The Valantines

Megs No Heat Summer Challenge!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Thu, 05 May 2016 16:53:00 +0000

Last year I posted on my Instagram about the results I got from the No Heat Summer Challenge and I've had so many people ask me about it since I thought I'd write up a post for all you Challengers!

My hair from about Jr. High to mid College was the WORST! It was always short because it was always damaged and breaking. I would try to grow it out but by the time it was barely passed my shoulders my mom would give me the firm but loving "your hair looks like dead straw and it's time to cut it" talk. It wasn't until college that I started taking care of my hair enough to grow it out. And by "taking care of my hair" I mean, I died it brown instead of platinum blonde, started "deep conditioning" (aka, leaving Pro V in my hair overnight) and didn't rip it in and out of messy buns all day. The result I got was the mid back length that I wanted but it was still thin, dry and ratty at the ends.

(High School Hair - Please excuse the chubby face and posture...)

Fast forward 6 years, 5 moves, 2 kids, 2 states, 1 dog and 1 husband later...

I'm back to blonde, it's the longest it's ever been but it's still dry, stringy and dead at the bottom.

My two beautiful best friends make me crazy! They are the kind of women that have the long, amazing, shiny, straight hair that grows grows like a weed! They never style, never color, never straighten and they look gorgeous every day!! I, on the other hand, come in with the thick, frizzy, wavy hair that HAS to be styled every-single-day and cut every 3 months or I look like big foot! One night I asked them both, "what do you guys do to your hair to get it SO healthy!?" to which one of them replied "well, I'd say the biggest thing I do is, while I'm in the shower, I put my conditioner in and then I just leave it in while I shave and do everything else..." to which I replied with a dumfounded look and my mouth wide open! I have been doing that for 15 years! It LITERALLY says to do that on every shampoo bottle!! I have been doing that since I could read and wash my own hair!?! WHY is their hair SO healthy!! I have been buying product after product for years, asking all my stylist friends for advice and trying all the Pins Pinterest has to offer! They don't even care about hair care! They just wash it and let it air dry everyday!!

Then it hit me ....

------ they NEVER put heat in it!!-----

They curl their hair every once in a while for church or a date but other than that, they just air dry everyday! This was my exact thought following that discovery: "Yeah, but my hair air dries like a Star Trek cast member because it's too damaged... but maybe my hair is damaged BECAUSE I never air dry!!" I figured, maybe the more I air dry, the more healthy my hair will get and the better it will start to air dry!

I remembered reading a blog post years ago about a girl who did, what she called, the No Heat Summer Challenge (and I cannot for the life of me find that post again!). Basically she just didn't put heat in her hair AT ALL for 3 months, I blew right passed it because I could NEVER air dry my hair and go out in public. I remembered what I could from her post and decided I was going to do it!

I did it for 4 months and I had AMAZING results you guys!!! I am about to reach my year mark of going 90% of my days with no-heat and it's been awesome! Now, when I do style my hair, I can go to bed with it wet, wake up and it takes me 2 minutes to straighten! It's thick all the way to the ends AND SO SOFT!!! It's so healthy, when I run a straightner through it (again, for like, 2 minutes) it'll stay that straight for DAYS!!

Here are the rules!

1- Absolutely no blow drying! NONE! zip! zero! If you're gonna cheat, don't start with the blow dryer!! It's horrible for your hair!

2- Obviously no curling irons or straighteners either.

3- You may only do your hair with heat for special occasions like weddings, dates, and occasionally church. (The grocery store is NOT a special occasion!)

4- NO pony tails! ... YUP! you heard me! Hair elastics are so damaging to your hair! Resist the urge! Don't pull it up! If you HAVE to pull it up, do a loose, straight pony tail. No messy buns and ESPECIALLY no wet hair pony tails!! Your hair is at it's weakest when it's wet, so you don't want to make it suffer in a tight bun when it's at it's weakest.

5- Endure to the end!! I promise, it'll be worth it!

Here are the steps!

Step 1- Take a "before pic" of your hair!

Step 2 - Make a note of how long your hair is but don't stop measuring at the very end of your hair! end where the damage gets really bad! My biggest improvement I saw is my hair is now thick all the way to my ends and that counts as growth! My hair grew 5 inches total in 4 months but the overall length of it only got 3 inches longer (if that makes sense?) Meaning it filled in 2 inches of thickness at the ends too!

Step 3- Stay Strong! Don't give up!

There were days when I wanted to give up and just style my hair! I got so sick of my husband coming home to Beaker from The Muppets everyday. I got so tired of trying to find ways to do my hair even to go to Walmart!

I promise it will be worth it!

After a month or two your hair will start to air dry naturally and with out all the damage, it will dry smoothly. I did the Challenge for 4 months and I've kept doing it for almost a year now! The craziest thing is I actually prefer my hair air dried now over curling or straightening! It feels so soft and natural when it's air dried and I can feel the damage in my hair the minute I put heat in it!

The best part is, now when I do straighten it, I air dry it 90% of the way, blow dry for about 2 minutes, touch up the top with my straightner and it's done!! 3 years ago it would take me 40 minutes to blow dry and straighten all of my hair!! I ALWAYS get comments on my hair when I straighten it now because it's so tick and long!

Other hair-care tips

Tip 1- Over the years I've found two game changing hair products! They have both completely changed my hair and I tell everyone about them!

(Keep in mind, I have thick, wavy, dry hair! If you have thin, fine hair these products may not work as well for you!) (Tip 2 - understand your own hairs needs!)

When I get out of the shower I towel dry my hair, flip my head forward and apply the It's A 10 leave in conditioner to my ends, then I do the same thing with the Moroccan Oil! Do it, it'll change your life! You can buy them both on Amazon and both bottles will last me around a year!

Tip 3- Don't brush your hair when it's soaking wet, remember, thats when it's weakest!

Digital Scrapbooking

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 22:19:00 +0000

Okay todays post again ventures off from the trip last summer. I feel like blogging that trip is always such a time consuming thing it keeps me from posting about other things! I've neglected my blog because I feel like if I blog it HAS to be about the trip and i'm tired of passing up other posts because of the wall that is my trip.
so heres my step forward in not being held back anymore!

Today I wanted to post about my new favorite passed time!!

I honestly could go on and on for HOURS about how amazing digital scrapbooking is! There are so many benefits to doing it digitally I have a NEVER ending list!! If any of you are thinking about switching to digital KEEP READING!

I will sway you...

So lets start with the number one and most obvious reason

.NO MESS.

Say you have 35 minutes of free time and think "hmmm... I wanna scrapbook!"

You can go 2 ways from there,

"Well, I only have 35 minutes and thats not enough time to get out my table and my bins and barrels and buckets and drawers of supplies... never mind, I probably don't have time"

"YAHOO I've got 35 minutes! I'll just go sit at my desk, open up my files and get crackin'!"

No more glue, no more scissors, no more ribbons, no more scraps, no more mess!

Reason #2

You can literally do and make ANYTHING you want! I don't know about you but I HATED cutting out circles on paper! Now it takes me 2 seconds to make a perfect circle! The arrow shapes on this page below took me under 5 minutes to pick out the papers, cut them all into the shape and place them!

Try doing that with paper!! Not easy.

Reason #3

You can MAKE your own supplies!

I made this princess castle in 10 minutes with stuff I already had!

No need to buy expensive specific kits anymore!

On this Drive in Movie page I made EVERYTHING except the red star paper, the lips paper and the ribbons!

Reason #4

If you have a favorite paper that you LOVE and spent 80 cents on (if you're like me) your VERY particular about how it gets used! You want it on the perfect page and you get really stingy about using it! With digital paper you can use it 100 TIMES! It will never get used up! Same thing goes for objects, if you look closely at my page I use the same leaf EVERY time I use a leaf! I just put it differently each time. I use the same flowers, same frames, same ribbons! It's awesome!

Reason #5

If you ever wanted to put objects into a scrapbook like fabric flowers, leafs, buttons, tickets, brochures, napkins, string, etc. it will make your pages thick and heavy and your book won't lay flat and it will warp every other page as it gets heavier. With digital EVERYTHING is flat! You can put ANYTHING on a page and it will never make it heavier or thicker!

Digital gives you cool affects that you could NEVER get with normal paper scrapping. Like the bubbles on my Bath Time page! HOW FUN! (P.s I made that tub and banner myself)

Reason #7

If you're like me, you have TERRIBLE handwriting!

When I was little I remember making a big cute page and then RUINING it with my handwriting.

Thats when I started making me sister write on all my pages for me instead

(THANKS NAT!)

Now, I'll add a journal page and write an entire story in one of my favorite hand written fonts and it's perfect every time! On this page I wrote about getting my first 3rd degree sunburn, not fun.

Oh, and lets not forget if you spell something wrong in marker! Your entire page is a goner!

Reason #8 Multiple copies!

Baby Books!

I'm going to make one for ALL of my kids to keep!

I'm sure you did or do too!

But hey :( I want a copy too.....

With digital it's easy! JUST PRINT 2 COPIES! Print 4 and give one to Grandma and Grandpa!

Lets say your house catches on fire!

DON'T GO GRAB YOUR 200 LBS OF FAT HEAVY SCRAPBOOKS! Run to the office, grab your hard drive with all the digital pages and GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! You can reprint the book later!

Reason # 9

You're looking at this page thinking,

woah! I didn't know Southern Utah University made scrapbook kits!

.they don't.

I got that logo off the internet, used it as a stencil and cut it out with scrapbook paper!

Making your own custom kits for Schools, Teams, etc. is easy!

Lets say your kid wants an underwater ninja themed birthday party!?

I'm pretty sure they don't make a kit for that...

MAKE YOUR OWN!

#10 Damage

I was looking through my paper scrapbook I made when I was around 13 the other day.

My mom LET ME take the ONLY copies I have of me when I was little, cut them up into crooked, lopsided ovals and then cover them with cheesy terrible STICKERS!!

Those are MY ONLY COPIES!!

They are damaged FOREVER!

I was really frustrated thinking about how I was going to get this ugly yellow thought bubble sticker that says "cheeeese" off my face...

No more printing your ONLY copy of your pictures and RUINING THEM!

Evies ultrasounds for example, her first ultrasound pictures were only printed out for me, I didn't get them digitally!

I would NEVER want to cut those up, glue all over them and put them in a book!

Instead I scanned them in, kept the originals in her folder and scrapped the copies.

