Munkey's Business

Here is a picture diary of what Munkey has been up for for the last few months. Sorry this is the worlds longest post, I'm trying to get all caught up.

Here is a cute series of photos I took of us where we were trying to lie down in the leaves for a cool background but she kept laughing too hard and I couldn't hold her still. It turned out cute anyway...



Sara's Nanna got her a tricycle and she's been riding around on it for a while now but still can't pedal it. Also here is a pic of Daddy putting it together for her.




Now that she has her own wheels, it's kind of giving her a whole new attitude :)

Munkey had a good Halloween, she dressed up as a little monster and we handed out candy on the porch. Even though some kids had really scary costumes she wasn't afraid. She got her first taste of candy too, kit-kats are her fav.


On the first snow of the season, she got so excited she walked out into the yard barefoot. Once she got in the middle of the yard she realized how cold her feet were and was screaming and yelling for me to come and get her.


She likes to eat lots of snow in the yard and then she wants to come in...


Munkey loves playgrounds, more than life. She begs to go to them when we drive by. When her Nanna came into town, we got these pics at the playground.

We've taken Munkey to the Festival of Lights here in SP Fork twice now. She really loves to look at Christmas lights and the ones at the festival are awesome because all the animals and displays move. As you are driving around you get to listen to Christmas music too. It's really fun.



Well, I still have more pics to put up but I'm out of time. I guess I'll have to do a Munkey Business part two post...

Snow sliding

Today we went to the River Park in Spanish Fork Canyon. We really needed to get out of the house even though it's been cold and snow flurrying off and on. I had envisioned that we might walk along the river trail some and maybe play on the play ground. When we got there however the gate was closed to the park. So I did what every self-respecting toddler mother would do, I jumped the gate. Actually, I tried to go through a small opening first and didn't make it, so I climbed over and Munkey squoze through the opening and then we headed for the playground.

I was proud of Munkey for climbing up the entire playground assembly by herself, up to the slide, and then actually sitting down and sliding. The first time I ever let her go down a slide by herself she insisted on climbing up to the highest one and then ran over the edge of it with out slowing down or sitting first. Luckily I caught her before she smacked her head into something. That is why I say I am glad she has learned to sit now :)

As a side note, I wish people who make slides would put small drainage holes at the bottom of them. They always hold water and today it was actually a patch of ice at the bottom.

I think she liked playing at the playground even more with the snow flurries but it got cold fast so we didn't stay as long as she would have wanted. I didn't get a video of the screaming tantrum where I had to carry her back to the car while she was kicking her boots off and clawing at me. Then I had to climb back over the gate while trying to keep her from running into the barbed wire on either side. Still, it was good to get out of the house!

A musical Munkey

When Dan is at work, I turn on the Piano during the day sometimes for Munkey to play. I caught some pictures of her having a blast pecking away at the keys:


I really love that our piano is a player piano with hundreds of songs on it that we can listen to during the day.

She has really gotten into musical instruments lately. We have a picture book with a few pages of instruments and she wants to read it over and over and points to the instruments for me to say what they are. She particularly likes the picture of the maracas.

Granny Kepi got her a set of wooden musical instruments that are bells, and tambourine, a sand filled shaker, and castanets and she loves to play them. Also we recently have been singing jingle bells while playing a hand bell. I'm thinking of trying to find her a few more musical instruments that she can play. Also Granny Kepi and my friend in Provo play the flute, maybe we can arrange for her to have a concert. I need to get my violin out but I'm a little afraid it might be too fragile for her to handle and it would just lead to a screaming fit when she couldn't play with it. I need to find her a little solid wooden violin like I used to have when I started out.

Dan's music academy where he takes piano offers music classes starting at 6 months old, which seemed really young. I think it might be fun to take her to some next year just to see if she likes it. I've seen group music classes for slightly older kids where they sit in a room and each kid gets a keyboard and their parents sit with them and they have a group class. It looked like fun.

I so don't want to be one of those parents that is like you will play 5 instruments, and practice every day, and never miss a lesson. I think it would be more fun for her to just encourage her natural curiosity by finding musical things to do during the day and to try and keep it fun for her and provide her with the opportunities to learn about music.

Check out my Monster shirt

Dan and I aren't really into celebrating Halloween so this t-shirt will probably be the extent of our celebration this year for Munkey. It is pretty cute though and I just discovered it glows in the dark!

It snowed at our house today and Munkey decided she couldn't wait for me to put on her shoes. She made her way out into the yard barefoot. Then after a few minutes of standing in snow she realized how cold her feet were and stood out in the yard screaming for me to come get her, which I did.


I really like this shirt, it goes to show you can buy happiness at Kmart for $2.

We did get this pumpkin that I ended up cooking but before I did I put it on the floor because Munkey seemed really interested in it. She tried picking it up at first, grunting as she tried to lift it but she was never able to get it off the ground. Finally she learned that she could just roll it around and she really thought that was fun.

This is how are garden looks now. I think it might be mostly dead. It makes us very sad. Munkey seemed to really just be getting into the swing of it. She would ask to go out to the "Ganye" and eat "Tomanos". We've started calling them tomanos because it's just too dang cute. There won't be any tomanos until next year unfortunately :(

A Munkey that goes Moo

Munkey really likes doing animal noises, here's a sampler :

I haz fun at Daddy's work!

