We're back!

We made it. We're still alive after two days in a cramped car with a six-month old. Wahoo! We're now in Stockton, Utah, a tiny little town about 6 miles outside Tooele, which is 35 miles west of Salt Lake City, I think. It's very different from where my parents live, and I have to admit, I just love the west. Yay for no humidity! :) I really grew attached to the west when we lived in Arizona.

We're living with Jeff's mom and dad, and so far things have been great. It's fun to watch Jeffy get reaccquainted with his dad's side of the family. Jeff has two siblings very close by, with another just a few hours away. And I have two sisters in Provo right now and once Natalie flies back, there'll be three! It's nice to have family close by. I just wish the rest of my family were out here too. Jeff's sister, Emily, and her family should be coming this weekend. I'm excited for Jeffy to play with his only cousin. He's a lot more interactive now than the last time he and Clara were together, so it should be fun!

Right now we're job hunting and moving in. We have to figure out what to do with all our stuff that's in storage in Idaho and get all that settled. I'm excited to be here and for the adevntures that lie ahead. (Or is it "lay?" I can never get that one straight. So much for being an English major!)

Off we go

In six hours we'll be leaving the great state of Virginia to head out west. We're hitting the road hard; we're planning on going 2099 miles in two days with a 6-month old. Wish us luck! We'll be back online soon, tired but happy in little Stockton, Utah! :)

35 Favorite Summer Memories In No Particular Order

1. Giving Melodie and Cassidy awesome haircuts! (I don't know if they thought they were awesome, though!)
2. Family "Shrek the Third" movie night.
3. Taking Mom and Dad out to ice cream after Stake Conference.
4. Kripsy Kreme breakfast on Mother's Day.
5. Cinnamon Roll breakfast on Father's Day.
6. Picnic at Great Falls with Loralee and Jeremy.
7. Jeff playing with a million little scouts at Cub Scout Day Camp.
8. Someone making chocolate chip cookies like every other day.
9. Riding the Metro into Washington DC for the 4th of July.
10. Cassidy painting my toenails.
11. Watching the kids swim at practices and meets. Go Tsunamis!
12. Learning how to make really good homemade pizza.
13. Natalie's homecoming day from Italy--lots of cool stories and even presents!
14. Taking Jeffy in the pool.
15. Going to Jeremy's Under the Sea Kindergarten Concert.
16. Going to Loralee's End-of-Elementary Concert.
17. Kimi and Matt's Wedding.
18. Relief Society Temple Trip.
19. Navy Decision Temple Trip.
20. Seeing Melodie in her play costume and make-up.
21. Seeing Hilary for all of 8 hours.
22. Our goodbye dinner.
23. Fun dinner at the Chapmans.
24. Going on walks around the lake with the kids.
25. Playing tennis with Cassidy and Melodie.
26. Feeding Jeffy peas for the first time.
27. Watching the little boys play with Jeffy.
28. Renting movies for the big kids.
29. Seeing all my grandparents and lots of aunts and uncles.
30. Cassidy making Jeffy giggle.
31. Watching Zach's Birthday Party chaos.
32. Introduction to Blogging and Digital Scrapbooking Worlds.
33. Jeffy sleeping through the night for the first time!
34. The kids' piano recital.
35. Teaching 7-8 year-old primary kids about Jesus.

Thanks for all the great memories, everyone! Love you!

What a Sweetheart!

We got electronic copies of Jeffy's portraits. They are sooo cute! Here are some of my favorites.


This one is my all-time favorite.


Can't tell really well, but the blue really brought out his eyes.


What a smile!


Cute little shirt, huh? Thanks Gramma!


I just love this little guy.


He really liked eating that sponge.


Hee hee.


He smiled for every picture! What a great kid.


I'm telling you--he loved that sponge!


Just relaxin' in the tub.


P.S. Don't copy and print these please. They're copyrighted. Thanks.

Three Pricks and a Haircut

The two major events of the last few days: Jeffy's 6-month shots and Jeff's new military-style haircut.

I have to say, ironically, the shots went better than the haircut! The first thing Jeffy got was an oral dose of something. The nurse comes in, says that babies usually dislike this stuff a lot, then sits to give it to Jeffy. He opens his mouth for it, takes some of it in, makes a interesting face, then swallows and opens up for more. He liked it! He also took the 3 shots very well. He screamed of course, but not for long. Considering what it could have been, it went great!