No damage!

Reason #11

Pages like this (below) would be SO HEAVY with glue, sticky dots, tape and whatever else all you paper scrapper use. Glue goes bad people!! It doesn't last forever! While I was looking at my old scrapbook I noticed half my pages had lost elements due to glue drying up! You never have to deal with that when it's digital!

#12

Creative freedom!

I can take a paper and make it ANY color I want!

This striped paper on this page used to be 3 different colors! I liked how it was grungy though so I turned all the stripes navy blue to match my page better!

Also, I made those snowboarders.

I made the word "Snowboarding".

Those frames are metal and would never last with glue or tape,
there is some awesome chain link fence in the background, AND
Try glueing a tree branch from a blue spruce into YOUR scrapbook!

Also, this page has stitching all around the border! CUTE! I was always envious of the girls who took the time to not only pull out their scrapbook stuff but ALSO pulled out their SEWING stuff!
Now it's just drop and drag and you've got stitching!

#13

You get cool stuff in Scrapbook kits

Like the Ipod headphones in this page!

Aren't those awesome!

Also, You can do REAL frames not just cheesy paper ones.

Reason #14
One Pic Pages

Have a random snapshot you love SO MUCH but you don't want to waste 15$ worth of scrapbook supllies just for ONE picture on a page?! DON'T WORRY! That page will cost you 15 cents to print!

.do it and enjoy the guilt free feeling.

Reason #15

Resizing and cropping.

When you print pictures you have 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 and thats pretty much your sizes...

From there you have to cut off and crop in as much as you can to make a layout work!

Thats sad! Don't cut up your composition!

You can make a picture the full 12x12 or you can make it 2x2!

It don't matter!

Reason #16

I lied, I'm adding a 16th reason!

This is a Photography conference I go to every year and this year I wanted to put my name tag on the page.

First off, how THICK would it be to put that in a paper scrapbook!?

The metal hook and the lanyard?!

NO WAY!

AND

That whole tag would have taken up half my page!

no thank you.

I took a picture of it on a white background, cut out the background, added a drop shadow and now I can make it ANY size I want with out it taking up my entire page!

Anyway, thats my LONG rant on why you should digital scrapbook! I hope you all are convinced :) I actually taught a Digital Scrap class out here in Denver and LOVED it! I would want to do it again! It's fun to teach what I love!

.Advice.

Write EVERYTHING down while you kids are young!

I'm making Evie 12 pages in her baby book, one for each month of her first year,

each month I made a list on my Ipad of every milestone we hit with her and the date.

What she was doing,

what she learned

favorite noises to make

when she crawled, when she walked,

favorite toys, etc.

Now i'm working on a page called

"the top 15 things I never thought I'd have to say"

I've written down all the crazy things Evie has gotten into trouble for.

"Evangeline! No! We don't lick the heater vents hunny!"

.can't wait.

Joy in the Journey Peeps!

xo. Meg

Turkey!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:48:00 +0000

I'm SO SORRY for being so far behind on our trip this summer! I still have like, 6 countries to do! Today is all about our day in Turkey! Ephesus mostly. We've actually been here before and we LOVE it! The ruins are amazing! Our first stop of the day was to this little village called Sirince, it was amazingly beautiful. It was full of all of the locals shops and everything was hand made and incredibly detailed.

I had fun taking shots of the little Turkish women, this one is consoling her cat after Evie scared the death out of it lol

Thus, our first lesson in not touching stray animals in foreign countries...

Natalie and I bought these GORGEOUS hand painted plates in this little shop just before we left.
I wish I had a picture of them they are beautiful!

After Sirince we went to an old turkish Mosque

Women need to cover their heads and we only had one scarf lol

This is the cute little man who showed us around the Mosque :)

Afterward he took us outside to his little shop and drew all of our names in Turkish for us

He was so nice we just loved him!

The place we love most in Turkey is Ephesus. It's this city of ancient ruins with an amazing library! We went there last time we were in Turkey so this time we decided to also hit up the Ephesus Museum, it's full of all the artifacts that they've found around the ruins!

Evie was a little bit of a handful with all of this ancient stuff to climb all over!

Luckily we found a ramp and she did that for the rest of the time :)

After a while she and Jared were going crazy so we headed off for the rest of our day

The place where The Virgin Mary was thought to have lived is in Turkey and it's a really beautiful sacred place. It's all the way up on top of a mountain so we had to take a little drive.

It's okay though because the locals along the way never disappoint lol

The middle picture is outside of Mary's house. There are no cameras allowed inside but once you get out you can go light candles in the garden and then pass the prayer wall. This is my favorite part.

People write their prayers on little pieces of paper or tissue and stuff it into this wall in hopes that they will be answered. It's AMAZING how much is stuffed into this wall!

We drove all the way down the mountain again toward the ruins at Ephesus!

We of course stopped for some legit turkish lunch first.

Middle Picture: this is the Arena that the Apostle Paul (I believe, correct me if i'm wrong) preached in,

it's the arena thats in the picture section of your scriptures

after you pass the arena you walk further to the ruins and

this

is the first thing you see when you round the corner...

The Library of Celsus

It's the most beautifully detailed ruin I've even seen! It's so overwhelming because you start out so close to it and you can't take it all in at once!

Once you back up further into the city you can see it all

My mom always researches each country for months before we go on these trips so she always knows all the answers to any questions we randomly throw out!

Example

Me: "Man, I wonder how many people lived in this city!?"

Mom: "well this was a seaside city so it was actually one of the most populated cities of it's time, during the war between turks and the greeks the only place to get resources was from the ocean so the turks moved here after their leader Amid Heduish died in 160 BC"

(That was a bunch of bologna I made up but you get the point)

Here's my mom (putting off heat stroke) and reading to us about the Library of Celsus from her book she's been reading all year :)

(and jared being a teenage boy)

dad always taking pictures :)

I very much love that about my dad. He documents EVERYTHING and I definitely get that from him.

Evangeline passed out thankfully

When we were here a few years ago my brother Ryan took a picture just like the one of Jared below. Since Ryan couldn't be with us on this trip (he's on a Mission in Cambodia) Jared decided to honor is memory by doing the same pose on a broken column

Then we decided to all be ancient gods ha ha ha

I love my dads pose! Not sure who he's supposed to be portraying but he's a good participant!

GO DAD!

After that my mom got heat stroke so we had to sit in the shade and cool her down.

After she was better we had to BOOK it back to the ship!

We (as usual) were the LAST ones back on the ship.

Like they pulled in the gang plank as soon as my dad stepped off it and we got in trouble lol.

.oops.

To cool off from our long day we hit the pool and then had formal night!

Where Evie later became addicted to Pina Colada's lol

My hubby is so handsome...
if I do say so myself :)

Okay thats Turkey!
Next up

JERUSALEM!

Here are the links to my countries I've already blogged if you are just joining us ;)
Iceland
London
Athens
Patmos

Christmas // New Years // Bieber Fever // Surgery

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:06:00 +0000

So i'm so sorry for the utter neglect my blog has had over the last 6 months! I update it MAYBE once a month ( if that ) and I'm only 3 days in to our month long trip we took this summer! ( My next post on that will be about Ephaisis Turkey so stay tuned! I know it's almost february but I SERIOUSLY need to catch up on Christmas, New Years and my birthday! This post is going to be the definition of picture overload too! Like, crazy amounts of pictures folks! And I'll appologize now, it will be the ugliest post you've ever seen too ha ha ha. I have 15 minutes to post this post and then we are leaving for our date night (aka, go wonder through the mall for a few hours and play in the princess castle at the Disney Store). So i'm putting a Blue Ginger filter on ALL my photos or I am just uploading them from my iPhone. Sorry guys, my blog is seriously suffering!

We'll start with Christmas...

Christmas this year was TOTALLY different for us because we live so far away now! It made it that much more fun to come home though! ... oh wait, no the extra 5 hours in the car this year was a NIGHTMARE!

Evie had a HORRIBLE stomach flu and was throwing up every hour on the hour the night before!

Luckily she only threw up 3 times on the 10 hour ride home, but to top it off it was a BLIZZARD for most of the drive! We had to go SO SLOW which didn't help the situation at all.

And worse, Evie and I drove back to Utah with my Brother-in-Law Joe
(B had finals for another week so we bummed a ride with Joe early)

So my POOR SISTERS CAR

.bless her heart.

Is completely full of throw up smell and old milk.

(If you know my sister you know how strong her sense of smell is and how OCD she can be)

(those aren't bad traits to have nat and I love you for them!! xo :)

To make it worse, I,

like an idiot

filled up Evies camelback water bottle with Sprite to make her stomach feel better...

have you ever put Sprite in a leak proof water bottle?....

I don't recommend it...

as soon as I opened the lid Sprite SHOT out of it at 100 MPH!

Hitting the ceiling of the car and then spraying out in EVERY DIRECTION!!

So.... we were a smelly, nasty, sticky mess by the time we got to Utah...

.kill me.

My poor brother in law...

MOVING ON!

The reason we had to go to utah early with Joe was so I could get surgery on my ankle! The funniest thing happened while I was at the hospital! I was signing in for my surgery and when I told the lady behind the desk what my name was she looked up at me and said "OH MY GOSH! I FOLLOW YOUR BLOG!" ha ha ha that has NEVER happened to me! A total stranger new all about me! She was so cute! We talked about my trip this summer and how fun Evie is! It was so cool! It's nice to know people read my blog but it's even nicer to know that total strangers can read my blog and find enough joy in my journey to follow it!

Evie came with me and was NOT happy about Nurses coming in left and right and messing with her Mamma! My mom finally had to just take her home, it was so sad :(

So after that my next week or 2 pretty much looked like this

FINALLY Brandon got to Utah and Evie was STILL sick so his next few days were like this...

not that i'm sure he much minded :)

Finally Christmas came around and Evie and I were feeling a little better. Evie was still super grumpy and not really herself and I was still heavily medicated and on crutches ha ha ha

Evie opening her wagon!

Evie ADORES Uncle Jared! She just smothers him with love it's so cute :)

Evie was the best "present hander-outter" you've ever seen

She unloaded that tree faster than we could keep up! and of course, she couldn't read so any present went to anyone she felt like (mostly dad)

I made Jared some artwork for his room, I was KIIINDA worried he'd be like "ugh.. cool... art?..." but he seemed pretty excited about it luckily!

