Roll Tide Baby!

So I was sitting here tonight watching some tv while Evelyn was laying on her playmat, playing with some toys, and I looked down and she was almost all the way rolled over! So I watched her for a bit, quietly grabbed my camera and took some pics. I think I distracted her though cuz she didn't finish the full roll, she just rolled back over on her back and watched me instead. But she got soooooo close!!!




(This is the only shot I got of her almost all the way on her tummy but didn't have my flash on so it turned out bad)

"A man finds out what is meant by spitting image when he tries to feed cereal to his infant." --Imogene Fey--

Lately Evelyn has been eating quite a bit more than before so I figured she was either going through a nice little growth spurt or wasn't getting filled up by eating only milk or a combo of the two. So a few days ago I bought some baby rice cereal and fed her her first bowl of cereal (much milked down of course)!

She was a bit fussy when I started because I had to make the cereal (she was hungry and I left her in her seat to make it...she's becoming very much a momma's girl with Mark gone and me being the primary person with her allll day long)so it took longer to get her some food so in this first pic she's a bit teary-eyed...sad little thing!



As soon as she figured out I was feeding her something new and that she liked it she pepped up pretty quick. She was very interested in this new concoction I was giving her :) Look at those big eyes!



This being her first time eating off a spoon though, she didn't quite know what to do and kept putting her fists in her mouth in between bites. I had to kinda hold the spoon so she could suck on it and eat that way.



Overall though she did pretty good for the first time with cereal and eating with a spoon. She's gotten better over the past couple days and gets pretty excited when I bring the bowl over and start feeding her. She sits there with her mouth wiiiiide open in between bites and she laughs and smiles and is just so happy! It's so freaking cute. She's a messy eater though (just like her daddy :)and I totally forgot to put a bib on her for the first time. Luckily she didn't get too much on her clothes, just all over her face!

"Birthdays are nature's way of telling us to eat more cake."

(Here's the last part of catching up for you!)

At the beginning of the month (January 3rd) my oldest niece turned 16! Which is sooo crazy to believe but it's true! It's so weird to come home and see all my nieces and nephews growing up, getting into the teenage years and high school....craziness! First Natalia turned 12 in December, now Sierra 16, Carmen just turned 13 a couple days ago, Brian is turning 15 next month and is now taller than me and such a cutie! It's great though because they like to hang out with me (most likely cuz I have a car and will do stuff with them, but it's fun) and it's more fun to talk to them now that they are older and I don't have to entertain them by playing games or chasing them (not that I don't like to do that with the rest of them that are still young, it's just nice now that some of them are older and more interested in mutual things :)

Anywho, on the 2nd we had a big Sweet 16 birthday party for Sierra here at my parents house, which was pretty fun. There was lots of food, as usual, and lots of people, also as usual. Here's some pics from the event.

(Sierra and Kady)

(Emily did pretty much all our hair, even Kady's!

(All dressed up for the party! Her colors were pink, black, and silver so we dressed to match :)

(Blowing out the candles!)

(The cake! Monie made and frosted it and Sierra decorated it with all the fancy stuff, very cute!)

(Opening Presents!)

(Abrahm and Tani, these kids are too freaking cute!!!)

(Cousins!)

(Sisters!)

Friends and Family that came



(Sierra and her Uncle Nathan)

(Me and Evelyn!)



(The Shapleys)

So there's a little peek into Sierra's party. She's grown up into a beautiful, smart young woman, very quirky but lots of fun and I've loved being her auntie! Love ya CiCi!

"I just like to smile, smiling's my favorite." --Buddy the Elf--

My baby is so freaking adorable, I just can't help but brag about her :) I love the way her face just lights up when she smiles, it's utterly precious! She's starting to laugh more now and is "talking" a lot more too which is pretty fun. Here's video of her "talking" to me. (Sorry, the video didn't upload I guess, I thought it did!)

She's also gaining more interest in her toys and is starting to grab at them, although she'd still rather just play with her fists/fingers and likes to try shoving her entire fist in her mouth. She can almost do it too but stops when she gags herself...crazy girl!

A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men

Ok, back to catching up. The next thing to happen after Christmas was Mark's parents coming up for our baby blessing. They stayed for a few days and we really enjoyed seeing them. We did the baby blessing on the 30th at my parents house (we couldn't do it on a Sunday at church cuz Mark left earlier than we planned and then we had bad weather). So it was just the fam, the bishop, and then my good friend Shauna came. We had dinner and then the blessing, and then every hung out and talked.

