happy easter!

what a splendid day it has been!

easter is such a joyful holiday with little stress but so much happiness!

it's the day we get to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ!

what a miracle it was that he broke the bands of death to be resurrected once more.

this day is such a gift to us all.

i love my savior, the gift of the atonement and the power of resurrection he has given to each of us.

i love my family, my husband, and son.

and i love the sweet gospel of Jesus Christ!

happy easter!!!!!!

nice and slow

life has been nice and slow lately.

we got back from indiana and have been lounging around a lot and i love it.

the weather shows signs of maybe a spring ahead.

today was the first day maxson spent any real time in fresh air!

it was absolutely lovely to take him outside and swing him around without being bundled up in blankets/snowsuits.

i can't wait for summer.

it's the most lovely time of year.

casey is continuing to study like a mad man (i've never been so eager for a semester of school to be over in my life).

maxson is sleeping longer stretches at night sometimes which is a.w.e.s.o.m.e.

last night we had our first 9 hour sleeping stretch, oh my, that was nice.

but i of course woke up after he'd been sleeping for 8 hours, naturally,

and then couldn't fall back to sleep,

and then i went to make sure he was still breathing,

and then i went to the bathroom,

and still couldn't fall back to sleep,

then went down stairs to pump a little bit to relieve the pressure,

then still couldn't go  back to sleep,

then needed chapstick,

then casey needed tylenol for a throbbing ear infection (at 26????),

then maybe i was about to fall back to sleep,

and maxson wakes up.

30 minutes later, after he's full and asleep, we continue our slumber until morning.

and somehow i was still tired even after all that sleep?

i've been kinda lazy myself lately, just going from nap to nap without much of a schedule.

we've been baby wearing lots around here.

maxson is perfectly content and happy with whatever activity i'm doing while he's in the moby.

(sitting down doing nothing doesn't count as an activity to him... what?)

it's been a lot of fun.

we dance,

do dishes,

pick up the house,

vacuum,

make dinner,

distract watch daddy while he studies,

ya know, mom/wife/house stuff

but we love that moby.

even casey has joined in on it a time or two.

and big announcement

after 2 rounds I AM WINNING THE FAMILY MARCH MADNESS BRACKET.

people, that's a big deal!

you know how i pick the teams? 

rankings? well yes of course i keep those in consideration.

but beyond that i pick the winner based off a bunch of whims.

examples:

arizona, california, and utah teams usually are almost always chosen in my brackets.

western states almost always beat all other states.

isn't kansas like always good at basketball?

michigan has gangsters, they usually win too.

sometimes teams just have names that sound like winning teams: butler, duke, marquette, harvard, etc.

if i've never heard of a team before they won't ever get chosen no matter what their ranking (FGCU? whichita? la salle? who are these teams?)

back to maxson,

we've been getting more big laughs lately doing the most random stuff!

and once we can tell he's laughing at us we keep doing it over and over and over and over to get replay action on that sound.

babies laughing=happiest moment of my days 

the view from 3 feet tall

back to all those pictures that 3 year old took:

(correction: there were probably close to 300, ha, so i'll show you 5%:)





and here's a little from my view:
a. indiana's stake basketball tournament casey just had to join for the saturday we were there
b. teaching jaden how to take photos of yourself
c. st. patrick's day sugar cookies
d. the oreo cake makes another appearance! (btw- this cake is better the second day somehow)

a. happy baby
b. eggs from casey's aunt's chickens!
c. loving dangling toys these days
d. happy side lying baby


and would you look at the difference in these two pictures!
left = roadtrip at 3 1/2 months
right= roadtrip at 2 weeks!

the difference between you and me...according to maxson

left: when he sees me
right: when he sees you

left: when he sees you
right: when he sees me

seriously, sometimes this kid is stone cold when it comes to reacting to others!
i think he's just so interested in this new thing that he's too distracted to smile.
or maybe it's just because i do the silly deer-in-the-headlights-face-slash-i'm-so-surprised-to-see-you-slowly-turn-it-into-a-smile face...
it's one or the other.

spring break 2013

for spring break, casey and i, yet again, decided to take a long car ride with our new(ish) baby across a few more states to visit some family.
(at 3 1/2 months old he has passed the state lines of arizona, utah, wyoming, nebraska, iowa, illinois, and indiana!)

i'd say our time together revolved around the feeding, sleeping, and caring of babies.

and i genuinely loved it.

there were no expectations.

