Life

Life is great!

Hard and busy, but great!

Last month we were able to go to my family reunion, definitely a highlight of our summer! We had a lot of fun and made tons of great memories! Evelyn got a new tooth so she didn't have as much fun as we had hoped but near the end it broke through and she was happier!

 After the reunion, Evelyn and I drove back to Oregon with my parent's for a week and a half.  We had SO much fun and hope to do it again but we missed Jarom pretty bad! We are glad to be back home all together again!

Jarom is 1 week away from finishing his summer semester and then we will have about a 2 week break! He is doing so well in school! I am so proud of him and grateful for all of his hard work! 

We are hoping that all of his hard work will pay off and he will get into BYU next fall and finish in the Engineering program there! We are excited for a little break before life gets crazy again!

Evelyn is 9  months old and learning new things everyday! I love this stage! I love watching her figure things out and see things "Click". It's also a lot harder having such an explorer around!

 She is a master crawler now and is getting pretty fast!

 She stands up on everything and gets into EVERYTHING!

 I am always catching her with something in her mouth! Her favorite thing to chew on is cardboard! I put everything up that wasn't baby friendly and I still find her eating stuff! She eats her board books! What the heck! I keep finding chunks taken out of her books and her chewing on the cardboard! Yuck!

 Sometimes she reminds me of a little puppy. She will put a toy or  something she found around the house in her mouth and crawl away with it. It's pretty cute!

 She is going through a clingy stage right now! She follows me everywhere and cries if she can't see me!  Some days are worse than others and she cries if i'm not holding her! Oh golly!  Sometimes it makes me cringe that I can't do anything without her "help" and sometimes it makes me laugh or even  want to cry! It gets pretty OLD but sometimes I like it. I like to feel like she loves me so much that she always wants to be with me or just that she needs me.

  It's hard to believe how big she is getting! She grows up more and more every single day! It's crazy! She is our best entertainment! She does some pretty hilarious things!

 She loves to clap when we say "yay"

she loves to play Pat-a-cake and peek a boo

she laughs all the time,

 she LOVES other kids and babies! Sometimes it takes all I have to keep her from totally clobbering another baby! She squeals in delight and shakes with excitement when she see's them! She tries so hard to keep up with the little kids running around her. She giggles and does what she can to keep up! 

Her favorite snacks are green beans, grapes, cheerio's and grandma (Graham) crackers, thanks to her Grandma Mitchell. :)

She has 6 little chompers and bites everything! yeah, everything! YOWSA!

I just can't imagine having another baby to love as much as I love her but I am starting to get a little baby hungry! Weird! After I had Evelyn I thought I would never get baby hungry again. Or at least not this early! She isn't even ONE yet for crying out loud! Sheesh!

 Anyway, that's our life in a nutshell! 

All is well and we like it that way! :)

Baby Shower Pictures

Pictures GALORE of the SURPRISE! Baby Shower I threw for Court!

(Thanks for sharing some of your pictures, Court!)

 Opening presents

 We forgot to get a group shot before everyone left! Oops!

 The "draw- a- baby- on- a- paper- plate- on- your- head" Game

The prize was a cute boutique style Apron and some Bath and Body Lotion. Courtenay's friend won!

 My cute little Party girl!

 Look at that CUTE belly!! I can't wait to snuggle that little sweetie!

 This is the blanket I made for Court. Chevron Chenille. LOTS of work but SO worth it!! Its so snuggly and CUTE!

 Party Favors! Burlap bag with Jelly Belly's inside tied off with a cabachon ring. 

 A closer look at the blanky!

 FOOD! Everything was GLUTEN FREE so that Court could eat it!

 All set up and waiting for little miss preggers to show up!

 Burlap bunting sewn onto eyelet lace

 Fruit Kabobs with fruit dip

 Marshmallow Pops!

 Decorated mason jars with Flowers. Just some table fillers.

 Scotcharoos with cute little flags

 Doily Banners

 Water bottles Fancy'ed up with paper and jute and crystal light packets so everyone had the choice to have water or juice and lets face it, It's just cute!

 More eyelet burlap bunting

 Supplies for games

 I framed the invitation 

 Invitation and party favors 

The pregnant lady throne! 

Also some tulle Pom Pom's in the background!

It was a huge success and I am so glad I did it! I definitely felt a "Party High" that day and might be crazy enough to do it again just for that! It was a lot of fun to see everything come together and watch Courtenay enjoy every minute of it! 

Courtenay's Surprise!

I threw a surprise baby shower for Court on Saturday! I had been planning it for about 2 months so I was SO excited it was finally here!! It was SO much fun but HARD to keep the secret! As I was making  all the cute stuff, I wanted to show her SOOOO bad! But I didn't and as you can see in the video, She was quite surprised! Just the reaction I had hoped for! :) I'll post more pictures with details and all the cute stuff later! We are off to Seven peaks this morning so for right now just enjoy the "SURPRISE!" video!

(I could hear them in the garage, That's why I sound so impatient in the video! Hee hee! Also, more people showed up after she got there! And Jarom didn't stay! Ha!)

Videos Galore!

Just some video's of what Evelyn has been up to lately!

She does this ALL THE TIME! The other day we were shopping and she did it the ENTIRE time we were in the store! Silly girl!

We have a "Disney Pandora" dance party almost daily!

Evelyn is SO glad when Daddy comes home! I think this is the first time she saw him in 3 or 4 days! HAPPY girl!

She gets so hyper like this every night before bed! She's a giggler and a jumper! Love it!

ALMOST crawling! She takes a couple of steps but she mostly just army crawls everywhere and gets into EVERYTHING!

I't's SUMMERTIME!!!

We have had a FABULOUS summer so far!

