Gwenny turns 4!

I loved the name Gwendalyn, growing up. I thought it sounded like such a happy name. I also went through a "Wonder Years" phase, and loved the character "Winnie". When I found out that Winnie was a nickname for Gwendalyn, I was so excited! It was fate! "We should start calling her Winnie!" I told Richie. He was not on board. :) But lately, we find ourselves calling her Gwenny a lot, which I'm diggin.


*This kid. I tell ya. She is one of a kind. I don't know anyone who can turn it on and off like her. One minute she is ecstatic, and a split second later she had tears rolling down her face and the world is ending. Within another split second, she is back to happy. I love her energy and excitement for life. She just wants to soak it all in.
*She would rather be outside than inside and takes great pleasure in really investigating things outdoors, no matter where she may be. The other day while planting the peas out in the garden, she found a big fat worm. Elated, she picked it up and brought it over to show us. When she tried to show it to Miles, he winced and backed away. :)
*She has a great imagination and loves to play with her dolls and babies in her room. She pretends she is the mommy/nurse/teacher, and her possessions are the kids/patients/students.
*She loves to talk! Sometimes she gets acutely shy, but most of the time she will strike up a conversation with just about anybody. It cracks me up when she repeats phrases or big words she's heard. One she's been throwing around a lot lately is "quite", as in, "I'm quite hungry mama." I know I've said it before, but she just blows me away with the things she retains and what's in that brain of hers.
*She loves babies and whenever she finds one when we're out and about, she just has to go up to it and talk to it and give it plenty of attention. She says she wants to be a mama when she grows up.
*She has always been a good eater and willing to try any food we put on her plate, but lately her thing is, "I don't like ____ anymore. Only when I was 2. Maybe I'll like it again someday when I am maybe...6 or something." Has me baffled.
*Still is a major book worm. She will sit and listen to you read FOREVER. After she is tucked in at night, she usually gets out of bed, finds the flashlight and grabs a big stack of books from the bookshelf and "reads" them until she falls asleep, completely surrounded by books. Although I was pretty sure she knew all the letters and sounds at the beginning of the year, I had her go through a letter curriculum anyway just to give her a really solid foundation. Well, surprise surprise, she whizzed through that and is begging to start Miles' reading books now. I guess it's time to kick it up a notch!
*She has one volume: loud! I'm literally having to "coach" her on how to whisper. She just doesn't get it! :) It's irritating (especially during church) and also endearing.


To celebrate this year, she was spoiled all weekend! On Thursday, aunt Makenna offered to take Miles and Gwen overnight for a sleepover! They were entertained from the moment they walked in the door, to the second I came to pick them up. The highlight was getting to go to the planetarium and getting frozen yogurt afterward! We took treats to joy school and homeschool group. She was sung to in primary. On Friday night she got to go on her very first date with daddy to see Tanner's play "The Wizard of Oz". She was so excited to get all dressed up and be with just her and Dad. After I snapped a picture, Lindy and I watched them drive off, and all the way down the street I could see Gwen's arms, very expressively moving up and down, obviously telling Dad stories.The play was long, and they didn't quite make it to the end, but I think she felt pretty special. I kept telling her that Dad's going to take her on lots of dates so that she'll know how boys are supposed to treat her when she's old enough to go on real dates. And she said, "Yeah, like how Miles treats me and treats all the girls." :) She's totally right. Miles is a stud. And for the finale, we decided to go see the new Cinderella movie on Saturday. She even got to borrow aunt Makenna's special Cinderella dress-up dress to wear to the theater. The movie did not disappoint, it was magical. Afterward we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Garner's house for cake, ice cream and presents! She was spoiled with games, puzzles, a new barbie from her requested princess cake, and a cash register. To top it all off, she got a #4 pancake this morning. So yeah, I'd say she had a good birthday.:)

Mom comes to visit!

My mom's pretty cool, you know? She decided to come up for a visit just to help me with projects and be with the kids. It was glorious. She did multiple art projects with the kids, which they loved. She watched Miles and Lindy while I went with Gwen to joy school, she came to my RS dinner and helped me clean up afterward, helped me fix up some curtains in my kitchen, and... oh yeah, painted the bathroom. :) My friend left me this bathroom storage unit that she didn't want anymore. It is cuter than the one we had in there. Once it was up, everything else just looked even more old and ugly than usual. So began the bathroom remodel of 2015. Mom painted, which is the first major step. We'll try and fix up the rest, and by the time we're done, that bathroom storage shelf will be the most expensive free thing we have ever received. :)

I'm sure my Mom thought we were slobs because she cleaned all sorts of things we don't usually clean, like the air vents. Hopefully she wasn't too grossed out and will come back again sometime! :) The kids were so sad to see her go. Me too. She left us better than she found us.

