Trav's Track Meet. And Then Some.

First of all, bear with my phone pictures. For some reason, our camera won't read our memory card.

Travis is on the BYU-Idaho indoor long-distance track team! His team is the Thunder and today he had his first official track meet.

 Here he is in is little uniform! :) He didn't love the fact that the shorts were very short.

 He took first place in his heat! Today the race was a mile and he got 5 minutes and 30 seconds!

 Here he is doing the laps for another heat.

 He thinks he has stress fractures or shin splints. Luckily, since he is on the competitive team, he has access to the physical therapy on campus and will be going in on Monday.
I love going to races and watching my husband run. I am so proud of him and all his hard work!

We have been having lots of fun. On the 26th we celebrated our 4th anniversary. That day in our prayers, Trav gave thanks for our happy marriage. It made me feel good to know that he is enjoying our marriage and that he is happy! :) I have never been happier and more content with life. I love being married to Travis and I love being a parent with him. I am so grateful for the blessings of eternal families!

Trav has been working super hard in school and he is doing so good! He has been getting great scores on all his tests (including anatomy and physiology! that is hard stuff!) I am amazed at how smart he is all the time and I love watching his excitement for learning.

Mackson and I are having fun at home :) I have recently been able to get him on a better schedule thanks to some advice from family, friends, and the internet! (I am sure it  helps that we aren't visiting our families every weekend!) I can now put him down for bed and for his naps without a complaint from him! It is awesome! He seems to be more happy and so am I! We are both getting a lot more sleep too! He is getting hard to keep up with. We need to get a baby gate because when I am not looking, he crawls straight to the stairs and tries to go down, face first! He has climbed 8 stairs so far. He gets so distracted. If he finds a little piece of lint on the stairs he has to stop and explore it and then he wants to touch the railing or eat the carpet. It is really hard to keep him focused on climbing up. He LOVES to get his teeth brushed every night. I think it tickles his gums. He smiles the whole time.

We are enjoying our time together and we really love our new place. We live less than a minute away from the temple! You can see Angel Moroni from Mackson's window. Kristina was so nice to babysit Mackson while we went there on our anniversary! We can still walk to church, which makes Trav very happy! We are still looking for a job for Trav and we are crossing our fingers in hopes to at least have one by the end of the semester!

Some fun pictures:
 I did Mackson's hair like this to bug Trav and it worked! His face was priceless when he walked in the door and saw Mackson. He said, "What did you do to his hair?!!"

 Mackson has loved exploring now that he is so mobile. It has given us both a lot of freedom. Yesterday, he got stuck under his crib and couldn't figure out how to get out. He just kept bonking his head on the bar. Me, being the great mom that I am had to get a picture of his struggle before saving him.

 He loves to play on his rocking chair that his McKellar grandparents made for him. He is usually backwards on it. He loves the yellow letters. And as you can see, he has been pointing at things that he likes or wants!

A few weeks ago, my parents came up and spent some time with us. They also watched Mackson while Trav and I had some time for just the two of us. He loved that they helped him play with his tractor!

Grandma McMillan and Mackson:

I absolutely LOVE being his mom!

Catch Up- Christmas 2011

If you think Christmas blogposts are boring, then you at least have to skip down to see what my husband gave me for Christmas. BEST husband ever!
Christmas this year was so fun. The McMillan side of the family celebrated on Christmas Eve this year. First, we got together and opened presents. We got some awesome stuff from my parents, including xbox games, a SWEET cake decorating kit, a new church coat that I was super excited about, and some other things that were fun and that we really needed. Jer and Kayla gave us a game and two awesome movies! After presents, we ate some DELICIOUS ribs and then went to Danny and Alisha's (uncle and aunt) house for some treats and fun. Afterwards, we went back to my parents and watched, "The Help". Good movie!
Mackson was sooo sleepy that night.

 My Husband is a cutie. I won't be seeing his beard for a long time, now that we are up at BYU-Idaho!

On Christmas morning Trav and I opened presents from each other. It was Mackson's first Christmas, and NO. We didn't get him anything. I am sure he will be super traumatized too.  Actually, there were a few gifts in our car but we never got them out for some reason, but he is having fun playing with them now. And he did get some giant Legos from his Keil cousins on Christmas Eve and he LOVES playing with them.
I was pretty darn excited about these spring form pans! I have been wanting to get into cake decorating and it will go great with the awesome decorating set that my parents gave me. I was amazed that my husband thought of getting me these.