Even though Jarom has been CRAZY busy with school and work, we have managed to still have a good time! My hard workin man is pretty much working his fingers to the BONE! This is what his schedule consists of : Go to work at 5:30 AM go to school at 9 AM (I think) til about 11, go BACK to work til 5 and then go to school til about 8 PM! LONG days! Evelyn goes to bed at 7 and so he goes days and days without seeing her! I think last week he didn't see her all week! So I kind of feel like a single Mom right now but finals are this week and then we get a little break! Poor Jarom misses Evelyn so much though! And she misses him!! You should see her when he finally gets to play with her!

We have enjoyed this HOT weather by going to seven peaks with Courtenay and Everett every week! The baby's LOVE the splashing!

We are REALLY going to miss them when they leave in September!! :(

We have gone Mini Golfing a couple of times! We really like that!

It's just FUN to get out!

Evelyn is a MOVER! I have to be EXTRA careful about what I leave on the floor! I have caught her putting EVERYTHING in her mouth! She is very attracted to the electrical outlets too, so I guess it's time to start baby proofing! She is getting SO close to crawling but hasn't gotten the hang of it quite yet! She has taken 2-3 "crawling steps" at a time but then she just falls on her belly!

My family reunion is a couple of weeks and I am SO excited! Me and Evelyn will be going back to Oregon with my parents and staying for 10 days and flying back! We are really excited but are REALLY going to miss Jarom! I am a little nervous too because Evelyn has NOT been sleeping well when she is not in her bed so we'll see if we can't break that while we're gone! 

Anyway, we are all doing well and looking forward to fun things this summer! 

One of our favorite Evening activities is to play outside while Daddy does his homework!

She LOVES bath time!! Splash, Splash, Splash!

I love my little buddy!!

Cheering for us while we golf! 

I love spending time with my family!!!

Batting cages!

Always happy in the morning!

Lately

Quick update! It's been a little crazy over here the past couple of days so I will post more later! I also need to do Evelyn's 7 month video! That will have to wait for later!

Jarom got me this video baby monitor for Mother's Day! It's AWESOME!! I LOVE it!!

And this little stinker LOVES to sit up in bed and play with her bear! I had NO idea how much she just quietly plays in her bed! It's pretty fun to watch!

She's thinking REALLY hard about crawling! She has just started to rock and it's SO CUTE!!! Exciting as it is, I am in NO hurry for her to crawl!

Sick baby! :( My oh my have we had a rough couple of days! FIRST she got REALLY constipated (my fault! I fed her too much cereal (I think)) Anyway, the poor thing was hurting so bad! She kept pooping these little tiny pellets and her bum was really sore! She would push SO hard to get those little poops out that she would throw up! Not just spit up, THROW UP! :( So I called the Doctor and they gave us some advice on what to do. In case your baby/child is ever constipated and you don't know what to do, let me tell you! Here are all the suggestions that the Doctor gave us: Sitz bath-put her in the tub with 1 tsp of baking soda and let her sit in it until she poops (in the tub)

Stick a lubricated Q-tip up her bum (Just the white part of the Q-tip) to help get things started.

Put 1 tsp of DARK Karo syrup in her bottle once a day until she becomes regular.

Give her diluted Apple of Pear juice.

Prunes, peaches, pears! Give her the 3 "P's"

and last but NOT least, SUPPOSITORY!

You better believe we tried ALL of those and then we tried a PediaLax suppository and BOOM! Within ONE minute, she was pooping and hasn't stopped since!! HALLELUJAH!

We should have just done that in the first place! SO-we got that under control and while that was going on, she's teething (she has 3 teeth, working on 2 more), her nose is running NON stop, she has a horrible cough, fever, and now a really bad Diaper rash that makes her VERY grumpy and sad! She screams when we even TOUCH her bum (with a diaper on and even WORSE without a diaper! Don't even get me started on trying to wipe her!) so we have to be very careful and gentle when we hold her! She won't even sit down!

THEN-as if that wasn't enough! She wasn't peeing! She hadn't had a wet diaper since SATURDAY! So that was worrying me but I just kept trying to feed her (She didn't want to eat ANYTHING) but she was SUPER fussy and so I called the Doctor (Again) and they said to bring her in right away! I asked if we could wait until 4 (when Jarom could come home in between work and school) and she said she can't wait that long! If she is dehydrated then she needs to be hospitalized right away! I instantly started worrying and crying (I woke up this morning SICK! So I was extra emotional) I called Jarom and he rushed home and we took her in! They said that she had a really bad sore throat which is probably why she didn't want to eat but her mouth was wet and she had tears so they weren't worried too much and told us to watch for that and sent us on our way! PHEW! She is on the up and up now! (almost) back to her normal self! Besides the Diaper rash! Poor baby!! As for me, I am sick, sick, sick! It's been a hard day! No slowing down for us! Jarom can't miss any work OR school so it's been a rough day to say the least! LUCKILY Evelyn has taken some good naps today and so I've been able to rest while she does!

Did I say this was going to be a quick update? Oh well!

Everett LOVES Evelyn! It's so much fun! He is so sweet to her and calls for her if he can't see her! It's so sweet! We have enjoyed spending time with him and Courtenay once a week to go to seven peaks! So much fun!

Evelyn is STILL cute! and getting cuter every second!! I could smooch her face right off!

PRUNES! This is day ONE of constipation and she LOVED the prunes! Too bad it didn't really help her!

My hard workin' Man! Poor guy fell asleep doing his Homework one night! He's working SO hard! So thankful for him! Only 18 more days until this semester is over! Yes, we are counting down!

We went on a fun double date with Joanna and Cody! We went to dinner and then to Trafalga (A family fun center) to play Mini Golf! We had a lot of fun! We will definitely go back!

That's all for today! More updates later! Evelyn is doing lots of fun new things!