Julie

It was so much fun having my sister Julie and her family here! I don't see them nearly often enough! It is going to be so fun when I go out to see them this summer! Here are a few extra pictures I got while they were here.

This is my nephew Benson. It seemed like he was ALWAYS hungry! He kept going to the pantry and seeing what he could reach. One time I walked up the stairs and this is what I found.

It is so fun to see my brother playing with the babies. He always liked babies, even when he was really little. (He is quick to hand them back to you if they spit-up though.) Brigham had been playing on the ground and was getting kinda whiney, so Jeremy picked him up and pretty soon they were both asleep. It was pretty dang cute!

Sydney had so much fun with Gracie! She wanted to be doing whatever Gracie was doing. Those girls had so much fun playing together!

Here is my cute niece/sister Gracie. Gracie has 3 younger brothers and no sisters, a fact that she was quite sad about until one day I was talking on the phone to her and she asked me if I would be her sister. Of course I agreed, and ever since I have been one of the family. When she draws family pictures she will include me in them. She always calls me sister, and calls Rachel her niece. It was quite funny when she was here she told me, “It wouldn't be weird if we bathed together, since after all we are sisters.” I thought that was so funny! Her brothers get to take baths together and they always have so much fun, but she always has to take baths alone because she doesn't have any sisters. I thought it was funny that she said that to me because in fact it would be quite weird, but in her mind it wasn't.

I think Rachel had fun with her cousins. She got a little overstimulated at times, but all in all I think she had fun!

I really wanted to get some pictures of her and Brigham together since they are so close in age, but it never happened. Brigham is two months older than Rachel and they weigh pretty close to the same. Brigham is taller and when I hold him I think that he feels skinny compared to my chunky little girl. They were so cute together. When they were laying next to each other, Brigham would just sit and “talk” to Rachel. He also gave her a kiss! Then another day I was holding both of the babies on my lap, and Rachel leaned over and grabbed Brigham and gave him a kiss! It was pretty sweet. Rachel doesn't give kisses to very many other people besides her mommy! It was so fun to have Julie here, I miss her and her cute family already!

Laughing babies are so funny!

So I've written before about how Rachel just doesn't think I'm funny. Sometimes she will get in moods where she is practically asking you do something funny so she can laugh. Even when she is in those moods I can try and try and try and all I get is a chuckle or two. Someone who can get her to laugh is my brother Jeremy. Rachel just loves Jeremy. She loves to watch him and she thinks he is hilarious. He can get her to laugh a lot easier than anyone else can. One day he flicked water at her and she could hardly stop laughing. Another day he started barking like a dog in her ear and she thought that was funny too, but when I try those things she just looks at me like, “What are you doing Mom?” I don't know what I”m going to do when Jeremy leaves for basic training this summer! I wish I knew what to do to get this girl laughing! Anyway, with that said, here is an example of Jeremy getting Rachel to laugh! I just love laughing babies!

Shopping and Subway

It is so much fun to be here so close to family. The other day my sister Caralee and I went shopping together. Do you know how long it has been since I went shopping with one of my sisters? I don't even know how long it has been, but we had a lot of fun! My sister brought over a baby sling so it would be easier to carry Rachel around. We tried on tons of clothes and spent way too much money and then we went to Subway for lunch. My niece Sydney was especially excited to go to Subway! It was such a fun day! I'm loving being able to hang out with my sisters that are close by! I wish we could all live close to each other and could see each other all the time!

Easter Egg Hunt (Lots of pictures)

Yesterday was our families annual Easter Egg Hunt in my parents backyard. It was so much fun! All of my parents 12 grandchildren were there and it was so fun and crazy! We missed last years easter egg hunt because we were in Monterey, but I sent some eggs for it anyway. In one of the eggs I had written a note announcing to my family that I was pregnant. It was fun to actually be here for it this year! Here are a few pictures of our fun evening!

Joy and Brigham

Brigham: He is so fun to watch. You put him in on the ground and he will roll all around the room to get to what ever he wants to play with.

Tolman excited for the Easter egg hunt to finally start!

Kimball was so excited when he found this egg "hidden" on Grandma! I love the look on his face in this picture!

Tait was so funny, this is the face he makes every time to tell him to smile for a picture!

Julie and her cute baby Brigham! It was so fun to have them here for a couple of days!

Rachel loving her orange egg! Who needs candy when you can play with the egg?

Rachel chillin' on Grandpa during the Easter egg hunt!

Joy: She is such a cutie! She just turned 1 this last week!

