Ew Poop

My little Rachel girl is so funny and smart. Yesterday Jacob was changing her poopy diaper and we were talking to her and telling her "Ew, poop." She started saying poop and it was really quite funny and cute. (Yes I taught my daughter how to say poop.) Anyway, this morning Rachel woke up earlier than normal and Jacob brought her in to me (I was still in bed). She laid down next to me and started saying "Poop, poop, poop." It took us until we got a whiff of her to figure out what she was talking about. Yep she was poopy and she was letting us know. She kept saying poop while I changed her diaper but after I was done and she was all clean, I couldn't get her to say it anymore. She is such a funny girl and she is so smart! I just love this funny girl of mine!

Well we have been here and there and everywhere this summer and I've had computer problems through it all, thus the lack of blog posts. My camera is full of pictures and I don't have anywhere to put them. I did just discover that io could blog from my phone though so I'll try this and see how it goes. Some good news is that we are on the home stretch! Only one more month-ish and our little family will be reunited with each other. Its been a long 5 months being apart from Jacob! I got to go down to Texas for Jacob's graduation and I stayed for about 2 1/2 weeks. It was so fun to live with him and just be a family! We had lots of fun and ate way too much junk but it was totally worth the 2 pounds i gained while I was there! It always amazes me that it doesnt matter where we are but as long as we are together it feels like home. Can I just tell you how excited I am to go to Tucson? Last night I was googling Tucson and I kept getting more and more excited to go there. I can't believe how much my little Rachel girl is changing and growing and learning! Just the past couple of days she has decided she wants to walk. She takes a couple of steps on her own and she is so proud of herself for doing it. Every time she takes a step she has to stop and clap afterwards. I love this funny little girl of mine! Rachel is so much fun! I love the stage she is at right now! She loves everybody! She likes to wave and make eyes at anyone who will look at her. It made me laugh, yesterday we were talking to my neighbor in her yard and her son came outside and Rachel loved him. Everytime he walked past she would get so excited and she wanted him to hold her. He had been working on his truck and his hands were dirty so he didn't pick her up but he was holding their cat and brought him over for Rachel to pet. Rachel was funny because she would pet the cat and then she would reach up and "pet" the facial hair on my neighbors face. She cracks me up sometimes! She likes playing little games with mommy. She is starting to explore and get into things and I love it! When we got back to my parents house last week she noticed my moms clock on the wall for the first time. The clock has a pendulum that swings and after watching it for a few seconds Rachel started rocking from side to side like the pendulum. Now everytime she sees it she has to rock for a minute. Rachel loves to be outside and she let's me know when she wants to go out. It is so fun to take her outside and to watch her study everything. I put her on the ground outside for a minute the other day and I ended up picking her back up pretty quick because she started stuffing rocks in her mouth as fast as she could. I don't know if she thought they were candy or what she was thinking but she sure wanted to taste those rocks! I could go on and on about this little girl for days, but it's kinda tricky typing on this phone. I really hope my computer can get fixed soon so I can put up some pictures of my little cutie!

Grass

My Rachel girl is so funny! This morning Rachel was eating breakfast and all of a sudden started to cry. She wouldn't calm down until I got her out of the high chair and snuggled her on my lap. Then after she was done snuggling she climbed down off my lap and grabbed my hands like she wanted me to walk with her. I got up and decided to see where she wanted to go. She walked to the front door and when we got in front of it she let go of me with one hand and reached up for the door. She wanted to go outside! I know she likes to be outside, but she has never really let me know that she wanted to go out there. She didn't care that we were both still in jammies (far later than we should have been), or that there were things to do inside, so I decided not to care either. I took my sweet outdoorsy baby and went outside into the beautiful Texan morning waiting for us.

We sat on the porch for a little while but it wasn't too long before Rachel let me know she wanted to do more than just sit. We walked over to the grass (which was really more mowed weeds than grass) and she was in heaven! Yesterday when I let her sit on the grass, she was obsessed with putting it in her mouth. Today she just wanted to play with it. She kept running her fingers through the grass to see what would come up in her hands. She would pick it up and look at it real close and then grin and show it to me. What really cracked me up though was when she would go after a certain blade of grass and she would grab and grab and grab at it until it came up in her chubby little hands. She didn't mind all of the weeds in the grass or the fact that the grass wasn't soft or comfortable at all. She didn't mind the ants crawling through the grass and trying to crawl on us. Pretty soon she started crawling all over the grass. She would get pretty far away from me too which I thought was fun because she thought it was exciting enough to leave mommy for.

I haven't taken her outside as much lately because it has been too hot, but I see that I need to take her outside more. It really isn't too bad in the mornings and in the afternoons when it is hot we just need to go swimming or play in the water or eat popsicles or something. I love it that Rachel likes to be outside and I love that she is starting to communicate what she wants more. I thought it was so fun that she showed me exactly what she wanted! I just love being a mother to this sweet funny baby!

Hill Cumorah Pageant

Julie took me to Palmyra and we got to go to the Hill Cumorah Pageant. It was so awesome! I think everyone should go to it at least once in their lifetime. The whole time I was there I was wishing so bad that Jacob could have been there to watch it with us! I think he would have loved it! Julie was wishing her husband David was there too. Unfortunately he had to work so it was just Julie and me and the 5 kids. It was crazy, but so much fun!

While we didn't see Jacob there, we did run into part of his family! Jacob's parents and brother were in New York visiting Jacob's uncle and we coordinated it so that we could meet them at the pageant.

It was so fun to see them there! I truly have the best in-laws ever! It was fun to see how happy Rachel about seeing them there too!

These two little babies are so cute! I love to watch them together and see how many ways they are similar and how many ways they are different. They definitely are each their own little person!

I like this picture because it shows off Rachel's tan. :) My little baby is so super tan and it is funny to me to see her tan little arm next to Brigham's fair one.

Here are a couple of pictures of the pageant itself. It was so fun and so cool to see. The babies both fell asleep during it but Julie's other three kids all stayed awake and they enjoyed watching it too.

Here is my little Rachel girl completely tuckered out the next morning. We got to the hotel so late that night and she was so tired I just let her sleep in her clothes instead of changing her into jammies. Sleeping babies are just so sweet!

Niagara Falls

The day after our sleepover in Julie's other house we went to Niagara Falls. I thought it was super exciting to see the most powerful waterfall in North America.

I also thought it was super exciting to see Canada! I've never been so close to another country before!

We stopped and had a picnic while we there and I couldn't get Rachel to look at me for a picture the entire time. She was to happy looking around studying everything else.

There were seagulls all around and all of the kids thought they were so much fun! Rachel included. She thought they were fascinating and couldn't stop looking at them!

Gracie, Benson, and Sammy thought it was so much fun feeding the seagulls that they couldn't sit down and eat their lunch. In fact they all ended up feeding their lunches to the birds which was pretty sad because it was a pretty good lunch! I guess the birds thought so too!

Gracie

Benson

Sammy

My favorite part of seeing the falls was the side where we were right in the mist of the falls. It was a hot day and the cold water felt so nice. It was really cool too because you could look off the side into the falls and see this: