Guymon Family 2014

Hello there!

I obviously have not updated this poor blog in quite a while.  And by quite a while, I mean over a year!  It's crazy how quickly a year can fly by, and how much can happen in that year! I thought the most effective way to bring this blog somewhat up to date would be to post our letter and pictures that we sent out in our Christmas card this year. 2014 was a busy year with lots of fun memories, and most importantly, a new baby!!
Enjoy! -JAG

Merry Christmas from the Guymon family!

We hope you are all doing well and enjoying the joy of this season! It has been an exciting year. Here are our favorite happenings of 2014:

•          Bryan and Janelle:  1-Celebrating 10 years of marriage...and it just keeps getting better! 2-Henry's birth. It was an exciting, memorable couple of hours! 3-Getting to take two trips together, one to OKC and one to Boston. 4-Being in the temple with all of Janelle's siblings for Paige and Zeke's wedding. 5- Living this crazy, happy, busy life together. Life is so good for us in Pampa, TX

•          Joshua, Age 10: 1-Going to the OKC Thunder Game for his birthday. 2-Aunt Paige's wedding. 3-Going to see Grandma and Grandpa Guymon on their mission 4- Meeting Henry. 5-Going to the Ogden Temple Open House

•          Grace, Age 7: 1-Being in Utah for Aunt Paige's wedding. 2-Being brave and going down the toilet bowl, a water slide at the water park. :) 3-Henry's birth. 4-The first day of school. 5-Visiting Grandma and Grandpa Guymon on their mission

•          Hannah, Age 2: 1-Becoming a big sister to "Baby Nenry" 2-Turning 2! 3-Having Aunt "Syssa Jean" live with us for four months. 4-Dressing up as an owl for Halloween. 5-Playing with cousins in Utah

•          Henry, Age 1 month: 1- Being born Nov. 12th in a super quick fashion. He's just glad he was born at the hospital and not in the car (so is his mom)! 2- Being a super-star baby and putting up with all the poking, prodding, and pain that comes with having his club foot corrected. 3- Being smothered with love by his family, especially lots of kisses from Hannah 

Family Pictures

I don't know about y'all, but I am super excited for Christmas! :)

It's true, I might be one of those people who listens to Christmas music in October and I might be one of those people who starts Christmas shopping in September. So of course I'm thinking about our annual family Christmas card and my favorite part of that card...the pictures!

The fall leaves are so beautiful right now that I knew we had to take advantage of the beauty before they all die and fall off the trees. So I roped the family into a quick, camera remote/self timer photo shoot this afternoon.  The kids were awesome! The bribery was quite simple this time...smile, cooperate and be done in 30 minutes, or don't smile and cooperate and we can come back next week and do this all over again. :) Thankfully that seemed to do the trick! We actually got all these pictures in 25 minutes!

I love this sweet family of mine!

(And two of Hannah because I can't decided if I like the serious face or the squishy face best. What do you think?)

11 months

Today Hannah is 11 months old.  Can you believe it?!  I can't.

Except when I look at these pictures and see that they are proof positive that my baby is growing up! (that and the huge mess behind me on the floor because my baby can crawl and get into everything!)

She is definitely growing up.

I would maybe think about being sad over that fact, but she is just so much fun that it is hard to be sad about it!

How we love this baby girl!

 

We did our monthly photo shoot in Hannah's bedroom this morning and it was a lot of fun!

I finally captured some of her "tricks" she has learned lately. :)

First up we have her "squishy face." She makes this on command and it is so funny! I absolutely love the squishy face!



 

 

Next up we have the sticking the tongue out and moving it back and forth really quick. Grandpa Henke just got her doing this one this weekend while they were here visiting and it is quite cute!

 

And here are just a couple more pictures because they are too cute not to share:

So adorable! And now I better start planning the 1st birthday celebration, it will be here before I know it! We are all super excited to celebrate this cute baby girl!

