Valentine's Day

I LOVE Valentine's Day! It's probably in my top 3 favorite holidays. (It's tied with Christmas and my birthday.) Growing up, my mom always made Valentine's day a fun day. We put a tablecloth on the table, heart shaped chocolates were scattered on the table along with some flowers, and then we had a yummy meal. After dinner we always got a Valentine gift from our parents. Sometimes my mom would even hang up heart garlands on the wall (which I don't think was as common as it is now with Pinterest and Instagram.)

My mom signed me up for a bow subscription from Little Poppy Co. and in February they sent out a bonus Valentine's Day bow that I just HAD to use. And since Rose is such a willing subject, we had a fun little photo shoot. (I can't think of a better subscription than to get little baby bows in the mail every month! #girlmomlife )

My freshman year of college my parents sent me a little care package and my dad accidentally switched the valentine he wanted to send me with the valentine for Carson's teacher. So I got a little valentine that said "Teacher, You're Great!" haha!

As a lame teenager, I always wanted a Valentine, but the holiday was never dampened if I didn't have one. For me, the day is about love. Not just for a significant other but for my friends, for my family, for the people around me that I care about. I am so so so blessed to be surrounded by people who love and support me and who love and support my little family. Valentine's day was a wonderful day to reflect on that and feel gratitude for everyone in my life.

Because our anniversary is only 4 days before Valentine's day we have decided that we want it to be more of a family holiday where we celebrate how much we love being a family and being together. Ryan is a romantic at heart and still felt like leaving me a trail of Hershey's kisses and fancy chocolate for me to find when I woke up (leading to some flowers), which I didn't mind, of course. And we finished the day off by making homemade pizza (because that's what I did last year and I thought it would be a fun tradition.)

Isn't he sweet? He did all this while I was asleep and was late to class because of it. 

I know I'm like a week and a half late, but I hope that everyone was able to feel loved and important on Valentine's Day. If not by the people around you, then at least hopefully you felt the love that Heavenly Father has for you.

“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)

Anyway, I hope you feel loved and remember to love the people around you every day of the year! Happy Valentine's Day!

Merry Christmas From Us

I wanted to send out Christmas cards this year (if you are family and have not received one yet, don't fret, I'm still working on them, slowly but surely they will eventually all be sent out.) , but we don't have a printer and I don't plan on going to the library to print off a bunch of newsletters to go along with the cards, so I'm writing a blog post instead.

Plus, we love and care about so many people who don't fall into the family category but we are just poor college students who don't want to spend more than $20 on Christmas cards, sooooo here's your Christmas card. Just pretend it came in the mail with an envelope and a stamp. :)

2018 was quite the year for us! There have been a lot of wonderful changes!

Let's see, the year started with both Ryan and I in school. I finished up my last semester at BYU and graduated in April with a bachelors degree in Family Studies. I graduated when I was 8 months pregnant, and despite being a pretty small person, I think I was one of the largest people at the graduation ceremony! I'm pretty blessed to have so many people in my life that care about and support me. My parents flew up from Texas and Ryan's family came up from Southern Utah, all to sit through a long and boring graduation ceremony just for me! I originally just expected Ryan to come (and maybe not even him! He hates graduations!) so you can imagine my surprise when both sides of our family decided to come.

Ryan has been working hard, as always (he's the hardest worker I know). He works full-time in the Tire Shop at Sam's Club and comes home every day smelling like the tire shop and with arms covered in grease. (He's too excited to come home to see me to wash his hands thoroughly... but if you ask him, he'll claim their clean!) He's also working hard at school, this year he took Anatomy and we're hoping to be done with that for a while, because it's tough!

What a handsome guy! Even when he's throwing snowballs at me! 

Our last Christmas card blog post announced that we were having a baby, but this is the year that she actually came. :) Rose was born on May 24th, and took her sweet time coming (36 hours of labor later). She is almost 7 months old now, which we can hardly believe! She is the cutest little human being on the planet (no bias of course...) and we love her with every ounce in us. She's sitting up now, rolling over whenever she wants, and she's started eating solid foods. She thinks her mom and dad are the coolest people on the planet, and she wants to be around us ALL the time (I'm sure that will never change.)  She also likes to play with what we play with. My phone, the keys, and my water bottle are some of her favorite toys, and when I'm eating chocolate she wants to participate as well. (Thank goodness! I don't know what I'd do if I had a daughter that didn't like chocolate! It's in our blood!) Her dad is great at making her laugh, and I make her smile. We are the luckiest parents alive!

