Another Baby Girl!

My fourth niece is here! Little baby Charlotte came just 3 days after our 2nd anniversary. (She's the reason why I took a short break from blogging.) Since today is her mother's birthday, I thought I would go ahead and share some of my pictures of her.

Garrett loves "Baby Sister". He only occasionally acknowledges that
her name is Charlotte and not Baby Sister.

Baby Sister gave him a new Dinoco McQueen!

Already smiling in her dreams!

So happy she's here!

Not to sure about being out.

A very happy grandpa.

I love seeing Jonathan with our nieces and nephews. I know he'll be such a good dad!

(No, that was not a pregnancy announcement.)

Garrett helped make a sign to welcome the addition to the family.

We all love baby Charlotte!

Five

For those of you on Instagram, I'm sure you've been seeing a lot of posts with people sharing five things about themselves. Well, my cute friend Jamey tagged me in her blog version and so mow here are my five.

  

1. For the first year of my life, I watched Peter Pan every single day. It had to stop because I wore out the VHS. (Boy, do people even know what a VHS is anymore!)

2. In my entire life, I have lived in a 3 mile radius. Thanks to Jonathan, I at least left the city I grew up in for almost two years. That should be changing by the end of this year though.

3. I can out belch just about anyone, including my husband. I refused to do it in front of him because I was worried that it would scare him off. Luckily, it didn't and now I've been helping him to not burp like a little baby.

4. When I was in high school, I really wanted to get through school, have a career, and eventually settle down and have a family. That seems pretty typical in the world we live in. What changed it for me was my nephew Tyler. I was rather uncomfortable with little babies and toddlers because I'm the youngest of my family. I babysat a lot, but they were usually older kids. By the time Tyler joined the family, I had already been an aunt for 3 years and was feeling really comfortable with kids. I don't know how to describe it, but the best I can come up with is that Tyler and I are kindred spirits. I loved spending as much time as I possibly could with him and was very bad at sharing him. (Sorry mom!) He helped me realize that I really do want to be a mom when I grow up.

5. Thanks to watching my mom do a million crafts and various projects throughout my life, I have no fear of trying things. We installed my ceiling fan when I was in high school, my first sewing project was a clutch, last month I did a little bit of simple embroidering, and this month I'm trying something new for a birthday present for one of my sisters. Trying new things is fun!

FYI, because you are reading this you are tagged!

Lover's Month

When I was growing up, I don't ever remember really caring about Valentine's Day (especially when there were no more class parties and candy Valentines). Now I love the entire month of February! Not only for Valentine's Day, but also for our anniversary. I don't feel silly for leaving up all of my decorations for the entire month.

Jonathan and I take turns being in charge of celebrating Valentine's Day and our anniversary. This year he was in charge of Valentine's Day and can I just say that he made the best meal ever! He decided to cook dinner for us and I just figured it would be a really simple recipe. I was totally wrong! He found a recipe for Chicken Paillard with Cherry Sauce & Parsley Rice. I was really skeptical at first, but it was sweet and tart and delicious. (I LOVE tart!)

There was even enough for lunch the next day!

Here is the craft that I was hinting at in this post. I have been seeing so many cute embroidered crafts on Pinterest, I just had to try it for myself.

They didn't turn out perfectly, but it's a start!

A little something special thing that I tried to do for Jonathan was give him a cute little Valentine each day leading up to Valentine's Day. I was a slacker and only gave him about 5 or 6, but that means I can give him the other ones throughout the year.

For our anniversary we went out to dinner to Piatti. Holy cow do I love that place! It was a lot fancier than what Jonathan was expecting, but he really enjoyed it. (To give you an idea of how fancy it was on a scale of Ruth's Chris to McDonald's it ranked around PF Chang's.) While dinner was so good, we were both really excited about dessert. 

A little over two years ago, Jonathan and I went to the Imax theater with his brother Taylor and his wife Kenzie. Afterward I introduced them to Rick's Diner. All they serve are delectable desserts. (It's part of our tradition when we go to the ballet as well.) 

This is only a small portion of one of the two cases of desserts!

 Jonathan had a hard time picking out his dessert, but he finally settled on Death by Chocolate. I am pleased to report that in spite of the name, Jonathan is still alive!

Isn't that cake beautiful!

Jonathan's Death by Chocolate and my White Chocolate Mousse Raspberry Tart!

Jonathan's laughing at me because this is my 5th time trying to get a good picture!

 I love February (even though it seems like it went by really quick!) I love that I have 2 special days to celebrate my love for my sweet Mr. Nelson!

Two Years Down, Eternity To Go!

It's true. This week we are celebrating our 2nd anniversary. I don't know when that happened!
To celebrate, we are going out to have an Italian dinner and dessert at our very favorite place. It will be fun!

Here's some pictures from our year together.

Going on our first date all over again!

Checking out the solar eclipse.

Nap time

Playing around with my mom's iPad

Visiting the Oakland temple

Modeling in Idaho

Sleeping under the stars in Idaho

Hanging out in Yellowstone

My favorite part of Yellowstone

Our latest family picture

This year has been wonderful and I can't wait to see what this one brings!

