Christmas Pictures

Here are a few pictures of the fun we had while Tanner's parents were here for Christmas. We took them to the Yuma Territorial Prison, the town of Felicity, CA (where the official "center of the world" is - its a weird place, another story for another time), we took walks with Sadie on Christmas morning and opened presents in the afternoon. Sadie was spoiled to the max, but what are grandparents for?!?

Sadie and Grandma at the historical Yuma Territorial
Prison - overlooking the Colorado River.

Sadie - our little convict
Taking her old-fashioned mugshot

Tanner and Sadie in jail!

Sadie loved to walk all around the huge
gravel yard they had at the prison!

Felicity, CA - The pyramid that housesthe "official center of the world".
That's the church in the background. It's their town law that the
church has to be the highest point in the community.

Tanner standing on the center of the world

Taking a walk with Grandma and
Grandpa on Christmas morning.

When we take walks, Sadie always has to stop and play with
the mailboxes. And it was really windy that day, so her hair
was blowing all over the place!

Opening the last of the Christmas presents!
Look at that mess!

Sadie playing with her new purse and all its contents!

Sadie loved the bubbles she got for Christmas!

Tanner's parents got Sadie a little bike that's made for toddlers, she's still a little small for it, but she likes riding around on it! She also got some new sunglasses. Here's a little video of when we took her out today to ride around.

Christmas Dress

Tanner's parents are here visiting for this week and they bought Sadie a Christmas dress to wear to church today. We all went to church together and then drove around Yuma for a little bit to show them to town, such as it is. We went to a park on the banks of the Colorado River and got a few pictures of Sadie. They turned out so cute! Enjoy! Merry Christmas to all!

Sadie and Momma (and bunny)

All of Us

Pretty Smile!

Yay! Clapping Hands!

Playing Dress Up

Sadie has really been into putting clothes on lately. She really likes to wear hats, or put shoes on; any piece of cloth that she finds, whether its a towel or a sweater, she tries to put on now. Its so cute! She gets so excited when you put whatever it is on her - she always runs right away to go look in the mirror in her bedroom so she can see what she looks like! Here are a few pictures of the things she's modeled lately!

Wearing her pajama pants on her head!


She brought me my hoodie, so I could help her put it on. She actually wore it around for a long time! She thought she was pretty cool!


Looking at herself in the mirror - so vain! :)


Wearing Daddy's baseball cap!


Wearing a towel on her head!

Getting into things

Sadie is becoming a master at "getting into things". We have this corner cabinet in our kitchen - you know the kind with the shelves that swivel. We haven't figured out how to put a child-lock on it yet, so she is constantly getting in there! I don't know how many times she has all of the sudden brought me a bag of powdered sugar, or a box of taco shells! She can also get into the drawer that we keep our ziplock bags in and likes to take the whole box of them out and pull the baggies out one by one. So these pictures are of the goings on at our house this morning!

Clean Hands

Tanner taught Sadie how to wash her hands! Here's a cute little video of it! Enjoy!

Poor Girl :(

Sorry we haven't posted the last week or so, we've been keeping pretty busy. Sadie has been teething all four of her one year molars for the last several weeks, so she's been super fussy and clingy. On top of that she had a cold for a while, and then today she had a doctor's appointment and she had to get four shots! Poor thing! So she's getting spoiled - as you can tell from the picture.
There's nothing like watching a movie wrapped up in a blanket eating graham crackers and milk and looking at a magazine to help a girl feel better! She had just woken up from a nap and was having a hard time - that's why she has "sad eyes" :(

We did get her to smile today though - even though it's a little hidden behind her pacifier. Anyway, we'll try to post a little more this week to make up for lost time for our faithful blog readers!

Happy Birthday Sadie!

Sadie's first birthday was last saturday! Here are a few photos of it. She was really fussy the whole day, so she looks super tired in some of these, but she enjoyed playing with the balloons, unwrapping her presents and stuffing her face with cake!

The Birthday Girl just woke up!

Playing with Balloons!

Yay! New pajamas!

A pretty new dress from Grandma and Grandpa Branham

New Toys!

Mmm...cupcakes!

Taking a bath after that messy cake!

This is today - Sadie's wearing her new clothes from
Grandma and Grandpa Branham, she looks so cute!

It Rained!

We had a big storm yesterday and the night before. It absolutely poured, it was really neat! Our backyard was a lake, we had over an inch of water right at our backdoors. We're so thankful we didn't get flooded, but we really enjoyed the rain since we don't get it very often here. Tanner took Sadie out to play in it, and she had a ball! Here's a little video clip I took of it! Enjoy!

What am I going to do for the next six months!?!

So, I've always heard that when you have to take your baby with you to church, the hardest age is between a year and 18 months, when they can go into nursery. I always thought, oh, Sadie does pretty well, I can usually sit through my meetings with her. Well, I think that just ended! Its so crazy! I didn't get to sit in any of my meetings today! Sadie was going wild! I managed to wrestle with her through the first 15 minutes of sacrament meeting (and it seriously did feel like I was wrestling with her to keep her on my lap so she wouldn't run off), then, during Sunday school I took her with me to prepare for Relief Society, and she managed to rip a page out of a hymn book, lock me out of the storage closet, and escape out into the hallway countless times! Then, in Relief Society I managed to keep her quiet and still with crackers for the first five minutes, but after that we had to wander the halls for the rest of the meeting! So now I can completely understand when other parents say they can't wait for their kids to go to nursery! But - since we were just wandering the halls the whole time - Sadie greatly improved her walking skills! She's getting really good - she won't let me hold her hand anymore, she wants to do it herself! She's not feeling well today though, so maybe that's why it was so bad - but I just couldn't believe it! It'll be nice when I get to actually get something out of my meetings again! She's a good girl though, most of the time, and we love her in spite of the frustrations she gives us once in a while! Anyway, here's a really sweet picture of Sadie and Tanner. He was sleeping on the couch and when she got up from her nap, she went right over to him and laid her head down on him! It was so sweet - she loves her daddy!

