

Whew okay so that's the end of trip 1!  Are ya sick of us yet??  Well hang on, trip #2 is much shorter!

We spent the first few days just hanging around Fort Leonard Wood. Life on a military base is SO different!  But it is good to see how Nate lives for now and I enjoyed it for the time we were there. However, I am super happy we aren't active duty, I wouldn't want to live there long term! We went on lots of walks and went to the museums about the Engineers, Military Police, and Chemical. We took Baylie to a park and discovered that she is terrified of going down the slide and she also hates to swing (which breaks my heart because swinging is my favorite!).  Nate got a day off for Columbus Day so we went up to Kansas City to see the sites there and it was a blast!

The pictures are out of order from how we really did things but that's okay!  We went to the beautiful World War 1 Memorial and Museum.  On our way there Nate and I talked about how we really didn't know very much about this war so it was cool to learn a little more.

This is a really old elevator that takes you to the top!

The best view of Kansas City!  BEAUTIFUL!

See the limo?  There were 5 wedding parties taking pictures!

Around Kansas City there are a few church history sites so we went to some of those and it was really awesome.  We went to the Community of Christ temple (formerly RLDS), it was weird to see their "temple" and be able to tour it.  They also have a museum in it where they have some things from church history.  They had a display of each copy of the Book of Mormon from the original publication up until now (obviously their current editions are different from ours), but it was really cool to see how old they were.  We toured the LDS Visitor Center and and saw the site that was dedicated for a temple before they were run out of town.  Then we went to Liberty and saw Liberty Jail.  This was an incredibly touching experience.  It is a replica because the original crumbled but it is built within feet of the original structure and uses some of the same rocks.

The walls are 4 feet thick!

 The missionaries there were awesome!  I don't have a picture of the front but my favorite part was when the missionary talked about when Joseph Smith was brought to the jail.  Just before walking into the jail, where he would be held captive for 4 months for unjust causes, he said to the jailers "Good afternoon, gentlemen".  The missionary talked about how this showed so much about Joseph's character.  He was always kind to everyone, no matter the situation.  He could have been angry and yelling for being taken from his family in the middle of winter, but he greeted them kindly and humbly did as he was told.  This is also where my favorite scripture was given to Joseph Smith  D&C 121: 7-8.  His friends were with him, and supported him through this most difficult time, even though the circumstances were extremely difficult. It never ceases to amaze me the sacrifices that Joseph Smith made for the gospel to go forward!

We took Baylie to the aquarium and she LOVED it!  Let's be honest, I did too!  Lil Miss was entranced by all the fish and sea creatures.  She even touched a star fish!  I thought she would freak out, but she didn't and tried to pull it off the rock.

Lil Miss touchin' a star fish

Across from the aquarium was a really cool shopping center with some fun specialty shops. There was a cute Crayola store with all things colorful!  This wheel has every color of crayola crayon!

 We also went to Union Station, which was breathtaking!  It was huge and old and beautiful!

 Okay this was funny.. the parking at Union Station.  You just slipped your dollars into the slots, it was so old.  The lady helping kept saying they needed to join the 21st Century.. we totally agree!

The view from the bottom of the World War 1 Memorial!

We went and walked around this "Living History Museum", it wasn't really a museum, it was a little town set up like it would have been in the 19th century.  The buildings are actual buildings that were built between 1807 and 1885 and then moved to this area.  It reminded me of This Is The Place Park.  There were stories about each building and how the town could have been.

This was considered a mansion back then, it was beautiful!

We also went to Arrowhead Stadium!  I really wanted to go to a Chiefs game but it was on Sunday so we passed!

We also went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.  It was interesting to learn about the separate league that African Americans played in before they were allowed to play with white players.  I think that is such an interesting time in history to learn about so it was cool to see how it related to leisure activities.  The museum is located at 18th and Vine, which was a happenin' place back in the day!  There was a movie about all that happened there for African Americans, it was basically there little oasis where they went to let loose and have fun!

We had a couple of really great trips!  We saw some great things, but the best part was being able to just spend time together!  It has been really hard living so far away from each other for these past couple months.  We are almost halfway there and it can't come soon enough!  Luckily we have amazing support from our families.  I am living with my parents and they have been a blessing beyond imagination.  They help me with Lil Miss SO much and seem to always know when I'm having a rough day.  I don't know what I would do without them.

Nate is doing well in his training and just keeps plugging along!  He goes a little crazy sometimes because he is so bored but he is a trooper!  We get to talk everyday and we Skype a lot too.  Baylie loves talking to her daddy.  The other night we were talking to him on my parents iPad and she kept crawling over and kissing his face on the screen.  She loves her daddy!  I keep worrying that she might forget him, but every time she sees him or hears his voice on the phone she gets giddy with excitement!  She is such a sweetie.

Well that was a really long post...  Sorry!