Merry Christmas!

We are so excited for Christmas! It's kinda hard to say, but we are really looking forward to giving our little angel her presents and teaching her about the birth of our Savior. There is just something so special about feeling the excitement of one who is so innocent. So, to start things off right, we did our annual run through the first snow storm. To give you an idea, as our official way of ringing in the long and cold season of winter, we go out in our bare feet after the first major snowfall and we run around for a minute. Although it makes for some cold feet, it certainly adds a good laugh. Olivia even decided to turn out for this annual event, although she declined the offer to go barefoot.

Bundling up

Daddy is Nuts!

Part of our holiday tradition includes the night we get to decorate the Christmas tree. Each year, we try and pick something of a different theme, whether it's bulbs, bells, silver, or gold. It is a way of looking at the variety that Christmas brings. Last year, however, when we were poor beyond all belief, we couldn't be as original as we had hoped. So, we got to decorating the tree one evening and although we imagined gold and silver ornaments and lots of tinsel, we simply didn't have enough money to really go all-out. So we decided instead to decorate the tree with the plain and simple things in our home that made us happy. Before we knew it, we had a tree decorated with an American flag, teddy bears, cat-collars, Rubix Cubes, binkies, a mini Book of Mormon, bi-wing airplanes, and Frankie's missionary plaques. They look like such simple things but they carry so much meaning to us for one reason or another. It has since stood as a powerful reminder to us of what we are truly grateful for during this holiday season. We may not have much, but we are so lucky to have the blessings we do have.

Decorating the Christmas Tree!

Eating the chocolate Advent Calendar "num-num"

It will be fun to see how Olivia will be with opening her presents. She didn't quite understand the concept at her birthday, so hopefully she'll catch on a little more with her Christmas presents. We are trying to get a Christmas card sent out, but so far I've only been able to do hand delivered invites since I keep forgetting to go to the post office and I don't have a lot of addresses. We decided to take the pictures ourselves in front of the Christmas tree and boy did we go all-out!. We even put our red bed sheets up for a background cover and fixed the lamps in our home to provide proper lighting. The only thing we weren't prepared for was... well, Olivia's temperament. For some reason, Olivia just wasn't feeling very happy that day so what could have taken a few minutes ended up lasting the whole afternoon while our little diva got her beauty rest and a full belly. Although we didn't get as many pictures as we would have liked, we got a few good ones.

Getting her ready

Checking the lighting

And.........ACTION!

Nope not ready yet. Gimme a minute.

Ok, maybe some chocolate might do the trick...

Daddy, what did you do to this? I'm hungry! Get my agent on the phone NOW!

Yeah! Grub time!!

Now we're getting somewhere


And...... Success!!


Yay! I am sooo cute!! Merry Christmas to all of you!

She's on the Move!

Well, our little girl is now on the move. We officially declared her a walker on Thanksgiving, but she didn't see the benefits of walking over crawling until last weekend. We have such a small apartment and if her toys are on the ground, she has a hard time navigating the floor, so it was just so much easier for her to crawl. But she has discovered that if she walks, she can take her toys with her. It is just so cute to see her taking her small baby steps while carrying one of her stuffed animals or her ball.

We went my my cousin Aleisha's wedding this weekend in Bountiful and Provo. She found the balloons in the ballroom, claimed one and walked around the entire evening with that balloon. It was funny to see a balloon moving along the crowd at the reception. Now she just walks around our house just holding the balloon, it is such a cute sight to see.

These are exciting times for us. I know that there are people that tell us that we will wish that she was still crawling, but I'm just so excited that she has hit this milestone in her development. She has also started to say other words other than "ma-ma and da-da". Her new word is "Hi!" she'll even say it in the same tone of voice I say hi to her in. When I walk in to her room in the morning and after naps, I'm greeted by her high pitched "Hi". She will also ask "What's this?" and say "Thank-you". She is a fast learner and gets excited for many new things.

Meet Olivia

Now that we have a beautiful daughter I'm not so inclined to talk about our cats as much. Now I just can't say enough about our little Olivia. This past year has been and incredible year with adjusting to parenthood. Olivia has brought so much joy into our home and has developed quite the personality. Now that I get to stay home with her everyday, I get to see all of her little quirks start and grow. So let me introduce you to the littlest Workman; Olivia Judith Workman, she is also known as Livia, Livs, Livy, Lady Bug, Munchkin, Munch (short for Munchkin), Olive and Olly. Some of these names have been given to her by aunts and uncles, but mostly from Frankie and me.

Olivia is a very pleasant and happy baby to be around, but be aware that she is a baby who will do things her way in her own time. It took a while to learn that Olivia will go at her own pace when it comes to learning new things. From day one she has been teaching us this very thing. We thought that she would come on October 26th, the day I was induced, but no it wasn't to be she would arrive on October 27th. For weeks I tried to help her learn how to roll over, but she would have no part of it what so ever, so I gave up. Then when I least expected it, I put her on her belly and what do you know, she just flipped over with the ease of a rollover champion. It was the same thing with crawling and going down the stairs. She doesn't want to do anything until she knows that she can do it perfect. She hasn't started walking yet, even though we know she is so close, we are just waiting for that day when we just put her down and she'll start walking like a pro, she's done it with all of her other stepping stones, why not this one.
Olivia loves to be where that action is, especially if that involves the chair by the computer. No matter who is sitting in that chair, Olivia wants to be there with that person playing with the computer. Olivia has found that she still loves to play with her kick and play bouncer, just not in the same way. She loves to climb on it and bounce up and down. She has also found that it is a nice chair to lounge in and catch her breath after bouncing so much. She also loves playing in the dishwasher. The minute she hears me open that door to start loading the dishes, she is there, ready to push the bottom tray in and climb onto the door itself. She will then begin to pull out every item that is easy to pick up and pull out, mainly the silver ware and plastic bowls.