Usually for breakfast on Christmas Day we end up filling up on Christmas sugar cookies all morning and then just wait around till lunch to really eat something and this year we decided our stomachs couldn't handle that kind of breakfast anymore ha ha ha

So Nat & Joe treated us all to a yummy Crepe breakfast

I seriously hope this is a new Christmas tradition for us now.

Then Grandma and Grandpa came over for a visit and TO TALK TO UNCLE ELDER ANDERSON!!

Elder Anderson is serving out his last few months in the Phenom Phen Cambodia mission!

He'll be home April 12th!
Evie has never even MET Uncle Ryan so we are SO EXCITED for him to come home!!

Evie was REALLY excited lol

So... My sister and I came home for Christmas to a 13 year old brother who had a "rat tail" coming off the back of his head...

It's like where you grow the very back of your hair in one spot really long?...

he insisted it was cool...

we insisted it was not...

We threatened him the entire week that we were gonna cut it off in his sleep ha ha ha

Well, while we were talking to Ryan he noticed Jareds disgusting hair cut and commented on it!

"dude whats going on with the back of your hair?!"

Since Ryan is Jareds IDOL we asked Ryan if he thought we should cut it off?

Ryan said yes defiantly!

So we pinned Jared down

and cut that disgusting thing off!

Thank goodness!

The next morning we took of for our Christmas in St. George with Brandon's family
(no throwing up this time)

The highlight of this trip was this girl right here

this is my baby sister Dani

(I love my sister-in-laws like my own sisters!)

This amazing girl has been called to serve in the Barcelona Spain Mission!!!

She leaves in May so we decided to go through the temple with her while we were home for Christmas.

The temple was awesome as always, it was awesome but I hated it too lol

Brandon made me wear my crutches (even though I was 2 days away from when the doctor said I didn't have to anymore) and the entire time EVERYONE was making a fuss over me! I had to take the stinkin' elevator, everyone kept asking me if I was okay, I couldn't get up and participate with my family like I usually love to and I HATE being the center of attention!!

especially on someone else's day...

But all around it was a great night.

I'm really so proud of her :)

Now we just have to keep the boys off her till May and THATS gonna be the hard part!

After we spent a few days down in STG Brandon took me and Evie to Richfield where my parent's met us.

Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you!

So Backup...

I've had 4 or 5 bone grafts up in my mouth and they've all failed so I got another one in March and we found out while I was home in SLC that that surgery failed as well and I'd have to stay in Utah for 2 MORE WEEKS to get surgery AGAIN and try to save my implant.

Fast forward...

So B dropped us off at my Grandpa's house and took off to Colorado and Evie and I headed back up to SLC for another few weeks and another few surgeries.

We did do some fun things though

We hit up the Aquarium, Evie LOOOOOOOVES the Aquarium!

aaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnd!

I got to go to the

JUSTIN BIEBER CONCERT!!!

It was AWESOME

My dad is an Orthodontist so to get more business in he got the VIP Suite at the concert and had fun giveaways and prizes at his office! New patients who started braces got a ticket and others had to win theirs! It was literally, Me, My parents, 4 other adults and 30 screaming girls! It was SO FUN!!

the suite was HUGE and there was SO MUCH FOOD!!

such a blast!

After that I had my surgery, got way swollen and never really left the house again ha ha ha

to end my million mile long post i'll leave you with some of the texts if fired off when I was under anesthesia lol

read them.

.you won't be sorry.

ha ha ha ha

Happy New Year!

Our Merry Little Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 21:30:00 +0000

This year we are going home again for Christmas! but this time home for us is a 10+ hour drive in a very packed car with a very active 1 year old. We decided this year, instead of packing our gifts for each other all the way to Utah just to unwrap them and pack them all the way back we'd have a little Christmas with just the 3 of us.

.i LOVED it.

We finally got to make our own little traditions and do our own thing on Christmas eve. It was so much fun. As I was unpacking my Christmas decor this year I kept setting all of our Christmas books under the tree so Evie wouldn't get to them until I could find a better spot for them, well they ended up just staying there and so started a new Christmas tradition!

Every night at "wind down" time Evie, bathed and snuggled up in her jammies, would go get a book out from under the tree and bring it to me to read to her while she drank her bottle!

We did this EVERY night! I loved it! We are for sure doing this while our kids are little, Evie would have destroyed the gifts if we would have put them out any earlier anyways so we just left the books there instead!

Then she noticed a big difference the next morning when all the books were gone and presents were there!

We woke up around 8 and let Evie walk out and find the presents

She of course went straight for the BIGGEST present in the very back

ha ha ha

It was a big Princess castle! We got her a few little princesses to go in it and she LOVES it! We had to set it up right then!

I made Evie and Brandon big snuggly Blankets

I'm obsessed with Evies lol

B got the leather hooded jacket he's been wanting

He looks pretty good in it (minus the bed head and pajamas lol)

I must say though my gifts were the BEST :)

IPHONE 5!!

(we're not weirdo's I promise...)

Evie loved her gifts but of course

like any true one year old

loved the box more

....

Here's our little Christmas turn out :)

We ended the morning with a Christmas morning call to Grandma and Grandpa on my computer mouse?...

and now it's time to pack and get ready to leave for utah in the morning!

.... wish me luck...

Thanksgiving break!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:39:00 +0000

Oh yeah, it's Monday after Thanksgiving and i'm already on top of posting about it!

Hold your applause!

Our Thanksgiving was so fun and much needed! We drove the 8 hours back to Richfield Utah and Evie did AMAZING in the car! She watched movies on the iPad, sang (I assume) songs, ate snacks, played with her socks and slept. Thanks heavens. Our families both have roots in Richfield so we got to see Brandons family and my family this week! It worked out perfect! Now before I get into pictures i'd like to apologize for my photo quality ha ha ha. I decided last minute not to bring my Nikon and just bring our little point and shoot that has been dropped and sucked on one too many times by a certain 1 year old. So my photos are sub par and it bugs me ha ha ha. Enjoy.

Me and my little sisters!

Kaili is about 23 weeks along now! Can't wait! Thats my very FIRST nephew in there!

(even though you can barely tell she's pregnant)

We ate SO MUCH FOOD! Kaili brought some of that cookie pudding stuff and I'm pretty sure I took 3rds of it. Homemade rolls, turkey, mashed potatoes! YUM!

While we were in Richfield we stayed at Brandons Aunt Holly's house and she has the "dream backyard" for any kid. Evangeline was literally in HEAVEN! I think she spent 6 hours outside on Thanksgiving Day! She convinced everyone at least once to take her on the swings, the playground or the tramp!

.It was pure bliss.

After thanksgiving B passed out on the floor so Evie thought she'd help out with that

That night we watched The Avengers and my family got to town! After the movie a few of us brave souls took off to Walmart for some Black Friday craziness. It was my very first time doing black friday and I figured since I'm in a small town i'd try it out this year. We got to Walmart, looked at the line at the check out, wandered around for 30 minutes and left ha ha ha ha Huge failure but it was fun.

The next day the Valantines packed up and we moved over to my Grandpa's house in Elsinore to hang out with my family! Yahoo! We hit up all you can eat french toast at the Ideal Dairy and then did some Christmas shopping at my favorite shopping spot, Christensen's! After we blew our Christmas budgets we took the 4 wheelers out for the rest of the day!

Evie thought she was gonna drive all morning while we were getting the bikes out and started up ha ha ha. Evie ADORES her uncle Jared, it is just hilarious to watch her with him, she goes nuts and just squeals at him all day!

Evie would NOT go down for a nap, we wanted to get out on the bikes but she was being so stubborn! Then my mom remembered that Jared used to pass out on the 4 wheelers so we thought we'd see if Evie would be the same way and viola!

.worked like a charm.

We took the wagon and went and saw farm animals, Evie of course loved that!

The week went fast and we were sad to go but we are glad to be home ...

okay we're glad to have Evie in her crib 2 rooms away from us again lol

No offense to Thanksgiving but LET CHRISTMAS BEGIN!!

We've been non stop watching Christmas movies and my Glee Christmas playlist is on repeat!

I put our tree up and a Christmas miracle has happened!

Evie BARELY touches the tree!!

I thought she'd tear it down on day one! She will come up and touch one ornament

(one I got from the dollar store and intentionally put right at Evie eye level on the front)

then after she looks at it for a second she just moves on to other things!

.amazing.

Merry Christmas to All!

Halloween!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Halloween this year was a BLAST! We have the funnest friends out here in the Mile High City! For Halloween this year we decided to have a big halloween party and EVERYONE had to dress up for it! It was so fun to see everyones fun costumes! Our costume was Evie inspired. Brandons little brother Cary taught her this move we have come to call The Hulk! She's squeezes her fists together as TIGHT as she can and then makes a hilarious grunting noise until her face goes purple! HA HA HA HA It kills us! We love it!!

So while trying to come up with a costume for our family we decided on The Avengers JUST so Evie could be The Incredible Hulk! (well... a more girly cute version of him)

Evie was the Hulk, I decided to be Black Widow and Brandon couldn't decide for a while who he wanted to be. He either wanted to be Tony Stark (not Iron Man, Tony Stark), Captain America, or Thor but only Thor during the part where he has just his jeans on and no shirt ha ha ha ha!

.Luckily we finally landed on Captain America.

We wanted to take Evie Trick or Treating this year and B's school was doing a Trick or Treat day at the school so we decided to do that!
Evie LOVED IT!!!

A lot of the husbands got let out early from classes and got to meet up with their kids and go trick or treating. Evie was HILARIOUS! The first 3 stops took us around 3 minutes each because when someone would put a piece of candy into her bucket Evie would put her face into her bucket and just SQUEAAAAAL with joy about it!

HA HA HA

She would FREAK OUT for a few minutes and then we could move on to the next stop and do the entire thing over again!

.Too funny.

Heres our friend group out Trick or Treating with the kiddos!

After Trick or Treating we met up for a Halloween party!

It was so fun! We had games and sugar cookie decorating, halloween music, good food and lots of awesome costumes!

Boxers and a Fairy Mustard Ketchup and a Hotdog

African Safari Tourists A Sailor, Captain, and Mermaid

The Flinstones Captain America

I LOVE that I married a man who will dress up like a super hero and run around with little kids :)

B did awesome in his event, he had to hang a jar lid from a rope around his waist and drop it on to a soda bottle!

.Group Shot.

