life lately.

we're two weeks away from christmas! i'm excited. i've done most our shopping this year online, and i will tell you what - it has been nice. it's a lot more effort to find time and then get gracie in the car and to the store and shop and then get everything and everyone back home. so online it is! and even better - i haven't paid shipping costs on one single thing i've ordered. free shipping all around! that is the best part for sure. i refuse to pay for shipping.

both jae and i had the itch early on to get our christmas decor up. i'm not sure why (we've never been so on top of things like that in the past...maybe because we have a 1yr old this year to make things more exciting??). we had most of our decorations and our tree up before thanksgiving. we finally put ornaments on the tree last week. i've loved having it all up, around the house. makes things special and gracie loves the lights. surprisingly, even with presents under the tree too, she hasn't bothered it much. we'll see if that lasts another couple of weeks.

gracie is all sorts of in the climbing into/onto/over things lately. it's pretty funny and cute, but also really interrupts my dish washing or toilet cleaning cuz i have to run and grab her as she's falling on the floor (from short heights, don't worry!). she's just growing and growing and doesn't seem to ever stop.

work is stressing me out. i've been working two jobs for almost 8 months now and it is seriously starting to wear on me. who's idea was this anyway, to work two jobs?? (pointing at myself.)

it's been 6 weeks since my D&C. can you believe it? it was a rough few weeks for jae and i, but we are finally back in a good, happy, healing place. we know it happened for some reason, although we don't know quite what that is yet. sometimes it's still hard not to think about how far along i would be now, and how we'd be planning everything, etc etc. but we are so blessed and so happy with our little family and know that little babe will be ours forever, even if he couldn't join us now.

on a side note, i ordered the sweetest drawing of Christ holding a newborn. a good high school friend of mine does AMAZING work, and when i saw it, i knew i had to have it. i am in love with it. i am still working on the perfect frame for it, but i love love it. it's beautiful and makes my heart happy.

what is with this weird utah winter spring weather? it really feels like we went through winter and now it's 50-something degrees everyday and things are kind of damp and dead still, waiting for new life. except we haven't even had winter yet. not sure that i'm complaining, but it is just strange.

i feel like we've had family pictures done about 17 times in the last couple of months. with all my family in town for thanksgiving, we had full frederickson family pictures done. plus, we'd already had two sets of pictures done for our little family for gracie's 1st birthday and christmas cards. you'd think jae and i would get more photogenic with all the photos being taken. but we don't seem to. gracie steals the show every time. which is totally fine.

last but certainly not least, gracie girl is walking!!! she started the saturday after thanksgiving, and has gotten better and better. she's still not sure if she'd rather walk or crawl, (whichever is faster at the moment, i guess), but she is getting so good and i'm all sorts of mixed emotions about it. (video below - sorry it's kind of weird quality, but it's so fun, i had to include it)