Its my last week as a college student!!

Wow. It hasn't been a breeze, but I've sure enjoyed my time as a student of Brigham Young University! I had plenty of time to reflect on my college experience as I slaved through my Statisitics final for no less than two hours. I have loved being a student, but I'm thrilled to get to be a full-time mom! Wahoo!

Here are some of the Joshua achievements of late:

I love how he gets up onto his knees and rocks back and forth. Its adorable!

Thank-you mom for his new Easter outfit!
Joshua has discovered that he is able to scoot a little easier on the kitchen floor. It is now a banned area for him.

We've noticed that he has become possessive of his xylophone. I guess when we return this toy to the Gibbons family that we will have to buy him his own.

Is it too early to start lifting weights? Joshua found my 5-lb weights and insists on dragging them across the floor.

He does his best to get into everything. Somehow, even though he doesn't know what buttons are, he can crawl right up to the computer and know exactly where the button is that will turn it off!
He enjoys blowing raspberries, even will a mouthful of food.

He LOVES chasing balls! He's getting good at it too! In the last two pictures, you can see that we have tried just about every line of defence. In the kitchen, we put our chairs across the entry. For our shoe container by the door, we have a blanket over the top. All of our doors are closed in the room and there is a large blanket that covers that cords and the computer. He's too smart!

Easter Party

To celebrate Easter, we thought it would be fun to have our Utah neices and nephews over to hunt for easter eggs. Having felt like I had cleverly hidden each of the 40 eggs, I was slightly disappointed when the hunt didn't require more than about 3 minutes. I'm glad to know that we have smart neices and nephews.

After the hunt, Steve and I hosted the Mosbackers and the Gibbons families for Easter Egg Special, a special Easter dinner that the Monson family has as a tradition. Besides Lia and Quinn, it seems that everyone enjoyed it.

Mikayla even had 3 helpings!

Joshua and little Nathan got to know each other.
And we had a good time sitting and talking!

On Easter morning, we were surprised to see snow outside! Come on spring!!

I was entertained to see how well my little easter egg decorations collected all of the snow.

We want you to know that we are truly grateful for the Savior. We each have a testimony that the Savior lived perfectly and that he suffered for every sin before dying on the cross. We also have a testimony that he rose from the grave and has overcome death. We are grateful for the sacrifice that He made for us that will allow us to return to our Heavenly Father.

Happy Easter!

Friends Come to Play

A few weeks ago, little Kaitlyn came to play while Steve helped her parents move. She was only here for a couple of hours, but by the time she left, Joshua had begun to notice that she could get to his toys faster than he could. I'm certain that it annoyed him and within 3 or 4 days, he had figured out that scooting forward had its advantages. Joshua is now very mobile, although it kind of looks like watching someone walk with a limp. Its SO cute though! Keeping him out of the shoes and away from the cords has been an added challenge, but we are happy to see him learning and growing!

Speaking of growing: Joshua has graduated to a new carseat. It is still rear-facing, but he now sits upright. It has increased a few of our challenges, particularly when we are trying to get him to sleep during church. The solution: there isn't one. He doesn't sleep during church anymore.

I've been very proud of my accomplishments during March. First off (this might have been at the end of February, but I can't remember) I finished my Christmas stocking. Just so none of you view me as an underachiever, no, I never planned on having it done for Christmastime. Here are some of the pictures. I'm rather proud of it!

Secondly, I finished my Independent Study English 314 class. It was notably harder than anyone I've talked to who have taken the class as an actual class at BYU. I struggled to finish it in time (especially when I found out that I had 3 fewer weeks than I was expecting) but it is over and I am very glad to have it over with.

Finally, Steve and I were able to compete together in the BYU National Dancesport in Dance 380 (Social Dance). The competition was Mambo and we had a blast competing together. We came away in the top 10 of over 60 couples. It was really fun to be able to compete with my sweetie!

I turned 23 in March as well. I had a wonderful birthday, first surprised with presents from Steve (a beautiful necklace and a darling headband with a bow on it) and then chocolate from various friends and family. At the end of the day, I had my dress rehearsal for my orchestra class, I went to the remainder of my dance class and then we went home. Matt cooked delicious hamburgers for my birthday dinner and we finished the evening with Stargate SG 1. I have been tremendously blessed in my life! I have a tremendous husband whom I love and who loves me very much. I have a sweet little baby boy and I am currently so close to attaining a degree from a very good university. I love the Lord and I love who I am!

I hope you all had a wonderful March!

Valentine's Day

I surprised him with cake, he surprised me with an adorable hedgehog that makes kissy noises.

Matching Bracelets

We decided to get matching bracelets this week. What do you think about the pink?

Who does that?...you might be asking yourself. Well, anyone who has to get in and out of the hospital.

Yep, the hospital. Its been a long week.