we really just hung around the house, laughing at the children, putting them down for naps, cleaning up messes, feeding them and ourselves, and sleeping.
we loved every single minute of our time there.

i spy pillow hiders...

food and family: inevitable

st. patrick's day full of green food!
firstly, green chili.
btw- this little missy is one social eater. she very happily sat in her chair for over an hour each meal time (i swear!) slowly eating her food. cracked me up!

secondly, chicken caesar salad with noodles dyed to be green! (and definitely a new favorite thing: dying noodles! makes it so fun)

more greenness all around



mister maxson has suddenly loved grabbing onto all things in front of him, so fun to watch him learn!
and of course cousin loving! jaden was the sweetest to maxson: sharing his very special blanket with him and always trying to give him kisses and be all over him, made us all laugh.
these boys will be bffaeaeae in years to come

there's a picture in this post of maxson and brielle and my how they both have changed!
now 3 1/2 months and 10 1/2 months.

cuties


and lastly, cutler cousins!
jaden did awesome for all these pictures, he was a rockstar cheesing for us.
brielle was a wiggle worm, so funny.
maxson didn't mind at first but after about 30-45 seconds had had enough.




my how we loved our time in indiana.
casey has so much fun with his brother, cody, and i have so much fun with my SIL, camille.
and the 4 of us have a ball together having so many things in common.

i'd say that (our first in 4 years!) spring break 2013 was quite the success and mighty well worth the 11 hour drive there and back!
maxson did not agree with the last half of the driving back part of that sentence...ooy.


soon to come: spring break 2013 from the view of a 3 year old who realizes he can ask for your phone and take close to 100 pictures in a matter of minutes!
i'm lucky it's so easy/fast to delete mass amounts of iphone pictures at once.
i will spare you the duplicates (aka 20 pictures) of the 5 different close-up fabric materials he so artistically took :)
but i will share the funny ones!

a little video

casey informed me i haven't updated in awhile,

which is true,

but people, it's spring break!

i'm BUSY being LAZY!

and by lazy i mean doing the same thing i do everyday of my life except at family's house in indiana :)

but i do have this movie for you to watch!

it's of maxson's utter cuteness.

(crazy how much bigger he is now!!!!!)
watch if you please :)


Maxson 2-3 months

from Kimber Cutler on Vimeo.

or view it here if it's not playing on the blog

ps

spring break day one:

driving 10 hours to indiana with this baby!

ps- driving long distances with a 2-6 week old=much easier than with a 3 1/2 month old...just saying :)

and happy st patrick's day!
i'm excited to share with you our celebrations of the day with the indiana cutlers

Pi day

all during undergrad i always wanted to celebrate holidayish type stuff but never had the motivation to do so with school.

the only reason we had any kind of holidayish dinners/meals/celebrations was because of family.

i constantly told/promised myself "well once i'm not in school i'll have time to do all those fun things"

example of promise unbroken:

Pi day

3.14

i had heard of people getting together to have pies on march 14 but never had the energy myself to do so while at BYU.

lo and behold, march 14 came around and Pi day was officially celebrated with the cutlers (on march 13 due to spring break vacations).

we had shepherds' pie, made by yours truly, simple basics that always work together: mashed potatoes, chicken, green beans

meat pie, made by the sigety's, an australian recipe cooked in the crock pot for nearly 24 hours with chunks of steak, carrots, and yumminess with a flaky pie crust.

s'mores pie, made by the sigety's, rich happiness... holy hannah

banana cream pie, made by the blomstedt's, probably the best banana cream i've ever had, oh geeze.

i can't wait for next year's Pi day and try even more pies!

snow day

so last sunday we had quite the large snow storm blow in to lincoln.

sunday morning we woke up to about 3ish inches of snow and it kept falling all day long.

it was quite the cozy sunday lounging in our home watching the flakes drift down and down and down.

actually those poor flakes were blown every which way direction with all the wind,

but we can still say it was a pretty snow day.

i braved the cold monday to get a few pictures

this and that

the other day i was talking to my brother (who does not yet have children),

and he asked "so what do you do all day?"

i answered "uhhhh...play with maxson?"

ha it's true, i feel like that the majority of my day,

but i love it and find so much joy in it!

he's "awake" for 9ish hours of a 24 hour period, but about 3 1/2 of those hours he's eating so not really interacting much,

which leaves a mere 5 1/2 hours!

that's really not that much time,

so what time he is awake i genuinely want to play with him.

