Happy October!

Posted by Blair Bagley at 9:44 PM 2 comments

When I was outside with Abby today I had a moment where I stopped to feel the cool breeze. Then I looked around to see the trees in the awkward stage between green and a vibrant fall hue and I found a little peace.

Lately our family theme has been: "Whatever can go wrong, will. So expect it." We are still in the tedious process of buying a house that has been going on for about 5 months. We have been living with family for the last 4 months about 100 miles away from anything. This has taken an emotional and and financial toll on our family and I have struggled.

Today, as Abby and I were running around, I had a moment of serenity. Sometimes it takes the beauty of nature to speak and let me know how blessed I am. I have a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter and then the feelings come that things will work out. Sometimes, we need to just take time to stop, look around and realize how much the Lord loves us.

Too much going on...

Posted by Blair Bagley at 6:41 PM 3 comments

Wow, it's been an absolutely insane couple of months. To recap:

• I got a list of 6 Classes to complete as Pre-Req's for my MBA program (2 need to be done by Sept.)
• We put an offer on a condo in May - set to close in June
• Our Lender almost died in a car accident
• Our Realtor started getting really sick
• Our initial closing date keeps getting set back (all in all about a month)
• The underwriter catches a problem with the condo that would preclude us from getting funding.
• The sellers inform us that they knew about it when we placed the offer - but were hoping no one would catch it.
• We rescind the offer on the condo and start looking again - back to square one.
• Abby has her birthday - not at the location we'd planned.
• We move out of our place into my parents in Moroni (an additional hour from work).
• We find a place that we like but it is very small.
• We can't place an offer on the new place untill the owners of the condo sign to release us from the previous sales contract - that takes a few weeks.
• My birthday comes around.
• Condo owners finally sign - we place offer on new place.

Hopefully that explains why we haven't been very good recently about blogging.

Other than all of that we're actually doing pretty well. Abby is as cute as ever - not only is she running everywhere, but she is talking now too. She says things like bubbles, ball, dadda, mamma, cheese (although this is more of a hiss), book, hi, etc. She also does the signs for dog, up, etc.

She has also recently discovered her belly button. She is quite intrigued by it and seems to think that everyone else is/should be as well. So whenever she meets someone new she says "hi", waves, pulls up her shirt, sticks her finger in her belly button and smirks. As soon as we can capture a picture of it we'll be sure to post it.

Thanks to everyone for all the love and support through all of this - we love all of you.

--Kevin

Abby walking!

Posted by Blair Bagley at 9:04 PM 6 comments

Yes that's right, Abby can walk at 9 months! Her official "first steps" we are going to say are on April 20th...here is the proof...enjoy!
(These were with an OLD cell phone, so excuse the poor video quality)

Easter!

Posted by Blair Bagley at 8:41 PM 1 comments

We had a wonderful Easter with our sweet little Abigail. We took special Easter pictures the week before which was a lot of fun.She had an adorable green plaid skirt that I thought was perfect for her first Easter.

Easter weekend we had the traditional Easter egg hunt in a very untraditional way. We spread plastic eggs all over the living room and showed Abby where they were. I then showed her that the eggs needed to go into the basket...and that's all it took. She started to crawl all over the living room, picking up an egg...putting it into her mouth and then turning around to find her dad dilligently following her with a basket and then she plopped it into the basket. She proceeded to do this until all the eggs were in the basket. I was very impressed!


It was really a fabulous weekend!

Family Updates

Posted by Blair Bagley at 8:29 PM 2 comments

Well it certainly has been a few weeks since we last posted. Things have been very busy, I took the GMAT a couple of weeks ago and scored a 650 out of 800. I'm pretty pleased. But we still have to wait another month or so until we find out about admission. I guess I'm just going to have to learn some patience.

I also started my own blog at the request of Blair. She was tired of my soap-box rants and wanted me to find another outlet for my random nerdiness. So, I did. If you do decide to visit it, remember, it is likely to be a little nerdy, but that should be expected from someone like me.

Abby is cruising all over everywhere. If she didn't enjoy the security of balancing herself on the side of the couch or the wall so much I'm fairly confident that she'd be walking everywhere she went. We played in the backyard yesterday and she held a couple of my fingers while we walked all around. She pulled me around the yard as if she wanted to show me this great place to play that I had never seen before. Actually she has been wanting to play outside quite a bit lately. Unfortunately for her it's been raining (and even snowed today) which puts somewhat of a damper (ahem) on her playing.

