Family Pictures

We got some family pictures taken over Thanksgiving Weekend while we were in Utah. Our friend, Emily, took them and I think they turned out great. She took the one on our Christmas card too. It's always hard to choose favorites, so here are way more than you wanted to see. :) Thanks, Emily!

Happy Holidays

Here's the Christmas card this year (and sorry if you're family and live in Orem you probably haven't received it yet since I'm planning on hand delivering them to you as I will be seeing you very soon - yay!).

I thought about writing up a little "year in review" and then sat down to write it and it looked something like this .... "Brandon graduated from law school, took the bar exam in Arizona and passed, and started working as an attorney in Phoenix this past September." That's a lot to compete with!! But I tried to continue ... "Whitney is still loving being a stay-at-home mom to Rachel who is now 18 months old! Rachel keeps her super busy with playing kitchen, blocks, puppets and going to the park." And then I stopped. It just didn't flow right. I really do love being a mom - it's exactly what I want to be doing right now, but it just didn't look very good on paper. :)

Besides being a mom this year, I feel like I have tried a little bit of everything to try to discover new talents and interests (mostly when Rachel is asleep). I have a hard time focusing on just one project at a time, so I am usually working on a handful of things at a time. I experimented a little bit with cooking this year, sewing, photo organizing, photo taking & editing, baby book-ing, running, house hunting, decorating, and blogging, of course. And my most recent fun has been "photoshop-ing" and designing (wait, that sounds way too professional)... more like throwing together cards for myself and family. Want to see some of them? CLICK HERE to view the gallery. I really tried to make them what they wanted, so you'll see there are a lot of different looks/styles.

Happy Holidays! I'm off to the land of cold and snow for a couple weeks, so no guarantee on any posts until the New Year.

Thanksgiving Recap

Here's a family picture in my mom's backyard on Thanksgiving. We had such a great time in Utah and can't wait to go back for Christmas too! Since our families live only five minutes apart, we split our time and went to both dinners - totally worth it. I know that some people prefer to choose one place/family to be with on holidays, but splitting the time works for us (at least for now and when there's more kids in the mix I might change my mind).

With all the grandkids together, we had to snap a picture with Grandma & Grandpy Hale. (Cannon, Val, Rach, Brynn, Nancy, Kennedy, Mason)

Oh, some good news to share ... my brother and his wife, Cindy, are expecting a baby in June, so Rachel will have her first cousin on the Parker side! Wahoo - we love cousins! Keep 'em coming!

Just a classic Rachel face.

We are loving our new place and really loving living in Arizona. We go to the park and play outside lots. Here's Brandon and Rachel playing in the backyard and pictured below checking out the neighbors dog. Check out B's new glasses - pretty styling, right!?

Rachel's has already got two presents for Christmas. One was a play kitchen from Grandma & Grandpy (she absolutely loves it!) and the other one is a little tricycle bike that I found at a garage sale. It's the kind that I can push/steer from behind. She's still learning and isn't sure she likes it yet, but she's still little.

p.s. I photoshopped her boogies out of the picture above. Is that cheating? Hope not - I'm completely obsessed with Photoshop elements and Brandon's pretty good too, so he helps me a lot. I've been really busy for the past couple weeks designing Christmas cards for family/friends and it's been so fun. Nothing fancy... I'm totally a beginner ... I caught the bug back here when I completed my first one. Soon, I'll put together a gallery or something and share my work.

And how could I resist not posting this last picture! :) I have to laugh everytime I see it. I'm part of a cooking blog with some friends from Chicago (anyone can join and there's no pressure to participate every week, it's just for fun) and I made these cookies and needed a quick picture. Well, Rachel climbed up onto the bar to get some and I told her "no" - that I needed to take a picture first. Here was the result. I just love this girl - tantrums and all.