and casey is such a great dad. the past few weeks have been brutal for dental school, BRUTAL i tell you! it's hard test after hard test after hard test. class always starts at 8 this semester. and because there's been so many tests he truly IS studying all the time. last semester and january of this year were nothing like february and march have been. i'm so impressed how much time he spends studying because it's exhausting just for me to watch the poor guy sit and look at notes for that long. but he's such a dedicated husband and father and student so he studies at the kitchen table which makes life so much better. i make a very conscious effort trying not to distract him too much while he's home, so then he's able to take breaks and play with maxson all throughout the evening when maxson is in an extra happy mood, or if i really need help calming him for some reason, or just to give mama a 10 minute break from mommy hood, or to hold him of from eating for 10 extra minutes while i finish dinner or working out, or even to ask, hey will you take a picture? we are SO READY for spring break. (that's right cougars, we ACTUALLY get a spring break, yeeha!) but, oh wait. he has a test that monday we get back from break, blahhhhhhhhhh. so in summary, casey ROCKS at being a student and husband and father these days. love him to death.

***
here's a few randoms from recently:
a. we invite a bunch of friends to come to yogurtini to take over half the place, great fun, great fun i tell you.
b. casey relaxing while maxson plays with grabs his hair
c. friends with children=wonderful women in my life
d. ward chili party with friends.


***
i've seen those polka dots pants around the internet over the past 6 monthish and think it's such a fun trend.
so playful, bold, and cute!
a few friends and myself got together and made some of our own,
we all used different methods and i think they all turned out so awesome.
i kinda want to do another pair, but know it's not necessary, ha



what do we have forward to look to for the next week?
SPRING BREAK STARTS FRIDAY
60 degrees by the end of the week?
don't really believe that since we pretty much had a blizzard on sunday!
other than that my agenda is pretty open...ha :)

belly laughing it up

not exaggerating when i say casey and i have watched this video close to 40 times over the past week.

we constantly replay it, rewind it, and watch it over and over

hearing him laugh like this makes me laugh every time! 

he did it back to back a few times and hasn't done it since,

but casey will not give up.

totally serious when i say if he's not studying these days, he's trying CRAZY DARN HARD to get this  bebe to laugh again!

so until that day comes, we will keep watching this beauty :)

Maxson's belly laugh from Kimber Cutler on Vimeo.

maxson's 3 {months}!

as much as i so very much loved snuggling my newborn baby and will miss it much,

he's getting bigger and it too is so fun!

he's smiling and talking/yelling back at us so much, it's so funny to listen to.

and we officially have a roller!

it's that next exciting milestone we saw coming.

for the last month he's loved hanging out on his side while sucking on that hand.

then on saturday as i was trying to set up the camera on the floor to get pictures of him on his tummy,

i went to go get him and he was nearly all the way turned toward his tummy!
i cheered him on as an over ecstatic first time momma knowing he was fully "turned" once he was crying and couldn't get back.
since then, whenever we put him on his back on the ground, we'll look over and low and behold his on his tummy.
he gets his hand out from under him half the time right now and the other half just cries in frustration :)
onto some of his 3 month newsies/funsies:

-he's scooting circles on his back.
i lay him down and 10 minutes later he's still on the blanket but has done a 180 with all those side rolls!
-bumbo=awesomeness. that and the moby are his favorite places
-he's not fully on laughing/giggling yet, but we'll often get a few chuckles out of him.

"nom nom nom"

"what you looking at? i'm awesome on my tummy!"

but of course, tummy time inevitably turns into this...
he's crying/complaining while sucking on his hand

-he's still always wanting to stand on your legs or the floor or where ever he gets the chance.
arms in airplane mode, naturally.
-ove the past weeks we've figured out routines for his 4 naps (sleeps best in his carseat...there could be worse places, and is guaranteed to wake up after 45 minutes for crib naps and not go back to sleep, ooy, i will continue to fight!) and how to sleep awesome at night: 7 hours then 3 hours. it's been vundervul.
-we've changed to the secret swaddle at night and crib naps (because he escapes even my beloved swaddleme!) and sometimes let out an arm during day naps to see if he's getting better with arm control.

-his newest trick other than rolling: balancing on those 2 feetsies on my hand!
i'm sure that by next month i won't be supporting him.
-he loves facetiming. whenever we do he's so entranced by watching whomever is on the screen.granted it's like tv and that's probably why...
but it's not tv so we will continue.

taking photos=tired daddy
actually constant studying=tired daddy
please be over quicker you terrible 2nd semester of first year dental school!