Fun with photo editing

Adin will be seven months old tomorrow... it literally seems like yesterday that he turned 6 months! Anyways, I decided to have a little fun with the camera, and then with photo editing. I don't have any sort of fancy editing software, but I had a lot of fun none the less. I just have the HP Photosmart, which came with my printer, and then I used Picnik, which is an online editing program (partner of flickr)



So I know that I admitted it when I created this blog - that I knew it would really be all about Adin, which is why I have finally changed the title of my blog (Maria helped with the creative name).

Family Ties

As I mentioned in my last post, I have a new calling as MiaMaid Adviser. As a part of this calling, it my responsibility to teach the lesson. I found myself with a great struggle this week, as the lesson is on honoring your parents and sustaining family members. How could I stand up there, as a hypocrite, and tell them how to love and support their family, when my own personal relationships are lacking friendship, support, and forgiveness?!?!
I had the opportunity to attend the temple tonight for our ward temple night, and had some time to ponder these things, when it occured to me that I needed to make more effort in the relationships with you all. I realized that having an eternal family is the core of my belief. The core of my faith. I want to be with my husband and my child (hopefully children eventually) forever, and I want to be with my parents, and each and every one of my brothers and sisters. I don't care what has happened in the past, I want to spend eternity with each and every one of you.
I have been grateful for, and inspired by those of you who have had the courage to speak up recently and share your love, regrets and forgiveness for one another. I want to add my voice to the kind words that have been shared. I want each and everyone of you to know how much I love you. I know that I have a lot of faults of my own, including poor communication (especially when it comes to expressing my emotions), I can also sometimes be "blonde" (forgetful, airheaded, etc), among other weaknesses. This is what life is for, to recognize and try to learn from these weaknesses, as we learn in Ether 12. One thing I would like to make clear though, is that no matter what, despite my faults, I love you. I hope that you would know that I am always here for you. I know I live far away, but I hope that you know you could turn to me whenever you need me.
I know this can be a touchy subject for some, but I want you all to know that I don't care what your last name is (or was)! I love you all the same. Perhaps some of us are closer with certain siblings than with others. I think most of that has to do with age and opportunity. For example, I am not bitter that Peter and Paul are best friends because they grew up sharing a room, and many wonderful and even not-so-wonderful experiences together. In fact, I am more than happy for them, I think they are so fortunate to be so blessed to have one another. I am not going to go through every relationship here, but the point I want to make is that I love you, and I want you to be happy in this life, and forever. I pray that you can forgive me for any wrongs I have commited against you at any time in my life. And hopefully, you can desire to be with me and the rest of our family in the here-after.

PS I ask that you be respectful of my blog and those that I love, if you have anything negative to say about me or anyone else in this family, I ask that you first stop and reconsider. And if you still feel the need to share such thoughts, that they be done on a personal level, rather than on my blog. Thank you.

Tummy Time

Adin has been spending a lot of time on the floor, rolling around, and wanting desperately to be able to be more mobile. Just yesterday, he actually got up on all fours for the first time... so I know crawling isn't too far off!!! (I don't know how ready I really am for that!!!) I love how proud he looks here!

And don't you just love this goofy face?!?!?







PS Just FYI- I now have a link on the side to a website called "Sugardoodle"- it is a FABULOUS lds help website. I learned about it for my new calling as MiaMaid Advisor (yay!). It has links to ideas for all types of callings and has FHE and general family ideas too. I definitely recommend it to anyone who has to teach anything! Check it out!

Valentine's Scavenger Hunt

I told Miah that I wanted to do Valentine's this year, so I planned a little scavenger hunt. Here were his clues:

He had to go to our grocery store, Bashas.

Then he had to drive all the way to his brother, Philip's in Mesa.
Miah took Adin to one of the YW's home in our ward, for Adin to have his first babysitter. (hoo-ray for that!!!!!)
Miah then had to return home, where he had some nice clothes laid out on the bed for him to change into.
Finally, Miah had to go up to the front apartment office, to pick up his last clue, which was a hand-drawn map cut up as a puzzle.
Once put together, it led him to me waiting for him in a park with a picnic of Rotisssori chicken, baguette with cheeese, and chocolate covered strawberries.
Which by the way, this was my first time ever making chocolate covered strawberries. They were really fun to make. This was a picture of some that were left-over today (I think they looked a little better yesterday). I hope you all had a fabulous Valentine's Day too!!!

