Norah, Harper and Willa

or Norah, Willa and Harper?The following pictures were all completely candid

Alice is 10 Months

Alice is 10 months as of yesterday and it seems like every day she has a new trick. Just in this past week she has learned to stand up (as opposed to pulling herself up) and point. She has been pointing at her sister, food, and animals at the zoo. She has been waving when we leave or when someone else leaves for a while but now she is also waving “hello” when people come in a room and she is perfecting her timing so that people also see the wave (as opposed to waving bye bye to Daddy when he’s already out the door). Her bye-bye wave is often accompanied by a “baba” and it must be about the cutest thing in the world. And just today, I heard her say Mah-ma very clearly meaning me. She has said ma-ma a few other times but I haven’t been sure it was intentional. She has been saying Dada for a few weeks now – I’m not sure when that happened for the first time because it is just hard to know when we’re flattering ourselves but she definitely said Dada first, baba (bye bye) second and Mama third.

Last weekend we went to the arboretum to see the pumpkin village

Notice her pointing in this pictureAnd here is Alice at the arboretum again today – we go a lot

Monorail

The Dallas Zoo has a section of habitats that you can only see from their monorail. We got 4 monorail ride tickets with our membership (lame that the monorail has its own admission fee) that I’ve been saving to use sometime when Bryan could come with us. It was a lot of fun and our monorail guide/conductor/whatever was hilarious. I’ve never actually been on a monorail before so I was pretty excited and the whole time I was hearing this song from the Simpsons in my mind.
Look how happy we are on the monorail!

Farewell Summer . . . or not

Since today is the last day of summer I thought I would post my phone pictures that never made it into blog posts. It actually still feels like summer here in Dallas – so much so that I am startled when I see pumpkins and Halloween decorations. It reminds me of how I felt when Bryan’s parents took us on a cruise over Christmas break – I could NOT accept that it was January when it was that warm. If we were in Ithaca I’d be thinking about unpacking the sweaters around now.
These are from July 9th at a spray park
That same day Alice started pulling herself up on furniture for the first time and I quickly took some terrible pictures (always a battle – do I take the picture or make sure she doesn’t fall?) to remember the moment. She was so happy with herself.And I love this picture of Norah playing princess with my friend Crystal’s little girlsAnd here is Norah playing with her friend Jonathan

Utah Part II: Salt Lake City

Saturday afternoon after a Café Rio fix we headed up to SLC to see family. We haven’t been to SLC since Norah was a wee babe so it was great to see family again.

Norah practiced her Spanish (she pretty much just knows the colors) with Great Grandpa Hicks She read stories with Aunt Leslie and picked tomatoes from my Aunt Renee’s garden Explored City Creek with Natalie and walked around Temple Squareplayed in the Church History MuseumThis is one of the few pictures where you can see Alice’s faceAlice wasn’t in many photos because she was so traumatized from me leaving her repeatedly that she wouldn’t let anyone hold her. That is, until at a Hyer family party we were all talking about how Alice wouldn’t let anyone hold her and my uncle Glen confidently said “ah, I bet she’ll let me hold her” and managed to not only hold her, but get a smile and walk into another room. Before we left to return to Dallas on Tuesday, we made sure to get a 4 generations picture. When I visited SLC with Norah as a baby I took pictures of her with my grandma but I didn’t get one with me and mom grandma together. Alice was asleep in her car seat but at least she’s in the picture!

Utah Part I: The Conference

I got involved with the DFW BYU alumni chapter this summer and they needed to send a representative to an alumni conference in Aspen Grove and I enthusiastically volunteered to go of course. I couldn’t have done it without my mom who flew to Utah and watched the girls for me while I attended the conference. It was an amazing experience and I’m so glad I was able to go but it was also very stressful. Little Alice suffered from major separation anxiety so it didn’t work out to leave her as much as I had planned. Fortunately, I’m a BYU alum and at BYU babies go to class so everyone was very kind and understanding when Alice accompanied me to sessions of the conference. I tried several times to leave her with Grandma and every time I had to run back to the lodge and bring her back to the conference room with her hiccupping from sobbing. She seemed to know it was a privilege to be at the conference though because she was exceptionally quiet and content to sit on my lap. The leaves were changing colors in Aspen Grove and it couldn’t have been more beautiful. I wish there had been a little more down time to be outside and enjoy the beautiful setting but Grandma and Norah at least had plenty of time to explore.Friday September 7th, all the chapters from Texas combined to host the “Texas Round-Up” for BYU students from Texas. Students were encouraged to wear Texas attire and many did!We served Bluebell Ice Cream on the Hinckley Center Patio and I’m clearly a transplant to Texas because I don’t know what the big deal is with Bluebell ice cream. The students were going on and on about how much they missed it (they’ve been at school for less than a month). Personally, I was underwhelmed. Courtney met us at the party and it was great to have some face time with her. Looking at Helaman Halls brought back lots of memories. Provo in general brought back a flood of good memoriesNorah was so excited to hang out with another child after being the only kid on the Aspen Grove playground. This little boy was only 16 months old and not much smaller than Norah.