Five Year Anniversary

Yesterday was our fifth anniversary. Below are some of our engagement pictures. It is hard to believe that five years have already gone by.

We actually used this photo for our announcement. We did Photoshop out the faddish rip in Nathan's pants for the announcement though. We look so young and thin. Ha ha. I should probably mention we both had some bad food poisoning shortly before the engagement photos were taken Nathan looks extra thin and boyish both here and in our wedding photos.

These pictures were taken by our friend Lysle for our Christmas card. When he was taking this photo of us without Corinne I was joking that it was like getting our engagement photos done again so I thought it would be fun to stick a few of both up for comparison sake. I like my hair much better now longer and closer to my natural shade. I wouldn't mind if those other jeans still fit though. Grrr.

We had a lot of trouble getting baby girl to be happy and look at the camera.

For our anniversary Nathan got us an overnight babysitter and booked us a night at the Hilton Americas down town. We went to a nice fish restaurant (my favorite), then swimming in the hotel pool followed by staying up way too late dancing at a club until the disco lights started to make me feel dizzy. It was fun, but if we go to a club again I think we should find a few friends to go too. He planned the whole night. It was a lot of fun. Thanks Nate.

Traditionally the fifth year is a wood gift, but Nathan bought me an opal ring and necklace set. Opal is Corinne's birthstone and when he asked what I wanted this year I said an opal. I am exchanging the one he picked out though (which he said he knew I would) for just a ring instead. We will find the right one and then I'll post a picture. I have noticed I don't like a lot of opal settings so it might take a little while.

Daddy Daughter Seattle Trip

Nathan was really brave and took Corinne up to Seattle for a weekend without me. It was his first time traveling on an airplane alone with her. I've done it. Even with her being really good it is kind of stressful. I am proud of him for doing it. And grateful because although I really wanted to go too, I had way too much to do to get ready for my NIOSH audit. Him taking her with him allowed me to get a lot of work done while they were gone.

Her diaper leaked on the plane and he had to change her pajama's in the airport. The first night they were gone he stayed in a Hotel with Dana and BJ in Olympia. Apparently there was a hotel fire before they got there. Kind of scary. Here she is looking cute in the hotel room the next morning.

My sister, Becky, also went into labor the night Nathan and Corinne flew up so they were able to see Becky with her new baby, Lucy in the hospital. Apparently, I look enough like Becky that Corinne really snuggled up to her. Becky's daughter Olivia would do that with me when she was Corinne's age too. I was extra sad I missed the trip when Lucy came just in time for it. Becky was scheduled to be induced the day after Nathan and Corinne came back home, so had Lucy not come on her own they would have just missed her.

Becky is such a good sport sharing her pudding with Corinne. Very sweet.

Such a cutie playing at the mall with daddy and cousins. She had a fun time. Naps were a bit difficult during the whole trip though. Without her crib, Nathan said he tried laying her down on her cousin Desmond's kiddy bed, but she would just get off and bang on the wall until he came back to get her.

Nathan says the only morning on the trip that she slept in was the morning they needed to get up early to come back home. I am glad to have them back. I knew I would miss them and I did for sure, but I was surprised how emotional I got watching them leave me behind at the security gate. I actually broke down crying in front of the guards. It is good to have them back.

Daddy Time

With me working more hours again at BSI Corrine has been getting more Daddy time. These are all off his phone and some of them are pictures he has sent me while I have been at work. A daddy day is a perfect day to wear the ACDC onesie. Her first time wearing it Nathan played ACDC while we were all getting dressed so that she wouldn't be a poser.

Here she is helping him chat on the computer.

She likes to entertain herself with reading while he works. That map looks stimulating. I wonder sometimes if is she is mimicking us. We like to lay in bed and read with her.

She likes to chase Cali all around the house. They both seem to like it a lot under the kitchen table.

Corinne loves going for rides and running errands so long as it does not overlap nap time. I love her wild hair here.

Nathan has also discovered the joy of trying to take a shower with Corinne in the bedroom. The toys only distract her temporarily from looking into what you are doing. She likes to pull back the curtain and join you.

This is one Nathan sent me one day while I was at work. He says she pulled out her rocking chair and grabbed her snacks all on her own. I love her little frown. She looks like she is sad about the rain outside.

Here she went with Nate when he was meeting with the neuro surgeon. He had to take some steroids after messing his back up playing soccer and fixing the fence post in the back yard one Saturday. I guess you shouldn't jump on a shovel in flip flops. Three MRI's and an EMG later the Dr. says he is fine, though he does have an abnormal Babinski reflex.