Then, today I tried to give Jeff a military haircut--one that's super short on the sides and back and a little longer on top. I cut the sides short, then tried to blend the line where it met the top, but I did a very bad job. Eventually we gave up and shaved the whole thing! He looks very different. I don't think he's planning on keeping it like this; just a preview of things to come! :)

What do you think? :)

The Case of the Missing Video Camera

So, Jeff and I have a video camera. Important little thing when you have a baby, right? Well, we got it out one day back in May and left it on the desk by the phone. By the end of the day it was gone. I asked each kid if he'd seen it, and each kid answered no. I was pretty sure, though, that Jeremy (my six-year old brother) took it and was simply lying to me. He was the only one home when it disappeared, so it made sense. But, I could never get him to tell me anything. Now here we are, in the middle of July, and Jeff decided enough was enough.

He took Jeremy on a walk to try to get him to tell us where it was. At first, he wouldn't because I think he knew he would get in trouble. Then, when Jeff said he just needed the memory inside and that it was ok it if was broken, Jeremy finally said "well, I may have seen a video camera over here." He took Jeff to some bushes by our house and there was the camera--outside. Who knows how long its been there. We brought it inside, and amazingly, it still works! And . . . there were about 40 little videos of Jeremy and his friends. So, the kid stole our camera, used it with his friends, left it outside through many thunderstorms, and then lied to our faces multiple times about it.

A weird thing is that somehow one of the little neighborhood kids, Brandon, had it for a while, and was using it inside his house without Jeremy. And his parents were there too. So, that makes me wonder-- did his parents know he had the camera? Did they wonder where he got it? Did they feel any kind of obligation to find out whose it was? Or did they just say "finders keepers" and not care that their son had suddenly appeared with a random video camera? Disappointing.

At least we have the camera back. And it works. This in itself is a miracle. And none of our videos on there were deleted or damaged. That's a blessing.

But, here's the real question: what do we do about Jeremy? And do we involve Brandon? Jeremy really needs some kind of punishment or something--you don't just lie like that! (and steal, good grief) I don't know. What do you think? I'm asking sincerely. Leave me a comment and give me some much-needed advice!!

Today Jeff's

Navy Recruiter is coming to our house to "indoctrinate" him. Sounds exciting, huh?

Jeffy's First Portrait Session

Today Jeff and I took Jeffy to get professional portraits taken. At first, I was rather hesitant, thinking that maybe we should try to do some ourselves--and Jeff just downright didn't want to bother--but we both were glad we did.

He was such a good little boy! And we had a good photographer who was able to get Jeffy to smile really big for every picture. He took most of them in an adorable little red, white, and blue polo that looked great. Then we took some little bathtub pictures and those were great too! We had a hard time picking which ones to order because they were all so cute!! Of course we ended up buying more than we intended to, but we got a really good price so we both felt good about it. It'll be about two weeks before the hard copies come in, so we might have to have my folks pick them up for us if we're gone already. We get online access to them in about 10 days, so we'll post some then. We got copies for our parents and grandparents, so as soon as we get them, we'll pass them along!

Overall, it went very well and I'm super excited to see the final portraits! :)

Musical Meeting Extraordinaire

We had an interesting sacrament meeting today. I guess there weren't any talks lined up, but instead of just calling on random people like Bishops sometimes do, we had something similar to a Testimony Meeting, where members got up, said what their favorite hymn was and why, and everyone sang that song. I've heard of wards doing this before, but this was my first experience with it. I thought it was so cool! There were so many people who wanted to share, we started by singing all four verses of the chosen hymns, then we went down to the first and the last, then ended with just singing the first. And the cool thing was that it wasn't just s participating. We had youth and primary children get up there too. One little boy said "I Need Thee Every Hour" was his favorite hymn because his mom sang it to him every night. It was a cool meeting. I think music is a very powerful tool in the gospel, and that was reaffirmed to me today. It was great to hear people's experiences with the hymns and sing them together as a ward. I think it brought the ward closer in a new way.

But, I did feel sorry for the music people-having so many songs to play/conduct on the spur of the moment. As a ward organist, that would have been my worst nightmare! (Go Mom! :))

Help.

I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm afraid my child is going to develop horrible allergies because I feed him the wrong things at the wrong times. I'm afraid I'm doing everything wrong and my poor baby's going to be crippled physically, emotionally, socially, etc. because of my ignorance. Aaaah! What do I do?!

Help.

There goes a whole pack of candles

Here are some pictures from Jeff's birthday. He had a great time!

My Hunky Husband

Yesterday was Jeff's 24th birthday. Yay for Jeff! I love him with all my heart and am so grateful that he chose me as his companion. I think he is the best man I have ever met.