Kori and Lidia enjoying some sugar cookies

Evies first Halloween was AWESOME!

I can't wait for a lot more fun years of Trick or Treating to come!

Ma Belle Evangeline

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 03:54:00 +0000

I used to do a month to month update of Evie until she turned 1 and then stopped. She has been growing and changing so much that I decided I'd do another one for my own benefit and for my family that now live so far away from me and don't get to see her very much.

Evangeline is 15 months old now! She may only be 15 months old but you'd think she was a 2 year old. She is SUCH a toddler! Evie is the most adventurous little girl I've ever met! Nothing scares her! Her best bud at our apartment complex is a 8 month old, 100 pound, Alaskan Husky that knocks her to the ground licks her face and she LOVES IT! She looks forward to seeing this dog EVERY DAY!

She has no fear of water or running out in the street (which I love)

She is shy at first and then gets super chatty once she knows you.

She climbs on the table EVERY chance she gets and empties out my cabinets 20 times a day.

She's beyond happy if you take her outside and LOVES animals.

She insists on going down the BIGGEST slide at the playground all by herself and always chooses to play with older kids. She will do stairs until her shoes wear out if you let her.

Oh, she has the BIGGEST feet ever! She is already in a size 6! (she gets that from mom)

She's currently addicted to Tangled, Princess and the Frog and Curious George.

Thank goodness too because Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was making me insane!

She pushes all my pillows off my sofa every day no matter how many times I tell her not to.

She think's it's funny when I tell her "No!"

The only way I can get it across to her that I mean business is to sneak up on her, smack my hands together and yell NO!!! Like, scare her to DEATH!! It seems like abuse but she finally stops, but no worries, she still laughs at me...

She likes to velcro her own shoes when it's time to go.

If you say the word "go" and you are not standing on the front porch in the next 3 minutes you'll have a major meltdown on your hands.

She still only says "mom" "dad" & "Uh-oh"

Every time I try to take her picture she tries to put my lens cap back on my camera so all my pictures look like this..

Every time she gets hurt (no matter to what degree) she takes about 5 seconds to recover and then wants to be put down again. She loves to get tangled up in the blinds, especially if we've just told her NOT to get tangled up in the blinds. Her hair is super curly (like her daddys) which I love, but it gets fluffed into an afro as soon as she gets in her carseat so no one ever gets to see it. Her hair is finally long enough for pig tails and they KILL me every time! She loves to clap! She'll clap and won't stop until everyone in the room has joined in too. She claps between every bite at lunch and whenever a song plays. She is constantly hiding in my closet and is not trust worthy in the bathroom.

She climbs on EVERYTHING!

I can't get her to eat anything right now. She only eats bananas and peaches. Makes me crazy.

She's such a blast

I can't get enough of her firey personality!

She's a handful, and makes me nuts, but she's my sunshine :)

xo, Meg

Whimpy Salsa

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:29:00 +0000

I made some of my "Whimpy Salsa" the other day and I've had a flash flood of people asking me for the recipe so instead of re writing it 20 times I thought I'd just make a blog post out of it. I love salsa but I am a major baby when it comes to anything spicy! (like, too much Ketchup is spicy for me)

I found a recipe on Pinterest, it was a cilantro lime chicken recipe with tomatoes on the top, I made it for dinner one night and it was really good but I made WAY too much of the tomato topping and didn't want to waste it!

So I thought,

"hmm I BET I could turn this into salsa!

So added my own stuff and VIOLA! Wimpy Salsa was born!

It's more of a zesty-lime-vegetarian-salsa so don't feel bad about eating 2 bottles of it in one sitting

.i don't.

So first off sorry about the bad instructions

I didn't major in fractions so I never use measuring cups if I can get away with it lol

My recipe makes about 7 cups of salsa so I'll let you do the math if you want more or less than that :)

Here are the ingredients

1 White Onion

8 (ish) Scallions (Green Onions)

3 Big Tomatoes

2 Cans of Corn

Cilantro

Salt & Pepper

Olive Oil

Sugar

Lime Juice

Dice up the green onions, white onions and tomatoes into small chunks. Pour the corn (no water) and diced veggies into a large bowl. Stir. Add 3.5 table spoons of lemon juice, you can add more or less if you like, just keep tasting it as you go. Stir. Pour on olive oil, i'm not sure how much I actually use, I just cover the top and then mix it all in. If I HAD to estimate I bet it would be around 3/4's a cup. Just make sure the mix has a light coat, don't drown it and you'll be fine. Stir. Finely chop up the cilantro, I always use 1/2 to 3/4's of the bundle but this is another ingredient you add as much or as little as you like.

(This is dumb but I add just enough to make the salsa look pretty and then call it good ha ha ha.)

Add to mix and stir.

Next step is the MVP of this recipe! THE SUGAR!! I put about 3.5 table spoons of sugar in, especially if my tomatoes aren't perfectly ripe. Add to mix and stir. This is another ingredient you can add more or less of if you like.

Last, salt and pepper to taste!

I put mine in jars so they stay fresh and I can easily take them over to peoples house.

GREAT neighborhood gift at Christmas and everyone LOVES this stuff!

Enjoy!

Xo, Meg

Patmos Greece

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:49:00 +0000

Today was an AWESOME day for our trip! Mine and Nat's husbands are big motorcycle guys and they both had to sell their bikes when they got married

.I'm now wearing Brandons Harley on my finger :).

So since we feel bad about that we try to do at least one day on every trip on some sort of bike.

Since Patmos is such a small Greek island we decided today was a great day to rent some Vespas!

We woke up just off shore of the Island for an AMAZING view at breakfast and then headed for the tender boats!

We hit up a little scooter shop right off the dock and got the day started early

Here's Joe checkin' out the selection

Jareds wishful thinking of driving his own scooter instead of riding in the car with Mom and Dad and Evie lol

.Sorry Jay.

. and of course Evie running laps around everyone and winning over the hearts of the natives .

We drove around to a few beaches and saw most of the Island and then worked our way up the mountain to a really holy site for most churches.

On the Isle of Patmos there is a grotto at the top of the mountain where it was said that John received the inspiration to write the Book of Revelations. Inside the Grotto was really cool, you couldn't take pictures but they had places in the rock plated in gold where John had supposedly laid his head or nelt to pray.

.the Grotto is the domed building on the right.

After that we climbed the mountain a little higher and visited a really beautiful Monastery!

(again, couldn't take pics inside but it was amazing how much detail these people put in their work inside)

These 2 pictures pretty much describe my entire trip with a one year old...

. I tripped over her so many times i'm surprised she lived!.

After the Monastary we headed back down the mountain to the beach and Jared finally got his ride on the vespa :)

The beach was great!

Evie loves to play in the shallow part but, being the Miss Priss that she is with mud, she hated the rocky sand in the shallow end and insisted on being held for the rest of the afternoon.

We ate lunch right on the beach and then got back on the ship.

That night we went to a "Cinematastic" show on the boat and Evie danced and clapped and spun circles through the entire thing until she crashed ha ha ha

My next blog is on an AMAZING day in Kusadasi Turkey!!

There are no words to describe this place!

p.s Sorry I don't post a ton of my "photography" from this trip on my family blog. I kind of save the majority of those for posts on my photography blog. I'll be sure to send links when I post those though!

xo, Meg

ATHENS!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:21:00 +0000

I'm so sorry it's been weeks since I promised to post my Athens day. Athens is always one of my favorite days. The history here is amazing! Well, we flew from London to Athens in the middle of the night and when we got to our hotel they messed up our reservations and had no where for us to sleep! So we had to walk down some sketchy roads in the middle of Athens at 3 a.m until we came to our next hotel. It was pretty scary but we were exhausted and ready for a bed, no matter what condition it was in lol.

We started out the day at the "grocery store" to buy diapers and wipes :) After diapers we went to this really good Gyro restaurant and got some lunch, then we started the trek up the mountain to the Acropolis!

The Acropolis is incredible! It's just crazy how old this history up here is! The Acropolis includes the Parthenon, the Temple of Erechtheum, a few major amphitheaters, and lots of other ancient sites.

Evangeline loved climbing around on all the rocks, walls, and crumbled pillars on the mountain.

It was SO hot today! (not to be our hottest day) but when your up that high and there is NO SHADE you get pretty sweaty lol

(sorry for the visual)

Once we came down off the Acropolis we went to the Acropolis Museum where they keep all of the artifacts they've found on the property. It was pretty amazing to see what has kept for so long! We spent a couple of hours there.

After that we went to the temple of Zeus and the Olympic Oval

(Evie was asleep so I stayed in the car)

Then we RUSHED back to the hotel and got our stuff and loaded it into 2 VERY small taxi's ha ha ha ha Luckily my dad is the bungee chord master and got us all put together and tied down tight

Before we left I got a statue of my FAVORITE statue! (that sounds funny)

It's the Nike of Samothrace, she's the daughter of Titan.
The statue was made around 200 BC and was made to celebrate a battle at sea.
It's currently in the Louvre but the Greeks are really proud of this piece.
I got one and I love having on my shelf :)

I would like to give Photo credit to my lovely sister Natalie. I didn't bring my camera today so all these pictures were taken by her :) THANKS NAT! xo

Next Blog will be Patmos Greece!

Camping, POH, Rocks, Tubs, Splash Pads and more!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:56:00 +0000

I Don't know why everyone has been telling me

"medical school is hard for the students but it's even harder for their wives!"!?

I've been having a BLAST SO FAR!!

There are so many fun and free things to do all over Colorado and I have made so many amazing friends already!

i'm thinking these next fews years may be easier than I was dreading!

When I first moved here I got called by another first year wife asking if I wanted to bring Evie and go to the beach with her and some other first year wives, I went and it's been a party ever since! We have girls nights, play dates, book club, morning walks, and more on a weekly basis! I've been more social in the last 2 months than I have in the last 3 years! and Evie and I are LOVING it!! So, because we are doing SO much here this post is a MASS overload of pictures from our first few weeks in Denver!

I'm sorry to say though, since I have SO MUCH in this post already I'm going to put off Athens for another couple days. Sorry those who were waiting to hear about Greece!

So one of my FAVORITE things about Denver are their FREE splash pads!! They have one thats right by our house and it's the most legit splash pad i've ever seen and Evie is FEARLESS when it comes to these things!! In the pic below, this is her first 10 seconds at her first splash pad EVER! I didn't even have her sunscreen on her yet and she took off head on into this spiral water shooter!!

