Ameilya

Ameilya is getting so big. I can hardly believe that my once little baby has learned so much and grown so much. She's looking more and more like a kid everyday and less like a baby. Kind of bitter sweet. I'm so happy she's growing and doing well but I really wish she could stay little for just a little while longer! We love her so much, she is such a joy.

A little about Ameilya lately:

She is soooo happy, almost all the time

rarely cries

takes good naps and sleeps through the night

loves to play

loves to read, we read 10-15 books together every day because she brings me books all the time, I'm not one to say "no" to reading her as many books as she wants at this age!

she is learning to talk quite well. some of her favorite words: yeah!, yes!, rock (as in rock a bye baby), walk, eggs, cheese, hot (whenever I tell her not to touch something she says this ;)  ), and lots of others

you can ask her yes or no questions and she will answer "yeah!" if she wants whatever you're trying to give her. and most of the time she really does want what you are giving her. 

I don't know how much she weighs but she is sure getting heavy, she's probably close to 24 or 25 pounds by now. 

She's pretty tall, I really should measure her 

She has outgrown all her 12 month size clothes and a lot of her 18 month size pants are getting too short. This baby has looooong legs

She loves playing with Daddy

She is Mommy's little shadow, we do everything together and I absolutely love that :)

She is so busy but has a little cuddly streak where she will bring me a teddy bear and want me to rock her for just half a minute or so and then she's back to being busy and playing. (this is how she learned to say the word "rock" so well)

Here are some fun pictures of Ameilya that a friend of mine took when we were at the park the other day. All the pics turned out great, Melinda is so awesome at taking cute pics!

BIG news for this family!!

We have some exciting news we have been keeping a secret! Our family is making a big change over the next couple years. We have prayed and fasted about it tons and feel really good about it.
Here it is: Tyler has joined the US Navy as an officer in the Civil Engineering Corps!!!
Here's the scoop:
Last summer Tyler got a message from a guy on Linked In who was looking for civil engineers who wanted to apply to be in the Navy's Civil Engineering Corps as officers. He had applied for this twice before, once with the Air Force and the other with the Navy, and we felt like it would be at least worth applying for again. He wasn't looking for a new job, in fact we were quite happy with the job he had with Captive Aire. We got his application in and started waiting. And waiting. And waiting. We waited for about four months for the selection committee that met in October to make their decision and tell us about it. We were supposed to know by mid November. Come the beginning of December we finally found out that he had been selected and that he was going to be offered the position but we had to wait a little longer for big Navy to approve the amount of officers that had been selected. So again we waited. Finally, on December 15, 2014, Tyler was sworn in to the Navy.
He will be doing what's called a delayed entry program. The Navy is paying him to finish his masters degree first and then he will start all the training and everything. Here is our timeline: Tyler has 3 semesters left of his masters degree, that puts him graduating in May 2016. After that there will be a break of a little over a month and he will ship off to Officer Candidate School (OCS) which is the same thing as basic training for officers. OCS is 12 weeks long. After OCS there will be another short break while we pack up and get ready to move. That puts us staying in Boise area for almost two years. We will be in California for six months for him to complete some specialized training that is specific to what he will be doing in the Civil Engineering Corps (CEC). After that we will start our first tour, which will likely be with the Seabees, which is the Naval construction crew.
We feel like our lives have been completely turned upside down. But we have fasted and prayed and know that for some reason that this is what The Lord wants us to be doing.
The changes that have happened: Tyler started school again full time, he is working part time for Captive Aire (where he has been working the past two and a half years), and we are starting the process of selling our house. He is also working 10 hours a week for the Idaho Design Lab (IDL) at the University of Idaho.
It has all happened so fast, even though we waited for months, once he was selected everything just picked up from there.
We are so excited for this new chapter in our lives and all that it will bring. We already feel like we are being blessed for following what we feel God wants us to do. We know that it's going to be really hard sometimes, but we are going to stay positive and look forward to this new adventure for our family!

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Christmas Stuff :)

We had a really nice Christmas. We stayed home this year, boy was it nice to not travel. It was such a relaxing few days away from all the work we normally have to do around here.

We got dumped on at the beginning of  November and then it all melted and we didn't get any snow until the day before Christmas.

Tyler working on getting the lights on the Christmas tree, Ameilya "helping" ;)

Ameilya in the shopping cart at Walmart getting ready to sit on Santa's lap.

Ameilya didn't like Santa very much, she's not super fond of white hair or facial hair ;)

Santa was good to us this year and brought us presents :)

Tyler's stash from Santa

Ameilya's stash from Santa

Rylee's stash from Santa

Christmas decor on the piano :)

Our Christmas tree, with all the ornaments high enough so that little toddler fingers can't reach them ;) Such a fashion statement, I know!

Christmas mantle

 We have a fun tradition of hanging all the Christmas cards we receive on the back of the front door so we can see them often :)

Christmas morning, Rylee opening up her big gift from Tyler

Tyler got me a new computerized sewing machine, just what I wanted! :)

Santa brought Ameilya a "Santa Bear" talking book and bear, she loves them!

Wonderful Christmas messes :)

Trying to help a sweet baby open her presents ;) better luck next year as she wasn't really interested in ripping the paper off to see what was underneath!

Ameilya all dressed up and ready to go play in the snow for the first time :) She didn't really like the snow, just stood there confused and kinda sad looking until Tyler picked her up, then she just wanted to snuggle and be held so we went inside :)

Tyler's work on our car

Tyler has been working on rebuilding the engine in our Plymouth Neon these past few weeks. It has been slow going since he works full time and had his final for the master's class he took this semester but he is making good progress. His boss gave him the next couple days off so hopefully he will be able to spend a lot of time getting stuff done on the car so we can go back to having two cars. Here are a couple pics :)

I believe this is showing the cylinder head

Here is the cylinder head removed from the vehicle

Good work Tyler!

Family Pictures

We had our family pics taken at JC Penny as well this year and here are the best ones we got!

Ameilya's 12 Month Photo Shoot ;)

We took Ameilya to JC Penny Portraits for her 12 month pictures. They turned out great! We have been very happy with them the last few times we have gone. We always seem to get great pictures at a fair price.
Here are our faves from her 12 month pics :) We also got family pictures taken, I will post more pics after I send out our Christmas cards