We are 100% smitten!

This year we went on a few fun trips: we camped at Goblin Valley and played hide and seek among the rock formations, we spent a week camping in Southern Utah with Ryan's family, a week at Lake Powell with my cousins, and then a week here in Central Utah with my parents, who came up for my brother's wedding.

We also moved into a new apartment. We wanted a bigger place so that Rose could have her own room, and we are all sleeping so much better because of it! And we live in a super cool house.

In the last few months, I decided I would apply to graduate school at BYU in their Marriage and Family Therapy program. We had a crazy couple of months while I met with professors for advice, studied for and took the GRE and found a job that gives me more experience. It's a pretty competitive program, so I'm not sure that I'll get in but either way I am looking forward to finding out how that goes. If anything, the new job I started at a residential treatment center for youth is pretty fun and gives me something new to do that also allows me to use my Family Studies degree a little bit.

2018 has been a busy, exciting, slightly exhausting, and fun year for us, and we're really looking forward to seeing what next year brings us. :)

Look at her already rolling her eyes at us. She'll have it perfected for sure by the time she's a teenager!

We wish everyone a very merry Christmas full of love, joy, and a spirit of Christ this season and in the years to come! We love ya'll! <3 The Vorkink Family

Happy Halloween!

I cannot WAIT until Ryan is done with school and can work hours where he gets to celebrate all the holidays with us! Including Halloween! However, this year is not that year and so Rose and I had to celebrate Halloween mostly by ourselves.

I had these grand plans for us to dress up together and then pass out candy on the front porch. Then I was going to roast some pumpkin seeds for the first time and snack on them while watching Return to Halloweentown until Ryan got home around 11 pm.

What my Halloween REALLY looked like though:

- Studying for the GRE (which I'm taking in 3 days by the way. And the nail biting begins...)
- Running to drop off our rent.
- Realizing that the sun goes down sooner and I have WAY less time to find myself a costume that matches Rose's and take cute pictures than I thought.
- Rushing home squeezing into my ballet clothes from when I took an Intro to Ballet class at BYU 4 years ago. Finding another shirt to put on TOP of that because... nursing. Putting Rose's cute little ballerina outfit on her.
- Lugging Rose, my camera, a tripod, and a blanket out into the cold, cruel, but also photogenic outside.
- Realizing I need my phone to take the pictures, so lugging all that BACK upstairs (because you can't leave an expensive camera and a priceless baby outside by themselves without panicking about all the thieves and kidnappers there are in Provo...are there any?)
- Taking pictures of a grumpy grumpy ballerina who is NOT pleased to be wearing a tank top in the cold weather. (You have to suffer for beauty, Rose. Sorry, but that's what my mom taught me and I have to pass it down.)
- Stepping down on an acorn and bruising the bottom of my foot while lugging everything back inside.
- Changing back into normal clothes, because I just don't make a good ballerina, and feeding the grumpy baby.
- While I was feeding Rose, we got our first trick or treater, so I put her down (to her extreme displeasure) to run down the stairs, and give candy to them. When I came back upstairs to my screaming baby, I was walking on the front of my foot (because the back of it hurt) and got a splinter from the hardwood floors.
- So, then for the next hour I bounced between feeding Rose, trying to get a very stubborn splinter out of my foot, hobbling down the stairs to open the door and pass out candy and then starting over again.
- I gave up on getting the splinter out, and decided to just sit outside all bundled up to pass out candy, but that only lasted 30 minutes because Utah gets cold when the sun goes away.
- Ryan came home early and had to work on homework, but wasn't interested in watching Halloweentown, so he made fun of it the whole time and I just watched it on my phone instead.
- and the pumpkin seeds are still in the fridge a week later waiting to be roasted.

How did your Halloween go? :)

PS. If anyone would like some Butterfingers or Crunch bars, we have SO many left over. Come visit and I will give them ALL to you.

Here are pictures of the cutest little ballerina on the planet though, despite how grumpy she is sometimes. :)

Also, my legs are not THIS white (they actually sort of are, but I'm wearing tights in this picture, so they look even more white. And I'm wearing ballet clothes, so I'm not as immodest as you think... I think.)

Am I the worst mom for bringing her outside dressed like this? I promise it was only for about 10 minutes.)

All the heart eyes go to this sweet girl.

And here we are all bundled up on the porch. 

Also, here are our pumpkins. My cute little owl, and Ryan's sinister looking Jack O'Lantern. 