.the 2 pictures below that one are 10 seconds after the first picture was taken ha ha ha.

wild woman! I love it!

This is Ambry and Kori with their babies! They are champion mamma's and i love them!

This is the public splash pad

We went with Evies friends Halie and Cameron

Cameron kept drinking the fountain ha ha ha ha He is too funny!

Evie and him have this hilarious love hate relationship going on.

They are the closest in age and Cameron is quiet the ladies man ;)

and Evie isn't quiet sure how to deal with him

(heres an example of that..)

----------------------------------------------------------

Since Brandon and I were in Egypt on our anniversary we didn't REALLY get to celebrate it "just the two of us" so we decided to have a "Fake-Aversary" one month later on August 18th!

Since it was B's year to plan the event he surprised me and took me to the parade of homes!!

. I love this man.

(p.s Parade of Homes is FREE in Colorado!... yes FREE!!!)

My favorite house had this AMAZING 3 story court yard in the middle of the floor plan! Every patio had an amazing dining room or a beautiful hammock and the BEST part... there was an art studio attached to the house with a private balcony out into to court yard above a lions head fountain...

. I was in love.

It reminded me of this place we stayed at in Rome, I took a million pictures of it and I took even more at this house! I came home and drew out the floor pan as best I could remember because I WILL build this house for B and I someday, and I can no longer accept anything less than a private balcony into Rome off my art studio ha ha ha ha

----------------------------------------------------------

Now for the best part!

The Doctors had their first final and it was on a friday!

Which means NO BOOKS, NO ASSIGNMENTS, NO TESTS, NO NOTHING ALL WEEKEND!!

So, we wives took that opportunity for a much needed camping trip!

We decided since none of our babies had been camping yet it would be good to take them all together so we can all help each other out (much better than going with a bunch of "single couples" and trying to manage a baby)

Well.... our trip was... an experience ha ha ha

We got to our camp ground and about 3 minutes into setting up our tents it started to DOWNPOUR!!

and I mean DOWNPOUR! We're talking, hail, wind, the whole thing!

All the girls grabbed the babies and headed for the cars while the boys faced the storm and finished up the tents

Me and E hung out for a while in the car

took pics

ate Pringles

try to lick the rain off the window...

Once the rain stopped we came back to the camp site to 3 soaking wet men

After that, camping and babies was CRAZY!

The entire site was flooded and we have water babies!

We had to follow babies around all afternoon and give them the

"nooooo... we don't play in puddles.." talk

and then face the "BAAAHHH NO PUDDLES" melt downs afterwards

.so fun.

we had babies sitting in puddles, falling in the mud, picking up mud balls and of course...

playing in puddles

so after cleaning off outfits with wet whipes and water and making a few "drying trips" to the bathroom hand dryers

we decided to just hang out in tents for the next little bit...

After the ground dried up and we decided to be brave and let the babies out Evie went into outdoor adventure mode!

She kept wandering off into the woods on random trails!

Sometimes she wouldn't even find a trail! She'd just start trekking through the woods!!

She even convinced Cameron to come on a few off road adventures

Once it was dry enough we tried to start a fire...

that was a joke..

Firewood up here cost us an arm and a leg so we only bought enough to make dinner and squeeze in a smore or two!

I'm obsessed with Halies little reindeer outfit! ha ha ha

Since we had no fire to sit around we all hung out in our tent and played games till late which was a blast! It was so nice to see our husbands so relaxed and worry free for a few hours.

That night it blew like hurricane Katrina

and of course E slept like a rock through the entire night!

In the morning we had a nice.... smokey.... breakfast and sat around the last bit of our sad fire until it died out. Then we decided to pack up and head on home

It was a little chaotic but it was SO fun to get out into the woods for a night!

----------------------------------------------------------

So here is an update on our stinker Evie

She's 14 months now and in FULL SWING toddler mode!

She was a handful when she learned to walk but now it's almost impossible!

She is so independent and smart she just makes me crazy

when she's walking away from me and I say "Evie... you come back here please..."

she won't turn and look at me she'll just freeze in her steps for a few minutes until I forget to look at her again and then she takes off again!

She thinks when I say "NO!" it's funny...

I have no disciplinary handle at all on her because she thinks i'm just playing with her!

I have a lamp on the arm of the sofa and she'll go smack it! So i'll pull her down and give her a big, firm, "EVIE NO NO! We DON'T smack moms lamp!" and she'll just give me her big cheese burger smile and climb back up and smack it again!!!

She just knows how to push my buttons and will do anything to do so!

I think my only option at this point is boot camp ... or boarding school...

The other thing we're doing now is REFUSING to get out of the tub!

She will freeze to death for 10 minutes in an empty tub rather than get out when I ask her to!

... freakin' stinker...

There are rock pits surrounding our apartments and EVERY time we go in or out of the house we MUST stop and pick up 2 rocks and take them with us...

So I have a PILE of rocks in my car and in my house...

. yup.

So instead of making her put them back right then and having an ear splitting scream come my way I just let her bring them along and throw them out every 3 or 4 days.

.sigh.

well congratulations! you've finally made it to the end of this never ending post :)

glad you came, glad you stayed!

Next blog will be Greece I promise!!

LONDON CALLING!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:36:00 +0000

LONDON

So today is one of my favorite days! We have been to London 4 times now so it's kind of become a home away from home for my family. Natalie did study abroad here when she attended BYU so we were both very excited to take our husbands around London and show them all of our favorite sites. We got into London around 6 pm so we were going to go to Piccadilly Circus and get some dinner and do a walk about at night

but of course we missed our stop on the express train and ended up having to ride it all the way into London and back. So we ended up just ordering Chinese to our hotel and going to bed (which I think we were all secretly grateful for, me especially judging by my exhaustion in this picture lol)

The next morning we got up and went straight to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guards!

This is one of my favorite things to do in London,

thousands of people gather at the gates and they have this huge parade to bring in the new guards, they go through the front gates and do this line up/ gun salute thing and then switch the guards who are on stand. It's a big deal for such a small event really? But it's fun to see the parade.

After the parade was over we walked through St. James park. I LOVE THIS PARK! They have all these cute chairs set up and people are scattered everywhere, reading, sleeping, practicing juggling, making out (lol), having field trips from school, and walking dogs.

When you come out of St. James park you can see your first view of Big Ben!

That clock never disappoints every time I see it

We stopped at Big Ben just outside the Abbey and got breakfast then headed off a crossed the river to the London Eye and the London Tower.

The London Tower is another really cool site to see in London. It was a high security prison back in it's hay day, today if you go through it you can see all the cells and the tools they used to torture prisoners with ha ha ha kind of awful but really interesting.

.One cool fact.

I have a relative that carved his name into one of the walls in the Tower during his stay :)

We went and found it last time we were here!

I guess theres one in every family lol

THE LONDON BRIDGE!!
This was one of my top things I wanted to show Brandon, I couldn't WAIT for him to see it!

This bridge is incredible! The only way you can appreciate the detail is to see it in person.
They had just freshly painted the bridge for the Olympics so it was even more breath taking than usual!

It's amazing how many people come to see this bridge every year and for good reason too.

One thing Evie does right now that I love and hate,

when you take her picture if you don't IMMEDIATELY show her the picture on the back of the camera she tenses her ENTIRE body and growls at you!

Like she's going to explode!

It is hilarious but she only does it for a second so I can never get a picture of it!

Well, today I FINALLY got my picture!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA this kid kills me!!!

After the bridge we walked down the river to St. Pauls Cathedral.

We walked passed all the statue actors and street musicians and I just took some photography along the way.

At St. Pauls we all sat on the steps and took a well needed break before we went into the Cathedral...

...Evie, of course, traumatized pidgins and did the stairs 10,000 times....

While we were at the Cathedral it started pouring rain so we ducked into the Tube and rode over to Notting Hill Gate where Natalies old flat was when she studied here.

We visited the BYU center and then Natalie requested that we take a walk through Hyde Park.

She used to run here every morning while she was living in London.

The park of course was lush and green with locals scattered all throughout.

We were all ready to pass out by the time we need to jump back on the Express Train and catch our flight to Athens

but just before we left the pond in Hyde park I snapped this shot

.great way to end our London day.

Next week is ATHENS!

See you all soon!!

ICELAND

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:40:00 +0000

Hey everyone! So long time no blog! I have so much to catch up on it's not even funny. This summer has been crazy! I'd like to give a shout out to all of my friends, family and ESPECIALLY my clients who have been so patient with my hectic schedule lately! Anyway, as promised, i'm going to start blogging about my trip to Europe! As I sat down at my desk the other day I tried to get started on blogging my epic 3 week long trip and I started getting REALLY overwhelmed... I had a billion pictures I wanted to post and a million things to say and it would have been a long and then forgotten post. SO! I've decided to post about 1 country at a time! I'll leave it up for a week or so and then move on to the next. Sound good to everyone? I feel like doing it this way will actually do justice to this trip and also work as a journal entry for myself as well :)

so day one!

DENVER TO

ICELAND

So today we flew out of Denver at about 6 pm which was perfect because Evie slept almost the entire 11 hour flight and then we landed in Kelfick Iceland around 6 am (Iceland Time) so that cut out a HUGE chunk of our jet lag

.thank goodness.

Flying into Iceland was awesome! You got to see the entire island from one end to the other and it was NOTHING like I expected!

It looked just like St. George but COVERED in moss!?!

Really the entire island looks like lava rock covered in lush green!

It was beautiful

We landed and rented a car for the day and drove all over to different sites.

My favorite site was the Gollfoss Waterfalls

I've never even HEARD of these falls and they kick Niagra Falls butt!

They were truly amazing.

.awe inspiring.

It was WAY too cold to take Evangeline all the way down to the look out point by the falls and we didn't want her to get wet so we hung out at the top while the rest of the family went down.

Of course she got wet anyway cause she had a crazy diaper blow out shortly after the family started the hike...

(please note Evies proximity to me while riding in the sling...)

so the 2 of us had to walk around for a few minutes and air dry anyway...

.Thanks E.

After the falls we went to a geyser

It was FREEZING!

When the geyser is about to go off all the water starts to get sucked down into the hole so we were standing there freezing to death and every time the water started to go down we'd whip our cameras out and pull our gloves off.....

and it still wouldn't go....

luckily I finally got the shot before my fingers froze off

All around the geyser were these hot pot pools. They were beautiful!