Lindy turns 1!

That first year gets faster and faster with each kid. This Sunday I saw a little brand new baby at church and thought, "Oh my goodness, how did it all go by so quickly?" Lindy is such a joy! She is: sassy, obedient, sweet, empathetic, a small human wrecking ball, beautiful, a morning person, happy, opinionated, has a sweet tooth, smart, and as I've said before,an old soul.

Some things to remember about her at this age:
*For a month or two now, she folds her arms for every prayer she is present at, without hardly any prompting from mom or dad.
*She has weaned herself off her binky! When she had croup a bit ago, she was so congested that a binky just made things worse. Ever since then, she won't take it. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited about that development.
*She still takes 2 naps; a morning and an afternoon nap.
*She is not walking, and not really showing any signs that she has any plans to in the near future. As far as I can remember, both Miles and Gwen were either walking or really close to it by now. Lindy can stand no problem, and cruise along with no problem, but she never chooses to stand if she can sit. We've tried to get her to walk a few times and she's not really into it, although I think she is physically capable.
*She is done nursing! Hoorah!! I like to be done nursing by the time the year mark comes around, although by that point, they are only nursing once a day. I really tried to savor the last nursing with Lindy, but I'm glad to be done.
*She loves to growl at you. At first it was just a playful thing, and sometimes it still is, but now she also growls to show her dominance or to show she's angry about something.
*She laughs whenever other people are laughing, like she totally understands what's going on.
*She says "Mama" and "bah-bah" with a wave for bye-bye. If you ask her to blow kisses, she'll suck on her fingers. She signs "all-done" and "more" although to her "more" just basically means "food".
*She has 6 teeth, and I feel like she's been cutting a bunch more for a long time now, but none have poked through yet.
*Her favorite song to get her all calmed down for naps and night time is "Edelweiss" from "Sound of Music".
*At her year check up, she was still in the 99% for her head circumference, but in a surprising turn of events, she is only in the 71% for height and weight! This means she is the smallest Garner baby yet. None of our kids have ever been below 80% in anything, so I was kind of shocked! Ha!

Throughout this past week I kept trying to get that "one shot" that would represent her first birthday, but I don't ever think I got it. Instead here's about a million attempts. Also a picture or two of our celebration. It is Grandma Garner's birthday this week also, so we had everyone over for pot luck dinner. Lindy didn't have a clue about what was going on that day, but she did get lots of extra attention and I think she felt special. We let her eat 2 healthified cupcakes all by herself, which she loved. Miles and Gwen helped her open a few presents. She had a #1 pancake that morning where we tried to let her practice blowing out the candle, but she was mostly scared of it.

Happy Birthday Miss Lindy June!

Gwen Sleeps

For as long as I can remember, Gwen has been such a funny sleeper. As soon as she was out of her crib and into a big girl bed, I always found her in the mornings in the craziest places and positions. Sometimes, she had made herself bed on the floor, right behind the door, so when I opened their door in the mornings, I'd knock it right into her! Last week during quiet time, she was throwing a classic fit. I told her that she sounded really tired to me, so I wrapped her up in a blanket and laid her on the mini trampoline I had put in her room. I mostly did it because it made her laugh to think of sleeping on a trampoline, but an hour later, when I hadn't heard a peep, I checked on her and sure enough; She was still wrapped up tight like a burrito, feet hanging off the end and out to the world. Her latest trend now is to strip down to her nighttime underwear every night. So when I check on her before I head to bed, there she is, almost naked. She complains about getting too hot in her jammies. She cracks me up.

Photography Class

For Christmas I bought myself a photography class. Last Christmas, we bought ourselves a nice camera. We both love photography and have dreamed about starting a side business for years, so finally buying the camera was a big deal. However, I didn't really know anything about how to use it! I took a photo class in college, but it was a film class and it was so long ago. So I've been using the Auto settings for a year, too nervous to play with any of the buttons. This class was once a week, for 6 weeks. I am light years away from where I want to be. But I am finally on Manual Mode!! WAHOO! :) I'm comfortable playing with different settings and it was such a good experience for me. I'm going to post some pictures I took that were part of assignments given to us. The very last class, he had some models come and we just shot away.(I took about a million photos here, but for your sake, I'm only including a "few".) I felt so legit. :)As a warning, these girls weren't particularly modest. All of the pictures are natural light (Obviously, because I haven't forked out the money for lighting equipment) but I did include a couple from the photoshoot where we got to play around with a strobe, reflectors etc. So fun!
My next fear to conquer is....photoshop!