A BIG Weekend

The first weekend in February was a big weekend for Beth. Spencer blessed her (and did a wonderful job!). That was a wonderful experience where I felt, yet again, just how blessed we are to have her here and how happy I am to be her mom.

 The weekend also brought lots of other excitement...

Pops (Anna's dad) visited from Salt Lake.  He and Beth took some good naps together :) But, we also went on some adventures...

We rode the Sandia Tram (supposedly the longest tram in the US).

 

The views were gorgeous! Beth was such an angel, pretty much just sleeping the through it all. And I couldn't get enough of the fresh air and huge space, after a month of our comfortable but tiny apartment!

 

We also visited the beautiful Albuquerque temple.

 

Thanks Pops for making these outings possible! And for the babysitting, advice, laughs, walks, food, encouragement and everything else you gave while you were here!

Then, Nana and Opa (Spencer's parents) and Jake (Spencer's brother, fresh off his mission in Peru) visited, too.  

We took Beth out for her first restaurant experience.

  

She, like her mom, is especially fond of dessert!

  

Again, she was an angel! She slept through the whole dinner, letting the adults chat about everything from Peru to Downton Abbey :)

The actual blessing went really well, too. Beth was wide awake through it all, but didn't make a peep! She just stared around the circle, then charmed the congregation with her huge eyes.

 

The whole weekend was a dream come true for Spencer and me. Thank you to Pops and the Hansens for traveling and for making it so fun! (Thanks also to Grannie who would have been there if she hadn't caught a bug at the last minute--we missed you!) 

And thanks to Beth for making it happen!

 

FACES

So I keep saying this, but it keeps getting more and more true...when I took anatomy, we studied a crazy amount of facial muscles and I couldn't believe that anyone uses all those. But then Beth came along, and now I believe it! She can make more faces than I though possible! Here are just a few:

 

The "I'm not so sure about this" face

 

The "wake up" face (actually this video takes you through a whole bunch of great faces! But I love this double-chin scowl she makes when she wakes up)

 

The worried face

 

And, of course, Mom's favorite: the smile!

I think she's really catching on to the whole social smile thing and it melts my heart! Here's a video of one (sorry it keeps drifting off her face...I was paying more attention to her than the camera, obviously!)

 Pretty adorable, huh?

Photoshoot

 

A girl in our ward was nice enough to come do a photo-shoot for Bethany. It was pretty hilarious! Bethany was an angel as long as we had the vacuum going. She would fuss as we set up (with good reason--making her go naked and putting her in all these funny poses, you can hardly blame her!), but once she was all set, we would turn on the vacuum and she'd be happy as a clam! We actually blew out circuit 3 times throughout the morning, between running the vacuum and all our space-heaters, lamps, etc. But it was SOOOOO worth it to get these darling shots of her!