ASHA Convention in Chicago

This past week has been a little crazy, but quite the experience. I got to go to the American Speech Language and Hearing Association's Annual Conference in Chicago! Now that doesn't really mean much to someone who isn't an SLP or Audiologist but it was pretty cool! My professor who helped me with my thesis this past spring submitted it to ASHA and it got accepted as a poster session, so my friend Jen and I (who did the project together) got to go present our program we developed. At first was I much more excited to just go to Chicago, I love big cities and traveling! But the highlight was presenting our poster, it was so cool to see people interested in something we spent six months of life doing! So it was totally worth it just for that experience!Me, Dr. Sandi Gillam, and Jen in front of our poster! Sandi was so great and helped set everything up for us.

Some other highlights were that there were no regular rooms left for early check-in at the hotel we were staying at so I got to stay in a suite on the 21 floor with a panoramic view of the city for only $99, and to make it better USU is paying me back for it! We were only there two days but we got to drive around the city and see a few things, have deep dish pizza (not that exciting I don't think we went to the right resturant for that), and meet a lot of interesting people. It was my first time leaving Gabrie over night so that was a little hard, especially after Luke told me she had been asking for me all day! When I got home I think she was mad at me because she wasn't excited, she just looked at me and then looked down! Luckily she got over that!Here is a picture from Navy Pier but I was too cold to get a better shot of the city! It is definitely called the "Windy City" for a reason!

Some other happening this week Luke's brother and his family came to bless their new baby Max and my good friend Becca got married. And some bad news BYU lost ):

Halloween

Hope everyone had a great Halloween! We sure did! We had a ward trunk-or-treat on Wednesday, it was a lot of fun - here are some pictures. Gabrie is Little Red Riding Hood, I was a cowgirl and Luke...was a flower!


Then on Halloween Gabrie came with me to my work to see all the kids do their costume parade, she liked it, I think (: Then that night she did a little trick or treating at Grandma and Grandpa William's neighborhood and then again at home with Dianne, Kiley, and Parker. Luke has this scary mask he wore and we thought Gabrie would be terrified of it but as soon as she realized it was just Daddy underneath she had no problem! She even gave him kisses!

Poor Parker!


I guess should have fixed the red eyes in the pictures but it makes it more spooky for Halloween!

Gabrie liked trick or treating she would walk from house to house and knock on the door and even say "Thank-you." She also liked to give out the candy too! It was a fun night!


"Hunkin" Patch


Last week we took Gabrie to a pumpkin patch. Like I mentioned she loves "hunkins" so we were excited to she how she would react to seeing so many. Well she loved it! Here are some pictures we took.

Captain Gabrie Grace

Our neighbor threw a Pirate Halloween Party the other day and I was excited because Gabriella loves to play with other kids (or so I thought) and it was her first friend party. Well we got there and she wouldn't let go of me! And even when she did she wasn't really interested in the other kids, the speech pathologist in me started to worry- "My child isn't socializing!" Well I wasn't really worried but I was surprised when she is with her cousins she goes and plays with no problem. As the party went on I realized she was in a new place with new people and I guess she is little shy (something she has never been before) she did play with one little girl but mostly she was interested in other things like....eating her cupcake and wearing her skull bandanna. Every time it fell off she would bring it to me to put back on!

And she loved the jewels from the treasure chest and the giant slide!
ARRG! To bad she wouldn't wear the eye patch!

18 Months Old

Today is Gabriella's half birthday so she is officially 18 months old.
Her favorite things are:
Pumpkins- She calls them "hunkins" and loves them! She thinks they are her friends, she tries to share with them, talk to them, and even give hugs. You can see her shear joy in the picture.
Elmo: We a got an Elmo sing-a-long from the library and now she loves anything Elmo and she will sing "La La Elmo's Song"
Books, Babies, and Balloons- She gets really excited when she sees any of them.
Food and Drinks: She will eat just about anything and lately she always wants a "shrink" in a different cup or water bottle.
Climbing, Swinging, and Sliding: All of which she does far too well for someone her age.
Pretties- This includes any kind of jewelry (usually if she sees me put on a necklace she needs one too) and hair accessory. Hence the picture-usually she takes her "pretty" right out once I put it in her hair but this morning she would say "pretty" then pat her hair and say "hair" and then once I put one in she would say "more" and we would start all over.
Singing and Dancing- She has done both of these since she was very little, she loves music.

All Gabrie All the Time

I had a bunch of pictures I've been meaning to post
so I decided to do a slideshow of them all! So
GABRIE ALERT!
There are 50 pictures of Gabrie so if you are not up
to it I understand. But I just can't help taking so
many pictures. Unfortunately she is getting to the
stage where she won't look at the camera and usually
runs away ( as you can see if you watch the slideshow).

So Cute!

I got Gabrie this cute dress from Target and it was so cute on that I had to post the pictures! I know I'm biased but she looked so adorable! What made it even more cute was the little pig tails I finally got her hair into! You can barely see them so I included the next pictures in case anyone doesn't believe it. Behind her is our upstairs hall/loft. The people before us painted this huge tree and then grass, flowers and bugs. Luke and Gabrie love it, I'm still deciding...

Here Gabrie is doing one of her favorite pasttimes, putting things on her head.

I also had to mention the pictures below are from the last month and all the fun we had. The ones where she has pink on her face was when I gave her my sister Jeni's lipstick to hold, not thinking she would able to untwist the cap. Oh and it was permanent lipstick, you have to use the remover inorder to get it off. It was pretty funny! The other pictures are of our new nephew Parker and niece Samantha, and the rest are pretty self expanatory.

Summer Pictures