Just full of steaming water

It looked amazing with how cold we all were at that moment ha ha ha

We also went to this GIANT crater!

I don't really remember how it was formed but it kind of looked like 10,000 flushes (for those of you from Cedar City :)

.my dad is so handsome I think.

After all that we sadly had to drive back to the Airport and catch our flight to London

not that I was too sad though, I LOVE London!

I wish I could have spent 4 more days in Iceland but it was just a long layover for us.

I'd like to go back and photograph more than just out a car window!

.........................................

In back in Denver news!

Brandon is OFFICIALLY a

Student Doctor!

I am so overwhelmed with pride in him I could barely hold the tears back at his white coat ceremony!

He's doing well so far, the hardest thing about it is learning how to be a med school student.

How to balance study time, what to take really serious and what to just pass.

He's getting it though, and Evie and I are having a blast.

We've already made a ton of new friends and have been going on bike rides, reading books, scrapbooking, and just enjoying life before my work starts up again.

Next weeks blog: LONDON!

Ciao!

Evie's 1st Birthday!!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 03:09:00 +0000

The last few weeks have been crazy for us! We've been non stop working, packing boxes, enjoying our last family events, getting ready for our trip and tying up lose ends in Utah. We are officially living in Denver now. We moved last Saturday and so far we are really liking it (other than the fact that I got lost for 2 hours the other day trying to find Costco...) Anyway. I thought i'd catch up on the last few weeks.
First up my mom and Jared came down to help us pack up our housethank goodness too because I have NO IDEA how to pack a house for a move to another state.While they were here we went and saw Aladdin at Tuachan!

... honestly I loved it but I was also kind of disappointed in it too. The effects and 3d were SO COOL but they brought in a lot of jokes about Madonna and Beyonce and "Deal or No Deal" and it really killed the whole "Disney Magic" for me. That and the flying carpet got stuck during the first 10 seconds of "A Whole New World" so they just sat in the middle of the stage on a stationary rug ha ha ha ha it all worked out cause after the song they stopped the show, had Aladdin and Jasmine hope off, a few tech guys ran out, put the couple back on the rug and we got to have round 2 of the song but this time with the working rug! .much cooler the second time.
................
OUR LITTLE STINKER TURNED ONE!!I can't believe how much she's grown this year! 365 days ago she didn't know how to walk or say mom get into drawers, (work my iPad), climb stairs, roll around, and use her hands!and now she does all of that and so much more!
I did this little birthday cake shoot and I was really excited about it!I got the cake all made up cute and got her all ready to go I put her down by that cake and guess what?.. that little girl wouldn't TOUCH that cake!I thought for sure, with how much she gets into everything else, she'd dive right into that cake!!We tried everything! We started putting her little snacks that she loves on the back of the cake and if she picked one off and it had the slightest bit of frosting on it she had a fit! I was shocked. So the way this cake looks in these pictures is pretty much exactly how it looked when the shoot was over. We now refer to her as Miss Priss...

Her birthday is the 28th and we were moving on the 29th so we decided to have a birthday/going away party for her at my In Laws house to send us off to Medical School. I got the house all decorated (thank you dollar store and Pinterest) and it looked SO CUTE! I didn't get a ton of very good pictures of the decor and i'm kicking myself about it.

So many of our friends and family came and it was the best way we possibly could have left UtahWe had 40+ people show up and when all those people starting to sing Happy Birthday to Evie she was just grinning from ear to ear! She LOVED being the center of attention and she totally knew she was too! It was too funny!

Me and my Birthday Gril
.i'm in love.
This little girl got spoiled beyond all reason! The term "showered with gifts" I think literally applies here.

I wasn't expecting other people to bring her presents! I haven't been to a birthday party is so long where you bring a gift I just didn't even think about others bringing her any! Brandon and I got her 3 little things and I figured the grandparents would but it was like CHRISTMAS for this girl! (In fact I still think i'm gonna take some of these and save them till Christmas)She did great though, I was worried she'd be so overwhelmed by presents she be thrown into an early nap time but she just unwrapped everything and as soon as it was opened she'd grab it and run it over to me to show her how it works. Then for some reason she started putting this white box on people heads and just thinking that was hilarious?
This girl was fed more sugar by more people than I think any 1 year old has ever had.She was so crazy! She was running around and saying hi to everyone and just being the biggest show off!

Which eventually led to a massive sugar crash and a good nights sleep...
We are loving Colorado but we already miss our friends and family.
--------------------------------
I wanted to write a few things about Evie so I can remember them.-She has the wildest, craziest personality!-She says hi to EVERYONE-She likes to take apart her diaper bag and slowly distribute it out to everyone in sacrament meeting-She learned how to walk backwards so we are having a lot of accidents lol-Every time Mickey Mouse Clubhouse comes on she screams like a 13 year old girl at a Justin Beiber concert- She goes "ahhh" when she wants to share your drink (like, the sound you make AFTER you take a drink)-She will do the stairs 10 MILLION times if you'll let her- She gabs on and on at the grocery store- I don't know WHERE she learned this but she always try to give kisses to little boys...- She's a quick recovery kind of girl when she gets hurt- She LOOOVES mom- Is always willing to share your ice cream- Goes crazy for her Uncle Jared- Starts dancing to ANY music, people cell phones, the hymns in relief society, commercials on tv. etc. - She tries to be sneaky already- She loves her sock monkey- REFUSES to hold her own bottle! She can drink out of a normal cup all by herself but will starve to death before she'll hold her own bottle.- She loves to sit on people's faces? I have no clue why but if you lay on the floor she's gonna come sit on your face and bounce...

Well, we leave for our Europe trip tomorrow so get ready for that post in about 3 weeks!!until then CIAO!!

Powell. Mystere. Emerald Pools. FUN.

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 20:48:00 +0000

Moving day is FAST approaching and I have WAAAY too much to do before then!

...Heres the list...

Tie up all lose ends with all my photography clients

GARAGE SALE!

paint and stain new shelf that dad and I built

take a saw and a sander to the hutch and make it a TV stand
sell old TV stand at garage sale

find loads of boxes

PACK

Anderson Family Reunion

about 3 weeks worth of laundry

2 more family sessions

touch up lockers that I painted for Evies room

post a blog about Evies Lockers

Evies birthday party!

Aladdin at Tuachan (find babysitter)

finish the 5 foot 6 inch tall subway art i'm making for the entry in our new apartment

......

deep breaths

.....

So i figured before I got 2 months behind in my blogging i'd hurry and catch up!

We'll start with the most recent and go backward I think

*shake things up a bit*

The Valantine family vacation this year was to Lake Powell!!

Yahoo RIGHT?!

.no.

We wanted to leave early and hit the lake but Dani Aubrey and Brady had school so the rest of us took off to powell. We unloaded at the hotel and then hit the lake! We docked at Antelope so we headed straight up Navajo Canyon for about 15 miles then decided to get out and surf and board. We played around for about an hour and then figured the rest of the Fam would be getting to the hotel soon so we'd better head back...

Well we got about a mile back down the Canyon and the belt on the umpeller FRIED

.great.

so we put it back on the best we can and take off again

.....

700 yards later it breaks again

so we put it BACK on...

this happens about 3 times and we FINALLY see a boat!!

WE'RE SAVED!

We asked the guy if he could just stick around and follow us for a bit and make sure we get out of the canyon okay...

LONG story short

we put the belt back on about 4 more times and then gave up and he towed us the last 10 miles of the canyon.

4 hours later we get to the dock and decide to just go to the hotel and go to bed

it was too long of a day

The next day we go out first thing and buy a new belt!

everyone is in high spirits!

YAHOO!

BOAT DAY!

We launch it into the water

turn on the engine

get about half way out of the no wake zone

and it fries again...

so we have Dani swim us in

We reload it

and take it to a shop

while the boats getting fixed the rest of us head to swimmers beach and just set up a day camp till the boat is done

NOW the fun starts!
We played in the water and played with sand toys
blew bubbles
climbed all over mom...

built sand castles

then a few hours later the boat pulled up
YAHOO!!!!!

Evie stayed back with Grandma and Grandpa and all the kids took the boat out
We were out for about 30 minutes and decided to go back to the beach and let Dad know that the boat was doing just great and he didn't need to worry if we were stranded or something.
We got back to the beach and the wind had picked up BAD!
We decided to throw everything on the boat
take it back to the truck
dump it off
and just spend the entire rest of the day on the boat
....
well while we were loading the stuff from the beach to the boat the waves had gotten SO BIG from the wind that they picked the boat up and smashed it into the ground and completely

bent
the
propeller...

so needless to say...
we called it a trip

we went back to the hotel
watched a movie
and went to bed

the next morning we just took off and left

So not the most successful Powell trip but it was still fun to spend time with family :)

Next up!

Brandon took Me and E on a Zion hike!!
YES!!
I love hiking
Brandon does not
so when he said he wanted to take me on a hike I was BEYOND excited!!!

Here's Evie getting ready to go!

We had a blast.

I hope we'll hike more when we move!

For Mothers Day B got me tickets to Mystere in Vegas!!

I have never seen a Vegas show before and Brandons family see's them all the time so he wanted me to have a REAL vegas experience before we moved away!

We dropped off the baby at Grandma and Grandpa's and headed off for a much needed vaca

The show was SO COOL!

If you go to Vegas to see a show GO SEE Mystere!

After the show we had a Groupon for a Thai place so we ordered a TON of food!

It was so good!!!

We ate a lot

We shopped a little

and hung out by the pool all day

It was SO NICE to not have someone climbing all over your legs all day and getting into EVERYTHING all the time.

.We loved it.

and lastly...

Me and B went to the

F.U.N

concert about a month ago!

It was awesome!

One of the best concerts I've ever been to

well thats it for now

lots more exciting posts to come!

Thanks for keeping up with the Valantines

Red Velvet Sundays...

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:52:00 +0000

I cannot even begin to describe my love for cupcakes

.ESPECIALLY.

Red Velvet cupcakes

They are the greatness to my day and the bane to my love handles!

A good friend of mine lives in Texas and she's been taking some photoshop classes from me so as a thank you she sent me a box of cupcakes...
she knows me all too well.

I saved the Red Velvet cupcake for 4 days for the PERFECT moment

sunday afternoon

E is down for a nap

Brandon is watching the game out on the sofa

so I sneak away to my bedroom with a chick flick, a glass of milk

and this fabulous piece of pastry...

