Filling the house with music.

Last summer we were sitting in church listening to one of the youth play a piano number when Aaron and I turned to each other at the same time and both said, "I want Eleanor to play the piano."

The musical number was just so beautiful and reminded us both of the many piano lessons we each had while growing up. Eleanor was 7 months old then, and while we knew she wouldn't be playing for a long time, we wanted her to grow up hearing the piano and developing a love for it.

My parents still had their upright piano we all played as kids and had since replaced it with a grand piano.  They told us the upright piano was up for grabs as long as we came and hauled it away ourselves.  So when we moved to Fresno a couple months later, we took the opportunity of having a Uhaul to load up the piano and take it with us.

We have now been living with a piano for going on 6 months and to say we are loving it is an understatement.  Our home feels so much more home-y now.  Aaron has been playing the piano almost every morning recently and then often again when he comes home from work at night.  We have The Eagles complete collection so he has been introducing Eleanor to "the classics."

Then I usually sit down to play the piano in the afternoon, around 4 pm when we have run out of things to do.  I am pretty rusty but I'm slowly pounding away at the hymns, hoping to one day feel confident enough to fill in at church if a piano player is ever needed.

Aaron and I both usually start out playing with Eleanor in our laps.  She used to just want to turn the piano book pages but now she'll actually bang away on the keys for a couple of minutes like she's playing a song too.  She eventually loses interests so we set her on the ground with a basket of toys while we keep practicing ourselves.

I've actually kept my clarinet perched on top of the piano for the past three months too to motivate me to play it more often.  My clarinet had been sitting in its case for years when my mom asked me and Aaron to play a clarinet/piano duet this past Christmas.  So I dusted off my clarinet and was surprised to find I could still play moderately well.  Of course, I need to build up my embouchure muscles and lung capacity again but I made it through that song (barely).  I've kept my clarinet out ever since and will regularly pick it up to play a scale for Eleanor or attempt one of my old clarinet numbers.

It's been so nice have a house full of music again.  I get really happy when I can hear Aaron playing with Eleanor on the piano as I cook in the kitchen.

I also love that we have a go-to creative outlet now.  I think we all need to be creative every day in some way to feel fulfilled, so music has helped us achieve that recently.

It sure feels great putting all those years of lessons to use (thanks parents!).  And its a special treat to have the very same piano I played on for all those years.  The piano is definitely showing its age and needs a good tuning, but we want to wait to spruce it up till after our next move.  For now, we just blame any poor sounding piano playing on the fact that the piano is out of tune and not the fact that our own piano skills are in need of improving ;)

Now we just can't wait til our kids are older and are the ones making the music themselves.  Let the family talent shows begin!

Goals

My first and most important goal of the year is to birth a human and survive the experience.

Now grab a smoothie, pull up a chair and be prepared for a long list of other 2014 goals:

1. Take at least one family photo a month.

I was inspired by how many family photos my lovely friend Jessica had for 2013 and I'd love to be able to do the same for us.  One day I'd love to pay a photographer (like this one, this one, or this one) to photograph our family, but I still want to capture our moments as best we can on our own in the mean time.  I got a great tripod for Christmas as well as a wireless camera remote which will make this goal so much more realistic.

2. Read a good book 15 minutes every day.

When I was first pregnant, I read a wonderful book about motherhood that said "...no matter how busy you become as the mother of a newborn, make sure you read in a good book every day, even if it's just for a few minutes..." because if you want to raise your child to be a reader then "it turns out that the two crucial criteria for future readers are that they live in 'print-rich environments' (houses with lots of books) and that they see their caregivers read daily."  And I definitely want my baby girl to love reading. I like to read and I have gotten better at making it a priority but I think I need to commit to a time frame to make sure it happens.  Here are books that I want to read in 2014:

How Will You Measure Your Life? By Clayton Christensen
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Toian
Aquariums of Pyongyang by Chol-hwan Kang and Pierre Rigoulot

Do you have any suggestions?  I like all genres.

