The Wedding!!

On December 27th we flew into LA- just in time to join the craziness at the Jenkins' household. The day after we arrived Corinne and Morgan were married in the Los Angeles Temple. It was a wonderful wedding! Corinne was a beautiful bride! We are very excited to have Morgan join the family. Mom and Dad with the bride and groom
Corinne with her sibilings.
Corinne and Morgan with their 4 nieces and 3 nephews.
Even Madi had a great day!

Madilyn is LOVED!

We all had such a fun time being in Brentwood! Madilyn was especially loved and spoiled by everyone! Thanks Dad, Mom, Karlee, Clark, JoSue, and Roxy for the fun time!! We love you all!

Merry Christmas!

Madilyn had a wonderful first Christmas! She got lots of fun presents- even though she liked the wrapping paper better than what was unwrapped. I was especially excited to get a Kitchen Aid (thanks mom and dad) and Spencer was excited about seasons 1-3 of "The Office"!! We all had a nice relaxing day- hanging out, watching movies, playing games, and eating LOTS of yummy treats!

Madi was feeling very satisfied after her yummy Christmas dinner: oatmeal cereal, green beans, and peaches! YUMMMMMM! Look carefully and you can see Karlee in the back making her famous cinnamon rolls!!

Roxy surprised all of us with new pajama bottoms- thanks Rox!! Just a few pictures of us modeling our new PJ's! The boys really got into the photo shoot- this is just one of their 100 poses!

Fun at Gram and Papa's House!

Finally 3 days after arriving in California, Madi has adjusted to the time change and is back to her normal schedule. It was a crazy few days with lots of fussing and crying, but now she's VERY happy to be here and spend some time with her grandparents, aunts, and uncles! Since arriving on Monday we've done a whole lot of RELAXING!! Boy has it been nice! The weather's been great- a little windy, but definitely warmer than Maryland. Madi has been having lots of fun- going for walks, eating lot of yummy treats (well...just wishing she was big enough to eat all the goodies that are around), playing with lots of new toys, having fun with Kody, playing in the bathtub, hanging out in Half Moon Bay with her GREAT Grandma Jenkins, Aunt Fay and Uncle Bob, and just today going into the hot tub for the first time!! She's having such a fun time, I don't know if she's going to want to go home!

The week started out a little rough........but Madi adjusted in no time!
Madi and her buddy ready to go for a walk.
Madi digging into Gram's peanut butter balls! Yummmmmmmm!!Playing with Homer!

Having fun with Kody. Playing in the tub!
Madi LOVES her GREAT Grandma Jenkins! We had tons of fun in Half Moon Bay with Grandma, Aunt Fay and Uncle Bob!
Madi's first time in the hot tub! She had a fun time splashing around.

Flight to California

On December 17th Spencer, Madi, and I flew to California! We were super excited for the trip to spend Christmas with family and have a nice relaxing holiday vacation. Madi's first flight was when she was 5 weeks old and she did great!! But now at almost 6 months old we were a little nervous as to how she'd do. Well, let's just say it was a six hour hour flight and she slept only 1 hour of it!! Luckily the flight was not full. We actually had the whole back of the plane to ourselves. I think that was the only thing that helped Spencer and I survive. We arrived into SanFrancisco with splitting headaches and hungry stomaches! Here's Madi at the beginning of the flight- very excited to see her Gram and Papa. We weren't in picture taking mood the rest of the day.

Santa Claus came to Town!

We had our ward Christmas party last night. It was a pretty fun night with dinner, the nativity play, singing, and visiting. But what we were most excited for was the visit from Santa!! The tricky part was getting Madi to stay awake long enough to meet him. Her regular bedtime is at 6pm and with the party not even starting until 7pm, it was a stretch. She was a pretty good girl the whole night, but almost 2 hours later it was obvious that she was ready to go. We gave up waiting and got ready to head home, a little disappointed with Santa's delay. But just as we were about to walk out the door, Santa arrived!! So yes, Madi did get to meet Santa for her first time! She was a little too tired to enjoy it though.

LET it SNOW!!

We had our first snowfall on Wednesday!! It wasn't a little snowfall either! It snowed ALL day long! Madi loved it!
She was really itching to get outside and play in the snow!

Exersaucer

I recently made my first purchase off of Craig's list!! Boy was it a GREAT experience! I woke up thinking, man Madi really needs a new toy where she doesn't have to lay on her back....on the floor. SO, I got on Craig's List, typed in exersaucer (I've been wanting to get one for awhile now), and to my amasement saw postings in Rockville! I don't have a GPS (yet!) and so I am NOT willing to drive more than 10 miles to pick up a new toy. I emailed the people who after listing the price said OBO! Yes, I like making the "BEST" (or first) offer. An hour later I had Madi's new toy at home and put her in to try it out.
So what do you think Madi??Hmmmmmmmmm.....yes......this is actually pretty interesting!

