pictures from Serena

Serena, Erica and I went out to lunch to celebrate my birthday (Apr 24) and Erica's birthday (Apr 11) a couple of weeks ago. (Serena treated. Yum Yum!) She also made us some yummy little cakes.
These are just some extra pictures she took of Sam, since she is snap happy... which I'm ok with if the camera is not on me!

Aren't they beautiful? And such good friends too! I love em to death!
This is one she took of my newest niece and nephew after my nephew's blessing. They look like little angels in all their white. Either that or a very tiny bride and groom...

our little stinker

Our little "Cinderello" working so hard. Sam loves to 'help' daddy with yard work.
For the last month or so Sam has been sleeping in his big boy bed. He absolutely loves it! Every night he eagerly jumps into bed, sometimes he's so anxious to hop in that he doesn't wait for our family prayer to even finish. During the day he will often go in and play on it too. He loves Cars, so I think his sheets help! We're just glad he's excited to go to bed everynight! Hope it lasts!
When Papa and Nana came to visit they made sure to feed the pig. They gave him his little piggy bank when he was born and every time they visit they load it up. (Dad, mom, can I have a piggy bank too?) Sam and Papa had lots of fun hearing the little chime each time a coin went in. (And mommy had lots of fun knowing she doesn't have to be the one to help him fill it up!) By the time they were done, the poor pig was resting on his belly instead of his legs! Sam could hardly lift it!
After Adam's baby blessing daddy and Sammy were patiently waiting in the foyer for the rest of the family to exit the chapel. Sam felt pretty big.
Even though it may not look like it in this picture, Sam loves being with Papa and Nana. He sure misses them when they are not around.
A little glimpse into a day with Sam. In case you can't tell, this is one of his many tantrum methods. I gotta give it to him, he usually finds something softer than the tile to rest his crying head on. He will literally go to another room to scream and cry if necessary, which doesn't bother me!

I'm back!

Well, many of my friends have been complaining to me recently that this blog was a little outdated. Very true... But as of today we have the internet again! We finally got it all set up again! Now I have no excuse... but please be kind, my blogging is almost as sparse as my journaling... which I am working on improving as well.
The following are a few sets of pictures since the last time I was able to update. Not too much has happened, that I actually took pictures of anyway...
I will soon take some pictures of the house now that it's painted and moved into, so stay tuned...

On Easter Sunday we spent the day with my sisters and their families. Aunt Ronda had a big Easter egg hunt prepared. Sammy had been sick the previous day and this day (probably thanks to the pizza...) but when it came time to find all the blue eggs, he was all of a sudden just fine! He had lots of fun finding them... especially when he realized there was something in them, and that it was something yummy!!

Easter egg fun

On Good Friday, my sisters, Ronda and Leesa came down to our house with their families to dye Easter eggs. As you might be able to tell by examining Sam's mouth, we had pizza for dinner. The little honker,unbeknownst to me, ate 4 pieces! (Which he threw up by morning...) He had so much fun with his cousins and with coloring the eggs.

New additions to the Riskedahl family

We have recently added a couple more special spirits to our family! On January 24, 2008 my sister, Ronda had a beautiful baby girl. They named her Brynja (brin-yah) Rebecca Christenson.
On February 29, 2008 another sister, Leesa had a handsome little boy, Adam Daniel Jones. They are both so adorable and so precious. Sam just loves them and every time we are with them he wants to hold them! We just let him hold one at a time though...

A few projects for our new home

On painting day Sam really wanted to help with the paint. Since we know what he is capable of, we didn't really want him to show us all of his artistic abilities yet, so he just got a dry roller, which he was quite content with!
We had lots of fun with the taping, oh wait, no, that wasn't fun at all. Just a necessary evil.
After a while Sam started getting into more things than dry rollers so we had to put him in the pack-n-play. He amazed us by tolerating it for most of the day. Poor kid. We put it by the window so he could at least see outside and look at the 'pones' or as we know them, ponies.
When we closed on the house, we never had a chance to see the lawn due to the snow. The day after signing our lives away... the snow melted. It wasn't until then that we realized how bad the lawn really was. Luckily Jason knows a few things about yardwork... cuz it's gonna take a lot of it!
Sam really likes to help his daddy, especially when it means being outside!

We closed on the house on Feb. 28th and on Mar. 1st we started with painting most of the main areas of the house and the master bedroom. That took a lot longer than we thought! We made the move a week later on Mar. 8th. We had lots of family and friends to help us, for which we were extremely grateful. I don't know how all our stuff fit into our apartment, but it definitely filled the house a lot more than I expected! Looking back, I'm surprised our apartment floor didn't collapse from too much stuff! We have pretty much everything (that is important anyway) unpacked and put away, so it's really starting to feel more and more like home.

new address

Well, it all worked! We have officially moved into our first home!


And unrelated to the move, though it did happen about the same time, Jason and I switched phone numbers.
Have a great day!!

We're under contract! Again!

Here's the view from the entry way. You can either go upstairs or into the dining room/kitchen or take a left in the living room.
This is the living room. The window looks out to the front yard.
Here's a shot from the dining room of the kitchen. The dining room is the same size as the kitchen.
This is a shot of the master bedroom, it's bigger than this picture gives it credit.

And the outside shot of the home. It could look great with a red door! (My dream!)