Adin's getting Old

Adin is 6 months old (I know, I am a little late here)!! Can you believe it??? Half a year... so crazy!!! I took this picture because it features Adin's favorite blanket. He always sucks on the silky part, and HAS to have it to fall asleep. I was laughing when I took this picture, because he was sucking on it while bouncing in his little entertainment saucer. Of course, as soon as I tried to snap the picture, he didn't want anything to do with it.So in other BIG news, Adin has his first tooth!!! Yay! So now Adin is eatin nothin but Steak and Taters ;)


On Sunday, Miah's brother, Philip, and his family came over for dinner. I made Tasha's delicious Minestrone. Mmmm!!! Sativa and Aunt Jill with Adin Adin's cousin's Nathan and Kellin playing with Miah's old toys from his childhood.


I am especially grateful for technology lately (that sounds super geeky, huh???). Well anyways, I am so happy to have this blog, so that I can keep in touch with family and friends. It is especially fun to print the blogs along with people's comments to put in Adin's book. We also have Skype on our computer, and are able to communicate with Miah's mom. It is fun to see Adin recognize her over the computer. The other day, I was able to capture him playing peek-a-boo with her! So fun! (sorry the pic is kind of blurry)

Steals and Deals, and a Peak into our Everyday

So I know that it has been a little while since I have posted. I don't really have any good reason I haven't, but I guess I can catch you up on what has been happening in our lives (and I apologize it is so long of a post)

STEALS and DEALS
I am always impressed by those of you who are pros at scoring great deals, and am excited to be finding my way in the bargaining world. My first source of fabulous deals: consignment stores. These are not totally new for me, but I have been excited to discover a fabulous children's consignment store close to me (like Heaven Cent). I pretty much did my Christmas shopping for Adin there. Since I was on a tight budget (most of my money having gone to traveling all over!), I was excited to score some adorable Gap and Gymboree clothes for cheap, and a bunch of books. I LOVE children's books, and was thrilled to get each of them for less than $2 a piece! I started Adin's collection of Dr. Seuss, Curious George, and Beatrix Potter.
Through half.com (which I have loved ever since I have had to purchase and sell college textbooks) I found a favorite children's anthology from my own childhood for only a few dollars. And by clearance shopping, I found some beautiful Christmas books for super cheap. I sure hope Adin likes to read, because Miah and I sure love it!!

Thanks to some tips from Kerri, I have also been finding some great deals on Craigslist and Ebay. I have scored a couple small adorable Gymboree lots. And my most exciting find was our highchair. After reading a lot of reviews online about different highchairs, we went to Target and found the ideal one for our circumstances... but wouldn't you know it was over $100. We plan on having a few kids, and hopefully having the same highchair for all of them, but still, that was a LITTLE pricey for our tastes! Thanks to good ol' Craigslist, we found one for $40!!! It looks like brand new, and best of all, it folds up completely. It is sooo nice! What is fun, is that when we take it out, Adin starts getting excited, because he knows what is going to be happening soon.
Adin eating... continued

So my baby hippooautomus, who never turns away any food, or anything for that matter, has finally found something that he does not like... peas!!! (Who can blame him???) Here is a cute little video we took, because we are terrible, and wanted to capture this torture forever!




Getting Ready
So it is getting more difficult for me to get ready each morning. I used to be able to leave Adin in his bouncer, but that doesn't seem to last as long as it used to, and he usually fusses if I leave him laying on the bed or the floor (I guess he feels left out), so I decided to stick him in the sink in front of me. This has been working great... although it probably won't last much longer, as he is beginning to want more mobility. I had to capture this moment though, as I think it is too cute!


My Baby Protege
While I was getting ready the other day, I got out our little keyboard for Adin. He enjoyed playing beautiful music for us. You thought Motzart was impressive composing at age 3? Ha! Try six months old!!!


Very concentrated on his music
That's it for now....

Videos

So we took a little video of Adin eating for the first time with our digital camera (not the clearest or best quality of pic), and shared it with both our mom's. They loved it and both asked why we didn't have it posted on my blog, soooo, here it is (it's about 2 min. long).




Then, the other day, we put in our Enigma CD, and Miah looked over at Adin, and he was bouncing to the beat of the music. He HAD to grab the camera to capture it. At least we know our son has rhythm, as he was pretty much right on beat!




We tried to take another video here, but I think Adin got a little camera shy/ distracted. Still pretty cute and funny though.