Metro moments

Here are some of my favorite photos from our weekend with Jon's parents and Jer while hanging out on the metro and giving Van his first taste of public trans. Startin' him young!

Van's Baby Blessing {Dec. 7, 2008}

After much debate on whether we should have Van blessed here in December or wait until we went to Utah in January, we finally decided to have him blessed in the ward he was born in, here in Arlington. It was a super hard decision to make, especially with family so far away and so few able to come, but we were glad that Jon's parents and Jeremy could be in town, as well as Jon's cousin & wife and their 5 cute kids (thanks Wakefields!), and we were especially grateful to all our dear friends who live in the area that came to support us on Van's special, simple day. We definitely focused on simplicity, and it almost made it seem unreal, but it was perfect for our little boy. The meeting was at 9:00 am on Sunday, December 7, and Van was blessed by Jon, being joined by his father, brother, our bishop, and a few friends. Thank you so much to all of you that went out of your way to be there for us and Van! It was so good to see you all and it meant so much to us that you would come.

We missed our family greatly (and you were definitely all in our thoughts!!), but we're grateful that all gospel ordinances and blessings can be performed anywhere in the world and still have the same meaning and validity. I'm so grateful for the priesthood and that Jon strives to live his life in a way that respects the priesthood he holds. We're just a little family, and this is just our little beginning, but I love every part of it! Thinking of the things Jon mentioned to Van in his blessing makes me amazed that we will see this little one grow from infancy to manhood, from being completely dependent on us to being an independent and responsible adult, and every step in between. I can't even imagine it!! I hope and pray every day that we will raise him the way he deserves to be raised, and that we will bring him up according to the Lord's will. It's a great responsibility, but I know that it's definitely not one that we will fulfill alone, and for that I am eternally grateful.

For the record, Van was silent as ever for the blessing, even though he was awake, and the best part was when Jon slightly raised Van for the congregation to see, because Jon's friends from work loved it--they later told us it reminded them of the Lion King. :) So here's to our sweet little Simba with his whole little life ahead!

{I may or may not have completely forgotten to take pictures of any kind until 10:00 pm that night...at which point I may or may not have made Jon get back in his church clothes as soon as I changed Van back into his blessing clothes to look like I remembered as soon as we were home...obviously still new at this mom stuff!!}




















































































And this is how Van felt after his blessing day (the same as every other day I guess!).

National Botanical Garden--take 2--{Dec. 6, 2008}

After the Capitol Visitor's Center, we continued to brave the ridiculously cold air to take Jon's family over to the Botanical Garden for the Christmas train exhibit, which we went to last year and LOVED. The trains were outside last year, but this year they set them all up inside for whatever reason, and we were grateful for that so we could get out of the cold! Everything the trains are surrounded by and run on, (the bridges, walls, tunnels, miniature houses, literally everything) are made by natural materials (sticks, bark, wood, plants, dried leaves, you name it), and that's what makes it so impressive. They did a fairy tale theme this year, so you can see the 3 Little Pigs' houses, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe's house, and those are just a couple of the many there.

In the atrium, they also annually set up naturally made replicas of the monuments, laid out like the National Mall, and it's soooo impressive. You may recall that Jon and I also went to this last year and blogged about it, but we had lost our camera the DAY before, and thus it all had to go undocumented by photos, and recorded only by words, while I tried really hard to learn the lesson of why sometimes it's good and important to create memories without photographing every second of what's happening. I'm sure you think I didn't learn that lesson very well based on the amount of photos we take all the time, but to my credit, I did say sometimes it's important to do things without picture taking, not always. :) But lucky for us, we had the luxury of both worlds in the end--last year without the camera to focus on the moment, and this year with the new camera to document it all.

So forgive us for all the photos, but it was kind of our make-up trip for last year's loss, so that anyone who wanted to see what they could only read last year will be able to do just that. Or at least we will in 30 years when we want to go back and remember it!

Capitol Visitor's Center {Dec. 6, 2008}

Their timing again being perfect for site-seeing, the Capitol Visitor's Center (CVC) opened the very week that Jon's parents and Jeremy came to visit. So of course we made sure to go see it! We were really impressed with it (and we should be, seeing as it cost $621 million of our tax dollars) and we would highly recommend it for everyone to go see. It has these really cool glass ceilings that you can see the Capitol through (the CVC is underground). We just went to the 13 min. movie, which we enjoyed, especially to get a quick version of what goes on in Congress and to make you feel all proud to be an American because of the replaying theme "of many...one."

We got some pics with some of the statues that didn't fit in the Capitol and have thus overflowed to the CVC--the most important ones being Hawaii's King ____ (some really long Hawaiian name, don't be mad at me for not remembering it Jer!) and Utah's Philo T. Farnsworth, father of the television. Van, again, was a silent, sleeping tourist the entire time. But he got his own ticket to the movie nonetheless, as you can see stuck to his beenie. We couldn't get over how easy he makes it for us to get out and keeping doing the things we love!

Visitors for Van! {Festival of Lights, Dec. 5, 2008}

We were fortunate and very happy to have Jon's parents and little bro Jeremy out to meet Van the man and visit us for a long weekend at the beginning of December (December 4-8), and we definitely took advantage of their time here to show them the sites! We hope we didn't tire them with our excitement to go out and see it all despite the freezing weather while they were here!!