Olivia adores Millie and Winston, but they are still getting used to her noisy and very physical attention. It is funny, but Olivia's main way for showing affection to people, she learned from Millie. Because Olivia is down at the level of the cats, she learned that when Millie is being affectionate with someone, she will but her head against you. So now you can know that Olivia approves of you when she buts her head against yours. Both of the cats will take long naps up on our bed, so every now and then Olivia will climb up the stairs to find the cats on the bed. She will then give them a hug and lay her head against their side. Of course that cats don't really like this because her way of hugging the cats often ends up with them being dog piled upon by Olivia. Thankfully, if they get too much love from Olivia, they will get up and vacate the premises. One very interesting thing to note about Millie, is that she has laid claim to Olivia ever since she was a newborn. There have been times that Winston will walk by Olivia and give her a little sniff only to get wolloped upon by Millie because he dared get near her baby. She isn't a very territorial cat in our neighborhood, but if Olivia is outside playing, she will attack any cat that is within 50 feet of Olivia, even if that cat was just wandering by. Poor Winston has been the main one for those beatings.

It is so fun to just see how much of us is in Olivia, and not just in looks. Olivia has definitely inherited her dad's very out going personality. She isn't shy, although she does prefer her mommy or her daddy. She has now problem in letting herself be heard. In fact when she first found her voice, I became a little worried that she would lose her voice from all the screaming she did. It wasn't crying, it was just playing with her voice. Now she just loves to talk up a storm, even if she has food in her mouth. She is also a little daredevil and will climb on things, just like her dad. From me, she has developed a love for music and has a good feel for the beat. She loves to just dance to the music. She has also inherited the trait of talking in her sleep that all of the Wells sister do. It is just funny that in the middle of the night we will hear talking on the other end of the baby monitor. The first couple of times, we went in there only to find that she was fast asleep and talking. Now was just smile and listen as she talks.

Well I know that there are so many more things to say about our little munchkin, and I'm sure I'll write about them sometime, but for now I'll just save it for another day.

Happy Halloween!

This month has always been a very special month for our family. I guess you could say that Halloween is our family holiday. Frankie and I met at a Halloween dance and of course Olivia was born 4 days before Halloween, it is definitely a month that we hold dear to our hearts. We had so much fun dressing our little girl in her ladybug costume. She wasn't exactly as excited about it as us, but she was just so cute. Ever since she was born she has been her daddy's little ladybug, so when Halloween came around we were so excited to be able to find a little ladybug costume at the store.

On Friday Frankie's work had a little trick-or-treat activity at the office, so we dressed her up and showed her off to his co-workers. We all dressed up and had some fun together. We also took Olivia out on Saturday night for a little trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and out to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Here are some pictures of our family fun.

Happy Birthday Ladybug

Well, here we are with a one year old. Boy does the time fly by fast. We are so excited that Olivia is a Halloween baby where we get to celebrate her birthday and Halloween. Last Saturday we had a really fun party for Olivia at her grandparents house in Smithfield. All of her family from dad's side came to celebrate with us, it was so much fun to have so many people there to show how much she is loved. She also had her friends Jackson and Easton came to party too. Daddy and I decorated a Ladybug cake that we had hoped she would just rip into, but she was a little hesitant to play with the cake. We had some sugar cookies that everyone got to decorate. Overall, Olivia had a blast and absolutely loves all of her new toys that she got for her Birthday.
On her birthday, Frankie took the day off which allowed us to spend time together as a family. Because it was such a nice day we took a little outing to the temple grounds and got some fun pictures.

It's Fall

Well here we are in the middle of the fall season. The leaves are changing colors and falling off of the trees. I love to see just how beautiful nature can be with all of her colors. Because of the upcoming holiday, Halloween, we as a family participated in our annual pumpkin carving. Frankie is very much a person who likes to tell a story with his pumpkin so we tried to find some fun carvings that went right along with us as a family. I'm sure that you'll be able to figure out the story from the pictures.

Even though Olivia didn't get to do any of the actual carving, she sure did have a fun time exploring the end results.

I love getting to stay home with our little girl, especially now that she is at such a critical learning stage in her life. She is so close to walking and is getting into everything. She loves our cats, Millie and Winston, and has even attempted to say their names a few times. Of course we have to monitor with the cats because she can get really, really physical with them and hurt them which then causes them to lash out at her. Winston is willing to put up with a lot more discomfort than Millie, but even he has reached his limit. But we have been having some success with teaching her how to be soft and to use one finger with the cats.

This past weekend we were able to go and visit with Frankie's family in Sandy. On Saturday we took a little drive to the property that his parents own in the Okur Mountains. We had a little picnic, did some crafts and went for a four wheel ride. Olivia had so much fun on the ride that she fell asleep.

Olivia's Birthday is just a week away and we are holding a birthday party for her this Saturday at her grandparents house in Smithfield. I'm excited to give her her presents so she can have some fun new toys to play with. Some of her toys are becoming to boring for her, so she finds new ways to play with them. Her old kick and play bouncer chair has now become a rocking horse for her. She loves to just climb on it and bounce and rock away. It is just so funny to watch her with it.