Sydney: She was so funny, I couldn't get her to move the egg out from in front of her face!

Brigham and Grandma

Tolman, Rachel, Gracie, Kimball, Brigham, Sammy, Brock, Eden, Tait, Sydney, Joy, and Benson: Wow, there are a lot of grandkids on this side! It was so fun to have them all together! (Not to mention crazy!)

Kimball and Brigham: Brigham is such a happy smiley baby and everyone was eager to get to hold him while he was here!

Brock, Eden, Tait, and Sydney. I love Sydney in this picture! Her mom told her to smile like a princess and this was the resulting face.

Rachel and Tolman: Tolman is so good with my little Rachel girl! He was willing to hold her for the pictures even though she is wiggly and heavy!

Brock and Eden: Eden is such a little mother! Brock was sick and just needed someone to snuggle with, so Eden was quick to volunteer!

Kimball and Rachel: My nephews are so cute! They love to Rachel and always are asking to hold her. Here Kimball gave Rachel one of his eggs he found.

The egg hunt was so much fun! I just love my family!

Happy Easter!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter. I hope everyone else's Easter has been as fun as mine. We had a fun Easter week filled with friends and lots and lots of family! Rachel isn't actually sure what to think of all her cousins. She seems to like them when there are only a few at a time, but when everyone gets together she gets a little over stimulated and scared. It has been a fun week this week. My sister Julie and her family came down to visit. I finally got to meet her cute baby, and she finally got to meet mine. It has been so fun to see how much her kids have grown in the two years since I saw them last. I also had a niece and a nephew with birthdays this week. It was fun to get to celebrate their birthdays with them by going to the park and by dyeing easter eggs. Also, Rachel was relatively good in church today! I only had to take her out once! I think that was her Easter present to me.

The only downer part of my day was that I didn't get to talk to Jacob today. I am really missing him a lot! It is so hard to be apart from him. There is something wrong with the Verizon service down there. Today it wouldn't let him call me, and I couldn't get through to call him either. We were able to exchange a few texts, but it totally isn't the same as getting to hear his voice. He has been so busy that most week days we only get to talk for about 30 minutes or so in the evenings. I did get to talk to him for quite a while on Saturday which was nice, but still it wasn't enough. I'm excited to get to go see him in a couple of weeks.

For breakfast this morning I made resurrection rolls. You wrap a marshmallow in a roll and sprinkle the roll with cinnamon and sugar. The marshmallow represents Jesus after he died and the roll represents the tomb. Then when after you cook the rolls you open them up and the marshmallow disappears and the roll is empty symbolizing they empty tomb on Easter morning. It was a fun start to our Easter morning. A few weeks ago I went to the St. George Temple Visitor's Center. They had an exhibit up of someones picture testimony. A couple went to Jerusalem and Bethlehem and they took pictures of places where Jesus had walked and been. The pictures were beautiful! It was so fun to see. The spirit and the peace I felt when I looked at those pictures has stayed with me and has really helped me appreciate Easter this year. It has helped me turn my thoughts to the Savior and it makes me want to do what I can to draw closer to him. I'm so grateful for him and everything he has done for me, and I am grateful to know that my Savior loves me! Happy Easter Everyone!

Baby Mum Mums

My baby loves to eat! She will eat just about anything she can get her hands on! At meal times when she sees me eating, she will whine and whine and whine until I share something with her. Sometimes what we are eating for dinner isn't something I can feed her, so to save my sanity and to let me eat something, I decided to buy Baby Mum Mums. They are rice crackers that kind of just dissolve when they are wet so that babies won't choke on them. Rachel absolutely loves them! She thinks it is awesome to be able to feed something to herself, and I think it is awesome to let her! In fact she is pretty funny with them because she can eat almost the whole cracker on her own, but the last little pieces are too small for her to feed herself and she won't let me feed them to her either. She will let me feed her other things, but not those. I just know she is going to be so excited when she can crawl and do a little more things on her own! I love this funny baby of mine!

5 Months Old!

Wow, time seems to be doing crazy things lately! The past 5 months since Rachel was born have just sped by, while the two weeks since Jacob left seems to have dragged on forever. Not that we aren't having fun with our family, because we are, we just miss that boy so much. It is crazy that it has already been 5 months since this sweet baby girl joined our family! So much has happened in that short time! It is amazing to see how much she has grown and learned in that short time! Here are some things about Rachel at 5 months old!

She weighed 20.5 pounds on our weekly Tuesday weigh in.

She is wearing size 5 diapers.

