Easter weekend with my family!

I've been so blessed this year! I usually only see my family about 2-3 times a year since we're so spread out, but this year I've gotten to see them a ton!!! I LOVE IT!!! Matthew and Jill are here at BYU, so I see them about once a week/2 weeks. Two weekends ago, the three of us went to Boise to visit my brother, Danny and his family. This weekend, my sister, Melanie, and her family came to see us from San Diego! Jill spent the night too, and Matthew came up every day. It was a blast! We played tons of new games, which is our usual with Melanie and Sam. We did our family traditions with egg hunts, dying eggs, and of course LOTS of chocolate. :) We enjoyed a great dinner at my aunt's house and had a fun weekend just goofing off.

Sammy, 6 and Nathan, 5 one request was to go play in the snow! They wanted to make a snowman and have a snowball fight. We took a drive up American Fork Canyon to find some snow. We had a grand old time. Jane cried the whole time. Nathan only had fun if he was throwing the snowballs and not getting hit with them. Samuel just loved every second, but was the first to call it quits. Andrew had no idea what was going on. We had a fun snowball fight, and slid down the hill. After about 20 minutes all the kids were done. It was pretty funny.

I loved this picture of Isabelle with her daddy. She sure does love him!

Here is Isabelle with Nathan, 5. Melanie with baby Andrew, just 3 weeks younger than Izzy. Jane eating an apple. And, Isabelle and Andrew. They had fun grabbing at each other's faces. Isabelle was happy drugged up on Tylenol.

Jill is such a fun Aunt! We love her. She loves all her nieces and nephews and they have such a fun time with her. This cute photo opportunity ended up like....














This! Pretty Entertaining!














The only bad part of the weekend was Isabelle was miserable. This is pre-Tylenol. :( She got sick the night before Melanie's family got here. She had a gunky eye for about a week, but developed the drippiest runny nose possible, a nasty hacking cough, and a fever to top it all off. She stayed home with dad for Easter Sunday and I went with my family. So much for a grand first Easter! This was her cute Easter dress this year, a sleeper! Maybe next year!

Jake's getting BIG

The top row was the night we got Jake. Look how TINY and cute!

10 signs you know your dog is big:

10. He eats 10-12 cups of dog food daily.
9. You lose during tug-of-war. (In my defense, 4 weel drive is better than 2.)
8. He gives your a pretty hard spankin on your bum with his tail.
7. He can get himself in and out of my extra deep bathtub.
6. He can burn his nose on the stove when bacon is cooking.
5. He sits comfortably with his bum on the couch and feet on the floor.
4. You can't hide toys on the top of the fridge because he can get them when he's on his hind legs.
3. If you don't wipe the sides of your counter top, your dog can lick it clean.
2. He can reach the ice and water dispenser in the fridge. (Luckily he hasn't figured out how to push the button YET!)
1. You need MULTIPLE grocery sacks to clean up the yard. (I'm glad it's not my chore to do :) thank goodness for husbands!)

Jake just turned 8 months old and still has lots of growing to do. Not to mention lots of learning to be more obedient. We can't wait for him to be as obedient as good old Toby was! We love Jake and are glad we got him when we did.

Isabelle loves Jake!

Jake has pretty much always loved Isabelle. The oldest picture is the bottom right with the newest in the upper left. Jake always has to be close to Isabelle. Whenever she's on the floor, Jake nestles himself close by. It's pretty funny. Isabelle has always been oblivous to Jake's presence unless he was licking her uncontrolably. The last couple of weeks, all of a sudden, Isabelle has noticed Jake. She watches him whenever he's around. She has also discovered that she loves to be licked. Jake comes up and she pets his face and then sticks her hands in his mouth to be licked. She smiles so big! She pulls her hands out, looks at us, and then sticks her hand back in for more licking! I think a great friendship is on its way!

Our Boise Trip

We had a great trip up to Boise to visit my brother, Danny, and his family. We took Jill, my little sis, and Jake, the dog, up with us. Matthew, my little brother, surprised us by flying up and meeting us up there. We had so much fun! The food was incredible. Karen also did a photo shoot in their backyard for us. We now have a new family photo with everyone! Didn't she do an awesome job! (Check the header)

On Friday, we went rock climbing. I've never actually been climbing other than rock gyms. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to get to try it again.


Mike made 3 hard climbs. He hasn't climbed for years, but did a great job. His first one he thought he wasn't going to make it and found a hole to lay down in to take a nap. It was pretty funny. He finished the climb and was ready to try some more and made it on a 10a and 10bc.


I only made it on 1 climb. It was pretty easy once I got going. I had a great time.