One Year Old

We have had a busy few weeks since my last blog post. Most exciting Corinne turned 1 year old!! Her birthday was on the 7th which was a Thursday and we had a costume birthday party for her on the following Saturday.

We figured with a birthday in October she may as well use her Halloween costume more than once. We dressed up with a theme in mind. We were Zapp Brannigan, Leela and Nibbler from the cartoon Futurama. Originally we were going to dress her up in either her Princess Aura costume we bought her or the Tinker Bell costume Marina bought her. We still have a few more chances before the end of the month though.

She started out by just picking at the pink icing with delicate and deliberate pinching before really getting into the cake.

That same weekend was also busy with Dana and BJ down here to help with some house repairs. I will take some pictures of everything we have worked on with Dana and make it a separate post.

She has a few other things that are new that came with turning one. We turned her car seat around forward facing, she loves it, she is drinking vitamin D milk now instead of formula, actually we started that a few weeks early and after the baby formula recall we were glad we did. She has also started walking. She took her first steps on September 13 and she has been getting more confident all the time. It is hard to believe that an entire year has gone by already. It is already hard to remember life without her. We love her very much.

Our sister-in-law Cassandra was here in Texas for some training with the Army. We both drove to a town halfway between Houston and Austin and got dinner together. The McDonald's here was just a place with indoor toys we stopped at after dinner. It was still too hot to spend a lot of time stay outdoors. Ben and Cassandra are moving to Florida here soon so we are hoping to drive out and see them soon.

My younger brother David got home from his mission and came down for a visit. While he was here David wanted to try some alligator so we picked some up at an exotic meat store along with some python. Here Nathan and David were cooking it out on the grill. The really dark meat is deer, which the salesman threw in for free. I thought the deer tasted too much like liver; I like my meat with a little more fat on it. Both the alligator and python were really chewy and tasted better fried, when you couldn't really taste them. A fun experience, but we were all actually a bit nervous about eating it because we cooked it ourselves.

We also went to the Zoo while David was here and I thought this picture was really cool.

Labor Day Adventure

So we had the craziest adventure in honor of Labor Day. While watching the BYU game on Saturday with some friends Nathan was talking about how we would like to go camping. However, being late planers where could we go? Nathan had heard you can go camping on Matagorda beach here in Texas and that it would not require having a camping spot reserved. Sounded like fun. Kind of last minute, but we decided to go anyway with the Wirthlins.

When we first got to the beach around 6pm it was super windy. Nate and John tried to start a fire by digging a hole in the sand and then blocking as much of the wind as they could with our coolers and a beach umbrella, but the elements proved to be more powerful and after about a half hour and some rain we gave up on the fire for awhile. John and Ellice brought a plug in griddle for making pancakes on in the morning, which we decided to cook our hot dogs on kielbasa style. However, that didn't work out so well. Even with a power converter the griddle blew two fuses in their van. So we ended up heading to a burger joint/bar that Nathan had heard from one of his coworkers was really good. By this point we were all starving and tired of the wind. Though the restaurant was not much of a break from the wind, all the walls were just mesh screens, the food was good and as you normally do when starving we ordered too much food!

While at the restaurant we looked up on the iphone when the wind was suppose to settle down and found the prediction to be around midnight. So we headed back to the beach and struggled up our tents/kites and weighed them down with stuff in each corner. Here is Nate and John setting up the first tent. The cute little dancing girl here is Abby.

You can see we used the light of headlights to set up the tents.

After getting the tent up and using the little cove created by the cars and the tents as cover Nathan and John got a pretty good fire going. Here below is the Wirthlin family, Abby, John, Dallin and Ellice. Their youngest Conner was already asleep in the tent and missed out on the smores and Starburts.

Corinne was really good for pretty much the entire trip. For the most part she was content to just hang out, drink a bottle and be held. I was a bit worried about her with the sand and the fire but it ended up not being an issue.

After looking at the amazing stars for a bit we sat around the fire chatting until Corinne and I were dozing in the beach chair. I went and laid down with Corinne and she went right to sleep. Nathan stayed up chatting until around midnight or 1am. Cars were driving past us all night long and while laying there with the wind keeping us from really falling asleep that the cars changed from driving behind us closer to the water on the compact sand "road" to driving around in front of our tents in the really soft sand that you just get stuck in. We had parked as close to the soft sand as we thought we could go with out getting the cars stuck. There was a huge area of compacted sand that people had been driving and parking on all day so we thought it was weird that people started going around in the soft sand instead. Well around 3 or 3:30 Nathan decided to go out and check on the cars and the tide. I don't know if it was because he could see through the tent window that the tide had risen or just because I kept asking "are you sure the cars are ok," but when we got outside this is what we saw.