Well, these are a few pix of the house we are under contract with. Hopefully everything will fall into place and we will continue to feel good about it. (Unlike the last house!) It's in Springville, and it's actually a twinhome, but we felt the positives outweigh the negatives by a lot!

2008 off to a fun start!

here's mommy's little angel looking so handsome in his little suit!
Our Christmas picture for 2007.

Silly Sammy!! Keep your clothes on!

When daddy started a new job, he didn't need his old business cards anymore. So Sammy and daddy played in them for a while before throwing them away.

Lately Sam has been doing this silly little smile thing, it's almost like he's clenching his teeth without his teeth actually touching. He kinda shakes his head a little as he does it too. It makes us laugh everytime he does it!

Christmas 2007

On Christmas morning, Sammy had lots of fun pulling out lots of presents of his stocking from Santa. He also had fun unwrapping his gifts. This was his first time really having fun opening presents, so it was lots of fun for mommy and daddy too! Mommy and daddy got Sammy his very own Tonka truck which he had lots of fun pushing around until he started putting dents in grandma and grandpa's newly painted walls...oops! It's so much fun to watch kids on Christmas!

Cruisin, Beautiful Cruisin!!

In Roatan, Honduras we gave windsurfing a try. We had a great instructor named Micky, from Chile. He wasn't too impressed with our 'style' but he did say Jason had better style than Jason's 2 brothers who have both tried windsurfing before. It was a lot of fun and Jason picked it up really quickly. We had a blast trying something new and can't wait to try it again sometime.
This was the first formal night which was on Monday night. It's always fun to have a chance to dress up every once in a while. Especially because Jason looks so hot in a blue shirt and suit!
This is at dinner for the formal night. I don't remember what we ate, but I'm sure it was delish!

This is the fruit drink we got in Santo Tomas de Castilla. Guatemala. I think it's blended pineapple, papaya and mango, or something like that. I had never drank something out of a baggie and straw like this before.
In the background you can see the bikes we rented for the day.
In Guatemala we rented bikes to bike up to some waterfalls. Right below us there is a 'slide' that goes straight into a deep part of the pond this emptied into. It was a short ride, but very fun. The water was so beautiful. Crystal clear and so pure and clean looking. It was absolutely incredible.

Once we rode up to where the waterfalls are, we locked up our bikes to a tree and hiked through this little stream to get to the waterfalls in the above picture. Hiking with flip-flops in water is not the easiest thing to do!
Right after we got the bikes, we had a whole herd of little Guatemalans accompanying us. All our little tour guides rode (or ran) with us all the way to the waterfalls. There was a lot of uphills and it was a pretty good distance, a few miles at least. I was amazed that those on foot kept up. Jason took a liking to this little guy named Mario. He rode with Jason most of the way. Such a cutie. Most of the kids were really hoping for a little tip for all their work, so we gave them about $1 a piece at the end and they were pretty excited.
These are jumping around a bit. This is in Roatan again. This is a good summary of my windsurfing experience... not that much time on top of the water! Micky's wife, Lorena became my personal assistant and she was so patient with me! The wind was very strong, so I kept getting blown into a dock, so I'd have to put the sail down and start over. By the time I got into the water it was nearly dark, so it made it a little more difficult for me. It was still so much fun even though I wasn't that great at it.


In Cozumel, Mexico we did a little snorkeling off shore. We saw one fish that was probably about 2 1/2 to 3 feet long. It sure is beautiful under water.
At the 'beach' we were at in Cozumel, Corona Beach, we ordered our long awaited Strawberry Daquiri. Yum Yum! And the alcohol... just kidding, we got virgin.
This was our ship, the Norwegian Spirit. This is at the Port of Cozumel. We did a little bargain shopping (Mexican-style) in the morning and then we went to do some snorkeling in the afternoon.
Another close up in front of the ship but this one is at Guatemala, right before we got back on the ship at the end of our day's adventure.
We asked all our mini tour guides if they knew where we could find a nice beach with sand, and this is what they had in mind! I don't know what they think sand should look like, but I never pictured it to be green, mossy rocks. These chairs are basically cement lawn chairs! Not exactly what we had in mind, but it made for funny memories!!
















For anyone who is confused, we went on a family cruise the first week in December. In celebration of Jason's dad's retirement, they paid for all their kids and their spouses to go on week long cruise. It was amazing and wonderful!! It was great to be able to spend so much time with each of Jason's siblings and their spouses and his parents. It was strange, and yet very refreshing, that there were no children with us! We missed Sam so much! But I knew he was in very good hands. My sisters, Ronda and Leesa, took care of him the week and a day that we were gone. I'm so blessed to have such wonderful and helpful and supportive sisters.
We also made a stop in Belize. Jason went scuba diving and I went shopping with Jason's brother and his wife for the day. We both did one of the things that we love best! That was the only day we were apart, so we had a lot of good, quality time together. It's amazing how that really can strengthen a marriage. I feel so much closer and even more in love with Jason. And I'm pretty sure I love Sam more too!
Even though we had such an awesome week, we were definitely ready to come home. It was nice to see Sam again and sleep in our own bed. It was a week full of wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime experiences with lots and lots of memories. Jason's parents were just in heaven to be with every one of their children for so long. We're just glad we could provide them with that opportunity... especially with it being in the Caribbean!! We are grateful for them and the dream we all fulfilled together as a family.