And, a very concerned Rose inside a pumpkin. "Mom! Dad! What are you doing to me?!"

Six Week Summer

We had the best Summer ever!

I mentioned the last time I wrote that Ryan got six weeks off from Sam's club because he's a new dad, and we took full advantage of those six weeks! He did work for his aunt for two weeks, but only in the morning. In the time that he had off we:

• Went to a wedding for my cousin.
• Went to my brothers wedding.
• We had Ryan's sister come to stay with us for a few days.
• We went to visit my aunt and uncle in Brigham City.
• We spent a week down in Southern Utah camping with Ryan's family.
• We blessed Rose down in Cedar City.
• We spent a week here with my parents who came up for my brother's wedding.
• We lived on a houseboat at Lake Powell for a week. 

and then reality came crashing back down when Ryan started school and went back to work. But before that, we had a blast and wore ourselves out to our limit. 

I used to hate Sam's club, but their paternity leave is awesome, so they are definitely not at the bottom of my list now. 

I love this picture. Every time we go to visit my aunt and uncle, it is for a big occasion of some sort and there are a ton of people and lots to do and never enough time to sit and talk. I was so bummed to find out that the weekend we decided to go up, my aunt and uncle would be at a wedding, my grandparents were going to California for a week, and everyone else had to work. On the day that we were planning on leaving we decided to stay a little later, and we ended up finally having a chance to sit on the porch, during the sunset, and just relax and talk, almost like the adults used to do when I was a kid and we had our family reunions. This may seem silly, but it actually meant a lot to me and was one of my favorite summer nights this year. 

Rose's Blessing Day

 Jared's wedding.

 My grumpy little girl, also at Jared's wedding.

I think this picture is just the cutest! The UVU library has THE coolest stained glass installment. We took Rose to see it and she loved it. (Until she realized that she was hungry, then the bright colors weren't interesting anymore.)

Pictures from Camping near Navajo Lake... I tried to limit it to only a few, but I have this amazing power to take way too many pictures in a short amount of time... so it's not just a few...

Those eyebrows!

One of the best things about Navajo Lake is that it has FROGS! You just don't really get to see frogs very often in Utah.

This one is at Duck Creek. 

Aunt Megan putting Rose to sleep. 

We left the campsite a night early because the rain was extremely persistent and our tents were filling up with water. This rainbow was a beautiful way for Navajo Lake to say goodbye to us on our way out. :) 

Here are pictures from Rose's Baby Blessing. We had lots of family come all the way to Cedar City to support us and Rose. :) We are so blessed.

Also, the dress Rose is wearing is the dress that I was blessed in as a baby. :) We waited a little longer to bless Rose so that both of our dad's could come and I was worried it would be too small, but it was perfect. :) My grandma made that dress for me 23 years ago. Isn't she darling???

Four generations. :)

Doesn't he make a handsome dad? 

Family Reunion t-shirts

Here are pictures from when my parents and Carson were visiting before Jared's wedding. We all went to Bridal Veil Falls for dinner and a walk. Isn't Carson a cutie? 

Pictures from Lake Powell:

We had so much fun at Lake Powell with my cousins. Rose is a natural and did way better than I thought she would. She didn't scream every time she went in the water, and she got plenty of naps and sleep at night even though there were 20+ people on the boat. Ryan and I even had a couple of chances to go off on a jet ski to go hiking without her.

Ryan wanted another swimsuit for the trip, so the day before we went to Walmart and he was going to get something boring like solid dark blue or grey. I tried to convince him to pick something fun, so he told me that I could pick WHATEVER I wanted for him to wear. ;) This was my pick. He wore them all week like the good sport that he is, until they "mysteriously" got a hole in the back on one of his hikes and they had to be thrown away. :) 

That's me. :) I can do headstands on solid ground, so I thought I'd try on a paddle board. The first try ended with me in the water, but my second try was much more graceful! 

This is Ryan and I attempting our Goga trick on a paddle board. Definitely not as successful as my headstand...

We had the best summer this year. Last Summer we both worked full time at different hours of the day so we didn't have a chance to do very many summer-y things, so we wanted to take full advantage of his paternity leave. Also, growing up in Florida, summer meant spending as much time as possible in a swimsuit in the sun as possible. So, we tried to do that this year, and I think it worked out pretty good. :)

It'll be fun to see what we do with his next paternity leave. (Which will NOT be coming for a while, so don't get your hopes up.)