She is mostly still wearing size 9 month clothes, but she fits in the 12 month size pretty well.

She loves to eat. Whether it is baby food, her mama's milk, or whatever it is that I am eating, she loves it. Her favorite thing to eat (besides milk) is probably Baby Mum Mum's because she can feed them to herself (a fact that she loves!)

She still loves bath time.

She absolutely loves her Uncle Jeremy. She grins every time she catches his eye. I think he is pretty much smitten with her too!

She misses her daddy and she likes to listed to his voice on the phone. She also likes to look at some pictures of him that I made into a book for her.

She can officially roll over. She used to only roll over on accident, but now she does it on purpose too. (Only from her tummy to her back though, we are still working on it!)

She can drink from a sippy cup! She loves water. Everytime she sees me drinking water she wants some. So I usually let her have some. The other day we decided to see what she would do with a sippy cup. It took her a little bit to figure it out, but once she did she loved it. I had to go out and buy her a couple and she loves to be able to drink water from it!

She is one of the happiest babies I have ever met! You just have to make eye contact with her to get her to smile, and sometimes not even that.

She still loves to go outside and it makes her day if I get out and take her for a walk.

She is loving the extra attention she is getting from living at Grandma and Grandpa's house. She likes that there are more people to play with her and to grin at.

She loves to play with toys!

I'm sure there are many many more things about my baby I could write about, but that is all I can think about at the moment. She is so cute though! I'm excited to see what the next month will bring.

Green Smoothie Grandma

So, my mom has something she swears by to get all the nutrition you need. If you have any problem, she will tell you that you need to drink Green Smoothies. Green Smoothies are smoothies that are made with a mix of fruits and vegetables. The green comes from all of the spinach that you put in them. I've had green smoothies, and they really aren't that bad. You can't really taste the veggies you put in it most of the time and it is a really great way to get all of your fruits and vegetables in. My mom's green smoothies on the other hand are not what I would call yummy. I like my smoothies with mostly fruits and some veggies, but she likes it the other way around. It is awesome for her, but I just don't love the way she makes them. They aren't quite sweet enough for me. My dad and brother who live here think her green smoothies are for the birds and wouldn't be caught dead drinking them. That being said, my mom was so excited to find a green smoothie friend in my daughter. Rachel gets so exited when she sees my mom drinking a green smoothie and she always wants some too so of course my mom has to share with her. Rachel just lovers her green smoothie grandma!

Bath Time

Rachel is so cute! Ever since the very beginning she has always loved bath time, which makes me love it too! There is just something sweet about giving babies baths that I love! If I didn't know it would dry out her skin, I would probably give her a bath two times a day! I put her in the tub the other day and she was just so excited to be in the water and had such big smiles that I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures. I love how much she likes to kick and splash and then after her bath I love how she loves to get all wrapped up in the towel and look at herself in the mirror before we leave the bathroom. Looking at these pictures makes me want to go put her in the bath tub again! Too bad she is asleep! I don't think she would love bath time as much if I woke her up just to put her in the tub!

Sunday

So I feel like I am having a hard time at church on Sundays. Well, actually, I feel like Rachel has a hard time at church on Sundays. Normally she is a happy smiley and relatively quite baby, but at church she is way noisy and fussy. It is hard because usually I have Jacob there to switch off with and I don't feel bad about it. If he misses a little church because of taking care of our baby, well he is her dad and it just comes with the job. I have a harder time just handing her off to my parents and having them be distracted from church. Also we have 11 o'clock church which is right during one of her nap times, but I can't get her to sleep during church. I have taken her to the mother's lounge and fed her and got her to fall asleep that way, but she doesn't stay asleep for me when we are at church. That being said, the past two weeks while we were in Sunday School, Rachel has been particularly noisy. Both weeks my mom has taken her from me and handed her to my dad. Both times within minutes of being handed to him, Rachel has fallen asleep. And it is a good sleep that is deep enough that she can be transfered to me after Sunday School is over so I can take her with me to Relief Society. The naps don't last for more than about 20 minutes or so, but it is enough to return Rachel to her usually smiley self instead of the fussy girl she turns into at church. I really love this funny little girl of mine. I was talking to a lady at church and she was commenting on how cute Rachel was and I responded that she was just as noisy as she was cute. Then she asked me if I would prefer Rachel to sit on the bench at church, sitting listlessly and quietly or if I would prefer the wiggly, noisy, get-up and go girl that I have. I honestly have to answer that while it is a little more challenging to take care of my wiggly noisy fussy baby at church, I love her just the way she is and wouldn't change her for anything! I really think she is perfect just the way she is!

