By Popular Demand

For the little Dollface's birthday party I prepared a slide show of photos of her first year. I hadn't intended on posting it because it's kind of a long slide show. 12 minutes long. (I'm a mom, and to me, ALL photos are important. I had a rough time narrowing it down to 12 minutes as it is!)

And besides, most of the photos included have already made their way to my blog over the past year, so it would mainly be repeats.

But a few people have requested that I post the slide show, so here it is. All 12 minutes of it. Enjoy the Amelia Fest!

Make a Smilebox free slideshow

Big Move to the Big Apple

By the way, did you all know that my little family and I are moving to New York for the summer?

It is the truth.

The L'Oreal Brandstorm marketing competition I mentioned that Pete and his team won a while ago lead to him spending some time in New York a couple of weeks ago being wined and dined, or watered and dined as the case may be, and then offered a summer internship in their professional products division.

The irony here, for those of you who don't know Pete very well, is that the man has never been inside a salon in his life. He cuts his own hair with peanut shaped clippers and the assistance of the bathroom mirror. But apparently the selection committee at L'Oreal USA thought he'd be a perfect match for their professional product division and are very enthusiastic about having him.

Lovely.

Its even a paid internship. Even better.

So I plan on getting myself a museum pass and wandering around Manhattan all summer with Amelia and Bob while Pete works in the fast paced New York beauty industry. Whoever would have thought?

Oh, and to prepare for my brief stint as a city girl, I just signed up for a short photography class. If you want to learn to take beautiful pictures too, sign up here.

Valentine's Day; the Calm before the Storm

I know. It’s almost March. The traditional ‘Day of Love’ has far left us and I am only now recording our celebration. But with my baby’s birthday the day after Valentine’s Day and the busy preparations I was making for her party (which included; baking, printing photos, framing photos, making/purchasing party decorations and cleaning my house) Valentine’s Day nearly got lost in the shuffle.

Lucky for me, I happened to have foresight this year. Not a common occurrence. I ordered a gift for my darlin boy three weeks in advance, so it even arrived on time. It was the ultimate romantic valentine’s Day gift;



Those of you who know my sweet baby understand why this is the perfect gift for him.

Also, very luckily for me, while I was insanely busy planning and preparing the birthday party of the century on top of work, Relief Society and generally keeping the babydoll from tearing the house to pieces, Pete made plans for Valentine's Day. It isn't as if he wasn't as overloaded as I was; the man had just gotten back from a week in New York being schmoozed by L'Oreal and missing work and classes, so he had a bit of catching up to do himself. Plus he was in charge of creating a masterpiece of a birthday cake.

But he still found time to observe Valentine's Day (or at least the day before Valentine's Day, as the big V Day landed on a Sunday this year in case you don't remember). This is what he did:

He took me to a BYU basketball game. That may not sound like the height of romance to some of you, but our first date was a BYU basketball game, so it felt romantic to me. Kindof. Besides, we love to watch BYU sports together. It's part of what we do and who we are as a couple. So it was a perfect start to our Valentine's Day evening.Especially because they killed Air Force. Nothing says romance like a good slaughter fest.

Then, he took me to dinner. A real date-type dinner, the kind that doesn't include asking our server for a high-chair (he had arranged for a babysitter as well--big points there). We went here:



And ate lots of meat. Honestly, I don't think there was a vegetable anywhere in sight, unless you can feel good about counting the onion rings, which were roughly the size and thickness of Krispy Kremes.

Last of all, when we got home Pete gave me roses and candy. But these were no ordinary roses, they were made of fondant icing and supported in a vase of jelly bellies.

So it was a perfect Man's Valentine's Day; a basketball game, an overload of meat and edible roses. I couldn't have felt more loved or lucky to have such a wonderful sweetheart.