3. Read scriptures everyday for 15 minutes.

I think the best time for me to do this is while I eat breakfast, nighttime is just not happening for me.  I am going to leave my Book of Mormon, Bible and Ensign (church magazine) on the kitchen table to help make this possible. I want to have the scripture-marking, note-taking kind of scripture reading.  Not the finger-scrolling-on-the-iphone kind of scripture reading.

4. Shower and get ready each day.

Ha!  This may sound silly but I've heard a lot of young moms say that getting ready each day, even if you don't have plans to get out of the house, really helps them.  I feel like I should put a time frame on this (like by 10 am at the latest) but I have no idea what my schedule will be like with a baby.

5.  Strengthen my marriage and make Aaron a priority.

While there are tons of ways that one could do this and many of them are hard to quantify, here are some of my ideas:

-Trade off time to exercise (meaning I'll watch the baby in the morning while Aaron exercises and he watches the baby in the evening while I exercise).
-Make sure I kiss and hug Aaron just as much as I kiss and hug the baby.  Here are some good thoughts on that: Who gets the best kisses? and Are You a Better Wife or a Better Mom?
-Have a weekly date night.  This doesn't necessarily have to be without the baby I think but I'd love for Aaron and I to go out at least once a week and do a planned activity (get dinner, get gelato, go on a walk, see a movie, go on a drive and find our dream home, knock off an item on our bucket list, etc.)
-Pray together every day.
-Put my phone (and other technology) away at night when we go to bed.
-Pick up the house before Aaron gets home from work (another suggestion from young moms I know)

6. Buy quality.

This is difficult for me because I am all about being cheap, but when I buy something this year I want it to be an investment in a quality item.  I mean this for all areas: tools, furniture, clothes, food, etc.  This means that we will have to save more and buy less but we can do it.

7.  Review our monthly budget together every first Sunday.  We are pretty good about doing this now and I want to keep it up.  This helps me be less stressed about money and actually encourages me to spend money on things I need/want.  My go-to "money strategy" is to just be super cheap and spend as little money as possible but when I see that we have money designated for a certain category I am able to spend it better.  This helps me feel guilt free for instance when I buy a laundry basket at the store because we need it (so silly that I have this complex!).

8. Call friends/family on their birthdays.

I want to say that I will send everyone a card (or even better a present) but I'm taking baby steps and starting with calling first.  And having real conversations, not just text messages.   Why is it so difficult for me to make a phone call sometimes?

9. Be healthy.  Which probably means I shouldn't take as many photos like this next year...

My exercise ideas are vague because I don't know how my body will be and how my time will be with a baby but here are my plans:

-Go on a walk several times a week (or every day?) with the baby and stroller.
-Get a gym membership in March when I am past my 6 weeks post-baby mark and attend a gym class twice a week when Aaron gets home from work.  I went to the gym a lot at the start of last year and up until my half marathon and it did wonders for my happiness.  (So moms of the world: Is this too ambitious or not ambitious enough?? I have no idea!)
-Cook deliberately healthy, well-rounded meals (as in actually have sides, etc.) and eat lunch (the hardest meal of the day for me).

10. Improve my photography skills.

I want to:

-Take another photo class at our local community college
-Purchase photo editing software (Lightroom, PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements??? This is a great internal struggle for me) and learn how to use it fully!
-Practice taking photos in low light settings (the bane of my existence!).
-Print photos I take to frame and put in to Project Life albums.

11. Enjoy motherhood.

Again, hard to quantify this, but I want to be the kind of person who has a positive answer to the "How are things going?  How is it being a mom?" questions.  Granted, I also want to be real, but I think what you choose to dwell on and speak about largely determine your happiness.

And that's it.  Short, concise and easy to accomplish, right? Ha! I know my list should only be 3-5 things, but alas, I just have so much I want to improve on. Luckily, most of these goals are things I am already working on so it won't be a shock to my system trying to make a whole bunch of changes at once. Maybe I'll need to re-evaluate things in a couple weeks come baby time but this is what I've got so far.