These are my blog books. I told Trav a few months ago that I wanted one for every year and he said I could go ahead and get them ready so I did. I love them and I love that I will have these books for my children and their children.

 I got Trav a bopit XT (whatever that means), some other games, some games for his kinect, and some things that he needed.

And the SURPRISE gifts that Trav had for me...
He noticed that my jewelry box was super old and tattered, so he spent A LOT of time making this (all the while I thought he was at work for super LONG days.)
Him explaining something about it:

 Showing me all the cool features:

 How AMAZING is this? There are mirrors in the back of the cupboards that I hang my necklaces in, a spot for my rings, and places that I can put pictures on the doors (and you can see that my husband already took the liberty of choosing some adorable pictures to put there).

 What? That's not all? There is another present INSIDE this beauty??? A little white box. Travis explained to me that he wanted to get me a piece of jewelry with Mackson's birthstone in it. He went to the jewelry store to find out what it was. The employee thought it might be a pearl and Trav thought, "Oh great. That will be expensive." And then they were like, "Nope, it's actually a diamond!"  He was a little annoyed to find out that Mackson's birthstone is one of the most expensive. Luckily, he got a SUPER DUPER good deal on it :) Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have got it. BUT, it still says a LOT that he would even spend ANY money on a piece of jewelry.

I thought it was very sweet that he even thought to get something with Mackson's birthstone in it. Since it has 7 little diamonds in it, he told me that we should have SEVEN kids and have them ALL in April. :)

Here's a picture of it. Our camera is still packed somewhere so it's a blurry phone picture.

I love it, and I absolutely love my jewelry box. Isn't it so pretty? Trav did an EXCELLENT job.

 WITH jewelry in it.

After breakfast, we went and celebrated at the McKellars.

 It's always a little crazy but super fun! We opened presents and ate some DELICIOUS breakfast casseroles!

  We got a really nice vaccuum from Trav's parents. Ours hadn't been working very well and we really really needed a new one. They also got us a few other things that we really needed. I was touched by their thoughtfulness. Jason gave Travis an RC helicopter (he plays with it ALL the time and has even crashed it into our poor child). Jenni is a GREAT listener and gave me "17 Miracles". If you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY reccommend watching it. It was definitely an inspired film.

And of course, Mackson got his rocking chair that grandpa Dave built, and Grandma Nancy beautified. They always give them to the kids on their first Christmas. He absolutely LOVES it and when we put him in it, he immediately started rocking.

Here he is, showing off his cute rocking chair and his adorable smile :)

Once again, we were spoiled and we had so much fun with our families.

Mackson at 9 months

Mackson on some toys at the mall in Ogden right before we moved. He LOVED them. Good thing he is at the age where you don't have to put quarters in it for him to enjoy it!

He has four teeth and it is adorable. He looks a little bit like Goofy with his gapped front teeth! He likes to be around people and always wants me or Trav in the room with him, but he still likes to do things himself and get into things that he shouldn't. We are scared that his first word will be "No" because we are finding ourselves saying that to him a lot now that he is mobile. He babbles a lot, especially when he wakes up. He tries to walk along the couch and he falls a lot. I feel bad when I don't notice and don't have time to catch him. He absolutely loves us to read to him and he gets so excited when he sees the rice cooker, Travis's weight bench, STILL the piano, and anything that resembles a TV screen. He broke our TV screen the week before we were moving. He pulled it on top of himself and onto the treadmill leg and it cracked. Luckily, he was fine.

Watching us unpack:

 You can sort of see his toothy smile in this one:

He seems to like playing in our new home. There are lots of places to explore and I think it has helped him with his crawling, now that there is some decent, soft carpet to play on. He is now crawling and not just army crawling! Sometimes he gets ahead of himself and falls on his face and he will revert back to the army crawl. He has his own little cubby under the stairs. But he still wants to be able to have someone in his line of sight most of the time.

The only time he doesn't care if anyone is around is when he is playing with his tractor. Trav's last boss gave it to us.
The day Mackson found it, I walked into his room and couldn't see him. He had opened his closet and found this wonderful toy. He started gasping with joy like he had found a treasure chest full of gold.

He loves to sit and put his hands on it and he loves when we put him on it and push him around.

He is growing up so fast. It makes me so sad at times! I can't believe he will be a year in just a few months.
He found a new friend...it's the door stop for our closet. He will hit it for ten minutes straight.

