Bryce Canyon

Sorry I took so long to post stuff. I was waiting for Josh to fix some of our photos because he always likes for me to wait until he's fixed the photos before I post them, but he kept never getting to them and finally I decided I'm getting too far behind so I've attempted to fix them myself.

The Saturday before last Pepper and I joined Josh on his Geology field trip to the beautiful Bryce Canyon. His teacher was really nice and let me and Pepper ride on the tour bus with the class.


Pepper's first time on a bus.

It was really beautiful.

After the official field trip part, our friend Michael (a professional photographer) and Josh stuck around to take more photos for art purposes. Michael's friend Anthony accompanied us as well.

Here's a group picture:

It started to get chilly later in the evening.

Pepper fell asleep in Anthony's arms.

Some views of Bryce Canyon (completely unedited photos. Josh will make them look better later.)

31 Weeks Old

I cheated and took her 31 week pictures today instead of last Thursday. I don't think it makes a huge difference because she really doesn't grow very much. She still fits into clothes she was wearing 5 months ago just fine.

Josh wasn't here to help me with the camera and it was on some weird setting I didn't understand, so I just put everything on auto mode and was forced to use the flash for these pictures because I didn't know what else to do. Despite my lack of camera know-how though, Pepper was being so cute that there were way too many pictures to choose from and I just didn't feel like sorting through and picking out my favorites this time. So you're just gonna have to endure the scroll-down of a million Pepper pictures today.













Although she's not growing much in size, she's definitely growing in ability. She shocked us last Thursday by letting go of whatever she was holding on to and standing by herself for a few seconds!

She is great with her hands and can pick up even the smallest of objects from the ground (and promptly put it in her mouth.)

She is so wiggly during diaper changes that the only way you have a chance of getting a diaper on her is to distract her by letting her play with another diaper so she doesn't twist around and try to crawl away.

She loves to clap her hands-- it doesn't make a sound, but she's definitely got the motion down.

She has an obsession with looking up. Every time we pass under the pull-up bar, she stares at it intently. I don't understand why.

Michiru gave me these really cute magnets for my birthday and Pepper loves to play with them while I'm in the kitchen.

She does great in public places and anywhere where there are a lot of new things to look at.

Asian Party at Mich and Brody's

Josh and I, along with Kiko and Eric, drove up to West Jordan to hang out with Michiru and Brody and enjoy some Asian food. I brought a bunch of chocolate mochi I made that was left over from my mission reunion. I didn't know how much food Michiru was preparing, but it turned out to be a lot! We were all running a little late Friday night so when I got there I still got to help make stuff.

(Good job on the food photography, Josh!)

We had california rolls (with some vegetarian rolls for Kiko)...

TONS of gyoza that Yukiko, Eric, and Josh helped make...


(That's V8 Splash in those cups :)

Michiru made super yummy tonkatsu with sauce...


And Yukiko made her yummy Asian style fluffy strawberry cake. (This photo is blurry because I took it.)

There was more than enough food for everyone and it was so yummy. We just ate until we couldn't anymore.

Here's Brody playing with Pepper. She was having fun, but every time she saw me with the camera she would make a really serious face. (I took these photos too... so the focus is not really "on.")



Classic Seino style, for some reason we took way more pictures of the food than of the people. I'll try to work on that.

Hiroshima Mission Reunion

I was excited to be able to attend this year's mission reunion. I got to see a lot of people I love and catch up with them a little bit. The Hiroshima mission reunion is never as well attended as other mission reunions because half of the returned missionaries live in Japan, but we still had fun. I thought there would be more people with babies there this year because I know of at least a couple of babies who were born at the same time as Pepper, but none of them came this time. Maybe next year.

It was a really long drive up, and we ended up being an hour late because the rush hour traffic in the Provo/Orem area was sooo bad.

Here I am with my friend Ma-chan (Masae) from the Yasufuruichi ward who helped us out a ton. She is currently attending UVU. I'm also with Sister Matsumoto, who is one of my favorite people ever, and even though we were never companions, she might as well have been because we worked alongside each other so much and did a lot of musical numbers together.

The obligatory silly face picture, of course. It's a Japan thing.

With the amazing sister Yeh. Sister Yeh just barely got back from her second mission in Taiwan. She would keep serving missions forever if she had the money.

The lovely Sister Takeshima (now Sister Tueller.) I was never companions with her either but we were practically sisters in the field. She took over Yasufuruichi after me and saw tons of baptisms there.

She's pregnant with a baby due in April. She gets morning sickness so badly that she has to have an IV in her hand. I definitely feel for her.

Here's the group photo that I hastily got everyone together for because I was in a hurry to get to Michiru and Brody's for dinner. Not badly attended for the third year I think. Josh isn't in this because he took the photo.

Thanks to the Montgomery's for always organizing this event.

30 Weeks Old

Josh accidentally started deleting Pepper's 30 Week photos, so we don't have the lying down ones anymore. So the only ones that survived were these of her getting up and eating her sign.





She absolutely loves paper. If she is ever being super fussy and is bored of all her toys, we just give her a piece of paper to play with and shred. The mess is worth a few minutes of quiet.

30 weeks feels pretty big. She can crawl around a lot faster, confidently stay standing with only one hand on something, and has better motor skills.

She finally figured out how to play the electric piano-- she used to just try to grab the red lights but now she bangs her hands on the keys.

She might be teething because she cries quite a bit, but it sounds like she's saying "mmmmm! mmmmmm!" When she's really upset, she'll sound like she's rolling her "r"s a lot, a skill that I still haven't learned how to do.

She can not take a bottle anymore, not even at all, which worries me because it might make weaning her more difficult, and I can't leave her with anyone else for too long because she doesn't have a way to get milk. Hopefully when the time comes she'll figure out the sippy cup pretty easily.

She loves to bang her hands on everything. She will get excited and slap the table over and over while I'm feeding her, which makes things a little difficult and messy, but it's really cute.

We had a super busy weekend last weekend... so there are tons of pictures to come, hopefully today, if Pepper will let me! Hope everyone enjoyed conference. We didn't catch all of it so we will have to catch up on it later.

Also, Happy Birthday Poppy!