I know we were in church, and it was probably naughty, but I just had to take a couple of pictures between meetings of my cute baby girl snoozing on her cute grandpa!

Grandma's Lamp

At Jacob's parent's house there is a lamp that all of the little kids always love, and Rachel is no exception. Jacob's mom showed Rachel the lamp one of the days we were there visiting and Rachel loved it! Then the next day, Rachel remembered about how cool the lamp was. As soon as Grandma would sit down in her chair next to the lamp, Rachel's arms would go up reaching for it! It was so cute!

Rachel has just recently started reaching for things. She has been grabbing things for a while. If you held something out in front of her she would grab it and play with it, but she never reached for things on her own until recently. Now she tries to grab everything. I have to be careful and keep her a little ways away from my plate at dinner time or else she would grab it and send it falling into my lap. She loves to drink water and will try to grab any cup I am drinking out of or any cup that is within reach on the counter or something. I know that as soon as this little girl is mobile and can walk, I am going to have to be careful where I leave cups, because she is going to be knocking them over trying to get drinks from them. I just love my smart little girl!

Play Days

So the few days that we had together here in St. George before Jacob left, we decided to take and just spend lots of time together as a family and just play. We decided to do some of our favorite things while we were here. Of course we had to go to Cafe Rio and it was oh so yummy! I just love their salad dressing! We went to a movie. We saw Rango, which I really wouldn't recommend. It was a cartoon so we thought it would be pretty good, but it just had some humor that wasn't geared towards kids, and it swore a few times so we were pretty disappointed with it. We went to Target. Target is my all time favorite store. In Monterey we lived really close to a Target and we would go there all of the time for diapers and baby clothes and such. Sometimes when I was driving home from taking Jacob lunch I would see the Target and try to think up reasons to go there because I just thought it was so fun. It was fun to be there in Target with Jacob one last time before he left. I could almost pretend we were still in Monterey when we were inside it. We got a smoothie from Orange Peel, and as you can see from the picture Jacob and I weren't the only ones to enjoy that. Rachel really liked it too!

We went up to Cedar to visit Jacob's grandparents, and we also went out to dinner with Jacob's family. Both of those things were so fun! I am so blessed with my in-laws! You hear all the time about people complaining about their in-laws, but mine are awesome! It has been fun to spend a little time with them this last week. Rachel has loved all of the attention she has been getting from them as well. I know we did some other fun things our last couple of days here, but my brain isn't thinking of them at the moment, but rest assured, we did have fun! :)

Driving

So I had some pictures from a little while ago that I didn't blog about, and I know that I don't need to blog about every single thing that happens, but I had pictures all put together so here it goes anyway.

So I was really quite nervous about the drive from Monterey to Southern Utah because that is just a long drive for a little baby, and Rachel is at a stage where she really likes to be held and entertained and played with and I wasn't sure how well she would tolerate being locked in her car seat for so long.

She actually did better than I expected. Here are a few pictures from our drive.

Here she is tuckered out. It was really funny, she fell asleep a few times with her thumb in her mouth. She wasn't sucking on it though. It was like she was putting it there just in case she might want to suck on it. I thought it was pretty cute though!

Here are a couple of pictures of her drinking from a bottle so we wouldn't have to stop so many times. She took it okay from me, but she definitely thought it was weird to be getting a bottle from mommy.

Something that I always love about the drive from Monterey to St. George is at one point there are lots and lots of windmills on the hills. I always think they look so fun because there are so many of them. From far away the first glimpse you get of them they look like a whole bunch of sucker sticks sticking out from the hills! Usually when making this trip I was driving and never had a chance to get a picture but Jacob drove this time so I snapped a few pictures of the windmills.

Since our drive was over 10 hours long, we split it up into to days, and we stayed at Edwards Air Force Base that night. Military bases have what is called billeting which is like a hotel type place that you can go and stay for pretty cheap. I for one really like the billeting at Edwards. Both times we have stayed there we have been in the process of moving and instead of moving where we are supposed to go, I have just wanted to stay there! The places we stayed were really nice. They were more like townhouses than hotels. The one we stayed in had two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a laundry room. It even had a washer and dryer and a highchair! It had two big TVs and wireless internet! It was so nice I just didn't want to leave. Unfortunately (and fortunately I guess) we did have to leave, but it was fun while it lasted. Here are a couple of pictures of Jacob playing with Rachel that night.

It was a fun drive and it was fun to spend the extra time with Jacob, but we are glad to be settled at my parents house for now.