Another friend he found....Himself.

 Not sure if he is trying to taste himself or give himself kisses...

Hey, why not play with BOTH friends at the same time?

He loves to be with me all day. He just plays around me while I do housework. He especially loves laundry day because he gets to ride up and down the stairs in laundry baskets.

 The last few days when we wake up, we find him happily playing in his crib. I love his smile.

He brings so much joy into our home. Hopefully I will find him a good doctor soon for his 9 month check up!

Hopefully I can catch up and blog about Christmas and our new home soon!

Home Sweet Home

We are in Rexburg! I already miss everyone...and I probably wouldn't have seen most of our family this last week anyways. I guess it's just knowing how far away we are. I even got a Facebook account again. Trav said he wouldn't make fun of me for getting one...if I went and got him a drink of milk. He lied. But that's okay.

Anyways, we are enjoying our apartment. At first I was discouraged when we walked in because the living room was so small. We ended up giving our couches to the DI. But after being settled in and having pretty much everything unpacked and put away, I am loving our apartment. I like that there is an upstairs, I like that I can let my baby crawl on this carpet and I don't feel guilty, I like that I have a dishwasher (after 4 years of not having one!) I like having a washer and dryer that are INSIDE and next to each other, I LOVE my nice bathroom and all the shelves in my closet and I love a whole lot of other things about it :)  We have already had two families bring over treats...a plate full of chocolates from Germany, and Applesauce cookies....I LOVE being new :)

Trav started school on Wednesday and he is already working super hard on his homework. He is taking a full load of classes including biostatistics and anatomy & physiology....just SOUNDS scary to me :)  But he enjoys learning new things and he is SUPER DUPER smart so I know he will do fantastic. Trav doesn't like that the campus is not very bike friendly. He has to ride up a big hill to get to AND from school. My little sister has a class with him and she thought that he was so nervous for the class because he came in sweating! Luckily, he is going to try and get the motor on his bike this weekend.

Mackson had a hard time being put down the first two days that we were here. I think because there was so much stuff everywhere, it overwhelmed him. Now he is enjoying exploring everywhere he can. He sleeps better for some reason....probably because it is a lot warmer (utilities are included in the rent). Oh thats another thing I love...I am ALWAYS warm. True happiness.

I still need to post about our wonderful Christmas and I have tons of pictures of Mackson to post of course but that will have to be another day!

Mackson 8 months and More Family Pics

The 16th marked Mackson being 8 months old! He is so much fun. He now has two bottom teeth AND two top teeth! His smile is so cute! He is babbling like crazy. I am pretty sure he thinks he is talking just like Travis and I. He definitely acts as if he is saying something very important :) 

He is army crawling really well and sometimes gets into things and makes a mess. Luckily, with our move we can just baby proof as we move in, rather than having to change everything.

 He LOVES to eat. He eats anything. He would still rather sit in his bumbo than his high chair for now, but we will have to switch soon now that he can climb out.

 I love his smile.

 He loves socks.

 He loves when Trav reads to him.

 We bought him this funny Christmas outfit.

Of course the hat was too small for his big head, so I made him a new one. (pictured below)

 He gets snuggly when he is tired. I love it. It brings back memories of when he was a tiny tiny baby.

 In the morning, I sit on the heater and let him play for a while. About an hour later he gets tired again and then we put him back to bed.

 He always finds something he shouldn't play with.

 He is getting chubbier and I love it!

 Thanksgiving weekend, the McKellar family was having  pictures taken and we got some of our little family as well. To see more, check out Nancy's blog.
I LOVE this one.

 My husband is probably the funniest person I know.

Life is going good. We are ready for Christmas...for the most part. Trav is having fun playing with his xbox, and so am I. I told Trav to get his fun in now with it before school starts....I may be creating a monster. Trav is working a lot, which is good cause we are going to need ALL the money we can get, since he doesn't have a job in Idaho yet. We have two weeks left. It is stressful and exciting. I asked Trav what he would miss about Logan and he said being close to family. I asked him what else and he said nothing. Later, he admitted that he would miss his boss. I said I would miss being close to family, the University Shuttle cause Mackson loves to be around all the people while riding it, and being so close to the mountains. I regret not doing more when we live so close to such beautiful places. But we are also ready for a new chapter in life and Travis is excited to be back in school.