Now I need to just print it out and stick it on the fridge :)

Wishing you the best 2014!

We are pretty excited for what 2014 has in store for our family.  Our lives will change in so many ways this January as we welcome a baby into our family (SO soon! due date is January 16th).

The year 2013 was good to us, with major life events throughout the year.  We started out last year with our secret New Year's wish to get pregnant and start our family, and we were blessed that it came true.  In 2013, we also saw Aaron graduate from BYU, me finish my first year of teaching, and us pack up all our things, saying goodbye to Provo and hello to California.  Aaron started his full time job at PwC in San Jose and we are now living in an apartment stuffed to the brim with baby gear. We have had a good time this 2013 and even though we have no idea what life will really be like with a new baby, we are totally excited for the adventure of 2014.

We hope you have a great first day of the year, get a chance to make some really lofty resolutions (I am always way too ambitious on January 1st ;)), and take time to enjoy some Martinelli's.

P.S. Since we didn't get any Christmas cards out this year, lets just count this, ya?  We took this picture last week, two days after Christmas, at Aaron's parents' house in Riverside.  I was 37 weeks pregnant (this picture really doesn't do my bigness justice) and praying I didn't go into labor before we got back up to San Jose.  We have since made it home and no sign of baby coming yet!

13.1 miles

After months of training, my friend Erin and I ran the Utah Valley Half Marathon on June 8th!  

The whole day was quite crazy--we woke up ridiculously early (3 am!), hopped on to a bus with a bunch of crazy other runner people, drove up the Provo Canyon, hung out in the dark until 6 am strolled around, heard the buzzer blare and then we were off running!

 ^^on the bus!^^

^^We found out the night before the race that Kaylie Sikahema was running the half too!  We got to hang out all morning pre-race and then started running together, but that girl is a quick one and pretty soon took off like a bullet.^^

The race started by Sundance up the Provo Canyon, winded down the Provo Canyon and along University Ave. until you reached the finish line at the Provo Tabernacle on Center Street.  Almost the entire race was downhill.

It was such a beautiful run through a town where I have so many memories.  The run made me nostalgic about my last 6 ish years of living in Provo and how I will miss everything come August when we move.

Although we trained well, Erin and I had both been nervous about the run with different body pains we had started to experience.   Despite any pain though we were able to run the whole thing without stopping and keep the pace we wanted.  My knees started hurting around mile 9, but just then the song "Sweet Caroline" came on Pandora and I chomped on an orange slice at the aid station and both of those boosts helped me keep going. 

^^Just before crossing the finish line...look at those end-of-race game faces^^

Our husbands (and Richard and Emily!) cheered us on all along the trail.  They were ready at every part to take our pictures.  I wish I had taken a picture of them because they really looked like the paparazzi   Such good husbands they are.

Erin and I crossed the finish line together and then chowed down on post-race snacks.

I think I did everything wrong in terms of taking care of your body after the race.  All I wanted was a hot shower and a long nap (I had been up since 3 am, after all) so I did both of those things.  I woke up really stiff and more tired than ever.  By the next day though I was really feeling good, all except for my left knee which may forever plague me.

The race was a great experience, but even more than that I was grateful for the chance to do it all with Erin.  I loved getting to train with her weekly and have the chance to bond in a new way before we move in August.  Thanks for pushing me to keep running Erin!

Brad in Spain!

My younger brother Brad is off enjoying himself on a study abroad in Spain.  While I am totally happy that he gets to have this experience, I am starting to get quite jealous that he is there and that I am here. He has been sending home these descriptive e-mails about his adventures and these beautiful pictures and it's all becoming quite cruel (in a not cruel at all way but still in a jealous older-sister-kind-of way).  

Can't we all just go to Spain and see these pretty lookout points and castles?

The LDS Temple in Spain!

 And maybe the most cruel picture of them all...

...gelato served as a flower!  To quote Brad in his last e-mail, "I know it's not like you can all drop everything and come to Europe but you really should.  Just for the gelato."

