Christmas came and went this year. It seems like it came faster than normal, but i think that is what happens when you have children. Olivia had fun. She got TOO many things. My sister Brooke came to visit this year with her family. That was fun. Olivia's hair is now long enough that we put it in pig tails, but as you can see, she was having a melt down and ripped them out.

Her upset look.... she was READY for bed!

and after all her toys, she still wanted to play with the place mats in the office.

Smile on command. (it took a while to learn this one)

Daddy trying to make her laugh.

I made sugar cookies this year....TOO MUCH WORK!!! i think i will stick to other goodies.

they sure were good though. fluffy, soft and cream cheese frosting.


All in all it was a good year. i am excited for the new year to start though. i feel like there were too many things going wrong this year. Ben and i had our talk last night ( we have weekly companionship inventory) and we set our 2011 goals. i am pretty stoked about them. one of my goals is to ready a non church non baby book every 3 months. 4 total for the year. First on the list is Mitt Romney's No Apologies. I am going to be looking around for the next ones. any suggestions??

colors

We have been working on changing our house around for the last few months. yesterday we painted half of our cupboards...we have to work in stages with Olivia...now that she is walking...(YEAH!!) but as you can see, they look WONDERFUL compaired to the ugly color they were...we are just trying to decide what color to pain the kitchen...any suggestions?

Did i say busy???

This would be Olivia trying to feed herself. She usually gets beside herself and starts rubbing it in her hair!

Her 12month check up...the dr said she is VERY healthy. She is 31inches, 22 lbs, and in the 75th% for both!

She was VERY over me taking her picture. We have been trying to teach her to feed herself.

This would be Ben and the Mover moving our new piano up our stairs...and Aaron watching.


We got a new piano. This is my christmas present from Ben. We got it early, because we found a REALLY good deal on craistlist that we couldn't pass up. The new piano becoming Olivia's playstation... She loved playing with that roll of film. I found it in our luggage. It was left over from Ben's mission...hahaha.... not used....so she loves chewing on it and throwing it around the house.

We painted....Neverminds the mess. Olivia will find any pile of clean clothing and make sure she throws every piece on the floor.

I love our living room now. I love this color. it makes a WORLD of a difference.

Our new "ride". As from the last post, we have been very busy. We had Olivia's First Birthday, Ben's Birthday, Halloween, My car accident, our wedding anniversary, and looking for a new car all in about 3 weeks time. This is what we found. IT IS WONDERFUL!!!!! it is a 2007 Jeep Commander. Leather, 4x4, Hemi engine, Navigation, DVD system, power everything, back up camera, sun roofs...yes i said sun roofs. there is one at the front of the car, just like others that opens, and there are 2 smaller ones in the back seat. they don't open but they do make the backseat a lot roomier.... there is even a 3rd row seat as well. it is a great car for us right now. we love it and it is the nicest car we have ever had. i love the auto start on the key chain. now the car is heated up by the time i get in it and they have heated seats too!!! needless to say, we have been busy this last month and are DEFINATELY looking forward to the holidays...

Busy Busy...

This happened on Monday on the way to the Gym.... we are ok...but the car is a total loss. That is why we have been looking for a new car.
Olivia getting ready for church. she is playing with my hair clips already.

She LOVED the cake!!

She is good at hugs.

My little girl turned one this month!! she is getting so big. not walking just yet, but standing up and thinking about it.

She is so much fun at work. she loves hanging on me.

at the pumpkin patch....daddy thought this would be a good pic...and it was!

just hanging out in the stroller at the patch.

Our latest family pic. we have been meaning to get to the studio...but ben has been gone in fresno for the last 4 weeks. he is finally home and it is nice. this month for sure! We have been on the hunt for a car. we didn't even have time to celebrate our anniversary. we have been married for 3 years now! It is great to share everything with my best friend, lover and husband! i love you benjamin!

Halloween and the BIG 1!

This is a busy time of year for us!!! Pictures to come!

11months

My my, she is sure getting big. Can you believe she is almost 1 year old??!!?!?!

follow up and a little upset......

Well we went the fish hatchery again on thursday. I forgot my camera, but i found these and this about sums it up. I don't know how i was imagining it, but i sure didn't imagine it like this!! They cut the female fish open, scoop out her eggs into this black tub, and then take the male fish and squeeze out their sperm and throw them in a bucket....it was pretty gross, but i guess they were doing it to "save" the fish.... i just was a little upset. i wasn't NOT expecting this!! It was fun to see it all happening though. We can't go to the Salmon Festival this year, but for sure next year!

date night

Ben and i went on a date to the Feather River Fish Hatchery. It was really neat. All the Salmon and Steelhead fish were just JUMPING out of the water. I have never seen anything like this before. We then went to Tong Fong Lo's for dinner. Ben's parents babysat. it was nice to get away for a night!

the Blanket

She now cuddles with the blanket next to her head. as she takes her nap, she is on her stomach and crazy hair when she wakes up...but boy is she happy when she wakes.

10 Months...

At 10 Months, she is doing pleanty.....

