September

First day of school at Apple Creek Preschool


The droopy pigtail has been greased down with chicken nugget grease . . .


Birthday present (I know, he's spoiled)



Happy 5th birthday Caleb!!!

Ashlyn's favorite place to play!

We're also in the process of buying a house a couple blocks away from where we are right now. We close on October 18th and can't wait! I do have pictures . . . maybe one day I'll get around to posting them!

With my other 2 pregnancies I always knew exactly how pregnant I was, like 11 weeks and 2 days. The ticker on the side of the blog was for everyone else's benefit. This time I actually have to check the ticker to find out where I am . . .
Can't believe I'm almost to the 2nd trimester!

Swimming

Caleb turned into a fish this summer. Look how good he can swim!

Is that an alien or a jelly bean???

The Big O-N-E!!!!

Happy first birthday Ashlyn!!!

Start . . .

Finish!


She loves her new play table!

She also had a joint birthday party with her cousins while we were in Pennsylvania:

Oh how I love the random questions Caleb comes up with. Today he asked "Mommy, how did Heavenly Father put the first person on the earth? If he was a baby then he wouldn't have anyone to take care of him!"

Happy Independance Day!

Happy 4th of July! Our weekend consisted of a hike at the lake,



swimming with friends, fireworks,


a barbeque, and a Ranger's game!

Sorry, We're Closed

The initial excitement of Ashlyn crawling has worn off, and now Caleb's trying to adjust to having a MOBILE sister! Look closely to read the sign.

Is Heaven in the Sky?

Caleb thinks very deeply. It's starting to hurt my brain. Today's conversation consisted of questions like "How does Heavenly Father see everyone at the same time, even the people in Dallas and Lubbock and Frisco and Kade's old house?" And, "How does Heavenly Father hear us even when we're inside our house?" "Did Heavenly Father make those trees and signs? Did He build our house?" "Did Heavenly Father ever die?" And of course the usual "Where does Heavenly Father live?" Now I may know the answers to some of those questions, but trying to explain to a 4-year-old is challenging!

First Pony Tail!!

. . . And some other cute pictures . . .

It's About Time!

Air Show

We went to a great air show in Fort Worth a couple weeks ago. Watched planes do cool tricks, played on inflatables, ate artery-clogging food, climbed inside planes and helicopters, had lots of fun, and got sunburned!

Texas Bluebonnets (and my Beautiful Kids!)

A Couple of Cute Kids

Highlights

I haven't posted pictures in a while, so here are some highlights from the past couple months. Enjoy!

In Frisco!

So we're in Dallas now! Frisco to be exact. I love our neighborhood and house so far - all very nice. Sorry to all of you in Lubbock that we didn't get to say goodbye to. We miss you already. Nate accepted the job on Wednesday, and they wanted him in court the following Tuesday. So, needless to say, we were a bit rushed. Packed all day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Loaded the truck Saturday (thank you soooo much to those of you who helped!), tied up loose ends and cleaned Sunday. Drove out here Monday. Frisco is a super-nice suburb and I know that we'll make some wonderful friends here and love it.
On a different note, WOOOHOOOO for Stephanie! So glad you're done with chemo! Now you deserve a vacation . . . hmmm . . . Dallas is a wonderful vacation spot . . .

Change in Plans

Just kidding, we're not really going to Georgetown. Nate got two more offers within 5 days after the Georgetown offer. All three were really good offers and we had a VERY difficult time choosing. But we've finally decided to go to Dallas. We'll be leaving sometime in the next week if we can get into our rental house that fast.

Caleb's obsessed with rhyming lately. Today: "Mommy, what rhymes with witch?" . . . "Uhhhh . . . I don't want to tell you." Luckily Nate saved the day with "switch."

Moving!

We're moving to Georgetown Texas!!! 10 minutes north of Austin, green & warm complete with a lake and river flowing through town!

Haircut

Nate left out of town at 5am today and won't be back til 10 tonight. The kids and I had a great day. I had everything under control. So much so that I got a little cocky . . . We had a wonderful dinner together, I bathed Ashlyn, fed her, put her to bed. Everything was going so well I thought I'd go ahead and give Caleb a haircut. So I start cutting his hair. Then Ashlyn wakes up and starts crying. No problem. I leave Caleb sitting on the counter with a popsicle while I go to get Ashlyn. I come back 10 minutes later and Caleb has gotten impatient and cut his hair himself . . . big bald line down the middle of his head. Pretty.
Well then I explained that since he did that to his hair, we won't be able to do it like Dash's hair anymore. He then asked if we could get Heavenly Father or Jesus to change it back. So I had to try to explain that although Heavenly Father is capable, that doesn't necessarily mean He will. Something that makes perfect sense to adults, but absolutely no sense to a 4-year-old!

