Halloween and Thanksgiving

There is an amazing thing here in Maryland called the "Tot Swap". Each of the fairgrounds holds one quarterly. You can sell you children's old anything and everything, as long as it's in good condition, and then on the weekend it is open to the public to purchase what was consigned. It is huge and it is amazing. Well, on my first trip to the Tot Swap I found this cute giraffe costume for Lily for Halloween.

Since she wasn't even walking yet, we decided just to go to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat. You could win prizes for creatively decorating your trunk, so of course Barrett wanted to go all out. My contribution: using the leftover balloons and confetti from Lily's birthday. Barrett's contribution: the trunk can be a mouth with big scary teeth, the balloons can be the bubbling saliva the children have to reach into to get the candy, and we can use our bedroom lamp with an extension cord in the electric outlet, pull it through the backseat to the trunk to light up the inside. Ha ha! I sure married my better half! Well, we won a prize. I should have taken a picture when it was light because you don't get the full effect, but here it is.

Lily didn't really know what candy was at that time, but she loved the wrappers. Barrett dressed up in his 70's full-body ski suit he bought at the D.I. one night with the young men in our old ward.

Here's the night he bought it. I heard about the new ski outfit from our downstairs neighbor before he even came home. Apparently the young men "pressured" him to buy it. Yeah, right.

And when we moved to Baltimore he tried to make a good argument for why we needed it to take up space here. But he actually used it to go snowboarding in West Virginia a couple times. (This almost looks like the same pose at the picture above. Must be a natural stance when wearing a retro ski suit ;))

With the two classmates he snowboarded with.

On Halloween we had a big party at our house with friends in our ward who live nearby, with dinner, treats, and a "scary" movie and that was really fun too! No pictures though :(

We kind of wanted to go on a roadtrip for Thanksgiving, so Barrett called his friend who lives in Hershey, Pennsylvania (the one we went to the temple with when we first moved in) and we invited ourselves over for Thanksgiving, ha ha. Mark and Jenna are the sweetest and let us join their already-planned Thanksgiving dinner with friends and stay a night at their house. They even took us to Chocolate World and encouraged us to go to lunch alone while they watched Lily. To top it off, this was during Lily's no-sleep time and she slept horribly there. I'm sure they woke up several times to her crying, but they were so nice about it all. 

On the "ride" at Chocolate World.

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 Picture from Thanksgiving Day

What is this creature? Any guesses? Well, I never figured it out, but it is the mascot of the Walters Art Museum and mostly I just wanted to document going there. The Walters Art Museum is a free museum in Baltimore that began as a family collection. At the time of the civil war (!) the family started collecting European art, Egyptian mummy masks, medieval armor, ceramics, etc. They used to open up their home a couple days a week for Baltimoreans to view. When the son died he bequeathed it to the to the mayor and city council "for the benefit of the public." Kind of cool history. We went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Festival where they had some kids crafts. We made a bell for Lily.

Changing leaves and falling snow

I couldn't decide what to title this post. Because to me it was the hard time of our lives in Baltimore (which can be seen by the lack of pictures taken after our visitors left, until Thanksgiving), but who wants to have a negative title post?

After our families left I was really down. I was used to having people around all the time, and then Barrett got really busy. He often left as I was waking up and came home in the middle of the night. Occasionally he would come home for dinner for a short time before leaving again. It was the same story on the weekends. He was gone most Saturdays until late, would come to church with us on Sunday, and then would leave again after church until bedtime. In addition to Barrett being alone a lot, Lily had a really rough 2 months. She turned 1 and tantrums started. This was increased by getting all four of her molars in one after another. Somewhere in the middle she got Roseola (who knows how? We hardly went anywhere). So nighttime sleep was very interrupted, with me often having to stay in her room for 30 minutes each time she woke up until she would fall back asleep, or else she would just scream, sometimes bringing her into our bed early in the morning to sleep... and naptime was irregular and short.

It wasn't easy on Barrett too, being away from us all the time, and often he would barely go to sleep before Lily started crying. Everyone has hard times, and in comparison to the many things we could have gone through, this was small. But it was life. And I felt sad and often lonely. (Disclaimer: I should point out that I talked with family regularly who provided support, reading scriptures always boosts the spirits, and I have good friends in Utah and here to talk to and occasionally spend time with, so I wasn't really all alone :))Eventually near Thanksgiving we had some families over for a home teaching night and Barrett shared a spiritual message and talked about his recent struggles with trying to balance everything, explaining a talk he read that helped with that. Everyone left and I said "What?! How come you haven't said anything??" Here I was thinking he was handling everything great while I was breaking down over silly things like a little less sleep and my husband being gone all the time. We were both struggling and trying to cope in our way without thinking how it was affecting the other one. It improved a lot once we talked and tried to adjust in what ways we could. And Lily got over her no sleeping/grumpy phase around the time we left for Utah in December.

Overall, I really think Barrett has done great at managing his time to include a very strenuous program, trying to be here with us, maintain relationships with classmates, and serve in his calling. He doesn't agree with me. But I appreciate the small things like coming home just for dinner when he has to walk right back to the lab after. And activities and date nights here and there help when he's gone several nights in a row. I wanted to record this time to remember that life has times like this. Life isn't just events. That's what is fun to remember and what keeps me going, but pushing through mundane, everyday tasks (and finding the happiness with that) really makes up more of life. During this time I started saying this phrase to myself: "Everything is temporary". This ranged from small things like walking from our parking spot in the snow, to the 6 months we had left with Barrett being gone a lot. Everything really is temporary... except the Gospel and all that encompasses. I am grateful my family isn't temporary and joy isn't temporary, but all the trials of my mortal life, no matter how long they seem at the time, really are. It definitely helped me get through the rut.

