The little red Schoenhut

One of my favorite gifts that Norah received upon her birth is this little Schoenhut. It was given to her by our good friends Carlo and Becca (and Henry). Now that Norah is sitting up and demonstrating [a little] better muscle control we thought we'd get it out and let her give it a whirl. She loved it! Especially once she figured out that SHE was the one making the noise. Thanks again Carlo and Becca! I think this is probably just the beginning of kids learning to play instruments in our home, and the many great sounds that will accompany that :).

Happy Half Birthday

Norah hit the 6 month mark over the weekend. Our girl is half a year old! Amazing. We went in for her 6-month check up yesterday and the stats were:

height: 26 1/2 inches
weight: 17 lbs. 11 ounces

90th percentile in both!

We've yet to see a tooth, and we're still trying to get her excited about eating real food, but we'll take those things as they come, and in the meantime we'll just keep enjoying watching this little love grow. Here are some more 6 month shots.

The New Years Post 2009

On New Years Eve we celebrated with some of our old New York friends now in Salt Lake, the Jacobsens and Millseses.

Behold: Rock Band.

I don't have words to express how awesome this is. I got really lucky with the timing of my zoom-ins to capture the performances at their best spots. There are no weak links here.

It must be mentioned that Holly brought in a 100% for her work on vocals. Most excellent.

Not only did Kristin & Craig deliver with Rock Band and provide a nice quiet space for the babies to sleep, but they also made sure we could ring in the new year with poppers. Nicely done. I personally am grateful for the ladies for providing the screams and yells to add to the excitement. Upon review I am curious what it would have been like without them. I'm pretty sure Paul, Craig, and I could have popped all of those without saying a word.

One last video. Kristin can keep a steady beat, Paul rocks the vocals, Holly and I do choreography.

2009 will be a good year, I can tell.

The Christmas Post 2008

Now that it's ten days beyond the twelve days of Christmas, we've arrived at a point where we can summarize how things went down for our vacation spent in Utah. We'll divide it between Christmas and New Years. Ahem..

First off, we should pay tribute to Sarah Jane's grandfather, James Sabine, who passed away on Christmas Eve at the age of 99. He was a truly inspiring and excellent individual, and we are so glad to have had great memories with him. We were glad to be home to commemorate his life. Here's are two photos of him, younger and older:



Now, in the Udall household, Christmas time must include a viewing of White Christmas.

Here are the sisters watching sisters. I'm not sure I've ever seen such devoted sisters.

Christmas time also means family photos of kids, but why should they get all the attention? Here's a nice shot of backstage, where all the coaching and real smiling goes on.

This is the end result. Really fun.

Not only were we able to watch White Christmas, but we also experienced a white Christmas.

Here's the neighborhood. snow-snoW-snOW-sNOW-SNOW!


Merry first Christmas Norah!

Norah was really amazingly pleasant the whole trip. You're putting a Christmas hat on me? Great. Oh, now you want to put me in a bag so you can make jokes like 'get yours now at Target' on your blog? Fine with me.

...Take a photo of me when I've got food all over my face? Fantastic. No really, I'm cool.

Here's our first family Christmas photo. We're decked out in holiday colors, of course. I'm contemplating investing in a red blazer that comes out but once a year. Thoughts?

We got a new 50mm portrait lens for Christmas, which I like to use to take pictures of my girls (sorry Sarah Jane, I'm posting it. You look too good).

While we didn't get to see everyone we wanted, we were still able to meet with some friends while in SLC for a nice lunch so we could talk about babies and stuff. Now I know I just mentioned that we might have color-coordinated for photos, but I swear I didn't orchestrate the dark hair / light hair split.

All in all, it was really good to be with family and friends. We love you guys, and miss everyone already!

Oh, new clothes? I know what to do...

So Brigham and Jennie sent us this great onesie, which I had Norah wear this morning (thanks guys!). Notice that Norah is sitting up now all by herself! I've tried to take advantage of this new trick she can do by letting her entertain herself while I get other stuff done, knowing that when she falls over she'll let me know. She did. Only it wasn't just a "hey, I've fallen down!" notification, but a "hey, I've fallen down, pooped, and I'm messing your bed because of your negligence!" I need to distinguish the difference between 'fall' cries and 'poop fall' cries real soon. So yeah. Brigham and Jennie: your onesie is officially a part of her wardrobe.