E-Greetings!

Because I've been extremely lazy busy this year, our Christmas card is going out via the internet!

Hope everyone had an awesome 2011!  If not...there's still a few weeks left to make it good! :)

The Wiltbank Family Christmas Tree

Among other things, one thing we've really been looking forward to this year is going out to the woods to chop down our own Christmas tree!

Although Mike and I had both been with our families to to get trees, it was still a pretty new experience for us. I kept laughing 'cause I kept thinking "Hey, how about that little guy",  Then Mike would go right up to it and it would really be about twenty feet taller than him with the branches practically dead.

Not wanting our first attempt to end in failure, we ended up finding one on our way home that was only about a mile from our house.

I wanted to take a picture of Mike actually chopping it down but instead I accidentally deleted some pictures off our camera I had really wanted...go me!  Here it is post-chopping.

Grant wasn't too interested and looked like this the whole time.

Grant tends to be somewhat more photogenic than us.

Grant was a little more interested once he saw the tree was going in the house.  He and Trist stepped in to help.

Here it is in all its glory!  Not too bad eh?

Christmas Calendar 2011

Here's the final draft of the Calendar for you to Print. 

If you can't make it to the events it's still fun to watch the movies.

Let us know if you want to receive emails of details for the events.

Christmas Calendar Starts Tomorrow

A look at previous years.

We also have a group on facebook you can join.

Here's some pics from previous years...

3d movies

Christmas Cookies

 Christmas Movies

 Tree Lighting, fake snow and sporting events

 Hot Chocolate and Parades

 Main Street Walk

 Santa's Theme Park

Temple Lights

Home Sweet Home

 So far it has been amazing to be able to move back home. We want Grant to have his childhood here and everything has been going really well so far.

We have been working on a lot of projects since we moved back home and for every one of them Grant always tries to help. We plan on making another post with some before and after shots and going into more detail of what we've been working on when we get further along.

One of the most exciting things we've been working on is our fireplace. We've wanted a fireplace in our house since we got married and now we finally have one! It makes our house feel a lot more like a home.

Mike and Guillermo putting in the insert

We had lots of help putting it in and we especially want to thank Brett Bigelow for helping us cut through all the steel of the previous fireplace.

 If we ever have a fire already burning when we come home Grant crawls as quickly as he can to check out the flames. He seems to understand that he's not supposed to touch it, but we always keep a close eye on him.

We loooooove our home and can't wait until we get done with everything we want to do to it.

9 Months and First Snow

Grant is almost 10 months old already!

He is really fun right now. He keeps trying to figure out this walking thing, but we want him to crawl a little bit longer. It is really fun seeing him crawl into the room as fast as he can to see you. It's probably the cutest thing we've ever seen.

As you can see he got to witness snow for the first time.

He didn't know what to think about it and wanted to be held right away.

We can't get enough of this little guy.

The Boy Who Lived

Grant dressed up as Harry for his first Halloween.

All we had to do was make a cloak (which Donna did), get some glasses (online), draw a scar on his forehead and make him a wand. The wands turned out pretty nice. We made them out of rolled up paper and hot glue with some paint. We found a tutorial for them online. We made an extra one because we figured he might go through a couple.

Grant's uncle Chase went as skunk again. It was so funny to me that Donna was so set on having him be a skunk. I'm not sure where she got the idea but once she got it, she made it happen.

He makes a pretty good skunk.

First we went to the Halloween Carnival at the High School, then to Bashes', and last visited a couple select houses. Uncle Dallin was running a booth at the High School and went as Charlie Brown.

Happy Halloween!

8 Months!

 The more time that goes by, the more fun we're having!  Life is pretty dang good in the Wiltbank house right now!

Grandma Velda bought Grant his first RV shirt!  Isn't he the cutest little elk fan?

Getting ready for Uncle Dallin's soccer game.  Grant is SO excited to be from Round Valley!  And rightly so!

Thanks Grandma Velda!

This is only our second family picture ever.  We need to get with it!

Grant loves his daddy!  They are best buddies!

Grandma Velda has a walker at her house and Grant has been loving being able to cruise around and go wherever his little heart desires!

It's so cute seeing him getting around on his own.

 This month, Grant has:

*Mastered crawling

*Learned to wave "bye-bye" (See video)

 *Gotten a few more teeth

*Started drinking apple juice (YAY!!  This is HUGE!  Such a relief to not have to rely completely on breastmilk!)

*Eaten a few beans---also a big step!

 *Started standing up alone. We've been cheering for him when he stands up and now he thinks clapping and cheering means he's supposed to stand up.  He gets so excited, it's pretty dang cute!  Here, his cousins, Aunt Jen, and Grandma Velda all joined in the encouragement:

 Here are a few more of my favorite shots from his 8 month pics!  I can't believe how much he changes every month!

I hate to cover his hair but he looks so studly in a hat!

There's that hair!  This is my favorite shirt Grant owns!  It's almost too small now :(

He's recently started sucking his thumb for the first time.  We're not too worried about it 'cause he doesn't do it too much, plus like everything else, it's cute!

Grant got a little cut above his eye after falling down while trying to stand up, it's finally starting to heal.

As I'm typing this, Mike and Grant are making a fort/crawling obstacle course.  Having this little guy around has made life so much more fun and wonderful!

Bathtime and a (Lame) Surprise!

Bathtime has been fun lately! Lots of things have been fun lately but bathtime in particular makes Grant a happy camper!

He loves his Rubber Duckies! He also loves bubbles, splashing, screeching, trying to stand up in the tub (ah!), and most other things associated with bathtime.

Rubber Ducky doubles as a teething toy so that's a plus as well.

And as you can see, Grant's fifth little tooth is starting to break in on the bottom right. As you can also tell, he needs ANOTHER hair cut!

I LOVE his little eyes! They remind me of baby Ewoks and Puss in Boots...it's going to be SO hard to say 'no' to this little face when that time comes!

See?

So here's the lame surprise. I finally edited Grant's 7 month pics! We didn't really get too many good ones. They came out blurry for some reason. Not that it matters too much since I'm already behind on month 8. Time is flying, and we're having so much fun!