They managed to time it just right to go to the Festival of Lights lighting ceremony this year, which is always fun to hear great musical numbers, wonderful speakers, and to get excited for the Christmas season. The Festival of Lights is an annual month-long event at the LDS Washington DC temple that is open to everyone and has free (not to mention amazing) musical events every night until January 1st that are open to the public. The lighting ceremony is the debut night of the Festival, and this was the 2nd year we were able to attend. Elder Neil A. Anderson spoke this year, and he shared a wonderful story reminding us to 'have room in the inn' (see the December Ensign for the story in full). We loved seeing all the nativity scenes from all around the world, checking out all the lights, and seeing Van sleep through yet another event, as photographed below :). Jon designed the invitations/logo again this year for the Festival, so I threw that in for fun at the bottom of the post.

This is what I get to wake up to

One early morning after Jon had left for work, I decided to take advantage of the one time in the day that a little bit of light comes through the window in his bedroom, and we had our own little photo shoot. These are some of my favorite pictures of him...doesn't it just make you want to hold him? (these were also taken when he was just over 3 weeks old) I especially love the flailing picture, haha. Let's be honest, babies scream. But they're just so cute when they do it!

Ridin' along in my automobile

Here's the little man, all tiny and bundled up in his carseat, shoes monogrammed with his name so he could be rightfully returned to his parents should he get lost (okay, so they came like that), and eyes shut tight, all ready to see the world. So maybe the only world he sees is the back of his eyelids, but that's totally by choice! He's just a sleeper when we're out and about. Jon calls it "survival mode" because it's so cold. He holds his hands out in front of him so funny when he's strapped in, I love it. Van LOVES his carseat, but mostly just after he gets in the car and we start cruising. He's gonna like roadtrips just like his mommy and daddy!

Van 3-4 weeks old

Of course we've been photo-aholics with this new little life in our house, we've just been slow with posting the latest. The following pics are a couple from weeks 3 and 4 of him hanging out with us out of my belly. Or hanging out with his crib. He likes that too.

















































How sweet is this???

Gratefully (and latefully) Thankful

Clearly, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and Christmas is right around the corner now, but I felt I needed to do some belated recapping of the last couple weeks anyway so I could feel like I at least attempted to document it all.

Thanksgiving was great this year. Even though we couldn't be with family, we were blessed to be invited to join some friends at a large Thanksgiving meal with people we mostly didn't know, but everyone was so kind and fun and we had a great time. Our only assignment was to bring a dessert or two, so I made a super easy family chocolate cream pie recipe, attempted a coconut cream pie that for some reason ended up tasting more like a sweet egg quesh (oops), and a classic pumpkin pie that I was delighted to find out tasted just like pumpkin pie. :) The rest of the food was fabulous, and all we had to do was show up and eat it.

Van was a little sleeping saint, as he tends to be when we go out to loud places with lots of people, and probably didn't even notice we'd left home. There were probably about a dozen kids running around, playing and screaming, and he was totally unaffected. We love that!

So, I didn't take a picture of his "first thanksgiving" or anything, especially since he was just sleeping through it, but I was fortunate enough to get some pretty amazing day-after Thanksgiving photos, thanks to our amazingly talented photographer friend, Alia. Alia was so patient and totally worked around Van's schedule so we could try to get him both asleep and awake, and Jon and I were soooo impressed with the photos she got. Plus it gave Alia and I an excuse to hang out all day, which is rare for us, and I loved it. Thanks again for the pictures Alia, they turned out so good, you did an amazing job!! (see some of our favorites below)

And since this is a Thanksgiving post, I thought I should say just a few of the many many things we're grateful for. In no particular order:

God, and His perfect eternal plan for each of us. family {x 2}. old friends. new friends. an apartment perfect for our needs with a rent payment within our means. our marriage & our fun, growing, ever-increasing love and relationship. all the giving people that helped us fill and furnish our apartment when we moved. popcorn. jon's stable & secure job that allowed us the blessing of me staying home to be a full-time mommy. the amazingly created human body. the gospel and its incredibly clear principles & doctrines that teach us why we're here and what we need to do to return to our Heavenly Father someday. the blessing to have a living prophet and twelve apostles in our day. ice cream. my coworkers from my job I left that are some of the greatest people i know. jon's coworkers that are also some of the greatest people I know--and they're the reason he gets excited to go to work every day. having enough food and clothes. babies. our baby. van's health. answered prayers. music. the man handing out newspapers at the metro that smiled at me and said something nice every morning when I commuted in for work. people who offer rides to me because they know I have no car in the day, or just because they're nice like that. democracy and the ability to vote. america. baby smells and tiny new baby smiles. the priesthood. temples and the blessing to be sealed to my husband for time and all eternity. seasons. eternal perspective.

And so much more...

Happy 4 Weeks, Van!!

Guess who's already going to be one month old this week?? We can't believe how fast it's going already. Or how fun it's been. Or how cute he is. Or that we're parents (nope, still can't believe it). Or how much he trusts us already. Or how much Heavenly Father trusts us to bless us with this little life joining our family. Or what joy he brings us. The kind of joy that makes you realize why this is right, and why it's the next step in our lives to keep progressing, growing, and increasing in love (and hopefully eventually increasing in knowledge and wisdom too, but apparently that comes a little slower :) ).

We love you, Van man!