So much to be thankful for!

  So with Thanksgiving last week, I have thought a lot about all of the many blessings I have received in the last year and throughout my life!  I realize more and more how much I have been blessed with!  To name all of my blessings would take too much time, but I definitely wanted to name a few:

1) Obviously Grant's and my biggest blessing this year was getting pregnant, having a great pregnancy and having a healthy, happy little boy.  Will has been such a little angel!  Grant and I can't imagine our little family without him.  We feel like through our love for Will, we have gained a greater understanding of our Heavenly Father's love for each of us!

2)  I am so grateful for Grant!  He has been such a wonderful husband and father!  Especially this year with my pregnancy, I can't think of a time he ever lost his patience with me, or let me carry anything over five pounds!  He was constantly looking for things he could do for me (i.e. let me sleep or take naps whenever I was tired, give me foot and leg massages when my feet and legs were tired or swollen, making dinner so I could relax when I got home from work, etc. etc. I could go on for quite awhile about all the sacrifices he made for me!)  There are so many times I have looked at Grant and just felt such an overwhelming sense of peace and comfort from knowing that we are sealed together and we can always be together!

3)  I can't imagine how different my life would have been had I not had such a wonderful family!  I look at my parents and brother and sisters and am amazed at what strong people they are.   Everyone has always been so supportive of me and been such great examples.  I am so grateful for my parents strong testimony and for the choice they made to always raise our family in the gospel.  Although I feel like I have been blessed with even material things, I have been even greater blessed to always have been taught the teachings of our church and have the priesthood in my home!  As for my siblings, I don't know what else to say but I love spending time with them and only wish I could see them more often.  But even with not seeing them as often, I will always consider them some of my best friends!  

4) Even though I am not looking forward to going back to work in a month, I do have to admit that I am so grateful for my job.  I love what I do and I love the people I work with.  Because I have such a great job, Grant and I are in a position where Grant can stay home with Will until we go to law school, while I work and we don't have to put Will in a day care.  All throughout this year, there has been so much talk about the unemployment rate and I can't help but feel blessed in having such a good, secure job with great benefits.  

5)  I am grateful for my testimony of the gospel and how it has given me strength throughout my life.  The gospel has always been such a guiding influence on the decisions I make.  I look at myself and see plenty of areas where I need to improve and be a better person, and I know that I have not only this life but the next life as well to continue to learn and grow and better myself.  I am grateful that this last weekend Grant was able to bless Will at my parent's home.  He promised Will with many beautiful blessings that would come to him throughout his life by following the gospel.  I am grateful to Grant and that he is a worthy priesthood holder and that he was able to do that for Will.  Without the gospel, I know I couldn't be the person I am right now.

   I have to admit that this year has been such a wonderful year filled with so many blessings!  I know I have been blessed in many more ways then I can even imagine or recognize!  I have so much to be grateful for!

Little Buddies

   The other night Grant and I babysat for our friends Rick & Collette while they went to a Cardinals game.  Their little boy, Logan, is just a few weeks older than Will, so we keep telling them about what good friends they are going to be.  Well, while they were gone we got both of them down for bed and ended up sticking them in the crib together.  We were a little worried that if one woke up, he would wake up the other one, however, they did great and slept like that for almost three hours before Rick & Collette got back from the game.  We thought they looked pretty cute together!

Our Little Pea in a Pod

  

 So this year for Halloween, Will dressed up as a little pea in the pod!  Again, I am the bias mother but I thought he looked pretty darn cute!  We took him to our ward's Trunk-n-Treat where he quickly ate his dinner and then was a sleepy pea in a pod!  Surprisingly, he actually enjoyed his costume quite a bit and would flap his arms around and smile for anyone who was willing to give him a little attention!  Grant and I thought the arms on this costume were pretty funny because in order for his arms to fill in the costume he would have had to have ape arms.  His little arms only went half way so he just kept flapping the sleeves all over the place.  The next day we ended up getting family pictures and so we thought we might as well take the costume and get a few pictures of him in his costume also.   By the time we were done taking all the pictures Will was so tired we couldn't get him to stay awake no matter what we did.  However, this one of our sleepy little pea is turned out to be one of my favorites!

 

Introducing the Newest Mullin!

Well, it has been almost two weeks and I still haven't posted a blog about the most exciting thing to happen to Grant and me since our wedding! On September 19th, Grant and I welcomed out little Will into our family! We named him William Curtis, in honor of his dad and great grandpa and Curtis which is my mom's maiden name. He was born at 9:23 am, weighed 8 lbs. 5 oz. and was 21 inches long.

I know I am a little bias but I think he is the sweetest little baby I have ever seen! It has only been two weeks, but I can't imagine Grant's and my life without him. When he first got here, he was placed in NICU for some rapid breathing but got that cleared up right away and is doing great now (up until yesterday when he got his circumcision).

The first week, my mom came down to help me out and then my dad came down later that week for a few days as well. Grant has been able to work from home several days and his work has been really flexible with him, so with all the great help I've had the transition into mommy-hood has been great!

