A Post About Her

My girl is just a few days shy of six months old. Something that I'm NOT happy about. It is going by too fast and it seems like each day she is doing something new and growing right before my eyes.
She is beautiful. I hear it often enough from perfect strangers. Like waitresses who sit down at our table (on the job) to exclaim over how pretty she is and talk about her.
She is sweet. She has the silliest personality and giggles all day long. She loves her brothers to come talk to her in silly voices and make her laugh. She loves her daddy to kiss her bare tummy and make silly noises on it. She puts one palm on my face whenever I hold her on my hip. It's like she just needs to constantly touch me.
She's got two razor sharp teeth that make her smile even sweeter.
She is my tonic when I'm having a rough day. She's everything we could have asked for and more. She is the perfect addition to round out our family and make us complete. We all adore her.



Snuggling with her Uncle Paul

She LOVES the doorway jumpy.





Elizabeth Elaine Wilding

Christmas, New Years, and Beyond

Well we had a lovely holiday season. Hope everyone else did, too. My brother joined us for Christmas and the kids loved having their tallest Uncle around for several days. With Christmas on a Sunday we had to come up with a plan for presents and dealing with 9:00 church. Wait, that sounded bad. We didn't "deal" with church, we just had to plan differently because we had the early time. Sacrament meeting was a beautiful addition to our Sunday celebration of Christ's birth. We decided that we would just do "Santa" before church and save everything else for after and it worked nicely. We had our traditional breakfast of orange and cinnamon rolls chased by a bunch of candy from stockings. After church we got down to the business of presents and family time. Greg's parents and siblings joined us later in the afternoon and we had a nice Christmas dinner and played games afterwords. Greg and I broke down and bought an unnecessarily huge HDTV a couple months ago and called that Christmas for each other. Paul brought lots of movies to watch on the new TV, we had an extreme abundance of snacks and goodies (thanks to amazing friends and neighbors) and we had such a nice time together as a family. More than anything else, I love having family around to be with. Christmas brings us all together and magic happens!

We had to wake up the kids on Christmas morning. They were so sleepy.



Santa used really pretty, fancy gold wrapping paper for the Wildings this year.

David's ONLY request was a "red mote ca-troll helicopter." Santa came through for him.









It was good fun watching Paul get Elizabeth dressed in tights and her Christmas dress.





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A week or two before Christmas Andrew and Nathan participated in a children's choir that our neighbor put together for a YW personal progress goal. They sang at her grandpa's retirement home. It was a good experience for the boys to perform for elderly people who always seem so happy to see the younger set come and brighten their day.

But now school is back in session, we're into a New Year and life continues to treat us well. Happy New Year to all!

Merry Christmas!

Scan0019 -

Holidays and a Baby Girl

I neglected to take a single picture of our Thanksgiving. We went to Idaho and spent it with my family. My sister and her family and my brother and his family all met at my parents house where we celebrated our Thanksgiving on Friday instead of Thursday (due to traveling schedules, etc). My parents are temple workers on Friday mornings in the Twin Falls temple, so while they were gone Friday morning the rest of us at the house got busy in the kitchen to come up with our delicious feast. It seriously was so good and I over indulged in the worst way possible. I'm not even sorry. It was so worth it. It was so fun to be with family and all the millions of grandchildren. The noise level in the house was unreal and I'm sure my parents were happy to see several sets of tail lights drive down the road, but we had a lovely time while we were together.
Our family tradition is to put up the Christmas Tree and decorations as soon as Thanksgiving is over and that's what we did. Greg and I realized that several strings of our house lights are dead and unusable from last year, so that will be a project for another day, but we did get the tree up and the kids were happy to help hang ornaments and set out nativities. This is such a magical time of year and my heart is full as I count my blessings and realize how much we have.

Notice the baby under the tree. She LOVES to stare at the tree.

I also have been negligent in posting pics and growth updates and info about our baby girl. It's because I can't bear to see her grow up. She's been the sweetest angel and our family has grown together so much because of her sweet little spirit. Her favorite thing in the world is still her mama. And I must say that I love this. I will drop anything and everything to go snuggle with her or sometimes just watch her sleep. I love being the one that can get her to smile the most or do her belly laughs when she's in a particularly good mood. And I also love that I'm usually the one that she'll stop crying for. Poor Greg. But he understands.
99% of her awake time is spent sucking on her hands. She spits the binkie out every time in favor of her fists and fingers. Might be teething, who knows. But she'll suck on her fingers and her fist if she can manage it. Even if I swaddle her up in a blanket just to get her hands away from her mouth, she'll struggle and wiggle and worm her little hands out to get them up to her mouth. Silly girl.
She is laughing right out loud if something strikes her as funny. It's the most precious sound in the world and the whole family stops and comes running when she's laughing. She's a chubby girl who still loves to eat. Her cheeks are droopy and kissable and perfect.
What a blessing she has been in our lives and we love her more than words can say!

Family Hikes

One of our favorite family activities is hiking. We have been just about everywhere that Utah Valley and SLC has to offer. However, we heard about a new trail up in the mountains above Payson from my friend Amber. We decided to go and found that it had snowed. A lot. We didn't have snow down in the valleys, but the hills were all white. We should have known better, but we hiked the Grotto Trail in the snow and ice anyway. It was lovely and we'll have to go back in the spring when it's warmer and not so slippery.

Halloween

We did celebrate Halloween this year. I'm just really behind on my blogging. Here's a rundown.

Both boys wanted to be Harry Potter this year. It didn't bother them that they would be the same thing in the same costumes (borrowed from our neighbor) with the same accessories. And if it didn't bother them, it didn't bother me. David's costumes was recycled from last year. It still sort of fit. And Elizabeth got the worst of it with just a little bit of face paint on her nose and cheeks. Talk about thrown together Halloween at the last minute. I didn't spend anything on anyone's costumes and it still went fine.


The school parade is always fun for the kids. They march through the halls of the school and then through the gym for all the parents.


Loot!