The Munkey Daddy needed to get some work done on a Saturday so we accompanied him up to Novell.  Munkey had a blast trying to grab all the fun stuff and computers off his desk.

Mostly she loved his magnetic geometry set, I did too.  It provided us with about 2 hours of entertainment along with zooming down the hallways in rolling chairs.  I am hoping we do not find any magnetic pieces in MB's diaper soon :)

Look, at the cool stuff I can build (OK, that last one was Mommies) : 

A tough day at the office

Today I decided it might be nice to ride my bike up Nebo with Munkey so that we could go see the fall colors.  I thought that if I went early enough we'd see relatively few people.  Boy, was I wrong. 

We got all bundled up because it was about 45 degrees when we started up the Nebo scenic loop.  Also the higher you go the colder it gets. Munkey was wearing a pair of fleece footie PJ's and her fleece lined winter jacket as well as my winter jacket covering her feet in the kid bike trailer.  We started to ride a mile below Benny Creek. The fall colors up there were stunning and that part of the ride was very enjoyable.

The traffic was initially light, soon however we began to encounter traffic of another kind.  Apparently  it was free-range cattle roundup day on the mountain.  We ran into herds of cattle being driven right down the road by farmers in pickup trucks as well as on horse back.  The only thing I knew to do was to pull over on the side and wait for them to pass.  Luckily we did not run around a corner head on to one of these herds but at one point there were cattle on both sides of the road and we had to travel in the middle.

Beef, road hogs: 

I ended up cutting our ride short because of all of this hoopla but we did make it up to a wonderful meadow where I let Munkey out to play in the snow.  She thought it was a smashing idea and I had a very hard time dragging her away from it.  She was very interested in eating all of the snow before we left.  We also saw some turkey tracks and when I pointed them out to Munkey, she tried to make the gobble gobble sound.

Turkey Track:

Everything was all fun and games until I went to put her back in the bike trailer so that we could ride back to the car and I noticed she smelled a little stinky.  Ah man! Changing a baby with 10 layers of clothes on in the cold is no fun.  I had even put her in an overnight diaper hoping that I could put off changing her until we got back to the car.  Neither one of us was happy about this occurrence and especially when I realized I had biked three bags of crap up the mountain and none of them contained any baby wipes.  Well, we made due with all her extra clothes I brought along and I changed her in record speed into a new diaper and full body PJ suit.

Smelling fresh, we loaded up everything, I gave her a whole piece of bread to munch on, and we headed down the mountain.  What really sucked was that now we were headed down in the same direction as the cattle, so I had to watch ahead of us and behind me to make sure they weren't sneaking up on us.  Also the traffic flood gates opened up. Apparently a school trip was in progress with 2 buses of kids with about 12 cars of parents following, which added to the fall leaf on-lookers and the ranchers.  Geez, we might have done better riding on I-15, there would have been less cattle.

Pics of cattle taken when we were safely in the car, they do look pretty in fall colors :

Still, it was a fantastic outing consisting of about seventy percent enjoyment, twenty percent annoyance, and ten percent cattle poop.  If there is a God, I think that if he loved us he would see to it that someone puts more bike lanes in Utah because sharing the road means something entirely different here.  I think I will wait to ride up there again until after they have closed off the road with snow gates and the beef is on the store shelf.

Look at me, I'm 1.5

Sadly, I wrote this post back in August and never posted it.  Never too late I guess.


MB is just a few days short of being one and a half now. She is such a fantastic kid. She has so much energy but not in a way that annoys us thankfully, she just loves to "go, go, go". She really does have an easy going personality and she is happy in nearly any situation as long as she's not sick or hungry. She also really loves being around other children and does not seem to be too shy. Another thing that impresses me about her is her capability to grasp new words and ideas. She knows and will say or try to say most of the words we use for things specific to her in the house and lots of things outside like trees, garden, grass, she calls grasshoppers-hoppers, apples, stars, sun, moon, airplane, etc. She also knows the words for most things in her Baby Einstein vids and her books. She picks things up quick.

Overall she is just so happy, she loves to laugh and smile. She loves us both and gives us "pats" on the back all the time, but she particularly loves her Da Da and really notices when he's not around. I took her on a hike by myself today and she asked for him the whole time even though we were having fun and she was not upset in the least, she just noticed he wasn't there. I also really like that she loves when I do very silly faces or use strange voices or gestures. I'm sure she will love it when she's a teenager too.

Here are some recent pics of her doing what Munkeys do.

Dances like a white girl, needs lessons from her Aunties :

Always big smiles and has cute teeth :


She is actually starting to grow some hair and it's a beautiful color :

Climbs on everything!



Is not affraid to wear a laundry hamper on her head:

Is generally adorable :



Still gets around quite a bit outdoors and can hike tough trails for surprising distances :



Naps whenever she can :


Loves hanging out in her backyard that she calls "side" for outside, which is also the same word she uses for inside (so you just have to take it in context, for example if we're outside and she says "side" she just wants to go back inside :)




What a fun little girl, we are so lucky!