Evelyn looked RIDICULOUSLY adorable in her blessing dress! Monie's AMAZING mother-in-law made it for us. I had asked Monie to see if her ma-in-law could make a bonnet for Evelyn (they are bonnets which after you take out a couple stitches it turns into a handkerchief which she can use on her wedding day, isn't that awesome?), so she said yes to that and then was like, why don't I just make a dress too? She said she had left-over fabric/lace/etc. from making Monie's baby's blessing dress so she went ahead and made me one too! I couldn't believe it! It was amazingly sweet of her and I was so excited to get it. She even embroidered Evelyn's name in it. It's beautiful.

Anywho, here's some pics from that night.

"There's one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor's." --Clyde Moore--

I'm not such a huge fan of snow but it does turn a dreary, brown landscape into a beautiful winter wonderland! We woke up the other morning to this beautiful winter scene.







And by afternoon it was all melted, well off the trees anyway, but it was beautiful while it lasted!

"Courage is endurance for one moment more..."

Today I got to talk to Mark for the first time since he's been in OCS. Well I talked to him when he arrived at the airport in Rhode Island the day he left but that was before he started his training. This was the first time I spoke to him since he started his training...anyway. It was only for a couple minutes and I actually missed the first time he called cuz I left my cell at home when we went to church and that's when he called.

But he called home after church was over and it was so wonderful to hear his voice! He said it's been a hard week and he's very tired. He said most of the week was working on paperwork and then learning how to do things the military way, like the proper way to make your bed and how to eat....sounds fun doesn't it? They have to do a lot of sit ups and push ups because they aren't doing it "right" yet but we knew that would happen. He's been doing push-ups and sit-ups pretty much everyday for a loooong time to get prepared for this. That's pretty much all he told me though, he said he might possibly get to email me this week but who knows. They're pretty darn strict, especially the first couple weeks of training. But we've got one week down, only 11 to go!

Here's some pics of Evelyn from this week.


(Her last picture with Daddy before he left!)

(She uses her WHOLE face when she smiles, it's adorable!)

(she's been falling asleep more on her own now during the day, sooo nice!)

(Having fun with tummy time!)

(and of course loving bath time!)

(I do love a fresh clean yummy smelling baby! and this was just too cute!)

(Lately she's been liking to sit up in the chairs and I thought this was a funny pic...couch potato in the making right here! she really watches the tv when it's on though, so funny! She even laughs sometimes with the laugh-tracks).

(Ready for church!)

"Christmas is a time of joy, A time for love and cheer, A time for making memories, To last throughout the year."

For Christmas Eve this year we did something Momma named "Camp Christmas". It was just all us Fredrick family, minus the Bidia's because they went to California for Christmas and the New Year, lukcy them!!! Anyway, we had appetizers for food with homemade root beer which was soooo good!!! Then for activities each family decorated a "gingerbread" house (which were actually made of graham crackers) which was fun. Ours turned out pretty cute I thought, but the best was Momma's. She made her house into a church and had a little nativity scene outside of it...very cute!

(Evie's First Christmas!)

(The homemade root beer)


(Momma's Church)

(Our Gingerbread house)

After that we played Christmas Movie Charades and then after that each family had to do a little skit or something Christmas related. It was pretty fun and very entertaining, especially the Charades. We had some pretty creative ones and then some not so creative ones. We ended the evening with the kid's gift exchange and Christmas songs around the "campfire" (which was a cast iron pot filled with lit candles). Very festive. :)

(Sierra's Charade- Her movie was "The Grinch" so she was walking like the Grinch, pretty funny)

(The boys opening their presents)

(Our campfire!)

Christmas Day was my favorite, mainly because it starts out with fried bread! YUM! I made the dough again this year and we had regular and pumpkin. The pumpkin was especially delicious. That's pretty much my favorite family tradition. It snowed all Christmas Eve night so we had a white Christmas. Since it snowed everyone just stayed over at Grammy's all day.





So after fried bread we all just hung out and the kids set up the Wii and played games for most of the morning/early afternoon. It was pretty darn funny to watch too. They had a "Dancing with the Stars" game and it was soooo funny! Grammy even got up and "danced" to it. Then we played "Rock Band" and "Mario Kart", which is my all time favorite game.

Playing Dancing With the Stars





In the afternoon Aunt Kim and her fam came and we had our Christmas Day dinner, which was delicious as always. Then we had the adult gift exchange and hung out again. So that's pretty much the run down for Christmas at the Fredrick's :) I'm just so glad we were here for it! I love being with my family!




Sorry it took so long to post all this, I haven't been feeling very creative writing-wise, I've been using all my creativeness in my scrapbook pages I've been working on and boy do they look good! :) I discovered the wonderfulness of a Cricut (it's a scrapbook machine where you can cut out things for your pages, it's ammmmmaaaazing!!!). It's my sister's but I'm borrowing it and now I want one. It's so much fun! So that's whats been taking up my time lately, besides Evelyn of course :) I'll post more later!