So this is a pretty exciting week for Eric! He started his new job as a Mortgage Broker yesterday and he seems to like it so far.  We still aren't sure if he will stay at this job or take this as a temporary position, though.  He has some other companies calling and wanting to interview him in the next couple weeks so if he finds a position that he'd like better than we may pursue that.  For now we are just so blessed and thankful to God for finding Eric a great job that will pay the bills and keep us comfortable.

Cannen is getting more and more squirmy and learning more everyday!  He's got such a little personality.  He's reaching for toys more and he'll get mad if you take one away from him.  Eric and I can both be extremely stubborn (we're working on it...) so we knew we'd have a little spitfire for a kid. He'll whine a little and he can get a little attitude with us but I swear, knock on wood, the child NEVER CRIES.  Like, ever.  It's baffling to us as we sometimes try to think of the last time Cannen cried and we just can't.  He's SO happy 99% of everyday which makes us so happy! We must be doing a pretty decent job at this parenting stuff! He LOVES his crib which is awesome because we put him down for bed or a nap and he just lays there and goes to bed! Sometimes he'll wake up from a nap and just lay in bed for over an hour, quietly, just playing with his blanket or looking around, waiting for someone to come pick him up.  He has slept through the night since he was 7 weeks old and so I think he must get his love for sleeping from me.  He talks (i.e. makes crazy terodactyl noises) a lot but they are awesome and we love hearing his little voice through the monitor, waking us up in the morning.  He's more and more fun everyday because he's learning to interact with us and it's just the cutest.  I don't mean to brag but I think I have the perfect child-- as every mother does.

I can't help but feel like I'm living a dream life sometimes.  All I've always really wanted is a loving husband who puts God and our family first and a home that is just simply full of love all the time.  I've always wanted a husband who will protect us and provide for us and make the Lord the center of our family.  A husband who shows me and tells me everyday how much he loves me and our family-- and Eric is all those things.  He blows me away sometimes.  Before Eric leaves in the morning he kisses me and tells me something sweet, and when he walks in the door after a long day, the first thing he does is find me and kiss me and he somehow still has energy to help me with Cannen.  I love that after almost a year and a half of marriage and an 8 month deployment abroad, we still act like newlyweds and are crazy about eachother! This past Thursday, Valentines Day, I really just focused the whole day on Eric and how important love is in our every day life.  

I've always wanted to be a stay at home mom and I'm so blessed to be able to do that too.  To each his own but I feel SO excited every day that I get to wake up and just spend the day tending to the house and taking care of my son.  To me, there is nothing more important and I'm so blessed that I never miss a moment of Cannens life.  

Our home is truly SO full of love and laughter all the time.  It just makes me so happy.

smash scripture

I was reading a post online the other day and the woman was talking about how she reads her son a book of nursery rhymes every night.  Inevitably, soon her son knew all the words to each of the nursery rhymes just simply by her repeatedly reading them to him every night.  She then came up with an idea.  Cannen also has a ton of books and he already loves when we read to him.  We will always read him his nursery rhymes and Dr. Suess, etc. but I'd rather him be memorizing something more meaningful. Ya know, instead of singing him to sleep with a nursery rhyme about falling out of a tree in his cradle...  (...... I mean, really?)

This got me thinking.

And then I packed Cannen up, put us in the car, and went to Michaels. I bought a smash book, some markers, some index cards, and some stickers, and got to work.


A day and a half later, I've <almost> finished Cannen's first (made by mommy) smash book of scripture! (and hopefully it will last long enough to be passed down to each of our children.)

Here's a little peak at how it's turning out

(Note: it's supposed to look fun-ish, artsy-ish, and homemade... I'm not a professional printing press over here)

I'll post more pictures as I keep going.  There are a ton of pages to fill so I'm trying to find all the very best verses but the bible is really just full of so much good stuff-- it's hard to narrow it down!
I pray that one day Cannen will find it to be sOooOOoo cool that his mama made him a book that he'll want to read it all the time, and consequently, memorize some of the most important words he'll ever read.

Here's one for us parents (or soon-to-be... or not-so-soon-to-be... parents):
"Train a child in the way he should go, in the way of the Lord, 
and even when he grows up, he will not turn away from it."    -Proverbs 22:6

lately

We had a really fun weekend!
Lately Eric has been taking me on lots of dates and it's been great!  We've always committed to having one fancy date night a week to spend time together and lately we've been trying a bunch of new restaurants and we've been having a lot of fun.
Friday night we went on a double date with our friends Daniel and Aimee to The Hill Cafe (HIGHLY recommend. So good.) , and Saturday night we went out with Des and Tony to Burger Bach (also awesome.  They have a cool, rare draft beer selection).  We are so thankful for our friends.  JUST when we feel like boring old people with a baby, our awesome friends come along and take us out and love on us. We are so blessed to constantly have good friends texting and calling us wanting to hang out, and they especially love when we bring Cannen along so it's really a win-win!

Sunday we went to our Pastors house for a super fun SuperBowl party!  Brandon and Katie have a beautiful home and we had so much fun meeting more new, young couples and watching the game! I made little individual 7-layer dips which came out really nicely!  I saw the recipe on Pinterest so the fact that they actually came out successfully shocked me a little!  My parents offered to watch Cannen for the game so that was super nice.  We are so grateful that my parents live so close to us.

Big event of the weekend:  Cannen rolled over!!! (I totally missed it though... Eric saw it and swears he did it all by himself!)
If you've spoken to us, we'll be the first to tell you that we were not encouraging this, haha! I knew as soon as Cannen rolled over that would mean that we would have to start watching him that much closer.  It's been relatively easy until now because I could lay Cannen down somewhere and know that he'd just stay there!  It's really exciting that our little man is growing up though and learning new little tricks.  He's perfect.
We've also started giving him a sippy cup and feeding him baby food! He's doing great with the baby food and we're just feeding him twice a day.  He still nurses from me and thats where his main nutrition comes from.  (I'm still the biggest advocate for breastfeeding and it really is the BEST thing you can do for your baby. It's the best decision I've made for Cannen yet.)  He's SO funny with his sippy cup because we just put a little water in it and he has really been trying so hard to figure out how to work it and get the water out... hes surprisingly really good at it though!  We have such a smart baby!

BabyBoy actually just woke up from his nap and I hear him squeaking and talking to himself in his room... I love his little noises.  I'll never get enough.