.bliss.

Europe 2012!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:49:00 +0000

One of the things I am most grateful for in my life is what we (The Andersons) do "as a family"

We don't boat

We don't jeep

We don't camp much

We TRAVEL!

I have had so many amazing experiences in my life thanks to my parents and I could probably never do anything or thank them enough to make up for what they've given me with the trips we go on.

They have made it a priority to get our family out of our comfort zones and to as many foreign countries as we can see before we get too old and our knees give out on us ;)

In my fine art classes in college, I had been to MOST of the architectural landmarks we discussed and have stood in front of the rarest art pieces in the world!

I will be forever grateful to my parents who have spent the time and money to make sure all of us see the world with them.

I know someday my kids will get tired of me telling them about all of my adventures over and over!

about getting lost in Venice for an entire day

seeing Rome at 2 a.m cause my mom didn't want to go to sleep yet!

Almost getting kicked out of the Endinburgh Scotland Castle with Natalie

Riding Donkeys up the side of a volcano is Mykonos Greece

Going to EVERY Pride & Prejudice site we could find!

About my mom passing kidney stones in Russia and my dad and I having to navigate a russian subway system all alone!

I have so many memories of my siblings on these trips as well.

We got along (ish) when we were little but we REALLY grew close on these trips.

Most of my favorite memories of my siblings are in foreign countries now that I think about it!

Natalie going INSANE in the car while driving from Whales to Scottland and back to London.

Ryan barking out the car window at unsuspecting Vespa riding Italians while stuck in traffic in Florence

ha ha ha ha ha

.Good times.

My parents decided since this would probably be the last time ALL of us could go on a big family vacation ALL together we'd go out with a bang!

Now announcing the agenda for the

ANDERSON FAMILY 2012 FAMIY VACATION!!!

We leave July 9th and I'm DYING!
Egypt is a bucket list item for me and Brandon!
Thats probably mostly what i'm excited about...
I've been to a few of these places before and I can't WAIT to take Brandon to them!
He's never been to Europe and London is like home away from home for me!

July seriously can't come fast enough!!

A LONG 3 weeks... and special announcement!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:21:00 +0000

Well Evie took her FIRST plane ride the other day!

Brandon, Evie, Me and my Mom all flew out to Kirksville MO, to visit my sister and brother-in-law!

Evie loved the plane ride!

...

okay she loved that there were people behind her and in front of her that played with her the entire trip

While we were in Kirksville Evie took a big step!

{literally}

SHE LEARNED HOW TO WALK!

9 months old and walking like a champ!

Our kids a genius!

While we were there Brandon took off with Joe and did "man things"

Ping Pong, Watched Man Flicks, played pool

and what man week would be complete with out sitting in on a couple of surgeries..

Joe is in his 3rd year of Medical School so Brandon went with him to some of his surgeries

Meanwhile...

The girls stayed back at the house and sewed our little hearts out!

nat and I made

baby blankets

baby slings

fixed joes sunday clothes

a purse

and more!

We helped Nat plant new flowers in her beds around her cute little house

She took a couple of hours to pull out this MASSIVE weed!!!

yes in the pic on the right

.that.is.a.weed.

We had a couple of fun dinners, one of which was a little picnic of shiscabobs out in the backyard

we were there for a total of 9 days but our trip wasn't over yet...

..........................................

Brandon has spent the last year interviewing at Medical Schools and he has FINALLY picked one!!

I would like to announce that in June the Valantine Trio will be moving to....

Brandon has chosen to attend Medical School at Rocky Vista University in Parker Colorado!

I am so happy for him!

We went out to Colorado to find a house to buy with absolutely ZERO luck

The housing market in Denver is CRAZY good still and you literally cannot find a house to buy there.

So long story short it was a LONG 5 days of mostly

this....

{In the car all day}

This crazy gal was SO GLAD to get home to St. George!

even though..

guess what?!

our air conditioning is out AGAIN this summer!

go figure.

This week was Aunt Dani's birthday so we went and played Tennis

see... in Salt Lake when it's 97 degrees outside, we go to the lake

in St. George when it's 97 degrees outside, they go play tennis at noon?....

Me and E hung out in the shade :)

and then we went to Walmart where we found this kiddie pool for 7$!

.fabulous.

Evie was in heaven!

I could barely get her out of it when she started shaking for the sun going down!

It's getting so hot in St. George already I can't believe it!

Moving day is also rapidly approaching and we have so much we need to do before then!

(lake powell)

xo, Meg

Spring Break Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 01:15:00 +0000

Brandon has been playing in this softball league this spring and it's been fun to go and watch his games.

. Evie of course loves getting to be outside and sociable .

Brandon of course has already injured himself more times than I want to admit to lol

...as for the rest of our spring break...

The ENTIRE Valantine family (including the dogs) went for a red rock hike up by Gunlock Res.

It was so nice to get some sun and some exercise!

I was so glad to get charley out of the house too!

That dog has been driving us nuts with needing to always have the attention over the baby!

She thinks she's a baby too.

.sheesh.

Matt (my Father-In-Law) went out and got a rock crawler...

.....

Our family and the McAllisters wanted to go out jeeping on saturday and climb up to a cliff to watch the Southern Utah Air Show.

(It's the one with the Blue Angel jets that fly way close together)

I was hesitant because my father-in-law thinks he's Evel Knievel sometimes..

after one week of coaxing I FINALLY agreed to let Evie go on this outing

AS LONG

as Matt agreed upon and followed precisely the terms I laid out :)

We went and we had a blast!

Matt did great and followed all the rules ;)

I'd go again in a heart beat!

Our neighbors, Alli and Kc brought their jeep and came out for some fun that day too

The air show was AMAZING!!

We were really far from the airport so the jets would fly over the airport and then go out and do a U turn to go back to the airport so whenever they flew out to turn around they'd be RIGHT in front of the cliff we were on! It was NUTS!

And of course i'm an idiot and didn't bring my SLR!

These were taken from our little 90$ point and shoot so that kinda shows how close they were!

It was so fun to hang out with the family all week!

They all work, go to school or live in Cedar City so we never get to do fun things like this all together!

What a blast!

Well tomorrow Evie is going on her FIRST plane ride!

My Mom, Brandon and I are going out to Missouri to visit my sheeshter!

yahoo!!

more to come on that!

xo, Meg

Spring Break so far...

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:24:00 +0000

I got a really great full time job opportunity last week so Brandon gets to quit his job and come home and be Mr. Mom!

YAHOO!

I've been looking forward to this literally for years!

Brandon is always so busy, he's always working, he's always studying, he's always doing something.

I feel like he never gets to come on trips with me (and if he does he has to stay in the hotel and study),

he never gets to go do fun things with our families,

and he never gets to do anything that he really wants to do!

so I was MORE than happy to take a full time job so that he could have the next few months before Medical School to be a free man!

And so far the turnout has been great

His last day of work was last Saturday and this week is spring break so we've already gotten away to do some fun things.

On Sunday night Brandons dad said

"Hey we should go to Vegas tomorrow!"

so 25 minutes later our hotel was booked and we were at home packing

(Thats one thing i LOVE about my father-in-law! he's way spontaneous and always follows through!)

We mostly went down to hang out at the pool so we booked our room at the fabulous

Mandalay Bay because they're pool is like a beach!

.Evie of course LOVED the sand and the pool.

I loved that Brandon was there and SLEEPING on a lounge chair!

Not up in the hotel

not doing homework

not reading a text book

SLEEPING!

My mom loaned me Jareds old "Mom Rigg" :)

So Evie and I have been going on lots of bike rides lately!

It's spring in St. George already and I LOVE it!!

I honestly never want to move anywhere cold ever again!

A few nights ago we went on a date night with a bunch of our good friends from Brandons (old) work!

We were going to go bowling but it was league night so we headed over to the batting cages at Fiesta Fun!

This was my first time EVER batting at something and I did WAY better than I thought I was going to!

We let Evie crawl all over the ground out by the cages and get filthy so when we went back inside to the arcade to play air hockey we just let her have at all the kiddie playground stuff

Her FAVORITE new thing is the slide!

(pardon the hat hair)

This little slide was like 3 feet long so she could go down it all by herself

and she went CRAZY!

as soon as she was down the slide she was back up and trying to climb back up it again

She'd get overly anxious at the top and accidentally front flip and tumble all the way down and she'd

STILL

want to get back up and go to the top again!

It was hilarious!

Well spring break still isn't' over!

I think today we're going on a hike with Brandons family and I can't wait!

More pictures to come on that

until then

xo, Meg

UT NV AZ and back

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:36:00 +0000

This month has been CRAZY! We started off the month up in SLC for a couple of shoots

then back down to St. George for my 24th BIRTHDAY!

.man i'm old.

then we came home and headed off to Arizona for Brandons birthday/ Valentines Day AND a medical school interview!

We were leaving on a sunday and Evie learned to crawl that morning!

(I think I already told that story in my last post but here are some pics from the day she learned)

Brandons Interview went great and he was accepted to Midwestern YAHOOO!!

*this school is my top choice for obvious reasons*

We spent Brandons birthday / Valentines Day hanging out on the sofa while Evie slept on us.

It was just what we needed though.

We both work a LOT so we never get to just sit together anymore.

After that Evangeline gave us lots and lots of face kisses (attacks)

and then we went to Brandons FAVORITE restaurant of all time!

It's the little tiny place in the middle of an asian strip mall but it tastes JUST like Taiwanese food!

We got home from Arizona and 2 days later I took off to Las Vegas for a conference

This year I got invited to attend WPPI

.Wedding & Portrait Photographers International.

and it was AMAZING!

I met so many famous photographers

and attended so many awesome classes!

I went down with 4 other girls and I couldn't have loved being in their group more!

I could gush on and on but I won't bore you guys :)

I'll go into more detail about WPPI on my photography blog later this week.

.anyway.

My conference ended on Wednesday so Brandon drove down with Evie and he flew out Wednesday afternoon to his next interview in Des Moines.

On Thursday my mom and brother came down for Jareds soccer tournament!

He didn't have games until Saturday so we hit up the pool side ALL WEEKEND!

It was amazing to have sun on my skin!

Last year I hardly went outside cause I was either 9 months pregnant or I had a new born and it was 100 degrees every day down here in St. George.

Evie is A FISH!!!

You can't GET that girl out of the water!