Anyway, now that the novel is over. Here are a couple pictures of the fall leaves. It really was beautiful in Maryland with the many, many trees changing colors and the cooler weather.

Once the snow started this winter, it didn't stop for long. But the first snowfall was comical for us. We were at church and it started snowing pretty hard during sacrament meeting. As everyone was gathering up their stuff to go to Sunday School, the Bishop announced that church was cancelled for the rest of the day. What? No way! We have lived through many snowstorms in Utah, but never was church cancelled for them. Here was us driving home from church.

What is nice about snow storms here, is that it often means school is cancelled! Here are some pictures of one of the first snow storms when Barrett stayed home with us on his snow day!

 

I am grateful for changing seasons. The snow was fun and beautiful at the start of the season, but I have been grateful for the spring rain lately.

Lily's 1-year pictures

I was so excited that Morgan was coming to town right when Lily turned 1 so she could take some pictures of her. I was hoping the trees would be more colorful, but we found a tree with some pretty leaves so we gathered them up for the shoot. Lily also wasn't very happy that day, but we still got some good shots. Morgan is also amazing at editing pictures so the colors add to the pictures.

She also took this one without me knowing. I love it!

The Yates visit to Baltimore

So my parents left on Wednesday afternoon, and Barrett's family arrived really late that night, and thus began the whirlwind 3 days of Barrett's family being in town. They weren't able to stay long, so we packed it all in.

The first morning we took them on a walk around the beautiful campus and to see Barrett's lab.

I walked them over to Hampden, which everyone here describes as a "funky" place with lots of shops, restaurants, murals, and dessert places on "The Avenue".  Then we headed to the temple so Barrett's family could do baptisms for the dead. 

 These are some of the amazing shots that Barrett's sister got while we were there. She is a great photographer and we took advantage of her skills for Lily's 1-year pictures (soon to come) while they were here.

Another trip to the aquarium and Inner Harbor.

 

And last, but not least, the day in Washington, D.C.

Us at the White House.

Barrett, Lily, and I went to the Natural History Museum for the first time while Barrett's family when to the Holocaust museum. As with all the museums there, we were pleasantly surprised at how interesting the Natural History Museum was and HOW MUCH there was to see. I don't think we even made it through one level before they were ready to meet up again.

 Standing next to Utah's wreath in the World War II Memorial. 

Then they left early, early Sunday morning. We loved having them here and were sad to see them leave. Thanks for visiting! We love you guys!

Here is a video Shannon sent me of us hanging out one night while Lily practiced walking :). I love having memories like these to look back on.

My parents visit to Baltimore

My parents flew in on my dad's birthday (the day before Lily's) so I made him a special dinner and we had preliminary birthday cake to prepare for Lily's. 

What is really nice about having visitors is that you tend to do more sightseeing. We had done a few things here, but we saw a lot more once our families came to visit.

Another picture at the aquarium on Lily' birthday.

It was really rainy the week my parents were here, so it encouraged us to find even more fun places to see. One of the not as well known gems in Baltimore is the Rawlings Conservatory. It is near the Baltimore zoo, which is fairly close to us, so I wandered in there one day with Lily and was in awe at all the cool things to see there. Plus it is very quiet and peaceful. So I decided to take my parents there and we all enjoyed it. I wish I had some more pictures to describe how cool it really is to see the unique plants from their 3 different environments: tropical, desert, and Mediterranean. I did get a couple pictures of an orchid in the orchid room and palm from their palm room.

It was built in 1888 and was one of the first conservatories built in the United States. I didn't take a picture of the front so I stole an image from the internet, because it is a cool building. The glass front was the original conservatory.

We also took another day to visit the Baltimore Bascilica, America's first cathedral, and the Johns Hopkins medical campus that has a Christus in the original building. Again, I didn't take any pictures in the rain (and I don't think they allowed photography inside the cathedral) but this is what the cathedral looks like.

The building that has the Christus in it at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The Sheikh Zayed Tower is the tower to the right with the colorful windows. This is the children's hospital. Most of Barrett's meetings and presentations are held in conference rooms here.

A walk around Loch Raven Reservoir. We were hoping the fall leaves would be around when our families were in town because there are trees everywhere here, but only a couple trees were changing colors.

Trip to Washington D.C.
 Lily fell asleep walking from the car to the National Mall. And since she didn't have a binkie in, she fell asleep with the strap, ha ha.

The government was shut down during this time so none of the museums were open. Or the monuments, technically. But most of the "gates" blocking the monuments were pushed aside so we did see most of the monuments. Luckily, my parents had been there before to see the monuments. But it actually encouraged us to go to Arlington National Cemetery since it wasn't closed. None of us had ever been there before and we were all really happy we made the trip there. It was definitely worth it.

We went to the Tomb of the Unknowns and watched the tomb guard "walk the mat" with the 21-step march.

John F. Kennedy's grave

On the way home we visited the Washington, D.C. temple

We loved having my parents here and wish they were always closer. Thanks for visiting! We love you guys!