Christmas in February

I've been working a lot lately and therefore neglecting the blog. I'm going to try to play catch up a little at a time today and tomorrow. First off, I never posted our Christmas pictures. We had a WONDERFUL Christmas eve and day. We all agreed it was our best yet. Since I had to work on the real Christmas day, we had Santa come a day early. So the 23rd was our Christmas eve. We got cozy in our jammies, then drove around to look at Christmas lights. After that we had hot chocolate and popcorn while Nate told Caleb the story of Christ's birth. Then we had ice cream and read The Night Before Christmas. It was soooo fun having Caleb old enough to really understand what was going on.

We didn't have any cookies, so instead of cookies and milk, Santa got popcorn and hot chocolate.

Santa piled the presents up strategically to make it look like there were as many as possible. Thanks to rescheduling Christmas, we woke up in the morning to a wonderfully white Christmas. The most snow I've ever seen in Lubbock! How perfect is that? You can see it through the window behind Caleb.

Here's Caleb jamming on his new electric guitar.

And Ashlyn smiling in her new high chair.

She wasn't so sure about the taste of the wrapping paper!

Scary Morning

My beautiful baby girl turned a very ugly blue this morning. It scared me to death. She has been a little sick for the last couple days, but not even a runny or stuffy nose. Just fussy, not eating well, and an on-and-off low-grade fever. This morning, Nate pointed out that her feet were purple. She felt cold so I wrapped her in a blanket and rocked her to sleep. Then I noticed her hands were purple even though she wasn't cold anymore. I unwrapped her feet and they were dark purple. And her lips and nose also turning to an ugly purple color. She was breathing and acting completely normal, just purple. I threw on some jeans, threw her in her car seat, and we headed out to the ER. Of course right as we were pulling into the parking lot, she turned back pink. So then I walked in with a smiling, talking, pink baby. Actually we called her pediatrician first who told us to go see the on call pediatrician, who refused to see her saying we need to take her to the ER. So we did. 4 hours later we had a diagnosis of a UTI, and it remains a mystery why she turned blue. Now I'm scared to take my eyes off her. Won't be much sleep happening tonight!

From the Mouths of Babes

I was in the grocery store the other day with Caleb, trying to figure out what else I needed, half-ignoring him. There were words coming out of his mouth, but it took me a couple seconds before I realized what he was saying. A couple seconds too late. "Mommy that man's FAT!! Look mommy right there! That one right there!" In horror I glance behind me and see the quite hefty WOMAN he is referring to. I am of course simultaneously grabbing his arm and whispering fighting words into his ear. He gets his feelings hurt. He has NO idea what he did wrong. So then I try to explain that people usually don't like being fat, so it's not nice to point it out when they are. I don't think it ever occured to him that someone might not be perfectly happy with who they are or what they look like.

Utah!

So we're wayyy overdue for updating the blog. We had an awesome and crazy busy December. I will have to post a little at a time. First off, we went to Utah for a week and visited Nate's family, who we hadn't seen in a year and a half. We had an amazing trip. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
Aunt Teresa watched the kiddos while Nate and I hit the slopes . . .

Nate catching some air!

What you can't see is that I had just ATTEMPTED a jump . . . I didnt' just randomly decide to fall like it looks.

Here we are taking a ride on the Heber Creeper. Caleb's first REAL train ride! And Santa even rode part of the way with us!

And here's Caleb enjoying some hot chocolate on the ride. If you look closely you'll notice his RED fingernails . . . We were all eating dinner at Aunt Teresa's when Caleb got up and went to the bathroom, shut and locked the door. Not usually a cause for concern. After about 10 minutes, Nate went to check on him. He was going potty and wasn't done yet, he said. So we left him alone. Then about 10 minutes later, I realized he STILL hadn't come out. So I went and knocked. Still not done he said. Well then I noticed some fumes coming from inside. I promptly used my ring to unlock the door and found him with the red fingernail polish in hand. He had painted his nails . . . and his fingers . . . and the cabinets . . . and the bath mat. AAHHHHHH!

We also went tubing at Soldier Hollow. I can't even begin to tell you how much FUN this was! Big LONG sledding hills with a lift back up to the top. We hooked our tubes together the first time down and Caleb was just laughing the whole way!


Cousin Dylan hitching a ride from his YOUNGER sister Allie!

Caleb and his Aunt Teresa riding up to the top.

Caleb and cousin Allie. Caleb had so much fun with her!

Here's a picture of Nate with his mom and siblings, all together for the first time in a LONG time.

And last but not least, a Christmas party at Nate's Dad's house. I don't know why I didn't get any better pictures, but you can at least see Uncle Matt being the Baby Whisperer in the back, and Dylan aiming his new marshmallow gun at some poor, unsuspecting person.

Sorry for the monster blog, but we had a lot to tell about! We also LOVED eating at Winger's and Cafe Rio while we were there, and I managed to miss getting pictures of visiting Nate's brother Brigham's family, and my best friend in the whole world Charity and her cute new baby. It was so good to see you all!!