Getting Tagged!

I was tagged awhile back (thanks Natalie), but truthfully I hadn't heard about the whole "tag" thing yet. So, being lazy, I opted out (sorry Natalie). I was recently tagged again by my sister Tisha, and I know she'll get on me until I do it. SO.... here are 6 things about me; probably not so interesting, but hopefully you'll learn something new.

1) I LOVE the sun!! I love being outside, but mostly on a warm sunny day. I love how the sun gives my body such a nice golden brown color. Yes, I LOVE being tan. Unfortunately, now that we again live in an area where we actually have seasons, I have to deal with being quite pasty for 5 months of the year! During all the other months I always find a way to get outside, roll up my sleeves and pant legs to get a little bit of color. When given the choice of eating lunch in the shade of a tree or in the direct sun- I always choose the sun. I'l usually stay in the sun until I've built up a pretty good sweat. Spencer knows that when going on vacations all I need is a pool (or beach) and the nice warm SUN!

2) I have MANY OCD tendancies! Two that really stick out are those of cleanliness and organization. Just to clarify, I don't love to clean- I just like things really clean! My cleanliness standard is usually quite different than other peoples. Back in the "roommate days" I would get after my roommate for never taking her turn to clean the bathroom. Her excuse was that it never got dirty enough to have to clean. My philosophy is that you shouldn't wait until something's dirty, but just always keep it clean. Spencer doesn't understand why we wash the dishes before putting them into the dishWASHER. I'm trying to get him to understand that the dishwasher doesn't wash the wishes, it just sanitizes them.....RIGHT??? I also have to things organized. For instance, when I get the mail I'll sort it out according to bills, letters, ads, and junk. Then I go through each stack seperately. It drives me crazy to have "stuff" just sitting on our table on counters- at least without some type of organization to it.

3) I live by schedules. Now, this doesn't mean that I always stick to my schedule, but I have to have some type of direction for each day as to the things I plan on accomplishing. The best part about shedules is getting to check something off after I've done it! It's such a great feeling! The past 5 years, as a teacher, I've had a plan book where I'd plan out the week, lessons, etc. Well...I still have a plan book. I have one for my daily events and tasks to get done, and I also have another one to record Madilyn's daily schedule. I record everything from naps, to her feeding schedule, to what we do during play time, and how many poops she had that day! It's probably a little excessive, but I just can't stop!

4) I CRAVE exercise! It was a habit that started back in high school when I'd go to the gym every morning at 5am! It kinda just stuck after that. Besides being a regular gym goer, I'm always find other ways to fit a little exercise in. When I sit down to watch a movie I always choose the floor so that I can do leg kicks during the movie. I have no problem parking at the back of a parking lot to get a longer walk into the store. Even when I was 9 months pregnant I'd choose to take the stairs at the doctor's office instead of the elevator.

5) I'm addicted to candy! It really is an addiction. I try to stop, but after evey meal I need some type of treat! Every night I tell Spencer that I don't want to eat any more sweets, however I've gotten him addicted as well. SO, it's like too addicts trying to help each other. Ya, it's not working too well!

6) Water- it's all I drink. I rarely, if ever, drink anything besides water. Anyone that knows me knows that I always have my water bottle with me. It's become like a comfort item for me. It goes everywhere with me. On many occasions I've even brought it into restaurants (mostly by habit), then I get embarrassed and so I set it in the corner next to me. I really don't know what I would do without my water bottle. I love bringing a diaper bag to church now so that I have a place to hide the water bottle. There have been times that I've forgotten my water bottle and I have driven back to the house to get it.

Well, that's 6! Hopefully you learned something new and interesting about me. If not, this can reconfirm your thoughts that yes, Anie has lots of weird obsessions!! I'm not sure who all has done the "tag" thing yet, but hopefully these individuals haven't done it yet: Melissa, Heather, Courtney, Lindsay Terry, Valerie Stolworthy, and Candace. I'll be checking your blogs, so make sure you do it!! :)

1 Down, 3 more to go!!!

Just wanted to keep you all updated oh how Spencer is doing. He's been busy studying for finals, and just today he got his score back for his first final. He passed with the highest score- 99.2 points out of 100 possible. He would NOT want me posting this, but how can I not be SO proud!! YEAH for Spencer and YEAH for being almost done! Only 12 more days until we fly home for the holidays!!!

I looked out the window....

Madilyn LOVES being outside. We didn't get out for a walk today and I think she was feeing a little sad about it! Instead I let her spend some time by the window-as the next best thing. She was pretty content to have a birds-eye view out the upstairs office window. She watched the trees (now bare) with the leaves swirling around in the wind, the cars, and neighbor kids coming home from school! I love how entertained she is by such simple things.

