A Few Firsts...

October was full of many firsts for Amelia Jo! Can I just say how much I love her?? It is sooo fun to watch her grow and develop. It is so fascinating to Jace and I! I am so happy that I have someone to share this love for her with. Every time something happens I just call Jace up and he is just as excited about it as me. Most people don't think it is that great when I tell them she is starting to reach for things and grab things, but if I tell Jace he gets just as excited. I think it is just so much different when it is your own. Everything is just so exciting! So here are a few firsts for Amelia this month...

1. Her first hair cut :)  Amelia was born with loads of hair!!! Who knew we would get a baby with all this hair? Jace and I were practically bald haha so we were shocked when Amelia came out. (P.S. I had no heart burn during my pregnancy, but everyone kept saying if you have a lot of heart burn that means lots of hair. I had no heart burn so I thought she would be bald.) I spent hours making all kinds of head bands and bows before she was born getting ready to decorate the baldness. Well I must say that she never wears any of the little head band flowers I made her haha her hair is just too cute that she doesn't need them! So her hair started getting a little out of hand this month. She has thinner hair in the back where her head rubs when she sleeps, but on the bottom it is still thick so it looked like she had a major mullet. Hair was hanging past her ears so we felt it was time to cut it. My friend does hair and so she trimmed it up for us :) 

       She did so good during her hair cut! She just sat in her little bumbo and chewed on the rattle. I was shocked. 

Ta-da!!

The bottom of her hair was seriously down past her neck haha this looks much better :)

2. Her first snowfall :) We woke up one morning last week and snow was just falling from the sky and all over the ground. Well Amelia has never seen snow before, so this was fun to introduce her to it. It was pretty early in the morning and we were still in our pajamas, so we didn't actually go play in in or anything, but at least we showed it to her! 

 

In this picture please just ignore me (scary larry haha), but she seems to like the snow! 

3. Her first Jazz game :) Ok, ok so I gave in. We were invited to a Jazz game by Ernst and Young (a company that is recruiting Jace to come work for them). I thought for sure we wouldn't be able to go because we have little Amelia and I didn't want to get a baby sitter for her again because she had just gotten baby sat the week before. It is still a little hard for me to leave her for very long. The recruiter said it the game would be in a suite though and there would be tables, chairs, food, and a back room to feed Amelia in. We decided to take her and just leave at half time, so we could get her to bed. It worked out pretty well! It was a lot louder than I had expected which scared her at first, but she got used to it pretty quick. She was so alert the whole time and loved looking at all the new sites and sounds. Mike (Jace's best friend) and Kim were there because Kim works for Ernst and Young. It was so fun to see them there! 

4. Her first Halloween :) We just had such a fun Halloween this year. We found a great deal on a costume at Children's Place for Amelia... a little sunflower! Since Jace and I are trying to be festive now we decided to dress up like farmers to kinda go along with the theme haha. We searched for overalls at the D.I. last weekend, but couldn't find any. Just FYI, the D.I. is packed the weekend before Halloween... holy cow we couldn't even find a parking spot haha everyone had the same idea as us. Our good friends Kara and Jeff invited us over for a little Halloween get together on Halloween night. She made amazing taco soup. We took pics, ate dinner, and chatted! We were gonna play games, but the babies were ready for sleep. It was such a fun night! 

As you can tell she hated the costume pretty bad, so it only lasted about 10 minutes... long enough for pictures haha. 

There's my cute little farmer :)... one handsome dude! 

Cute Kara, Jeff, and Miri 

BF's :) 

 Amelia also turned 4 months in October, can you believe it?! It is going by wayyyy too fast! Please stop time!