The tide had risen considerably and was already at the tires of the cars and the corner of our tent. Nathan woke up John and Ellice as their tent was also starting to get wet. Nathan debated just moving the tents further up the beach, but since we didn't know how high the water was going to go I was pushing for us to just pack up and get off the beach. So with us already parked in the soft sand this didn't leave us much of an exit route. We would have to either go in the soft sand and hope to not get stuck or the water. We got packed up pretty quick. Taking down the tents consisted of removing the tent poles and then rolling them up and stuffing them in the bed of the truck. We just put some stuff on to p of them to keep them from blowing away, contrary to the earlier prediction the wind never did die down.

So after getting turned around we headed down the to the area where you could get off and we were going fine until we came to an abandoned truck that we had to go deeper into the soft sand to go around. The truck got stuck pretty good here. The van did too, but probably only because they stopped when they saw the truck was stuck. When driving on soft sand you want to just keep moving or you get stuck. The truck had the axles touching the sand. While we were mourning our fate another truck with 4 wheel drive and 4 college age guys with beers in hand drove up. At first one of the guys was convinced that with the four of them and Nate and John they could just pick up the back end of the truck out of the hole it had dug. When that did not work they dug us out and pushed. Someone in their truck had the forethought to bring gardening hoes. They were our drunk angels! They helped dig and push both cars 3 or 4 times each. It took about an hour and a half to go less than a mile to get off the beach. We finally rolled into home around 6am and then slept until 11am when Corinne woke us up.

Later that day we got together and ate Thai food and made dutch oven cobbler in the Wirthlin's garage. It rained all day too. After getting back we checked when the high tide occured and it did not happen until around 6am. It was also the highest high tide in the recent history and forecast. I think the storm surge from the tropical storm probably helped with the high tide. I'm glad we didn't wait around any longer before leaving. Even with the hasty departure it was a really fun adventure and I would be willing to go again if we check the tide first and get a 4 wheel drive truck!

You can also read about this awesome adventure on Ellice's blog. http://wirthlin-family.blogspot.com/2010/09/awesome-adventure.html

Nap Time

Naps have been so hard for Corinne since getting back from Washington. Here she is complaining about it. We bought some black out blinds for her bedroom, which have helped. Now once we put her down, turn out the lights and turn on the bathroom fan for back ground noise, it takes her less then ten minutes to go to sleep. It has been a long month getting to that point though.

It is so sad to hear her cry, but in a weird way it is also cute. She gets really desperate with death grip hugs she gives trying to avoid being set down. We call that her star fish impression. Too bad she does not realize she will be longing for naps when she gets older.

Sealed the Deal !!

Corinne's Sealing was wonderful. She was an angel and was happy and cute the whole time. It was so nice to share the experience with family and friends.

Our camera battery decided to go out during our trip to Seattle. After charging, we can take like two or three photos before the battery dies again. So Dana and Trevor took all these photos for us. My only complaint is I wish I would have slowed down and had more taken. Like some with my parents and Nathan's parents and with my grandparents. But the ones we have are still nice and better than none, which is what our camera did.

It is too bad this photo is so washed out and more than half of the people who came had already headed over to the church house for the luncheon, but I like it anyway.

Corinne was so sleepy and ready to take a nap, but she didn't cry or anything. She just laid her head on Nathan's shoulder. I think this is my favorite photo from the whole day.

At some point Corinne ended up with uncle Rick. This is such a cute photo of her with him. She got to know him pretty well while we were out visiting Grandma and Grandpa Perkins.

Nathan's Mom BJ bought this cake for us to have at the luncheon. I think the white on white is really pretty.

Swimming Lessons

Corinne and I did a mommy and me swimming class this summer. Her class was just for those little tikes that really are not going to master many of the skills during the class time, but it gave me an idea of things I could do to work with her when we are at the pool.

We worked on teaching her to close her mouth in the water, climb out of the pool, grab on to the side of the pool, splash her arms and legs and get comfortable on her back with her ears under the water. We sang a lot of silly songs and had a fun.

My friend Laura came with her camera one day and took pictures of her daugher Addison in the class with her daddy.

She was so kind as to also take and send me these. Thanks Laura!