One day I will see you too, Spain!  And until then, have so much fun Brad and keep taking pictures so I can live through you!


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Aaron graduated from BYU!

Aaron graduated from BYU this Friday, April 26th, with his Masters of Accountancy!

I couldn't be prouder of him nor could all the family that flocked in to Provo to see the festivities. Mark, Susan and Annie came from Riverside, my parents came from Walnut Creek and Mimi and Papa drove up from St. George. It was fun to all be in the same place celebrating Aaron.

He definitely earned the degree with all the hard work and sweat (and foos ball playing) he put in to his classes.

Thursday was Commencement with Elder L.Tom Perry as the speaker.  He gave a great talk on work/life balance.

 ^^Aaron's "first friend" Dallin Trout happened to be graduating the same day in Neuroscience!^^

 ^^"Look I have wings!"^^

Following Commencement, we went out to dinner with the whole fam (and friends...Tarik even came!).  

Friday afternoon brought Aaron's graduation ceremony with the Marriott School of Management (and more pictures of course).

The incredible thing about this graduation was that Aaron was able to walk alongside some of his closest friends.

The BYU Accounting program has the ability of knitting its students together in a way that no other program does. From their first day in the program, they are placed in to a group that does all assignments, projects, presentations and test studying together.  Aaron spent all his time with this first group during his first semester of the Junior Core because they had SO much to do.  We were engaged during that first semester, so if I wanted to spend time with my dear, beloved fiance, I would just track him down in their library study room and do my (much easier) homework while they talked about numbers.  I became friends with his friends through this.

Throughout the program, they were placed in a variety of other groups and slowly but surely became a little Accounting family.  This made graduation especially sweet because Aaron knew his peers so well and I was also able to root them on from the stands.

Richard, being the most thoughtful guy that he is, got Aaron and Brad "Y" rings as a graduation present. 

 ^^The "foos ballers" of the MAcc. Picture stolen from James Embree off of Facebook...^^

^^And this cute couple (aka Richard and Emily) get married in two weeks!"

After the Friday graduation ceremony, we headed over to the Tanner Building (where Aaron has had all of his Accounting classes) for their mini post-graduation reception.  Aaron started telling a story that has meant a lot to us over the years.

Towards the middle-endish of our freshmen year of BYU, Aaron was feeling particularly stressed if he was measuring up.  He had wanted to get in to the Accounting Program so badly his whole life--his Grandpa, uncles, Dad at this point had already been through the Accounting Program--and was worried that he might not get in.  Now of course, he couldn't do anything about it at this point as he wouldn't even be able to apply to the program until after his 2 year mission, but nonetheless he felt like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.  Aaron borrowed his friend Erik Snow's car and we went on a drive.

Without meaning to, we ended up parked outside the end of the Tanner Building with our headlights pointing at the building.  Aaron let out all of his worries (and he openly admits now that yes he did cry) and then recommitted that he could do it.  That one day he would conquer that Tanner Building, make it in to the program and achieve his dreams.

Now, six years later, Aaron was standing in practically the same spot we had parked that night realizing that he had done it.  He not only got in to the program but really excelled.  He made it!

We ended Friday evening with a dinner at Grammy and Grandpa McKell's house.  We wanted to give back to everyone who helped us in our education by cooking a meal for everyone.  Because we had packed the day with activities though, our nice "give back" meal ended up being much later than anticipated (sorry fam!) but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

We had the traditional "graduation brigade" that had been following Aaron around for the past two days and then Matt and Sherri and some of their kids came along with Audrey, Patrick and their kids and Aaron's cousin David, his wife Natalie and their kids.  We really appreciate Grammy and Grandpa letting us pack their house in with all the loved ones.

Well, that's a wrap.  Moral of the story: He did it!!  And I'm sure proud of him. 

Just don't mention the CPA quite yet to this happy boy...

**Some of the pictures above are from my dad...thanks, Dad!