One of my favorite pics :) 

Well October was a great month, full of firsts! Such a good month. Can't wait for many more with our sweet little girl!! :) 

Pumpkin Time :)

So my new goal as a mom is to always be festive for holidays! I want to have traditions that we do for each holiday to give our children something to always look forward to. Jace and I are not fans of carving pumpkins because it is kinda nasty. It also makes a huge mess and they rot after a couple weeks. So our solution this year was to paint pumpkins! Well my solution... haha. Jace was a good sport and did it with me! After Amelia went to bed we stayed up for 3 hours painting pumpkins... yes 3 hours... haha we were not expecting that. It actually was a lot more fun than we thought! We tried finding Hocus Pocus at Redbox or Netflix, but it was a failure. So instead we listened to Halloween music on Pandora (a little creepy... haha). But it was a lot of fun! It is going to be our new Halloween tradition :)  Here is how they turned out!

Here is Amelia's pumpkin that we helped her paint haha

Here is my pumpkin

Here is Jace's pumpkin :) 

Happy Halloween!!! 

Welcome home Elder Chad Nilsson!

So I need to play a little catch up on the blog! I have been slacking lately, but I do have good reasons :).

So a few weeks ago Chad got home from his mission! He met Amelia for the first time. It was so fun! It is kinda crazy because Chad and I were in the MTC together. He left about a month before I did. I just remember it was really comforting to see him in the MTC when I first got there. When we said bye at the MTC before he left to Romania I just remember him saying "now don't marry Jace before I get home." He knew I would be getting home about 5 months before him. Little did we both know that I would be getting sent home a few weeks later for medical problems.... and then getting married.... and then having a baby! Haha sorry Chad!

Chad had never met Ashley (Tanner's wife) before either! They got married while he was gone, so that was fun! He came home to 3 new family members.

Amelia's Blessing Day

Amelia got blessed on August 26, 2012. It was such a special day! Since Jace and I didn't really have a ward yet, we blessed her in Jace's parents ward. It was neat because it is the ward that Jace grew up in. He gave Amelia such a beautiful blessing. The spirit was so strong as he blessed such a sweet little angel, who was just in heaven a couple months ago. I am so thankful that Jace holds the priesthood! What a blessing it is in our lives. After the blessing we went to Grandma Nilsson's for a lunch. We had sandwiches, salads, fruit, and desserts. Thanks to everyone who made it all! It was such an amazing day that we will never forget :).

     Here is sweet Amelia! My sister-in-law, Aubrey, took these pictures!! They are amazing!! She did such a good job! 

Here is her dress! Grandma Haws made it. I just found a picture on the internet that I liked and she just copied it. She is sooo talented! :) I am so grateful!! 

Our little family! :)

My cute sisters... Megan and Mindy!

Here are my sister-in-laws! We were all pregnant at the same time with baby girls. The top picture was taken around Christmas time of our bellies and here we are just 8 months later with our babies :) I have a feeling our little girls are gonna be best friends! Can't wait! Presley is on the right, she is 7 months. Raylee is on the left and she is 5 months!

Our friends, Zach and Auda Lamb!

Chelsea and Trina!! Two of my amazing friends :) 

My sister and mom :)

Amelia loves her Grandma Sona!!

She also loves her Grandma Marci and Grandpa Brett :)

Some of Amelia's uncles! Tanner, Mckay, and Austin... we are missing Chad, but he will be home soon enough :) I wish I would have gotten a picture of her with my brothers too!

Auntie Aubrey... Precious!

My brother-in-law Tanner and my sister-in-law Ashley! :)

Grandma and Grandpa Haws :)

Grandma and Grandpa Nilsson :)

My brother Garrett, sister-in-law Joni, and niece Raylee!!

Raylee :)

Presley :)

Eliza :)  My nieces and nephews loved playing in Grandma Nilsson's backyard. I am sad I didn't get any pictures of my nephews. They were too busy playing :) 

We are so grateful for everyone that was able to share Amelia's special day with us!!

Officially a blogger!