That's it for now, we'll post more when we find out about grad school etc.

-Kevin

Sunday in the Park with Abby

Posted by Blair Bagley at 8:57 PM 3 comments

Last Sunday was a beautiful day, so we decided to go to the park after church. It was a blast! This was Abby's first time ever playing at the park. We went on the swings first. She was somewhat used to this since we have an infant swing at home...but that does not swing high.

She LOVED the swing. Kevin kept pushing her higher and higher...giggles and peels of laughter.

We had a lot of fun hanging Abby off of random toys.

She did pretty well just hanging on some herself too.

Abby on the Farm...

Posted by Blair Bagley at 8:19 PM 2 comments

Last Thursday on our weekly excursions with Johanna and Clark we went to the working farm at Thanksgiving Point. It was so much fun! We began looking at the sheep and then to the goats.

Apparently Abby does not like the goats at all. She began screaming with fear when a large brown one can up to her. I have never heard her scream like that! We quickly moved on to the birds. She loved watching the peacocks, chickens, and turkeys.( It must be because of her Grandpa!) We then saw the ponies and thought Clark and Abby would love to ride. As soon as I got close to the ponies to put her one, she started screaming. I have never heard her scream with such purpose! She did not want to be near the ponies at all, but I had the goats. to get a picture...

Clark on the other hand loved the ponies. He got on the saddle, sat up, grabbed on and smiled...Abby and I watched from a distance.

Overall, it was a fun activity for our weekly adventures.

Abby & Daddy

Posted by Blair Bagley at 5:16 PM 3 comments

Fun, energetic, creative, sweet, thoughtful, loving, sincere, compassionate, relaxing, hard-working, smart...this is my husband and Abby's dad. We are so lucky and blessed to have him!

Valentines Day

Posted by Blair Bagley at 7:10 PM 2 comments

So we had a wonderful Valentines Day. Instead of going out and waiting for unreasonable amounts of time at a restaurant, Kevin and his buddies thought it would be good to just make an elegant dinner for their wives at home. So Marc, Mackay, and Kevin made Kathryn, Lindsay and Ia fabulous dinner for Valentines day. We had Martinelli's , Cesar salad, and shrimp cocktails for an appetizer and then we had Beef Wellington for the main course. It was wonderful! Here are some pictures:

A little note about the business...

Posted by Blair Bagley at 6:54 PM 1 comments

As most of you are aware I am the founder of a unique custom wedding invitation business called Eastwind Creations. Recently we participated in the Provo Bridal fair and had a lot of success. We are really excited for wedding season to get into full swing as we are developing our product line. I have two independent consultants that will be designing with me and we are really excited to see what will come this year. Some of you have wanted to see photos of our booth so here they are:

Iris Bagley

Posted by Blair Bagley at 10:43 AM 1 comments

We received a phone call yesterday that Kevin's grandmother Iris had passed away in her sleep. She seemed to have gone peacefully. I felt like I should write a little about how she touched my life in the short time I have known her.
From the first time I met her, I could tell that she had an amazing sense of humor. Not only was she able to keep up the jokes with Kevin's family, but she usually started it. She was kind and sincere and always "abounding in good works". Whenever we would go over, she was always working hard on stuffing little balls for children in need. Although she could not see and had difficulty walking, she rarely complained.
When we found out we were pregnant and began to think of names, Kevin immediately wanted to name one of our little girls after his grandmother Iris. When Abby was born, I saw those bright blue eyes and immediatly thought that our decision on Abigail Iris was a perfect fit. Now, when i look at my sweet daughters blue eyes, I will always think of her heritage that she will be representing. Of a fun, loving predecessor who was always thinking of others and was faithful until the end.

Our Monterey Trip

Posted by Blair Bagley at 10:24 AM 1 comments

We decided back in October that we would go and surprise my family for my Dads 50th this January. The same week my Dad was turning 50, my brother Nick was turning 21 and my brother Richard 18. The birthdays also fell over Martin Luther King weekend. Kevin and I thought it would be appropriate to go and have some quality time with family and the beach. Although the surprise was thwarted 2 weeks before by my attentive 6-year-old sister, we still had a wonderful time. My Nana from Washington state also came to celebrate and it turned out to be a wonderful weekend. It was so nice to get away from the snow, especially since the weekend we picked, the weather was beautiful. It was near 80 degrees the entire time we were there.
What a great sunset!
At the aquarium

They were so excited to be out of the car!