Henke Family Photo Shoot

Hello!

I am so excited to post these pictures!

Last June we went to Utah for our summer vacation.

We went to see our family and also because it was my mom's 50th birthday and we wanted to help her celebrate...whether she wanted to, or not. :) 

On her actual birthday we went to the temple and then out to Kneaders for dessert...yummm. 

Then a few days later we took family pictures. I just absolutely LOVE how they turned out!

I owe a big THANK YOU to my awesome father-in-law, Steve, who came and took the big family shots of us all together, and the ones of all the adults together.  They turned out fabulous and they really are treasures! Between myself and my brother, Todd, we managed to get the rest of the smaller family shots.

I feel like these pictures are so real. They capture who we are as a family, craziness and all, and I just can't say enough how much I love these pictures.

But I probably have said it enough...so here they are. :) Enjoy!

Photo love

I don't know if you've noticed, but I love pictures. :)

I love taking pictures.

I love looking at pictures.

I love scrapbooking pictures.

I love hanging pictures of my favorite memories and my favorite people on my walls. I want to be surrounded by moments shared with people I love. 

Yeah, I'm a bit obsessed. 

Anyway, today I'm loving this picture:

Precious, isn't it?

It's my Grandma Henke and Hannah back in March when we were up in Utah for a spring break visit. I just love when I manage to capture sweet moments like this. So if anyone ever wonders why I'm a bit obsessed with always having a camera with me, this is why. Love it. 

The baby who *almost* crawls...

In this picture it looks like she crawls, right? Well, Miss Hannah's got you fooled!

This silly baby girl will get herself in perfect crawling position, reach for what she wants and grab it...then she sits back down! It's so funny! It seems to me that it would be more difficult for her maneuver herself back to sitting than it would be to just crawl away, but she's got that maneuvering thing down pat. The crawling thing, not so much!

Ohhh, but she is CUTE! And happy, happy, happy, too. :) She is full of smiles and cuddles and happy baby sounds. 

Yeah, I'd say she's got this whole 'melting Mom's heart' thing down pat, too!

Moments

I'm pretty sure anyone who has raised children, or is raising children, would agree that somedays you have to look for and hold onto those little moments of joy to help you ride through the, umm, 'less glamorous' moments of being a parent. Well, today was a pretty great day and I had little moments with each of our kids that just made me really grateful for the opportunity to be their mom. I thought I better record those moments, you know, store them away for future days when I need a little sunshine. :)

Joshua: Tonight as I was getting the kids in bed Joshua was begging for time to read the Book of Mormon. Of course I couldn't refuse that, so I let him read in bed for a few minutes. When I came back in to tuck him in bed he told me that the Book of Mormon was his favorite book and he loved reading it. He has been marking his favorite verses as he reads and the other day he told me he has found all kinds of great "power verses" to mark (anyone else think that sounds just like his dad?). :) I'm so grateful he is discovering the great spirit that comes from reading the Book of Mormon!

Grace: I got a call from Grace's first grade teacher tonight. She was calling to talk to me about a spelling test Grace missed when we were out of town last week, but she also wanted to let me know what a wonderful girl Grace is and how much she loves having her in class. At the end of each day in their class they pick someone who was really well behaved to be the 'teacher's pet' the next day.  Grace was chosen to be the teacher's pet a week or so ago and was super excited about getting to do it. Well tonight her teacher wanted to tell me that Grace was chosen to be the teacher's pet again today but she let another girl in her class be teacher's pet because she had already had a turn. What a girl--I am so proud of her!

Hannah: This baby girl is such a happy and easy going baby, for which I am very grateful! I love getting her out of bed after she's been asleep because she is always so happy to see me.  I've been trying to teacher to say mama pretty much since she was born, and she's finally caught on. I hear Mamamamama all day long now and it's music to my ears! :) I love it.

So those are my moments for the day. Pretty good moments, I think. I love my kiddos!