Homeward Bound!

Grace and I will be in Utah as of April 30th. We will be gone for 3 weeks, including the week we will be in Texas house hunting. We will greatly miss Matt, but he will be incredibly busy. In fact, he is currently out in "the field" (which means he gets hands on training, hardly sleeps, gets real dirty and doesn't get to come home for days at a time).

Matt is almost halfway done with his training here and it is getting more intense every day. It will be good for him to have a quiet place to study while we're gone. Hopefully he'll sleep better without Grace waking him up. (Although we do have nocturnal neighbors!)

Grace is still pulling herself along and occassionally crawling. She is just brimming with personality. In fact, today at church was the first time she reached out for me to hold her. It was so cute and it felt really great. I wasn't just some caretaker...she actually missed me!

There isn't much else to report. We're trucking along and anticipating the next big step for our family; homeownership! Soon enough... I'll be sure to update often about that process. Until then, this is Mandy signing off. I'm not sure if I'll have any internet access while in Utah. SO LONG FOR NOW!

Jedi Grace!

The other day Matt brought a glow stick home from his Armor Training and he activated it so he could show Grace. She loved watching it as he spun it around and once she got her hands on it, she didn't want to let go. Here's a short clip of her playing the role of Jedi Grace!

Reading Time for Grace

I have been reading to Grace since she was just a few weeks old. She has always loved to look at the pictures and now she is starting to love the sound of the words. Last night Matt filmed our reading time and Grace looked up every time I said "Thump."

This past weekend was General Conference for the LDS Church and after the last session there was a series on parenting and it talked about the importance of spending quality time with your children. After visiting the web site, Matt and I decided that no matter where we are or what we have on our agenda, our children will be read to every single day until they can read for themselves and no longer want to sit on our lap (hopefully this will be before the age of 18!).

It is so exciting to think that just a few minutes can help build a relationship with your children and that reading to them can set a foundation for all of their future learning.

I am going to try once again to post a video to Blogger...but who knows if it will work. If it does, you'll see it below. If not I'll redirect you to MySpace.