so sleepy

the best advice i was given about the first month of motherhood was this:

sleep when the baby sleeps.

as much as we are loving violet's smiles lately, it is still nice to see this face every once in a while too.

the great news is, as vi is approaching two months old, she is sleeping longer and longer at night. i don't want to jinx the taylor home, but violet has slept 7-8 hours straight every night this week.

that leads to some very happy mornings.

violet's visitors

violet has been busy entertaining!

thanks for coming!

showered and showered

violet is one spoiled little baby. she was showered with gifts before she was even here! we had a great time at all of our showers- thanks to those who threw them and those who came. i didn't get pictures at all of them, but they were still a blast.

first, there was the shower with my high school friends. it was great to get together and gab about the past and about how strange it is to be growing up.

next, our good friends from college and cade's childhood threw us a coed shower. it was hilarious. for the majority of the guys, this was their first shower but you would never notice. they fit right in. we had great food, a power-point presentation and a spirited toast to baby violet.

and yes, for those of you wondering, i did spin so all could get a good feel of the baby.

next, there was my family shower at grammy's house. i loved seeing all the family together and those ladies know how to party. as the party was winding down, we realized that nobody had taken a picture the entire time! still fun!

then we had a shower thrown by the lovely ladies at work. i loved working at xactware and i really will miss all those fabulous women. violet and i will need to make frequent visits to fill our void.

and finishing up the shower tour was a stop at cade's sister's house for the taylor family celebration. i love these ladies. they always have a great spread and nobody left hungry. and check out the decor! luckily there was a camera this time.

THANK YOU FOR ALL FOR ALL YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT!

valentine tradition

i love this tradition- even if i bad mouth it the entire time i am rolling out dough. cade and i have a great time decorating the entire triple batch.

NOTHING tastes as good as a valentine sugar cookie. even if it does say "2pac" on it.

and since violet was born a few days after this, these cookies kept us alive for a month.

our new home

after months and months of searching, we finally found a house that was perfect for us. we gladly said goodbye to our apartment in orem and with a caravan of trucks, we headed to lehi. with all the help, packing went very smoothly.

it is pretty crazy to have a home to ourselves. we have lived in some pretty crazy places and we are so conditioned to hearing people all around us. now, we live in silence- and it has never sounded so good. after picking up a few items, the place is finally feeling like a home.

we only had a few weeks before violet was due so i spent as much time as possible organizing all our stuff. in the process, i found this gem of a box which was packed with all the notes my friends and i wrote to one another in junior high. since my feet and ankles were swollen solid, i wasted no time in reading every last one of them. let me just say, i am SO GLAD i don't have to deal with those hormones ever again (or at least until vi hits puberty).

and finally, if you come to our house you will get a tour- a COMPLETE tour. this, of course, includes a tour of cade's favorite room in the house: the crawl space.

cade's new project in this house is creating the ultimate man cave in our crawl space. he has rewired the entire thing for lighting, rounded up some carpet, put up a makeshift ceiling and has hired a neighbor boy to do some serious digging down there. you will have to wait for the "after" pictures.

while this is cade's new obsession, i am not so convinced the crawl space is a fun place to be. this picture just about sums up both of our thoughts on the project:

come visit us soon!

let the recap begin: cade's birthday

as many of you may have noticed, i have been one stinky blogger since the new year. things still happen in the taylor home- i just haven't documented them like i should. likely you all want to just see pictures of cute, little vi but you will just have to wait until the recap concludes.... and let me tell you, with all the pictures we have been taking, the wait will be worth it! so let's start the recap!

if i do say so myself, i have set the bar pretty high when it comes to celebrating cade's birthday. this year, however, i managed to scoot right under that bar and we had a simple- and fun- celebration. for lunch, we went out to cade's very favorite burger place, burger supreme, with some of our work friends. later, we had cade's favorite steak at outback for dinner and hurried back home to meet up with some friends for cake and a raucous game of parudo. we had moved into our new house the day before cade turned the big 26 and i was looking as pregnant as octomom but we had a fabulous time nonetheless!

the only candles we had unpacked were these massive ones.

palefico!

cade loved all his gifts, but perhaps this sack of potatoes was his favorite.

it really is great to celebrate cade and its such a bummer birthdays are only once a year. we are going to need to start celebrating half birthdays around here. thanks for being a great husband and father, cade. I love you!

HAPPY EASTER 2010

Happy Easter from Ashley, Violet, Mandy, Owen -
and Esteban (inside the bunny costume).