Highlights of '12

On New Year's Eve, Jonathan and I were chaperones for a youth church dance. We had the tough job of guarding some exterior doors. To help keep ourselves occupied, I thought it would be fun to come up with a list of the top twelve things that happened/ we did this year. I'll just share a few with you.

Jonathan had his first experience of going to Disneyland for multiple days!
(I want to go back just to be in Cars Land!)

 I loved our trip to Idaho during the summer especially because all 17 Patterson's were together.

At the end of this month, this picture will be outdated because baby Charlotte will be here!

Jonathan saved my life when I passed out at the temple.
(I'm only being slightly over-dramatic.)

We also were very regular with our temple attendance and
I know that has been such a blessing in our life.

We have a real plan for our future! (And this one really feels like it will stick!)

We survived our separation due to Girl's Camp (which I still have yet to blog about, it will come).
(I loved Camp, just not being away from my Mr. Nelson!)

Our car was stolen! (And promptly returned.)

2012 was our first calender year together!
(And it didn't even feel like it was that long!)

We have a deeper understanding of each other than we did the year before.

Last year was a wonderful year and I have a feeling that this year will be great too!

Last Minute Trip? Let's Go!

For anyone that doesn't know us, Jonathan and I are not last minute people. We plan just about everything out that we can. There are a few times that we make exceptions and this was one of them.

In early January, my cousin and his wife announced that they were going to be sealed in the Draper Utah temple. I asked Jonathan if I was crazy because I wanted to try to be there. He was kind and told me that I wasn't. We quickly figured out that we could take a few days off of work and fly there. So, we quickly booked the flights!

It didn't seem like we were really doing this even when we were packing for to leave the night before. Garrett was nice enough to drive us to the airport (along with my mom). We got the airport more than an hour early, so we were feeling pretty good.

We used a kiosk to print out our tickets and took the little train to the security check point. I started looking at my ticket and it had Jonathan's name on it. I realized that I had Jonathan's second ticket and not my own! A minor panic attack happened as we quickly went back to the kiosk hoping that my tickets were still there. We made it to the machine and sure enough, my tickets were right were we left them! After that, the rest of our travels were pretty normal.

We had a layover in lovely Long Beach. We weren't sure if we really wanted to continue knowing how freezing cold it would be. We went to Utah anyways. As the plane descended, everything was covered in a layer of white. I just started laughing. I do not like "cold California weather" let alone having it be cold enough for snow to stick to the ground. It was cold, but I somehow survived!

We decided to play in Temple Square before heading down to my uncle's house. There was hardly anyone outside. (Probably because the temperature was in the teens.) We walked around the Salt Lake Temple and as we were around the reflection pool, I hit Jonathan in the back with a snowball. (This was our first time in the snow together.) He wasn't too happy and started forming a snowball of his own. I begged him to be nice and not hit me in the head because I was nice and hit him in the back. Well, I turned and walked away quickly and he said something and I turned to say what and you know what happened? Yes, his snowball hit me in the face, but it gets even better. He hit me in my right eye. Can I just say that from personal experience, it is far better to get hit in the eye with a tennis ball than a snowball. Yeah it hurt, but what was worse was that each time I blinked freezing cold snow would get into my eye and melt. Lucky for him, I only brought it up about a dozen times during the rest of our trip.

We headed back to our car because we were both freezing! We were about 5 minutes away from my uncle's house and it started to lightly snow on us. (I was so grateful that Jonathan did all of the driving!)  We got all nice and warm by a lovely fire.

The next morning was so wonderful and exciting! My cousin Joe and his wonderful wife Courtney were sealed in the Draper Temple on their third anniversary. I've only been to three other sealings (including my own), but this one was by far the most special one. As soon as Joe and Courtney entered the room, I started crying. They were both glowing and overflowing with joy. It will be an experience that I will never forget.

We were in a winter wonderland.

The happy couple!!!

After the sealing, we took a few quick pictures and then had a brunch with all of the family. Jonathan finally got to meet my cousin Kinzie and her children. (He actually terrified her two little boys while we were waiting to leave the temple, luckily they did not scream stranger danger while they ran to their mother.) It was fun seeing my cousin Kurtis's little girl again. She is seriously the most smiley baby I have ever been around and she was even sick! As we were sitting around the table, someone asked how Jonathan and I ended up together. It was fun retelling our story, but I especially love seeing peoples' reaction when they find out that I shot Jonathan down about nine months before our first date. (What can I say, I was 19 and he was 26 when we met!) 

After everyone left, we headed back up to Salt Lake for some fun. We had dinner at the Lion House and checked out Deseret Book and a cool toy store.

22 degrees at that time was considered to be warm...

On our last morning, we went to Provo to visit one of Jonathan's old roommates from college. It's sometimes weird to think that Jonathan had so many years before he met me. Jonathan drove me around showing me some of the old apartments he lived in. Including his first apartment where his parents met for the first time way back in the day.

This trip was very quick, but so much fun! I am so grateful that we were able to be at my cousin's sealing. I am grateful that there are temples on the earth today so we can have eternal families. As I hugged Courtney after the ceremony, I reminded her that now she is stuck with all of us Pattersons forever. She was thrilled and I am so glad that she is part of our family too!

I'm also grateful for my Mr. Nelson for making this trip possible.