Pulling herself up and walking...holding on to anything.

saying baba, dada, mama, papa, we are working on lala

she has officially forgotten about the pacifyer.

her hair fits into a clip. I love this one.

she crawls like crazy!

Eats just about anything. i even made a lasagna and put her portion on the ninja with some water and she ate that.

she sleeps through the night and takes her 2 naps a day, but she has been doing this for a while.

and she has 2 teeth.

she is GREAT and we LOVE HER!!

Our DVD player died. we gave her the remote since she wanted the other ones that worked.

she is teething. This is what i come into in the mornings. plus the snot running down her face.

bed time. She loves it when daddy puts her to sleep with a song. Church hymn of course.

She loves bananas. I asked ben to cut some up for her. he gave her the whole banana. but she ate it...

Getting ready for church. She is such a lady.

She LOVES these sunglasses.

I would just like to say how much i love my husband. He called in sick to work yesterday so that i could just sleep and get better..... thank you!!! and i love you!

utah-idaho

Monday -Monday 8/2-8/9 we went to utah and idaho. it was really fun. it had been too long since i had been there. I got to visit with my really good friend Beth. i love her and miss her so much. then we hung out with Bens family for a day, then went to the SL temple. ben had never been, so we did a session, went the the Lion House Pantry for lunch, and walked around a little bit. That night, we got to visit our friends Kevin and Emma Cherry. It was nice to see them. We then headed up to Farmington to see some of my mission budies. that was a highlight...it had been 5 years since we had all seen eachother.

thursday we headed up to pick up my mom and molly and we all drove up to idaho where brooke got married. it was awesome. her husband, Tyler, is great. we were up there for 3 days. first time i had been to idaho. very remote and full of fields. peaceful. my whole family was there is it was really fun! this is the first time all 5 Cavaness kids have been together since my wedding. we didn't really get a chance to all hang out there either, so sat night was really fun. we all just talked and joked around.

we came back on sunday and oliva had a pretty rough week. i think i was probably the lack of schedule that we had out there, since i am pretty strict with our schedule here. but all in all we had fun. cant wait to go again.

Olivia loved being thrown into Aunt Lanell's Love sak.
A. Lanell took her swimming while ben and i went to the temple. i guess she had fun while pooping all over the deck. ;)

GOING PRIVATE!

HAHAHAHA just kidding...i think it is so funny when people say they are going private and then dont.....i don't really care who looks at my blog. I actually put a counter on here to see if anyone other than myself was actually looking at this thing! and suprisingly there are! so for all you out there who are blog lookers and aren't very good at making comments (like me)..
YOU ARE BEING COUNTED!! ;)

4th of July

puckering up for a kiss! she even makes the smacking noise!

Ben loves taking her swimming.

I saw a post today on FB that said ....do we celebrate the 25th of December, the 17th of March, the 31 of October, or the 14 of Feb.? no it is INDEPENDANCE DAY!!!....i thought it was stupid! so what, it is independance day.... it is also the 4th of july. does it really matter what we call it as long as we understand what we are celebrating?? no! at least not to me!

I don't really like it when holidays are on Sundays. Today, we didn't really do anything. we went to church and came home. although, olivia looked pretty darn cute in her new dress...thank aunt Lanell. Ben and i dressed patriotic today as well. it was fun to sing all the USA songs in church. we had to leave early. Olivia was NOT happy in Sunday school. it didn't help that is was during her nap. so we came home and ate lunch. on the way home, this looser backed into our car. i guess he didn't know the difference between reverse and forward. we got all his insurance stuff though. i have to call tomorrow. Then after lunch Olivia took another nap. 30 min into it, she cried...those first teeth still haven't come through....and when i went to get her, i picked her up and rocked in the recliner in her room, she fell asleep on me. so i just layed there and enjoyed it for about an hour. then i had to wake her up so she would sleep tonight. I sure do love her though. i give her kisses everyday and she is catching on. she is starting to pucker up for them. she is also rocking. any day now, she will crawl..i can't wait!
I just can't get enough of that girl! 8 months and getting bigger by the day.

Fort Bragg

This last week we went to Fort Bragg. It was really fun...other than the cold weather and everyone getting deathly ill!! Ben's family all got together and we went camping. Ben, Olivia and I stayed in a Hotel. I thought she was just a little too young to camp out. Although, i am sure that the air matresses were more comfortable than our cheap motel beds.

This was our last day..wed. the sun finally came out and I felt like we could actually go to the beach. Olivia did pretty well. She had to sleep in the moby...thank heavens we took it.
Ben on the first night. it was COLD... we didn't really have much of a fire either. the wood we brought was still a little green. the last night, we buckled down and bought wood...talk about costing an arm and a leg. but we were all much happier once we were warm.

For one reason or another, everyone got sick. out of all of us, Ben, me, Olivia, Lanell, and Lila were the only ones who didn't get sick. So maybe next year. we are talking maybe Bear Lake...that would be fun!

Olivia at the beach. she is just so cute!!


at the end of the last day...she was so tired, she actually fell asleep in Lanell's arms and then stayed asleep until we woke her up for her shower....yeah... the crappy hotel didn't have a bathtub, so we had to give her showers everynight. which means we had to take them with her.