What the heck!?!

Some how I got Thanksgiving off, don't know how that happened. Usually as a new guy in my line of work you don't expect to have Holidays off for a while!

Anyways, my instructor informed me that my shift supervisor has already started asking questions about me and my performance history. Word does get around in the company!

Note to all: Many of you know what I do for work. Please do not disclose this on the blog since it is public. No one has yet, but I just want to ensure it is kept private. The company prefers secrecy ;)

Our Little Sadie Girl

Here's a cute little video of Sadie today. Enjoy!

I passed!

I passed my exam! Thanks for all the support.

Good Luck to Tanner!

We found out last night that when Tanner's done with training he gets a normal, 8-4 shift! We are so excited for him to work a normal day! Although they rotate shifts every eight weeks, so after two months he'll be back to night shifts for awhile. He has his final for the training program at work today! Its supposed to be this huge four hour test that is just impossible. He's been studying really hard for it the last couple of days - so everyone include him in your prayers! Good luck!

I made my own curtains!

Yes, the title is true - can you believe it? My mom and sisters should be proud of me! I made curtains for the front door without a pattern (granted - its a very, very basic style) and amazingly without any problems. I am very much a beginner at sewing. I enjoy it a lot (if I don't have too many mistakes that I have to fix), but I don't have much experience with it, so it was a total shock to take on this project, thinking it would probably turn out to be bigger and more difficult than I had originally thought, like most of my sewing projects do - only to find that it was faster and easier than I thought it would be, and problem free! So - these new curtains excite me! Here's a picture of them that you men may not find interesting, but you women might appreciate!

My new curtains!

And here's a cute little video of Sadie playing on the tiny patch of grass in front of our house. She's never really played in the grass before - she's never liked it - so it was cute to watch her get used to it. She was loving being outside though.

A few random pictures

I just wanted to post a few pictures of Sadie that I've taken in the last few days. We have to keep her grandparents up to date you know. :) She is such a sweetheart though - we are so thankful she's ours!

Sadie's always sleepy after church!

Sadie likes spaghetti!

A random video of our sweet Sadie!

Good News!

Our family has had a few pieces of good news in the last few days! The first is that Tanner gets to finish up his training class at work a few weeks early! So he'll be done with it and out on his own in just a couple weeks! He'll still have to do some classwork on the computer one day a week until next spring, but on the other days he'll be on a normal shift and won't have to be with his teachers/class anymore. So we are really excited about that - its hard to believe the training part of this job is - finally - almost over! Our second piece of good news is that Tanner's parents are coming here to Yuma for Christmas!! Yay! We were bummed because they originally had other plans, but those didn't work out and they still have the vacation time, so they get to come and see us! We are SO excited to see them and for them to see Sadie! Which leads me to my third piece of good news - Sadie is walking! She's still definitely working on her balance, and she can't quite make it all the way across the room yet, but she just keeps getting better and better so quickly! Its really exciting, but kinda sad to be losing that baby part of her too. Here's a little video of her walking - she's actually better than it shows, but she must've gotten camera shy or something because she fell down a lot in my attempts to record it. But it's still cute - and just ignore my annoying voice. Enjoy!

Sadie Walking 11-4-08

Happy Halloween!

We dressed Sadie up as a cat for Halloween, she was so cute! We handed out candy at our house until Tanner came home from work, then we spent the rest of the evening at our friends Zach and Julie's house. They have a little boy that was dressed like superman and it was so fun to see both of the kids dressed up together! Its been kind of weird though, to have Halloween when its still so warm outside - not fall weather at all! Halloween should have the autumn leaves on the ground, and the crisp, cool air outside, where you have to wear a jacket! We are really missing the "real" changing of the seasons! Anyway, here are a few pics of our cute little Sadie girl!

Our Cute Little Kitty!

Sadie the Kitty Cat

Sadie and Kale
Catwoman and Superman!

Well we've finally done it.....

We've finally followed the crowd and started a blog. I've come to really enjoy reading everyone else's blogs, and since I email a lot of pictures and such anyway, I decided to go for it. Right now our family is enjoying the sunny weather in Yuma, AZ (sometimes its a little too sunny for us - we miss the fall weather of the midwest). Tanner is still in training with his job, but he'll be officially done at the end of next months so he is looking forward to that. I keep busy with Sadie, she's growing so fast and learning all kinds of new things! She's almost walking and can do things like blow kisses and say uh-oh. She even said Mama the other day - okay, so she was just repeating me, but she DID say it. So to begin my blogging experience I thought I'd post a couple of the most recent pictures/videos of Sadie. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Sadie just looking cute!

And here's a cute movie of Sadie talking!