Working it for the camera.

This is her sign for "Help"

Gracie telling us it is time to Pray.

We headed to Utah to pickup a used piano that Lisa found online. This was a gift from her parents for graduating from BYUI last year. It's a Yamaha digital piano (no, not a keyboard) and sounds great.

We decided on a digital piano because we don't really want to have to deal with moving a full size acoustic piano if we ever move again. My dad always warned me about marrying a girl with a piano... well this is our compromise. This has already paid off, we were able to pack the piano in our Ford Focus crammed with our family and all our stuff.

So for Gracie's nap today I took off her pants so she wouldn't get too hot and when she woke up, I just didn't put them on again. Not a big deal. Well, later in the afternoon I am on the phone when she brings my two onsies- (a sign that she got to the clean, folded laundry on the bed...) and signs please while handing them to me. Ok, not a big deal, I put both of them on over her other two onsies she is already wearing, the top one reads "What baby wants baby gets". That makes 4 onesies and 0 pants.
Then I make my way upstairs to put away the laundry. Gracie doesn't miss a beat and follows me upstairs and whines while watching me put away her clothes. Don't worry, she is smarter than her momma. She quickly gets into her dirty clothes hamper and brings me a pair of sleepers and signs please. So I put the sleepers on her arms (they definitely wouldn't fit over the four onesies)! For those of you keeping a running total this makes 4 onesies, 0 pants, and 1 pair of sleepers! Surely she is done...nope. Next she spies a pair of short overalls, brings them to me and signs please. Sure, why not, now at least she will have a pair of pants, right?! After that she spies a pair of socks on the bed and snags them with a loner sock, brings them over and again signs please. Her ensemble is nearly complete with 4 onesies, 1 pair of overalls, 1 pairs of sleepers, and 1 1/2 pairs of socks. The finishing touch is a ladybug massager that fits nicely into the bib part of her overalls:) Obviously her pocket was too small. What a darling daughter I have. I did a lot of laughing amidst the picture taking! As you can see, what baby wants, baby really does get. Especially if she signs please while looking at me with those big beautiful eyes!
Some of you may be wondering, where does she get this silly dressing streak, well scroll down and look to see which parent gave her those silly genes!
P.S. This is my first post with pictures :)

I put together a little video to celebrate the day. It's not totally polished, but it's fun anyway.

Lisa and I have each had separate, unrelated thumb injuries. That's right, thumb injuries. Lisa discovered that a pocketknife is great for cutting open boxes as well as thumbnails. I decided to see if a small jewelers drill bit would penetrate the thumbnail. It does. A tetanus shot later and we are able to empathize with each other very well.

We've been busy around the house. We've had a couple of small plumbing issues I've been chasing down. I've still got a washing machine leak to figure out and then I'm going to attempt to repair our irrigation system.

Lisa and I planted our vegetable garden yesterday. We decided to try something called square foot gardening which we're hoping yields a lot of crops in our little yard. It's really simple and was a lot easier to do than having to tear up our yard and add a bunch of nutrients to the soil. We just built big boxes to hold our plants and a special mix of vermiculite, compost and peat moss. We found out about it at http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ .

Gracie is learning more and more everyday, including lots of new sign language. She is able to tell us when she wants to eat or have a drink of milk or water. She also tells us when she's tired (not that it was tough to figure out before) and when she needs help or when she wants more of something. The best though is when she wants something really bad she'll sign "please" over and over again. She's teething again which has made for some rough nights.

I'll end the post here because I know everybody just wants to see pictures, and Lisa tells me the house isn't quite ready yet.

I couldn't remove my key from the ignition and was told it wasn't a key problem, but because it would not go all the way back to the "lock" position, something wasn't allowing it to release. I opened it up and was able to get the key out, but something still isn't working right. Take a look at the video and you'll see what I'm talking about. Is there a simple fix for this?

Gracie was cute in the dress given to her by Gramma Robison (Thanks mom!). She's doing a lot more walking on her own lately, so we're in for trouble.

April 09 Family Picture, originally uploaded by eyenology.

Happy Easter, we decided to commemorate today with a family picture. Thanks Grandma Sunderland for the beautiful (made with love) dress!

In the last few weeks she has started going up and down stairs, doing some sign language, standing on her own and now walking (with a little help)