Last Semester!!

We're already three weeks into our last semester!  At times it seems like April won't come fast enough, but there is so much to get done in between now and then.  Ryan and I both have about 13 credits this semester and then I have 3 independent study courses to finish my April 2nd in order for them to count for graduation in April.  I made a very idealistic plan of how to accomplish it all over Christmas break but now I'm way behind where I need to be, time to kick it into high gear I guess...or just postpone graduation, but I really just want to be done.  Ryan has just finished applying to grad schools, sadly we won't find out anything until March or April.

On another note though, Christmas break was great and Lauren is growing like a weed.  She is currently on the verge of crawling and will only do it out of shear desperation.  She gets up on all fours then takes one crawl and then plops back down on her stomach and flails her arms and whines until she realizes that I 'm not coming to pick her up and then she'll come one more crawl and plop back down again.  This will usually repeat about 4 times and then she refuses to go any further and starts crying.  One of these days she'll figure out that it is an effective way to get around.

Here are some of the recent pictures:

Christmas Morning

Lauren loved all the paper

Her new dress that Grandpa got from Russia

Playing with stacking cups

Crawling position

Final Finals

We finally both finished our finals on Friday evening.  This semester has definitely been a stressful one, Lauren has been such a trooper though. It's been weird for me to not even be worried about getting super good grades but just trying to pass my classes. At least my grades will be able to spell words though, words like BAD, ADD or ACE (hopefully no E's though...). We've now got two weeks of blessed Christmas break.Wahoo!!
Here's some pictures of getting ready for Christmas...Lauren is a great helper...

The Christmas Spirit

Check out this clip if you haven't seen it anywhere else yet. . .

The Christmas Spirit

To Sleep or Not to Sleep?...I wish it weren't a question

So after two months of Lauren sleeping through the night and then out of no where three weeks of her waking up every hour or two I was starting to go a little crazy.  It was still another month until her 6 month check up and I didn't want to wait that long to get her to start sleeping again.  So I went to the library and got a bunch of books  about getting babies to sleep.  Turns out she just needed to go to bed way earlier, so we've started a little bedtime routine and put her down at about 7pm every night.  She's been doing it for about two weeks now and it has made a world of difference.  It took a few nights of letting her cry herself to sleep, sometimes for nearly an hour, but she goes down pretty quickly now and she sleeps about 7pm to 6 am.  The sleep schedule works out pretty sweet for all involved, I'm getting way more homework done, just in time to save my grades this semester (hopefully).
  We are now in the process of attacking Lauren's nap schedule, which until this point has been pretty much non-existent.  She has never really been one to take naps, even when she was just a few weeks old we'd be lucky if she went down for an hour or two.  It's coming along pretty slow but I think she is starting to realize that she needs naps.

So when she doesn't take naps she goes a little crazy.  She will laugh her head off at everything for a while and then start screaming.  This is the state I found her in about a week ago when I got home from class.  It was around 5pm and she had decided to continue her nap strike that day... she usually doesn't even think this game is very funny...

A Beautiful Piece of Music

So Ryan found this piece of music yesterday and I just thought I'd share.  It's really pretty, sorry I don't know what the words mean but hopefully one of you can figure it out; I'm sure they're really pretty too.  It's by a minimalist composer named Arvo Part, it's called Fur Alina.  Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQJGi9ZLpHE

Mozart Shmozart

So Ryan discovered this morning that our little Lauren is a child prodigy. You think composing at age 5 is cool? how bout 5 months. We're expecting her first symphony next week...

Trick or Treat

We had a great day on Halloween spending it in West Jordan with family. In the morning we were able to go through the temple with Ryan's brother and then just chilled and did homework the rest of the afternoon. That evening we dressed Lauren up and took her trick- or-treating to a couple of the neighbors. Ryan and I didn't dress up cause we're lame but I couldn't pass up this cute costume for Lauren. I must say she made off pretty good for only going to a couple houses, too bad Ryan charged a candy tax on everything she got...well almost everything. She got a bunch of baby food from Grandma Woolsey, which Ryan didn't want and we also let her try a dum-dum sucker from Grandma Merkley. She was cute as a bug though. :)





Costume Preview