The New Quests of The Turetzky Family

Where did the time go? My baby is two and not really a baby at all. We love her to pieces and can't imagine life without her. She continues to learn things quickly and is already starting to read. Just kidding!! Just wanted to see if you were reading my post. Lila loves to learn, but she's not a genius (sorry sweetie--your genes aren't that good!). Lately she's been learning the sounds the letters make (she learned the alphabet at 16 mos.) and by sight she recognizes the words "cat", "dog", "Mom", "Dad", and "Lila." She knows all the colors (although her colorblindness sometimes gets her mixed up on red and green...those darn genes again!), shapes, and numbers 1-15. She enjoys singing, playing the "I Spy" game, running, climbing, going to nursery on Sunday, bike rides, looking at books, and going to the library. Oh yeah, and did I mention that she likes chocolate just as much as I do?? Maybe I shouldn't ha...

Well I've made some progress, but it's slow going. Don't look too closely at my header yet...I'm still just learning Photo Shop and I know that the image quality is really poor right now. My husband is working out of town this week, so I may not get my header fixed until he's back (he is the computer expert afterall). I'm excited to at least have something. And now I feel like I can make some posts. Yay! P.S. Dearest darling husband, if you see this post while you're out of town, please don't be too ashamed of me for uploading this rough draft of a blog header. XOXO, Me

time in the day!! There are sooooo many things I want to do everyday and not enough time to do them all. That's one reason my blog has been neglected. Another reason: I don't want to make anymore posts until I have finished the redesign of my blog! Too bad I'm not a graphic designer who has/knows how to use some great software for making my blog header... That being said, I will return to blogging when I have my header done. Hopefully that will be by the end of this week, not the end of the decade. Wish me luck. Ciao. one thing I always have time for

If you've been wondering how I made the most recent flower for Lila's headband (the hot pink one from 2 posts ago), I just found a great tutorial on how to do it. I usually am inspired by something and then just figure out how to do it myself. This was the case for this flower--I found this tutorial after the fact. Since I'm not really good at teaching people how to do things, now you can use this tutorial instead of suffering through me trying to explain it to you! Have fun crafting! (The above pic is taken from the tutorial I found--so pretty!) Organza Flower Tutorial

At 15 months Lila has decided to walk. We've known for months that if she would just give it a try, that she could do it. Last Thursday we got her to take 6 six steps to reach the iPod Touch, but it wasn't until Sunday that she began walking around without being bribed! Just yesterday she figured out how to stand up without using anything to help her up. So it's official: we have a toddler! I will hopefully post some videos this weekend so everyone can see. I know I keep promising video, but I haven't had time to edit any video yet, soooo...hopefully this weekend! Otherwise, about 5 more weeks until I get my freedom back (aka end of the semester)! We'll see if my new blog header I'm working on makes it up before then also :o)

Where does the time go? I can hardly remember what it was like to have a newborn anymore...this girl has grown up too fast! As you can see from the pics above, she loves to pretend everything is a phone. She likes to play peek-a-boo too. She also loves to make animal sounds, which is just too cute! I will post some videos this week so you can hear her adorable little sounds.

It has been pointed out to me that I have not announced over the blog our destination this summer...so now it's official! We are going to Mississippi and planning on it being a great summer. I haven't had a chance yet to start researching the state, but I'm sure we'll manage to have some fun in the south!

I just spent all day trying to put images together for all the events that I haven't had time to blog about in recent weeks and months. Good thing today was a school holiday and an excuse for me to abandon everything and just blog! The posts I've added today start from way back in November and are as recent as last week. I hope you all enjoy the pictures and the updates! The next post I make will be of videos of Lila, so you can look forward to that. --Adria

I was sick last week and my head was so clouded by my cold that I couldn't effectively study. Instead of studying I took the opportunity to do some crafting! I wanted to send Lila's cousin Amelia some Valentine inspired bows and flowers and the red and pink ones are what I came up with. With the exception of the big pink bow, all the bows and flowers I made were 2.5" wide. Lila's cousin has enough hair to have the clip in her hair without a headband, so I thought 2.5" was a good size. The larger pink bow I made for Lila and it's about 3.5" wide and I think it's a cute size on her right now. The purple satin bow with the white center is a bow that I finally made to match a dress that my mom made Lila (too bad she's already outgrown the dress!). This hat accidentally became Lila's just before Christmas. I was making this hat as a Christmas present for Darren's mom, but it came out Lila's size instead. The next night I made the hat all ov...

When Darren found out there were a couple of unclaimed tickets for the company cruise (only a week before the cruise was to set sail!), he jumped on the opportunity for a family vacation. It took a little bit of convincing on my part, but I was soon persuaded that a vacation would be worth the extra school work before and after the trip. It was definitely worth it!! The company trip was a 5 day cruise to the Bahamas that left from Miami. It was the same cruise Darren and I went on during our honeymoon, so we were ecstatic to go back! We didn't take any pictures on our honeymoon, and we sure made up for it this time around! We flew in to Florida a couple days before the cruise set sail (airfare was cheaper), so we also threw in a day at Disney World before our cruise. We had so much fun! We could not have asked for a better way to cheer up our dreary winter in Utah...now if we only could have stayed in the Bahamas until winter in Utah was gone...

The day after finals ended for fall semester, Darren's younger brother Kyle got married. We flew out to Arkansas right after our finals and made it just in time for Kyle and Whitney's wedding. The wedding was short and sweet (2 hours flat start to finish, including dinner!) and it was a "deja vu" weekend to be back where we spent 4 months of our lives earlier in the year. The bride and groom looked beautiful and we were happy to be there for their special day. The wedding was the 19th, and the next week was Christmas. We decided to just stay home at our new place in Utah for the entire Christmas break, of course with the exception of the wedding weekend. It's the first time we haven't been back to California during our break. We miss my family, but it was nice to have our first Christmas with Lila in our very own house. Poor Lila was teething on Christmas, so we didn't get too many pictures of her in good spirits. We did manage to get lots of sleep though,...

This is way overdue, but I thought I better post something about my baby's first birthday so I don't forget it happened! Some of you may know that Darren has food allergies. Because of this I was very cautious about introducing new foods to Lila as well as feeding her nutritious homemade foods exclusively during her first year. For her birthday I decided to forgo the traditional sugar-filled birthday cake. Instead we had blueberry muffins that were sweetened with fruit juice instead of refined sugar. Lila loved them, as well as everyone else in the family! Lila still has not had cake and has had only a couple of tastes of sweets. She is a good eater and her favorite foods are olives, brown rice, and beans of just about any variety. I have been practicing something called "baby-led weaning" with her, and one of these days I will blog about that. In case anyone is interested, here's a link to the blueberry muffin recipe: http://www.slashfood.com/2006/09/09/light-lif...

Well, the past year has been a whirlwind of non-stop busy-ness and it looks like it will continue into 2010! I feel really bad that I haven't kept up with people very well this past year. I would like to apologize upfront to everyone who I have begun conversations with via Facebook or e-mail and never finished. I have been so overwhelmed this year with my BYU classes, a 1 year-old, a husband with food allergies (i.e. I slave away in the kitchen many hours a week), and buying and moving into a townhouse, that I have been a terrible friend and family member. Just know that I love you all and think about all my friends and family members often, and I look forward to the day when I have more time to catch up with everyone (I'm hoping that time will come once I've graduated). So in case you're one of those people who I haven't kept in touch with this year, here's a brief overview of what we've been up to: Darren and I are working on our bachelor's degrees in...