She loves the pool, she loves the hot tub, she loves the bath tub!

(and as of 30 minutes ago the toilet bowl....

note to self: close all toilet bowls from now on...)

This girl is into EVERYTHING!

She is the most mischievous little thing i've ever seen!

I was having fun taking pictures of her all morning and then I lost my model to the Hot Dog Dance...

I don't know what it is about that song but as SOON as that song comes on every bit of her focus goes directly to Mickey Mouse?...

Anyways.
thats it for today!
E and I are going to go for a bike ride now
:)

Xo, Meg

Time To Lower Our Standards :)

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:25:00 +0000

This month has been CRAZY!!

For the entire month of February I will be home a total of 10 days!

We've been up to SLC for weddings and other shoots

down to Arizona for a medical school interview and Brandons birthday

next week we're off to vegas for a Photography Conference

and then I STAY in Vegas for the rest of the week for my little brothers soccer tournament

while Brandon goes to Des Moines for his LAST interview!

.sheesh.

My little girls sleep schedule is ALL OVER the place!

We worked 6 months for a routine all to blow it in one month ha ha ha

.oh well.

life goes on

In other news!

It's officially time to lower the crib!

This gal pulls herself up on EVERYTHING!

She climbs up the TV stand, the sofa, the table, your leg, the bed, my desk, my chair, she even attempts to stand up on Charley!

and guess what!? She CRAWLS NOW!!

She learned the morning we were heading out the door for Arizona!

I feel so bad because Brandon missed the first time she rolled and the day she learned to sit up because he was at work so I was SO EXCITED he was home for this!!

I was blow drying my hair out in the living room while Brandon was in the shower and I set my brush on the floor and she totally took a step towards it!

I jumped up and ran into the bathroom

B SHE'S CRAWLING!!! SHE CRAWLING COME NOW!!!!!

So he jumps out of the shower (grabs a towel) and comes BOLTING into the living room!

She thought it was peek-a-boo or something when he came around the corner so she started laughing and crawling towards him!! It was awesome!

We honestly never thought she'd crawl before she walked!

{sorry to all those who think stories like that are not nearly as awesome as we mammas think they are!

ha ha ha I used to skip right passed posts like these when I didn't have Evie so it's okay if you did too}

Upcoming Family Posts

Arizona/ Brandons Birthday / Valentines Day

Vegas Conference / Weekend with my Mamma

My birthday (yes that was clear back in January)

Upcoming Photography Posts

Wing Wedding

Conrad Bridals

Yellowhorse Bridals

Janelle Bridals

{yikes i'm behind...}

ALSO! Great News!

My camera that broke 3 months ago is FINALLY FIXED!!!

No more using this stinkin' camera with the soft focus!!

xo, Meg

You are my Sunshine My only Sunshine

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:41:00 +0000

It's funny how much I look forward to blogging.

I think about it all week

when I finally get to have a minute to sit down & do it.

It's kind of like a relaxing "me time" in my week

I get to take a break from photoshopping all my weddings and bridals and I get to finally work on something that I love

.most the time

it's this girl.

I have never been much of a Journaler*

I haven't regretted it so far

up until 3 years ago my journal mostly would have consisted of entries like

"This month I like (place unimportant boys name here)"

"today I hung out with my same 6 best friends"

"the church is true"

but once I met my husband that all changed.

I felt like I had stuff happening in my life that my kids would want to read about.

Thoughts and memories that they'd like to relive with me later in their lives

{maybe when I'm gone?}

for me

.blogging = journal.

So today I want to write about Evie for a few minutes

she's already 6 months old

I remember when I was pregnant with her thinking

"I think having a 6 month old is going to be the BEST!

she'll be at a perfect stage.

you can really have fun with her and she's not super fragile anymore

she has a personality but is still manageable

she's not so dependent on you but she's not mobile YET"

This girl is about 5 days away from crawling!

i'm terrified...

She is going to be a handful when she can finally get around

This girl is a

wild woman!

We have a hard time at church already because she sits and just SCREECHES!

It's not a cry, its just sheer joy

.She LOVES to jump.

we can't go to movies with her anymore because she is CONSTANTLY jumping in our laps and we're exhausted by the end!

We took her to "we bought a zoo" the other day and she just stood in our laps and SCREECHED at the animals on the screen! I had to take her out for most of the movie!

She ADORES my brother Jared

I don't know if it's because he's smaller than everyone else or what but every time he's near her she starts to kick her legs and scream at him.

He went to Hobby Lobby with us the other day and I almost made him go sit in the car because Evie was causing such a scene about him walking by us!

She wants to be touching your face at all times

If you are holding her she's either pulling at your nose, eyes and mouth or she'll put her hands up on your temples, shut her eyes, and slowly put her forehead against yours and leave it there for a minute.

{thats my favorite}

She is so smart

she's already learning how to clap

she already says "mom"

{I don't think she does it on purpose but she says it all the time}

When she gets sad she looks at me with her big puppy face and goes

"mom mom mom mom mom"

.heart melt.

She likes to bug charley and pull her ears

{charley will usually let out a huge annoyed sigh* and then go lay on the other end of the sofa}

She LOVES ice cream

{like her mamma}

She loves sock monkeys!

She thinks they are just hilarious

She's in a MAJOR scratching phase

which stinks because when i'm rocking her to sleep she HAS to be touching my face and most the time she's just scratching me.

When she has something in her hand that she is particularly pleased about having (dads cell phone) she starts to sing this high pitched little song and flips the item around in her hands.

She loves to suck on faces!!

My makeup looks like crap everyday because she is constantly sucking on my cheeks!

She loves to be upside down?

The higher and faster you drop her the more fun she has.

She's very curious about everything going on around her and watches everything very intently

She loves when I sing "you are my sunshine"

"I'm trying to be like Jesus"

"pop corn popping on the apricot tree"

& "you'll be in my heart" but doesn't like "I am a child of god"?...

.weird.

{maybe i'm a little pitchy.... sensitive ears...}

She gets exhausted at the grocery store because with out a doubt she has at least 6 people come within 3 inches of her face and say "oh what a cute baby!! do you love shopping!? You are just a doll! Are you with your mamma?! Oh my goodness how adorable!" while we are there.

She cracks up when Dad dances with her.

She likes to eat moms Ipad.

She HATES the car seat

Loves the stroller

and goes CRAZAY in the bath tub!

This girl is gonna be one of those kids that you have to go in and manually remove from the swimming pool!

anyway, it's 1 a.m and I just got caught blogging by my husband so I'd better go but thats my journal update on Evie. For those of you who stayed through the whole thing, thanks for listening :)

Talk to you all soon!

xo, Meg

Christmas Overload!

noreply@blogger.com (Megan Valantine) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:46:00 +0000

Get ready for the ultimate Christmas Vacation photo OVERLOAD!

We had such a great break and I couldn't narrow down my pictures at all!

We started out on Christmas day at the Valantine house! Evie's first Christmas was a blast!

She got all kinds of new toys, books and bath toys and of course her FAVORITE thing was

.the gift wrap.

As soon as presents were open and the big Valantine Christmas Morning Breakfast was had those traitors took off for a cruise and left us "newly parents" at home :(

.but thats okay.

I was more excited about seeing my sister and brother in law for the first time in 6 months

AND

Elder Anderson would be calling us that night too!!!

so we took off to Salt Lake with a VERY full car

{I never knew having a baby meant packing around so much stuff!!}

That night was sat around the laptop staring at the Skype home screen waiting and waiting for Ryan to call!

Of course my mom HAD to buy Evie this cute little Cambodia shirt since it was the first time she'd be meeting Uncle Ryan!

It was so fun to see him smile and laugh again!

We got to talk to him for upwards of 2 hours!

It was awesome, we loved every minute of it, but it was so hard to say goodbye

-----------------------

Since it was Christmas Day and Santa hadn't come to the Andersons yet we played the rest of the night off like it was Christmas Eve.

We did all of our Christmas Eve traditions and opened a gift. Read the Night Before Christmas Etc. and then went to bed!

Christmas is much different when you have a baby

For example when you wake up at 5 a.m on Christmas morning it's not because your overly excited about gifts...

We put Evie in her Christmas Jammies again (middle pic)

(PLEASE notice the reindeer on the feet!)

and then we had a blow out so we switched to our other favorite jammies.

.incase you haven't noticed.

Evie has this thing where she is CONSTANTLY sticking her tongue out!

I have about 25 pictures from the holiday with her making a tongue face

Christmas morning came and went way too fast as usual

I'm the worlds coolest wife and scored my husband a new golf bag and the new Travis Rice Snowboard Video ;)

I made my dad this little license plate plaque for his shop at the Dickens Festival

he has all the license plates from every car he's ever owned hanging on the wall in there so I thought it fit the theme.

I got SUPER spoiled this year and Santa brought me and Ipad 2!

.which I haven't put down since I opened it...

After we opened gifts we all took naps, played with our new gadgets and we put "Stinker Butt" into the bath.

Grandma Rainey has the BEST bath sink at her house!

E loves it!

That night I begged and BEGGED and my family took me to see the Zoo Lights!

my 2 favorite things in ONE place!

.It was bliss.

I loved these snuggly Giraffes so much I made everyone get their pic in front of them ha ha ha

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The next day I caught a flight and flew out to sunny Newport Beach California to shoot a wedding!

I left SLC at 8 a.m and landed back at 9 p.m that night!

It was fast and crazy but really fun!

-------------------------------------------

The next morning B and I went to the Draper Temple for my "baby Marni"s wedding

Squid and I met on the first day of the 7th grade

class got over and everyone was crowding the door and I got pushed and fell right on top of her desk!

It was destiny ;)

we stuck together all through high school and 300 miles apart all through college.

I love this girl, she's always her own person and i love that best about her.

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and what sister/mom reunion would be complete without some after christmas shopping!?

We hit up Nordstrom Rack which is almost always a mistake because I can NEVER narrow down my number of shoe choices...

Neither can Evangeline though...

we spent a few days in park city shopping our hearts out while the boys stayed home with the BYU athletics department and Tom Cruise.

Later in the week we made about 20,000,000 calories worth of carmely, chocolately, minty treats

and subsequently ate almost all of them before the week was over...

for our last night all together we went to park city, had an amazing dinner and then walked main street. We looked through all the galleries and saw all the Christmas lights.

It was such a great week!

The holidays always go by so fast when your older

When your young it NEVER comes

.so unfair.