Hello Family and Friends!
It just occurred to me that it has been far too long since I have kept you up to date on what’s happening with Qeirstyn and Heather and me in general. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures for everything, but I do have plenty for you to look at. I’ll start with the beginning of the year with the move from Rexburg, ID to Sandy, UT.
Our move was pretty hectic so we didn’t have a lot of time for much of anything. We did check out a lot of restaurants when we first got here because we didn’t have any food in the fridge yet. There sure is a lot of good food to be had around here. There’s a really awesome IMAX movie theater here practically in our backyard that we’ve been meaning to get to, but just haven’t gotten around to finding a babysitter yet. The Wasatch Mountains are practically parked in our front yard and are a sight to behold. Heather and I want to go explore them really bad, but again, there hasn’t been time for either one of us. Right now, Heather is doing her internship at MyGym and Derek is doing his thing at OfficeMax (he left RadioShack for now). Between us, we’re just trying to make rent, utilities, and in the meantime, keep our sanity. We have driven around the city quite a bit and we’re starting to get used to it. We still think the drivers in the area are insane. We’re having a hard time adjusting, so we’re looking forward to getting back to Rexburg hopefully this mid-March if all goes well.
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| Qeirstyn’s First Christmas and Packing |
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| View From Apartment in Sandy |
Qeirstyn is growing really well, and she’s starting to outgrow a lot of her clothes. We’ve been waiting for this moment so that she could finally fit into Heather’s home-made jacket. She’s been a lot of fun for both of us recently with her smiles. She always seems to cheer us up when we’re having a bad day. She can still be a pain in the rear when she wants to be.
She has been eating solid foods and liking them or hating them depending on the flavor. We caught a funny picture of her hating one such flavor. But, after dinner, she always gets her bath and she always enjoys it.
Qeirstyn has been developing great. We’ve been taking her to MyGym and Mom has been teaching her all kinds of things in the gym. She also gets to play around with other children and she really enjoys socializing with other people. She’s starting to have a standing preference where she’ll cry until you help her stand up. We have a blue walking/sitting hippo and she likes to play with that as well. She still hasn’t gotten the crawling down yet, but she really kicks like she wants to when she’s on her belly. We practice everyday so hopefully soon it’ll just click for her. Heather and I are also trying to get her to learn sign language, so we bought her a “Baby Einstein: My First Signs” video to watch. She watches it every morning and she loves it. She giggles at the little sock puppets they have on it.
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| Cute Qeirstyn in Mom’s Hand-Made Coat |
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| Dinner and a Bath |
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| Qeirstyn at MyGym |
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| Qeirstyn Walking with Hippo Toy |
I also wanted to share this video of Qeirstyn spazzing out while watching TV upside-down. She always seems to do this when viewing anything upside down, even us. I always get a kick out of it, and apparently, so does she!
We finally did find the time to make a trip up into the Wasatch Mountains because we heard about a really nice shopping outlet in Park City called Tanger Outlets. So, we bought Qeirstyn a dress there and took some pictures of the scenery and buildings. I’ve never seen a 3 car lane highway shooting through the mountains before! It was pretty neat, but nothing like the hills around Montana or Idaho. Right before we were going to head out, we were hit with a snowstorm and had to make our way out very carefully. Once we were back in Sandy, the snow started to settle down. I guess Park City gets snow just about every day. It looked like it too with all of the mounds of snow in the parking lots.
The next day, it was gorgeous outside, so we went to Temple Square to get some pictures of Qeirstyn in her new dress. She was really having a good time there being pushed around in her stroller and posing for the camera. I also threw in some other pictures I took of the temple as well trying to capture the scenery.
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| Visit to Park City, UT |
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| Qeirstyn at Temple Square |
Another very exciting thing is that Qeirstyn now has two (2) bottom front teeth! We’re pretty excited about it. It took a while for them to cut through, and Qeirstyn was really, really fussy for the couple of weeks that it was happening. We tried our best to give her medicine, but she hated that too. So, it was really just a bad experience for her (and us), but she made it! The first tooth came in on a Saturday and then the other tooth showed up very quickly after that in only about a week and a half.
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| Showing Off Toofie |
It has been snowing quite a bit down here in Sandy. One morning we woke up to about 15 inches of snow on the ground and then a couple of weeks later, we were caught in yet another snowstorm, so we took advantage of it with Qeirstyn and had some fun in the snow.
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| Qeirstyn in the Snow |
Now, it’s another nice day outside, so Qeirstyn and Dad might go take a walk outside while Mom is at work. It’s been hard with both of us working because we only get to see each other for about an hour a day. Oh well, it will be over soon and we’ll be able to look back on the experience and say that we were happy to have done it.
As always, we hope things are going well with everybody and that you’ve enjoyed the pictures and stories to go along with them. Until next time (which I promise won’t be long again)…
Love always,
Derek, Heather, and Qeirstyn Hildreth
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