So I finally did it... I finally blogged!! Many people have asked when I am going to start a blog. I always respond "that is my goal one day!" It always just seemed so overwhelming to me because I didn't know how to do it. It always seemed too much work to keep it updated. I have decided though that it is worth it. It is worth it to record everything. It will be amazing to look back on it one day and see everything that has happened in our lives. I know that our kids will love to read it one day! So I have now dedicated myself to doing this... not really so much for the world to see what is going on in the lives of the Nilssons, but for my own little family to have as a record. I am excited to start! There is so much I want to write about because there is so much that has happened! I am just going to have to do little catch up posts here and there to get all caught up. Well I am just going to do the briefest (I don't know if that's a word) recap of the past year and a half!

 April 26, 2011 was by far the best day of my life! I married my best friend in the whole wide world, Jace Nilsson :) I am soooo incredibly blessed to have him for eternity. I am so grateful to have him by my side as we go through everything together. (I will post our story sometime, it is long so I will have to save it for it's own post sometime)

 We went on our honeymoon to Cali! It was so fun! We stayed in a hotel right next to Disneyland for two nights and then two nights at Newport beach. Disneyland is one of my favorite places on earth!

We moved to Missouri the day after our honeymoon. Jace sold pest control there and I worked in the pest control office entering contracts. It was hard to be thrown into a very busy schedule after just getting married. Jace worked from 9 AM to about 10 PM and I worked from 5 PM to about 11 PM Monday through Friday. Then Saturdays we worked 9 AM to 5 PM. Saturday nights and Sundays were the only times we had together. We definitely cherished those times. It was difficult, but we both grew and learned so much. We were really grateful for that experience.

October 15, 2011 was the next best day of my life... I found out I was pregnant!! I still remember looking at the little stick and seeing two pink lines. I thought I was dreaming. We were both sooo excited and sooo grateful. I had quite a bit of morning sickness at the beginning of the pregnancy. I had weird cravings like hot dogs, cranberry grape juice, salty things, and wendy's. Poor Jace would get up in the night when I started feeling sick and get me a drink of juice or yogurt so that I wouldn't throw up. He pretty much went through that pregnancy just as much as I did. He was a saint!! I was so grateful.

                       

After much prayer, we decided we should go back to Missouri for the summer again to do summer sales. It helped us get through a year of school last year, so we felt it would be a smart decision to go back to help us pay for the baby coming. It was a hard decision though because that meant we would be having the baby away from family. Jace drove with his dad and I flew (because I was super pregnant.  We got there on our one year anniversary! :) We stayed in a hotel in downtown Kansas City. We went to The Cheesecake Factory and watched a movie. It was a really nice, relaxing way to celebrate our first year together. And yes, that is our wedding cake. I had been storing it in my mom's freezer for the past year and I wrapped it up and took it in my suit case on the plane. To be honest, it was pretty nasty haha we only took one bite each and that was that. It was another great Missouri experience this past summer. Jace is so awesome for working those long days. I have never known a harder worker than him. He works so hard so that I am able to be a full-time mom. I feel sooo very blessed. He is just so amazing! 

June 22, 2012 was the next best day of my life. It was the day I gave birth to sweet Amelia Jo Nilsson. She was 7 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 in. long. She was perfect. Jace and I were so overwhelmed with complete joy. She won our hearts over the second we saw her. It was the most spiritual experience I have had thus far in my life. I know that she is a special daughter of God and I am just so grateful that Heavenly Father trusts me to be her mom. I have faith that He will help me.  (I will post her birth story sometime soon as well)

Amelia is now 2 months old! She is so much fun! We just love to play with her and stare at her all day. It has been such an amazing learning experience. It is hard, but very rewarding. I still have soooo much to learn. I just hope she will be patient with me :). We love her more than words can describe! 

Well, there you have it! The past year and a half. It has been fun. It has been hard. It has been trying. It has been amazing. I am grateful for everything that we have gone through this past year and a half and I can't wait for many more years to come! Here's to blogging! :)