First Bath at home

He is a great eater, which isn't too big of a surprise with who he has as parents. Yesterday when we weighed him at the doctor's office he had almost gained another pound and weighed 9 lbs. 2 oz. I think a lot of that weight has gone to his cheeks because they have seemed to fill out.

Well, I know this is pretty short but believe it or not this is the third time I have tried to sit down and blog but kept getting interrupted. So I wanted to just post a few pictures and let everyone know baby Will and I (and Grant) are all doing great! I am trying to figure out how to do slideshows on your blog so hopefully there will be more pictures to come!

Memory Lane

I've been told that I need to do more updates on my blog. So I took this from my friend, Kiersten's blog and thought it sounded like a lot of fun.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Our Weekend Getaway

   At the beginning of June, Grant and I went up to Utah for a weekend.  It was so great to see everyone.  This was the first time I had taken any time off from work since finding out I was pregnant, so it was a much needed vacation.  Sadly, it only lasted a few days before I had the wake up with reality and had to come back to work.  Even though I only took one day off of work, it took me a full week to recover from the vacation and late night chats.  

     Grant and I left right after we got off work on Thursday (around 4:00 pm) and didn't get to my parents house until 3:00 am.  We were driving because we sold our Nissan Sentra to Marianne and wanted to give her door to door delivery.  Grant was great and put it in auto-pilot and drove the entire time, while I got to take several little naps throughout the trip.  At one point, he did force me to sleep when my speech started to slur.  It didn't take much convincing to get me to take a nap.   

     So that first night (Friday), my mom and sisters threw me a baby shower.  Since Grant and I moved to Phoenix two years ago, this was actually the first time I got to see a some of my aunts and cousins, so it was great catching up with everyone.  I am grateful to mom, Kris, and Marianne for all the work they put into the baby shower.  It was great because we played one quick game, ate lots of yummy food, sat around and chatted, and then opened gifts.  I know that having it Friday night made it a little harder for some to come to the shower, but Grant and me were busy all day Saturday and then had to leave Sunday, so there wasn't any other time to do the baby shower.  I am so grateful to all my aunts and cousins who were able to make it and completely understand for those who it just didn't work out for.  My mother-in-law, Peggy, surprised me when I found out she was going to be there because school in Montana got out that same day at noon.  She, however, with her determination was not going to let that stop here from being at the shower, and even though I know she must have been running on very little sleep, made it to the airport, and flew in to Salt Lake by 4:30 pm and drove to Orem for the shower at 5:30 pm with my three sister-in-laws.  Grant and me have commented several times to each other, how lucky we are to have so much family that cares so much about us and give us so much support.  

This is a diaper cake from Karlie and Marianne!  It turned out so cute!

Zachary and Rebecca were huge helps for opening and organizing my gifts!

This is a diaper bag that my mom and sister made for me

 then filled it with all of the necessities of baby hygiene.

A few of the people who made the shower so much fun!  

   You might be wondering where all the men are, or you may not, considering this is a baby shower and is generally only for women.  However, the men entertained themselves by going up to Salt Lake and meeting going to see Kung Fu Panda, which apparently is a hilarious movie because every time an ad comes on for it, Grant still laughs at the jokes!  

   So the next day, one of the whole reasons we came to Utah was to be with Grant's family on Saturday because Tanner (Grant's younger brother) and wife, Lupe, were being sealed in the Bountiful temple.  It was quite an adventure just getting there!  As we were hurrying along on I-15, no need to mention our speed, our tire didn't just go flat, but pretty much blew up!  I am grateful that Grant was driving and even more grateful that he knows how to change a spare tire.  I have to admit that I barely had time to realize what had happened before Grant had pulled the car over to the side of the freeway and was already tearing his suit coat and tie off and rolling up his sleeves.  He was already in the backseat getting the spare tire before I could suggest calling someone, not that anyone would be able to help us since they were all up at the Bountiful temple already.  Due to Grant's amazing Nascar skills, though he had the spare tire changed in seven minutes!  I was amazed at how quickly the car was moving up and then back down with the spare tire on.  We were back on the road and had hardly lost any time!  I admit had it been just me, I would have been calling a cab because I wouldn't know the first thing about changing a tire.  We got to the temple on time and thankfully we still able to be there for the actual sealing.   It was such a nice ceremony.  

Tanner and Lupe outside the temple after the sealing.

All of Grant's family outside the temple doors.  

    Later that night we had a party for Tanner and Lupe's ward to celebrate their sealing and then got to spend more time with them after church the next day before heading back.  It was such a great weekend!  Its after weekends like this that make it hard for me to live away from family where these weekends are too few and too far in between!  

little pretties

So my friend Sara (many of you who actually look at this blog probably know here) is having a contest to win something from here little pretties at http://saraetc.blogspot.com/. She has lots of cute things for little kids! Definitely everyone should take a look!