Weekend with the Harpers

If you've already read our "Happy Turkey Day" post you know that we had some very special visitors join us for the Thanksgiving holiday. But guess what- the fun with the Harpers didn't stop after our fabulous Thanksgiving meal. We had a whole weekend of fun! Thursday was obviously Thanksgiving and filled with LOTS and LOTS of cooking, relaxing, cooking, football watching, cooking, and EATING!! Then on Friday we headed into DC. We visited the Washington, Lincoln, WWII, and Vietnam Monuments. We made sure to stop by the White House on our way out as well. Before heading back home we stopped for some yummy Indian food! Saturday was SUPER relaxing! We scheduled our day around the BYU vs. UTAH football game- and what a great game it was. GO COUGARS!! The girls (Madi and Reina) crashed early, making going out not an option. So we brought dinner to us. We got a huge BBQ platter from "Famous Dave's". Delicious as always! We ended the evening with an intense game of Hearts (my choice of course) and reminiscing high school and college memories. Oh what a fun weekend!! Thanks Harpers for sharing it with us! Unfortunately I didn't get many pictures of the rest of the weekend. If you'd like to see more pictures of their visit, go to the Harpers blog.

Who does Madi look like?

Happy Turkey Day!!

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving this year! We were thrilled to be able to spend it with the Harper family. We hadn't seen them for over 3 years!! Oh what a joyous reunion it was! For those of you that don't know the Harpers, Scott and I were good friends in High School and he was Spencer's roommate at BYU. I was super sad when they moved to Japan because Heather and I had already become great friends! We were so excited when Scott got accepted into Harvard business school because now we live relatively close. They drove down from Boston Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday. Our Thanksgiving dinner was quite delicious if I do say say so myself. I gained some confidence in the cooking area- Heather taught me some of her tricks!

Spencer cooked the turkey and did an AMAZING job (as always)! He really is quite the chef!

Heather and I made homemade rolls.

Heather also made her famous cranberry sauce and apple pie (which I'm SO bummed that I didn't get pictures of)!

Scott had an especially important job. While we were busy in the kitchen Scott "nurtured" the kids while keeping track of the football scores for us!


We started cooking about noon and didn't sit down to eat until 7pm! OH what a feast it was!!

Oh Christmas Tree!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, Oh how we LOVE our 1st "REAL" Christmas Tree!! I hear the rule is that Christmas decorations can go up as early as the day after Thanksgiving. Who made up that rule??!! We got a jump start on Christmas this year. Not to downplay Thanksgiving or anything, because we are SUPER excited for it as well. But, since we will be spending three weeks in California for Christmas, we thought we were entitled, if not obligated, to bring Christmas into our hearts and home early. Our tree was up on November 19th which we figure gives us two days shy of a month to enjoy it!! Spencer and I had so much fun hanging all our ornaments! It was so funny to see all those homemade ornaments (I'm sure you all have the typical felt wreath ornament with your third grade picture in the middle of it) we made when we were kids...oh the memories! Our tree has character!

So, as I thought about this whole "Christmas doesn't begin until after Thanksgiving" rule, I came up with some persuasive reasons to throw this rule out the window:

1. You get the first pick at the Christmas tree lot! (Our tree came from the first shipment that arrived 20 minutes before we showed up!)

2. You have that much longer to enjoy the aroma of a real Christmas tree (if you get a real one that is). There's something about walking into the house and smelling fresh pine!

3. Its one less thing to worry about after Thanksgiving passes. (For me, after Thanksgiving is when everything gets SO CRAZY!!)

4. More Christmas music! (Who doesn't want more Christmas music??)

5. Eggnog appears in the grocery stores weeks before Thanksgiving. Are the grocery stores trying to tell us something...I think yes.

6. The emptiness beneath the tree persuades me to do my shopping early! Plus, it reminds me of all the things I want-which leads me to my next item.

7. Welcoming Christmas early gives me more quality time to contemplate, expand and perfect my wish list :). Now, some may call me selfish, but what good is a mediocre wish list??

8. And most importantly, welcoming Christmas early just makes me happier and more grateful for all the things I have!

OH HELLO!!

Oversized Mittens

So, because it was getting a little cold in the house and Madi inherited my bad circulation, I decided to put some oversized mittens on her when she slept. That backfired! She thought they were the coolest things ever and wouldn't go to sleep. Here's a picture I caught of her well into her "nap." Naughty girl! Spencer suggested I just turn on the heater. Heater?...That's a novel idea!

Madi Jump UP!

Suppossedly this thing is called a Johnny Jump Up. Weird! Why in the world is it called that? Was little Johnny the first kid to jump or did his parents invent it or something??? Regardless of its name, around here we say, "Madi, jump up!" She LOVES her new play toy!! Thank you Terry family for letting Madi borrow it for awhile!