Joshua's First Solids

This is Joshua eating his first bowl of rice cereal. These show it going better than it really did. He hated it! He was excited for the first bite, and then I had to force the spoon past his tight lips. This was the progression of pictures.

Isaac's Football Banquet

A few weeks ago, Isaac had his BYU football banquet. They have one every year to celebrate the previous season and to honor all the seniors. We had a nice steak and salmon dinner and then there was an awards ceremony. At the end each senior was presented his framed jersey along with his helmet in a glass case. This year there was also a unique addition. A Polynesian tiki-store owner made each senior a staff, personalized with his name and number on it. It shows all awards the team won during each senior's career.

Travis and Alison

Saia and Line

Wayne and Mary

Congratulations, Isaac!

Isaac and me

Isaac and Wayne

Tana and Isaac

Dramtic Weight Loss Attempt

Isaac doesn't understand my interest in the Discovery Health show "Mystery Diagnosis." I'm not sure I understand either. The whole time I watch it I feel like I need to be taking notes in case these things happen to me or someone in my family.

Doctor: "Symptoms?"

Me: "Fever, naseau, flu-like feeling"

Doctor: "Sounds like the flu"

Me: "Are you sure it's not adult-onset Still's Disease? Because on yesterday's episode of Mystery Diagnosis......"

Anyway, two weeks ago, I developed dibilitating abdominal pain that felt like impending doom that lasted for 2 days. But each day after I felt better and better. So naturally instead of going to the insta-care I decided to diagnose myself on WebMD. After I listed all of my symptoms and used their model to locate my pain, WebMD suggested that I had one of three things: appendicitis, cancer, or a peptic ulcer--all of which are very serious, all of which further scared me away from going to a doctor. I was mentally preparing myself to live with the pain for the rest of my life because I really didn't want to go to the doctor because then he would tell me I had to have surgery or take medicines or both! Finally Isaac locked me out of the house with my purse and car keys, and it was cold so I went to the insta-care seeking shelter. While I was there I thought I might as well see the doctor. Two days later I ended up getting a CT scan. When I showed up for the appointment, I had to gag down a QUART of barium which is exactly like Mylanta, and I laid on this table that slid through this giant ring. Well two hours later a nurse called me and said I needed to get to the American Fork hospital immediately--they had a surgeon on-call and I needed to have my appendix out.

When I got to the surgeon's office, he said he didn't think I had appendicitis. He said that you know when someone has appendicitis because they are in excruciating pain, but I looked fine. He had four different radiologists look at my scan, and based on the scan alone, they all said it was appendicitis. But after the doctor told the radiologists that I was walking around and showed no apparent discomfort, no one thought I had appendicitis. My first thought when the doctor told me this was "Oh no! I'm going to wind up on Mystery Diagnosis!" Based on the scans alone, it looked like I needed to have surgery so I went under the knife. And it went well I guess. The surgery got rid of the first pain and replaced it with another kind. The worst pain wasn't even the incisions--it was the air bubbles under my ribs and collar bone. They say they fill your abdomen so full of air to do the laproscopic surgery that it looks like your pregnant and when they push it all out it sounds like a deflating balloon. Gross... and awesome. I know Isaac loves me because he didn't want me to have to use my stomach muscles in order to get up out of bed so for 3 days he lifted me out of bed and stood me up every time. That's true love.

And I decided to include a picture. This isn't mine. I vaguely remember asking the nurse if I could take mine home because Isaac told me to ask (which is true) but when I found a urine cup in my belongings bag, all I found were my earrings. So I guess the nurse said no. It would have been cooler if I had found my appendix. Good news though--they say an inflamed appendix weighs about half a pound.

I knew I felt trimmer.

My Valentine's Day Brunch

As I was putzing around in my mom's storage closet a few weeks ago, I found a cache of holiday decor in the back corner still wrapped up from my parents' move a couple of years ago. As I sorted through it all, it was as if St. Valentine himself was asking me to throw a shindig in his behalf. So I sent out a handful of invitations to some of our close marrieds, ironed a few tablecloths, and washed a ton of dishes and this what it looked like when I finished. We had a lot of fun, and who knows, maybe it will be our first unique family tradition.

Menu: spinach/bacon quiche, salad with homemade almond balsamic vinagrette, vanilla yogurt parfaits with blueberries and marionberries, raspberry muffins, and orange juice/Kool-Aid/ginger ale punch and hot chocolate


Tyler and Kim
Ok we look so dorky, but I thought Joshua needed to look festive, and Isaac thought if he didn't put on a red shirt, I would be angry with him, so we just look perfectly cheery here.
Alyssa and Russ
Michael and Karina
The spread

Wayne, his baby Keena, and Isaac
The table

Stephanie Taylor

I'm always amazed at how common my name is--a generic first AND last name. When I get my hair cut, I'm one of 2 Stephanie Taylor's in the computer. When I bought theater tickets a couple of weeks ago, I was one of 4 Stephanie Taylor's that have bought tickets to that particular play house before. So when I saw this gadget on a friend's blog, I just had to know. And funny thing was... for once I had wished that there were more. I thought the number was little low.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 1,902 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Weird story: Isaac and I went back to the jewelery store where we bought our wedding rings to get a free cleaning. In the interim between our initial purchase and our cleaning, another Isaac and Stephanie Taylor purchased their wedding rings there too. Annoying for us, the salesman kept trying to merge our accounts, convinced that there couldn't possibly be two couples with the exact same name buying rings from the same store. It had to be a double entry, he said. I can't remember the salesmans name but I'm betting it wasn't anything like Matt Smith or John Brown or else he would have been more believing. P.S. Our evil twins currently reside in Spanish Fork.

Super Joshua

Sunrise

We've been TRYING to wake up earlier nowadays because...DUH... we feel better when we go to bed and wake up earlier AND get 8 hours of sleep. We're just figuring this out. Anyhoo, these are some pictures Isaac snapped from the back of our house.

Super Bowl Party

We had Tai, Andre, and Asia over to watch the Super Bowl. It was fun, and we ate lots of snacks--cheese dip, little smokies, cupcakes and all. Notice the Tums on the side table. Now thanks to Isaac, I love watching football now that I understand it all :) Too bad Utah doesn't have a pro team we can root for.

Love This Face

Couldn't you just kiss those cheeks off?!

This is Joshua talking to me.

Maybe a future quarterback? He always holds his hands like this.

Our New Camera and New Joshua

We finally got a new camera! Our other one was going on 7 years old. Good riddance. We've also just recently trained Joshua to sleep through the night. Here's a happier baby with a better camera.

Practice

These are some pictures of Isaac at football practice this season.

The Swing