Isabelle had a great time hanging out outside. She would have been much happier if she had gotten more than a 20 minute nap.

This is cousin Sydney with Isabelle. We traded off watching babies. Sydney is actually 6 months older than Izzy, but they're almost the same size. Yeah, Isabelle's a big girl! :)


A pretty funny moment was when Jill fed the table. She sat down with a bowl of soup and it somehow ended up completely upside down on the table with no spills, until we picked up the bowl. More proof of how Jill became "Little Miss Mess."


Isabelle loved her cousins. Sydney is 10 months and loved to grab Isabelle's face. She didn't mind one bit. Kali held Isabelle's hand and they smiled at each other for about 20 minutes.

Jake also had a blast hanging out with their golden retriever, Dewey. He also got to play with a great dane. They spent a lot of time out in the backyard just playing and running. By time we got home, Jake was exhausted. He's been sleeping all day.

Thanks for the great weekend, Karen! We had a blast!

Picture day...

So I took Isabelle for her 3 month pictures, (yes, she's 4 months, oh well). She was super cute this morning and always such a happy baby. I figured 4 is usually a good time for her to be cute. Well when she woke up from her nap she had a nasty gunky eye. I wiped it up and it was doable for pictures. We made it to the place with no blow out. In the waiting area she was being absolutely adorable and I was super excited to catch some cute photos. WELL, the second we walked into the photo part, she starting throwing a fit. She was happier if I was holding her, but still not happy. Finally, I pulled our her silky blanket that she is all of a sudden obsessed with and her little doggie that she loves to death and then she was super happy. But as soon as we took the stuff away she cried again. So 90% of all her pictures have her blankie and doggie in them. I was worried we wouldn't get any cute ones, but when all was said and done, I actually had a hard time deciding which ones to get. Almost all of them still turned out cute. I just find it so odd how much settling power the blankie and doggie have!

Not much going on...

We've had a very uneventful couple of weeks. I got called as a den leader in cub scouts. It's been fun, and I've even used my teaching stuff. Isabelle is getting HUGE!!! She's really starting to get some personality. She is also starting to rotate and army crawl during tummy time! She is such a good, easy baby. We're getting spoiled!

Happy Valentine's Day

Here is Isabelle's Valentine's Day dress. Isn't she adorable? I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day. We went and visited some of our Wymount friends who just had a baby. It's always fun to visit!

What a mess!

Last night was a crazy mess. If you live in Utah, you saw the news of all the mess in Utah County, especially Eagle Mountian and Alpine. We started getting a storm around 2:30. It was just getting kind of bad when we had to leave for Provo. Mike's taking an LSAT prep course down there. We left at 3:20 and made it to Provo just fine. Mike went to his class, and I went to Jill's apartment to hang out and play with Isabelle. At 6:30 I got a call from my neighbor. Her husband had left for work at 3:30, just 1o minutes after us and he was stuck on the road outside our neighborhood about 1 mile away. He couldn't turn around or go anywhere. He had been stopped for 3 hours just sitting in his car. There was a 16 car pile up and no one could get through. The wind was so bad it was a complete white out. Mike's class got out at 7 and we had to head home to let Jake out. We thought the mess might be cleaned up enough by time we got close. I-15 was backed up just a couple of miles outside of Provo. Everything was backed up and closed. We took some back roads through Lehi and skipped about 2/3rds of the mess. We still sat in our car for quite a while. We got told the road home was closed and had to go another back way. We finally made it home in 4 1/2 hours at 11:30 pm.

Isabelle did amazingly well. Up until last night, she has never been awake and happy in her car seat. She is either screaming or asleep. Once she woke up she was hungry, we were stopped on the interstate, but you never know when you'll get to move 1 car length. So, I got in the back of the car and nursed her in her seat. After that she was happy as long as I was playing with her. Her diaper needed changing desperately. Finally Mike got out to help push a car that got stuck, so I removed some of her heavy layers of clothes and changed her diaper. About 30 minutes before we got home, she finally fell asleep again.


Isn't the point of a covered porch so you don't have to shovel it?! The wind was so bad it was blowing the snow sideways. Our front and back porches were caked with snow! It was crazy.

Guess What?!

I finally roll over now! Mom hasn't gotten to video it yet. She laid me down on Monday and I just rolled myself right over! I did it 4 times in a row. I'm not super consistent yet. Sometimes I forget Ican roll over and just scream on my tummy instead of trying to roll over.

Utah Lake, Here I Come!!!!

This is Isabelle's new swimsuit. My old roomies gave her this cute swimsuit. It looks like we'll have a great summer in Florida and on the lake!!!!! Thanks!!! Isn't she adorable?!