Griffin James Kraft

My cute little nephew, Griffin James Kraft, was born on 3/2/10. That's a pretty cool birth date to have--it's a countdown! He weighed 7 lbs, 10 oz. and was 20 inches long. And he is beautiful!



Can you tell that I love him? Because I do. I have been so blessed--my niece and nephews are all so cute!



The hardest thing about living in Utah is that I am far away from all the little ones in my family. All of my side lives in Idaho and I don't get to visit nearly as often as I would like, and Jason's sister lives in Ohio so we don't get to see our nephew Ryan hardly ever. Thank goodness for the internet and for pictures! I can't believe how fast time flies and how quickly babies grow and change. It was so wonderful to be able to see Jacque and Reid and hold little Griffin. I have a feeling that this baby won't stay tiny for long. He's gonna be so tall when he grows up!

Baby Showers!

Holy cow...something is in the air. Talk about everyone in the world (except me!) being pregnant. :)

January was a fun month with two baby showers. First was Jill's baby shower that Dee and I hosted at my house. It was so much fun! Dee made an amazing cheese fondue and we played a some fun games. It was supposed to be over around 2 but went a couple of hours late! Overall, it was a good time. I was just glad that she didn't go into labor the day before like we were all worried about! Thanks for listening to me, Jill!

Jacque's baby shower was last weekend up in Victor at her house. It was a combined family and friend party, and she has friends that spoil her rotten. I've never seen so many presents in my life! As always, it was fun to be with Jacque and to see her reactions to things. I can't wait to see her with a baby. It's going to be awesome!

And I'm trying to post pictures, but for whatever reason they won't upload. I'll try again tomorrow!

New Year

Rather than go back and try go catch up on all that we've done since I've last posted, I guess I am just going to try to start fresh this year. However, as a summary:

Thanksgiving was awesome this year with my family. We had it at our house in Utah and all my family was able to come down to stay. It was so much fun! I would do it again in a heart beat. It was nice to be able to spend some quality time with everyone, rather than the typical "hi...bye" sort of visit. My family is awesome.

I went to China in December for work and it was quite the experience. It was neat to see a place I had never been to before, but I didn't really love all that I saw! :) Hong Kong was amazing though, and I would go back there again for sure.

Christmas was also great. We spent it down in SLC with Jason's family. His brother Brandon was in town for the holiday, and we always like it when we get to see him. We missed Shantel & Greg for sure! Hopefully everyone will be able to get together next year.

I also got to see Nikky Oswald over the break, and I miss her guts all the time so it was great to be able to hang out for the day. It was also nice to finally meet little Declan who is the cutest baby boy. He's such a happy baby! I can't wait until Nikky lives in Utah! I'm counting down the months...

For Christmas my wonderful husband got me a freaking awesome digital SLR camera and I love it. I'm currently learning to use all of its features, and I can't wait to dive in and take a million photos. If you are reading this blog than you probably know that i LOVE to take pictures. Love it!

Last weekend, Dee and I threw Jill a baby shower and she was kind enough to put off labor long enough for us to actually have it! It was a lot of fun, and it was great to hang out with her and meet some of her friends and family. I'll post some pictures on facebook later once I get them uploaded.

And on that note...Congrats, Jill! Sophia LoRee was born today and looks like she's a keeper! :) I can't wait to see her in person.

China

I'll update with a full post soon...but here is a nice sampling of some of the photos I took:

see more Engrish

Where to start?

Jason and I have actually been doing a lot of fun stuff lately, but we just haven't posted anything about our adventures!

Where to begin? Well...over Labor Day we went camping with Jacque, Reid, and my dad. We went to the Big Hole mountains outside of Victor, Idaho and had a really great time. Jacque had the perfect camp spot! We had tasty tasty dutch oven dinner, and enjoyed spending time with each other. It's an annual tradition! Nikki and Eli came up as well to go hike Table Rock. Jason was able to join them and had a great time. Next year I will definitely be joining the group!
A couple of weeks later, my dad came down to Utah to drop off some of his garden goodies and we were lucky enough to be able to see my cousin Marlaina while she was in Utah visiting. It was a super short and sweet visit, but it was great to see her. She even got to each french fries from good ol' Sugar City, Idaho like she would've if she would've been at home with us!

After she left, we hopped in my dad's car and went for a drive in the mountains to see the beautiful fall colors. We drove up through Big Cottonwood Canyon and took a dirt road over the top to Heber. The colors were gorgeous!We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful place. We are literally just a few minutes from some of the most gorgeous views!