Sunday and Monday were spent with Steve and I both sick with the flu. Steve got out of actually throwing up, but I didn't. In the meantime, Joshua came down with a fever, but really didn't seem that affected except for a bit of a cough.

When his fever didn't break, we took him in to the doctor to find out that he had RSV Bronchiolitis and an earache. For being so sick, he sure was pleasant!

Wednesday night, he was not getting enough oxygen to his blood for our doctor to feel comfortable with sending us home and we landed in the hospital. After some bloodwork, an IV and getting his airways suctioned out, Steve stayed in the hospital while I went home to sleep before a big test that had to be rescheduled because of my having had the flu.

I got back to the hospital to find that neither Josh nor Steve had really slept. Steve had finally decided to wrap Joshua up so that he would stop chewing on his IV.

We thought his hospital gown was ADORABLE, but kind of sad at the same time.
He HATED having all of the attachments required for monitoring his oxygen and his heartrate. After about 12 hours of being monitored, they felt comfortable in sending us home.

LOVE this kid!
We have had more doctors appointments than I would ever imagine and we have to go to the hospital twice a day to have him suctioned out. It seems like today he is finally coming out of this a little bit and he is just happy! After we had originally been released, it was still terrifying to put him down to sleep and have him out of our sight because we wanted to make sure we could take care of him if he suddenly started getting worse. We're grateful that he is doing better and are so happy to have him as a part of our family!

First time swinger

Also in Vegas, we found a nice chapel and attended church with one of the wards. Afterwards, we found this beautiful park and let Joshua swing for the first time. He LOVED it!

(Oh, and we can sometimes get him to wear shoes!)

Las Vegas....again....

Okay, so it took WAY too much time to try and get these in order, so here they are. On Thursday night (February the 11th) we decided that we both really wanted to go out of town for our 3-day weekend. Because we didn't want to spend the whole time driving, we decided that our best bet was to go to Las Vegas. SO, on Friday, we headed out! It was really fun to be so spontaneous. Our listening book of choice was Fablehaven II. We left Friday and got back Sunday night. We spent a little time in our room just reading and watching Olympics. We also enjoyed the buffet while we were there.

We had a bit of a scare from Joshua though. About 20 minutes into our trip, he decided to have an allergic reaction to sweet potatoes. He had an interesting rash around his mouth and down onto his chest. After calling mom and the doctor, we gave him allergy medicine and listened to his breathing the entire way down to Nevada. Luckily, nothing else happened and he is doing great now. No more sweet potatoes for Joshua.

Down there, instead of spening all our time on the strip (which keeps getting nastier and nastier), we took a little drive and found a beautiful canyon.
Our favorite hotel is the Bellagio. They always have an interesting and stunning garden that I think is redone every few months. Here, they were celebrating the Chinese New Year (actually the weekend we were there!) and so they had some nice decorations to celebrate. Just about everything is made out of some kind of flower.

A cool gazebo

The ceiling

Just under a year ago, we took a picture at this spot but I was carrying Joshua in my belly. I requested that, since I carried Joshua around on our last trip, that Steve carry him this time.

This chandelier was little droplet beads individually strung. It was cool!

The M&M museum

We got to see two different water shows in front of the Bellagio.

More Bellagio. It was a fun trip, but we decided that because it keeps getting more raunchy, we are going to skip going there for a LONG time.

Some cute pictures

I thought you would all enjoy some of these pictures.

Joshua has completely figured out how to turn over in his bouncer. I guess its time to find another method of setting him down.

He loves faces, but he usually scratches whatever gets under his fingers.

MMM...carrots.

He's figuring out how to sit!

Matching shirts

Toga Party!

On Saturday, Jan 29, our friend, Greg Sorensen, threw a Toga Party complete with elk meat (SO good!), grapes, grape juice, and olives. Most of the rest of the party stayed to watch Hercules, but Joshua enticed us to go home early. We had a great time and quite enjoyed dressing up and dressing Joshua up.

7 months old!

Wow! We never knew we could be so happy!

The Wilsons come to play!

On the Martin Luther King Jr Day weekend, Jon, Becky and their kids all came to visit. It was so fun to have them here!

In the last 7 months, three Monson grandkids have been born and we were excited to get them all together! Here was my favorite of the ones we took:

Joshua Monson, Tyler Wilson, and Nathan Mosbacker

We got all but two of the Monson grandkids in this shot. We're missing Ben and Rachel Coons.
Joshua got to bond with a few new relatives. It was fun to see them play with him.
Becky

Jon

Pat

The Wilsons stayed at one of their timeshares in Midway. It was a really nice apartment and they also got one for Pat and Shauna. We opted to drive up there everyday because of school and everything. Right next to this condo, there were some really neat ice sculptures that someone has been working on. Here are some fun shots.

A cute Swedish village

Siblings!

Some other fun things that we did was swimming, lots of games, excellent food, Saturday Night Live videos, more games, and lots of time to just talk. We had a great time!