Ketchup, Mustard, Mayo

Once again, I can't believe how long it's been since I've blogged! We are in desperate need of playing catch up...or maybe you prefer mustard or mayo...hehehe!

Thanks to my father-in-law who is visiting this weekend, I had that perfect "cheesy grandpa joke" to start off this blog :)

Really, though, we need to do a summary of what we've been staying busy with. Our last post was about the trip to Florida. We were home for about two weeks before our string of February trips started.

Hanging Out

Life with a baby is in some ways slower and in other ways busier than our life before. Sometimes our hang out time consists of "tummy time" where we put Alyse down on her stomach, help her "exercise", and basically just stare at her and talk about how amazed we are at how strong she is.



And then there are all of the times we just hold her and kiss her chubby cheeks and talk about how amazed we are at how cute she is.





Then, there are all of the cute daddy and Lisi moments. One of my all time favorite things has to be watching Brandon with Alyse.





So, that pretty much boils down what we've spent our time doing in between all of our trips this last month and a half :) Just kidding...we've also been busy trying to squeeze in spending time together while Brandon's been busy at work and with the youth in our ward. I've been able to connect with some of the other wonderful moms in the area and am thoroughly enjoying being a full-time mommy.



Chicago
For anyone who doesn't know the official word yet: we are headed to Chicago this summer. Everyone we have talked to about it has said two things about chi-town: 1)"it's my favorite/one of my favorite cities", 2)"the winters are killer". To be honest, I never thought much about ever wanting to live in Chicago, mostly because it violates my two "rules" of living somewhere very cold and living somewhere that is not in a coastal state. BUT, I LOVED IT when we went for our trip. And we visited a week after their huge blizzard so that really is saying a lot that I came away with such a positive feeling about the school and the city and the neighborhood we're going to live in.
We went for a whirlwind orientation weekend at the Univ of Chicago and everyone had this perfect blend of being professional & goal-oriented and grounded & kind. I feel like we packed a lot into a few days because we also got to tour a bit around Hyde Park to look at apartments, went to church, and hung out with a few families from the ward there (they were SO nice and invited us over for dinner after church!). We've applied to live in the student family housing, and will move sometime in July, so stay tuned for more updates about that.

The chicago students who organized the event made sure we had a quiet room to hang out in during the weekend. While Brandon was busy attending all of the events, Alyse and I took a break and had a "photo shoot". She is too cute if you ask me!








A shot during the crazy busy weekend...she looks like she needs another nap!


When we got home from Chicago, Brandon's dad was in town for a few days (we're so lucky we've gotten to see him so often this last 6 weeks!) and then we all headed back west for our big Pres Weekend rendez-vous in Utah (details in the next post, which I promise will not take me a month to do!)