A day or two later, Jason and I decided to go on a hike up in the Kaysville area in Adam's Canyon. It was a hot day and the first part of the hike is in terrible sand and wide open spaces so you get really hot, but once you're past all of that you get to the creek and it is much better. It was worth the hike!
A few days later, I got really great news. I got a promotion at work! I am now in charge of a $100 million dollar account and get to set up a completely different type of program for my company. The kicker is that they told me about this on a Friday at 5 and said "oh yeah...by the way, I have you booked on a plane to Milwaukee this Monday. Hope that's not a problem!" So needless to say, it has been a bit of an adventure. I flew out to Milwaukee and met with the company and got to see exactly what we are selling them. It is going to be a big challenge, but should be a lot of fun! Here are some of the things we are selling them as well as a few pictures from their corporate office:
This is a picture of me in their cafeteria...I wish we had a place like that at our work!!
Last but not least, we also took a very amazing trip to Moab. It was my first time actually spending time there rather than just driving through. Most people that have been to Moab rave about it and I wasn't sure it would live up to the hype. However, after going on several hikes in and out of Arches National Park I can fully admit that I am a Moab junkie. It's beautiful there! I am definitely getting a National Parks pass next year so I can spend more time in Utah's National Parks. This state is so blessed with strange beauty!

We went down to Moab with some work people as well as Jason's brother Tyson. We camped, Jason biked, we hiked, we cooked dutch oven dinners...overall, it was an amazing trip. I am definitely adding this to my list of places to visit annually. Here are some pics of the highlights of the trip:

Oh, and one more update. Our dearly beloved blue Trailblazer finally bit the bullet. It's true--the last adventure it went on was the Labor Day camp out:

Well, it had to be replaced so we decided to try for a more reliable car and thus we purchased a Toyota Tundra. Here it is on its first adventure with the Lloyd family!I am sure that it will be on many more adventures with us. Can anyone say Yosemite National Park in May 2010? Who's with me?

Long Overdue? Perhaps...

Yeah yeah yeah...so I've been slacking at the updates. My bad!

We've done a lot of fun things over the past month. We went to Flaming Gorge Dam with some of coworkers and floated the river with a vendor of 3form's. It was a lot of fun! I hadn't been camping yet this year, and it was nice to get out and finally do it. The area had been badly burned by a fire from a few years ago so it was a bit hard to find a good camping place, but we eventually found a perfect spot. We got our tent set up, and Jason said that the weather was supposed to be perfect so we didn't put our rain guard on the tent.

However, after we got dinner started (tin foil dinners, yeah!) we started hearing thunder from these itty bitty clouds. It made us a little nervous, so we decided to take the cautious measure of putting on the rain guard. Good thing we did! Just a few minutes after we had it set up, it started POURING! A huge cloud had come over the large cliff behind us and dumped on us. Yeah--that's rain and lots of it! It was raining so hard it finally leaked through the guard into our tent. However, we lucked out and it stopped just in time for sunset. Talk about a beautiful way to end the evening!
The rest of the trip, the weather was perfect. We were able to go down and look at the dam, but unfortunately we missed the tour by five minutes. I suppose there is always next time!Floating the river was a ton of fun, but since it was a VERY wet activity, I don't have any pictures from it. The people on the different floats had a competition to see how many people they could rip off the floats and into the water, and needless to say it got very very wet and was super fun. The water was freezing, but it felt good since it was so hot outside.

Another exciting thing that has happened since I last updated was Nikky and Lisa finally having their babies! Congrats to both of them! I can't wait to see them in real life.

Death Cab for Cutie

Jason and I enjoyed a very nice concert last night at the Red Butte Garden venue. It was an outdoor concert with a very relaxed atmosphere.
Ra Ra Riot opened up the show, and they were quite good. I loved the girl's cello--it was very unique! I love strings in bands, so this was something I really enjoyed.
After Ra Ra Riot, Andrew Bird performed. He has an amazing voice, and his whistling is quite good as well as entertaining. The glasses weren't bad either...And finally, Death Cab for Cutie performed! They are one of my favorite bands, and it was awesome to see them live. They are true musicians, and I really enjoyed watching them perform. Ben Gibbard has a ton of energy and gave a great performance. I just wish they could've played all my favorite songs...too bad I have too many! It would've taken them all night!
We had pretty decent seats. It was nice to be so close!
We went with our friends Angie and Nolan. They probably thought we were crazy for dancing and goofing off like we did...but hey! We had a great time!
It was a sunny day...thank goodness! At first, it was too hot but then it cooled off as the sun got lower in the sky.
All in all, a great way to spend the evening. If any of those bands are ever in your area, I highly recommend you check them out!