We had a fun day. I made his favorite dinner and we had cake and ice cream with my family. We have lots of birthday traditions and it was fun to do it with Jeff. One thing we do is tell the story of the birthday person's birth before they blow out their candles, so I got a great story from his mom. We also have a special song before the traditional "Happy Birthday." One of my favorite traditions is the gift giving. Everyone sits in a circle and the birthday kid spins a bottle to see who gives their present. As each person gives the present, they say one reason why they like that person. It's always fun to hear what the little kids have to say! I think Jeff enjoyed it. My parents got him gift certificates for dinner and a movie for the two of us and Jeff is super excited about that. He had a great birthday. I should post some pictures.

I'm going to make a list of things I love/appreciate about him and add to it whenever I think of another one. Here goes:

*He loves Jeffy
*He wants lots of kids
*He gets along with my family
*He tries hard to become even better
*He's the perfect height for me
*He's intelligent
*He forgives me . . . a lot
*He tells me I'm beautiful
*He's handsome!
*He makes me want to be a better person
*He writes me notes
*He wants to go on missions with me
*Anything he does, he does well
*He can fix just about anything I can break
*He loves his parents and siblings
*He thinks our baby is the cutest in the world
*He enjoys intelligent conversation
*He knows enough about politics for the two of us
*My younger brothers just adore him
*He can dance
*He takes his responsibilities as a husband and father very seriously
*He likes being outside
*He can make be laugh
*My parents like him a lot
*He can answer just about any question I ask him
*He used to help me with my homework
*He likes to read and discuss stories with me
*He's kind
*He thinks of others' feelings
*He isn't afraid of hard work
*He gives me a reality check when I need it . . .
*But he'll dream with me too
*He likes surprising me with flowers
*He's a very involved daddy
*I know he loves me
*He understands things
*He'll talk with me
*He does laundry and dishes!
*He likes to make me yummy dinners

My Boys

My two Jeffs are basically clones of each other. When Jeffy was first born, everyone thought he looked a lot like me, mostly because of his full head of black hair. But as he's been getting older, he's becoming more and more like his daddy, both in looks and personality. For one, his black hair is gone. From his birth it started growing in lighter. There was actually a distinct line between the two colors. And it hasn't stopped. It keeps getting lighter and lighter, and towards his scalp, it's glaringly blond! He made have started out , but when he gets his next haircut, I'm going to have a baby! Jeffy also had distinct physical characteristics of his daddy too. He's fuzzy with little blond hairs all over his whole body just like daddy did, he has daddy's cheeks, daddy's toes, daddy's build and more. The only thing we can really see as definitely being from me are his eyebrows. He definitely is a Jeffy! :)

Jeffy just loves his daddy. Anytime he comes into a room, Jeffy follows his every movement. He loves playing with daddy's face and playing with him. Jeff is especially good at making Jeffy smile. It's like he's saying "That's my daddy. He's just like me and I'm going to be just like him when I'm big! I sure love him!" It's so sweet. I think the above picture says it all. I just love my boys! Jeffy is the sweetest, cutest, baby in the whole world. I simply love it when he reaches to me for comfort or protection. He knows I'm his mommy and that I love him. And Jefffy has the best daddy in the whole world too. Jeff is always eager to help with Jeffy, mostly to play with him. It's obvious he loves his son very much. What a lucky gal I am!

July 4th in Washington DC

Jeff and I got to go into Washington DC for the 4th of July! How fun! I was so excited to be in the Nation's Capitol on the day we celebrate our freedom! We did lots of fun things. We watched a parade, went to some museums, got soaked in the rain, ate some ice cream, walked a million miles all over the mall, and got so pooped we came home before the fireworks even started. Weak, I know. My feet were me and we were getting tired of being wet. I don't know if they even did the fireworks or if they were postponed. Oh well! It was a great day and I loved being in DC. I've never seen so many patriotic people in one place. It was awesome! Some people were just there, but most people were decked out in brilliant red, white, and blue. It was awesome! I love this country and the ideas it's founded on. I'm grateful for the many people who have fought for it--the ones who have physically fought to keep it free, and the ones who fight to keep it moral. I'm excited to join the forces that protect the USA, and will try my best to be worthy of that protection!

Yep, it's begun all right!

My mother-in-law told me that in the Military, the name of the game is "hurry up and wait." We're not even technically in the Navy yet, and this has proven to be true. Jeff was supposed to go to Richmond once to get tests done, fill out paperwork and basically join. Not so. He went down there last Friday, came back Saturday, went again on Monday, came back Tuesday, and is now waiting for more test results to come back next week so he can go down there again. Fun times, eh? Oh well. I guess it gets us used to Military life now. Hooray! But Jeffy is as cute as ever, and life is still great!