The Best of Both Worlds

Why I love my days at home

All you have to do is watch the video to understand why I love my days at home.

I can honestly say that I cherish every moment with my little girl. It's never far from my mind what a miracle having a baby is. I've learned that every play time is a moment to teach her something new. Every fussy time is a chance to show her I'm here. Every content mood is an opportunity to teach her that quite time is good. Maybe it's the idea that she might be our one and only child, but I try to hang on to every milestone. She is already growing too big, too fast! This past week we put away her bassinet, baby bath tub, and baby carrier.

Why I love my days at work

These past few weeks at work our Marketing Department has encouraged employees to promote our "Take us on vacation with you" VISA push. Remember that if you use your HeritageWest VISA rewards card between now and the end of September you earn double points!

All employees were allowed to wear flip-flops and shorts on Fridays (which didn't include myself because I don't work Fridays) and wear "vacation" attire all week this week. Each department was also given $15 to decorate their area as some kind of vacation destination and the department with the most votes gets a free breakfast. Well, if you keep up on my blog you know how extreme the credit union gets for it's employee Halloween contest. So some department's really went all out. My department (Kathy and I) went with a camping/fishing theme.

The IS department decided to have a "BBQ" with hot dogs, root beer, and home made ice cream, yumm! Is it really that difficult to see why I love working there? Especially when they are okay with letting me work a day and 1/2 each week!

Photos, and Parade, and Fireworks. Oh my!

I'm so excited about our newest family pictures. One of my co-workers Sheri does some free lance photography and she took some for us a couple of years ago with Tessy. Now that Andrea is old enough to hold her head up and smile, I was anxious to update our photo above the mantle. Sheri lives on a farm and it was great located to get some pretty scenery. I recruited my friend Kristi along to help get Tessy and Andrea to look in the right direction. It was quite the adventure! Andrea was well-behaved, but a little overwhelmed, so she didn't smile on cue too often. Tessy was so excited about new smells that Ryan and I had to force her to be a part of the family. So here are some of my favorites, although I have about 30 favorites. Of course these are the raw pictures, they have not been touched up yet.

Andrea attended her first parade on the 4th. A few years ago the city changed the parade route and now it comes right down my parents street. Andrea was a little scared by the first police motorcycles, then she got hungry, then fell asleep, then quietly watched the rest of the parade. What a good girl! I had bought her a "Daddy's little firecracker" shirt about a month ago, before I realized that she would be wearing 18 month clothes at 5 months old. I still managed to squeeze her into the shirt because, after all, she'll only wear it the one day.Ryan's parents were babysitting Andrea when the big fireworks started. We were hoping to watch them with her on their porch but I guess Tooele city doesn't know how to tell time and started 10 minutes early. When we got there she was sleeping anyway. We found out she had another one of her "stomach situations". It seems like once a week Andrea has a 10-minute session of screaming while releasing a lot of gas, the poor girl. Ryan's parents have been so patient and have learned to deal with it well, just like we have. It still makes me feel bad as a mother that I wasn't there to rock her and sooth her. I'm looking forward to next year when she'll be old enough to enjoy a little more on the 4th of July.