Grass?

So with how much Rachel loves being outside, I've decided to start introducing her to some of the things she can find outside. I gave her a rock to see what she would think, and she promptly tried to eat it. I took that away from her pretty quick. Another time I took her outside and put her on the grass. I've been avoiding putting her on the grass for the most part because both her daddy and I are allergic to grass. Jacob gets sinus stuff and I always get rashes when ever my skin comes in contact with the stuff. Rachel was so cute when I put her down on it though!

Here was the face she made as soon as I set her down! She was so excited!

Looking at the grass.

Studying the flowers behind her.

This is a face she often makes when she is outside. She loves to be outside and she likes to study everything. This is her studying face. I wonder what it is she thinks about, and what exactly it is that she loves about being outside.

This is the face she made when her Uncle Jeremy pulled up and started talking to her. Cute huh?

I love this little outdoorsy girl of mine!

Graduation

Well, I'm a little behind on blogging, and I have tons and tons of pictures that need posting, but I guess I'll start playing catch up one day at a time.

A couple of weeks ago two of my favorite people graduated from High School. I wasn't super excited to go to the graduations because frankly I think graduations are kinda boring. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be though, and Rachel was relatively good for both of them!

The first to graduate was my cute brother-in-law Josh! He is such a good kid and lots of fun! I don't know how I got so lucky with my in-laws, but every last one of them are awesome!

I just love Josh and Rachel does too! She has so much fun when we get to go see her Uncle Josh!

The next person to graduate was my favorite brother Jeremy. (He is also my only brother, but none-the-less, my favorite!) Here is a cute picture of Jeremy and his cute girlfriend Shelby. Actually, Jeremy just proposed this weekend so I guess it isn't girlfriend anymore. It's fiancée!

This picture is quite blurry, but I thought it was cute. I like the look on my dad's face in this one! He just looks happy.

Again, another blurry picture, but one where they are all looking in the same direction. (I wasn't having a good picture day at all!)

My brother Jeremy is actually leaving tomorrow to go to basic training for the Army. I'm so proud of him! He is such a good kid and it has been way fun living with him the past two months! It's going to be lonely around my parents house with him gone. I'm going to miss him, and I know Rachel is going to miss him too! She LOVES Jeremy! I'm still in Texas today but I'll be heading home tomorrow, and unfortunately I won't be able to get to St. George in time to see Jeremy off. I'm sad that I'm going to miss him, but I'm proud of him for joining the Army.

Congratulations to my two brothers for growing up and graduating high school! I love you both!

Boxen

The other day Rachel and I went to Hurricane to visit Jacob's parents. It had been a while since we had been out there last (too long if you ask me :), and it took Rachel a minute to warm up to her grandparents. It was fun, we went out to lunch with them and then we went and saw Rachel's Uncle Josh dance at an assembly at school, which was really awesome by the way. Then we went back to the house and hung out with Grandma. Here are a few pictures of Rachel's adventures at Grandma and Grandpa Bulloch's house.

For some reason when she first felt this material she made the funniest "sicked out" faces. I'm not sure why she didn't like it at first, but the faces she made were awesome!

Rachel cracks me up with how much she likes to play with and eat paper. I let her play with it because she loves it so much, but I have to watch her really close because she is tricky and gets big pieces in her mouth. She will just sit and chew on them.

Wouldn't you just love to get a package on your doorstep with this cute baby in it?

I am the Biggest Loser!

So at the beginning of January Jacob and I started in a Biggest Loser competition that my sister was hosting. It has been a lot of fun and really good for both of us. For the first time in my life I payed attention to what I was eating. I counted calories for the first time ever and was totally shocked at the amount of calories that were in some of the things I was consuming. I started exercising more consistently than I ever had before. Tuesday was our last day of our contest and I won. I was totally shocked! I lost the highest percentage out of anyone doing the contest. I started out doing the Biggest Loser with my family not really hoping to win, but just hoping to get the motivation I needed to lose some weight and be more healthy, and it totally worked. It was fun because we had to get on and blog every week about how we had done the previous week and we could see how the other people in the competition were doing as well. Since we started our Biggest Loser competition I have lost 33 pounds, and since I had Rachel in November I have lost a total of 51 pounds. During this competition I lost 15.3 percent of my total body weight. I still have a ways to go, but I am feeling really good about what I have accomplished so far. Something I liked about this contest is that there were two parts. We had one winner who lost the highest percentage of weight, and the other winner was the one who made the most healthy choices. We had certain things we could do to earn points everyday and whoever had the most points at the end was the other winner. I think it was trying to get the certain points that helped me the most in losing the weight. The points were things like eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day and drinking 8 8 oz glasses of water a day and exercising for 30 minutes and other things like that that helped me make better decisions throughout my day. I'm hoping we will start another biggest loser competition soon because of how motivating it was to have to post how we did every week. Maybe if my sister doesn't start another one soon, I'll start one of my own! I just wanted to post and share my current successes with everyone!

Flying

I really couldn't ask for a more perfect little model to let me practice taking pictures! Sure she is wiggly and most of my pictures are either blurry or have a vital part of her missing for the picture (like her head), but she is just so cute, I just can't help taking lots and lots of pictures of her. I took these pictures last time we went to go see Jacob. We were both tired of being on the plane and she was excited to get off my lap and finally play! Isn't she just the most beautiful baby? (I'm not biased at all :p)

I think this second picture is probably my favorite. She is just so sweet and happy and I love the cute look on her face and her sparkely eyes!

We are actually leaving to go see Jacob again tomorrow, and even though the last flight went okay, I'm still nervous about flying again. I think that is just something I am always going to be nervous about. I decided I don't like flying because it is so stressful! It totally stresses me out going through the airport and making sure I get every where on time and trying to pack my luggage and my baby and my diaper bag and her car seat. I don't know why it stresses me out so much, but I just dread that part! It is totally worth it to go see Jacob though. I'm way excited, I am going to be there for a week and a half this time instead of just for the weekend! I miss that boy of mine so much and it is going to be so nice to get to see him for that long! I'll be so glad when his training is over and we can just live together as a family again!