Spring

I love spring, mostly the warm days of spring, but the rainy days are kind of fun every once in a while too I guess. The snowy days?? Not so fun, because that means we start the whole process of muddy roads by our house again, and it usually means a couple of extra cold days. We've loved spending time outside on the warmer days. Reese rode in the wagon for the first time and thought it was the best thing ever!

Look how cute Eli and Reese are with their arms around eachother.
Reese also loves playing on the swingset with Daddy.

Warm weather also means messy treats, because it's so easy to take care of messiness when it is outside.

Goblin Valley

We went with some friends to Goblin Valley over the weekend. We had such a good time. We camped on BLM land . The campground was full and the BLM land certainly wasn't lacking visitors either. We had a campfire every night and roasted brats, starbursts, and marshmallows. Our Campsite

We hiked through Goblin Valley and hiked part of Wild Horse Canyon.

I don't like this pic of me, I look puffy, but oh well. Gotta put a family shot on the blog and this was the best of the 3 we took with all of us.

See the man's profile below? With a nose ring and all?

Micah and Rachel

Jeremiah and his friend Emily

Looks like a castle!

The formations remind me so much of mud-drop castles you make at the beach.

Reese was in heaven since our whole campground and everywhere we went was dirt and rock filled. She sat here and threw dirt for a long time.

Rachel, Dallas, Reese, and Eric

Reese didn't get her normal naps since we were doing stuff all day. Once we'd been hiking for a while she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. She tried SO hard to stay awake, but those heavy eyes couldn't stay open and head couldn't stay upright. Below you can see her asleep. I tried to keep her head in line with her neck, but no matter what I did it always ended up out this side of the backpack.

That's Eric up on top of the peak.

On the way home we found a dead bobcat. None of us had ever seen one in real life so we took a picture. Yes, it looks possessed. I wish Eric would have zoomed out, you should have seen Jeremiah's face. He was posing next to the bobcat (he's the one holding it up) as if he had just hunted the thing - huge smile of pride on his face.

It was a fantastic trip. So fun to get out and camp - we LOVE camping! Plus, the weather was perfect, mid 70's.

Projects and growing up

Eric found another project to do.....I'll show you the finished product when it is complete, which could be a while since I'm doing the finishing touches.... Reese is growing up! It is crazy how strong of a personality she has. She is her complete own little person who has all the spunk of a full grown person and she is so good at expressing herself.

She is learning a lot of words. So far:

Mama, Dada, Eric, Dog, Bye, Hi, Hello, Num Nums (food), Here-ya-go (all slurred into one word), Loveya, Eye, Honk Honk (for nose), Ding dong (belly button - maybe that's not the best word to teach her for that? Oh well too late) Animal noises (monkey, dog, and tries to imitate others), and probably some words I can't remember.

She is smart. You tell her to do things and she does them, or you ask her if she wants to do things and she'll get ready to do them (i.e. "Let's go outside" and she'll find shoes and bring them to you, "Wanna brush your teeth/take a bath" and she'll run to the bathroom, "Time for a nap" and she blows kisses to dad and waves and then goes upstairs to her room, she does all the actions to monkeys jumping on the bed, etc.)

She's still small.

Height: 30 inches (50th percentile)

Weight: 18 lbs 4 oz (not even on the charts)

The Dr. watched her for a while and said "no wonder she can't gain any weight", she was running back and forth, climbing on and off the chairs in the office (which are armpit height - can you imagine climbing on and off something that was up to your armpits in height??) She was non-stop on the go. That is just how she is. Plus she started walking kind of early so she didn't have the extra couple of months to plump up before starting to walk and lean out. I figure she is just fine. Of course I'm still trying to feed her extra calories and make sure meals are more frequent, but I'm trying not to stress of the weight factor.

Reese is a complete sweet heart. The other day we were at our neighbors the Ericksens'. Bruce is quadriplegic and can only move the tops of his shoulders and up. Whenever Reese sees him or his picture, she starts wiggling her head back and forth, because that is how he plays with her. When we were over there she kept wiggling her head at him and he'd wiggle back. As we were getting ready to leave we told Reese to say bye to Bruce. She waved and blew him the most sincere kisses. It was darling and totally melted his heart. Thanks for being so sweet Reese.

Easter 2010

Yes, I'm just now blogging about Easter. It was wonderful! We spent the morning at our house and then between Conference sessions we headed to my parents for an Easter feast and easter egg hunt. It is always fun spending time with the fam! Camla hid the eggs. Since there were a 4, 2, and 1 year old looking for them, she hid them in easy places. Chelsea LOVED that, because she is the 4 year old, and therefore way more on the ball with finding the eggs than the other two. She was very generous though and shared with the other two.

Reese thought finding eggs was a lot of fun. It was cute to watch her go from "what in the world are we doing" to "ah-hah, we find the eggs and put them in the bag". My dad was cute to help her and carry her bag around.

Eli!! He is so cute. He adores Reese and always wants to hold her. He gives her big hugs and tickles under her chin while saying "tootie, tootie, tootie" (a.k.a. Cutie cutie cutie)

This was her "ah-hah" moment, when she figured out she is supposed to gather up those eggs.

Easter was fantastic, as was conference. I heard SO much about what I've been wondering about in life. I learned how I can be a better mother and wife - now it is time to put those things into practice :)

4*1*2010

It's April Fools today. I'm such a boring April fooler this year. Usually I tape the sprayer on the sink so it sprays when you turn on the faucet, but I always trick myself with that one, and I realized that I'd need to use the sink 50,000 times before Eric did, so I decided against it this year.

One year, when I was younger, I put Saran wrap on the toilet. By brother peed and it went all over the floor. I thought it was so funny! But my brother was SUPER mad and told my dad and my dad made ME clean up my brother's pee. Jokes on me once again. GROSS!

I did do one thing for April Fools, I can't tell you what quite yet because Eric hasn't been tricked yet. But I can almost guarantee that I'll be tricked by it too, oh well, so it goes.

Reese decided it would be a good idea to wear my slippers around the house today.

It is difficult to walk when your feet are as long as your whole leg.

On a completely different note: My wedding ring was purchased at L**** (I won't say the rest since I don't want them to look bad) Jewelers and they guarantee the band and setting for life, plus do a cleaning/checkup/re-plate the gold every 6 months. The owners retired and sold their company. It is still called L**** so I took my ring in for the check-up. Well, come to find out, I am really rough on my ring (who would've guessed). I guess you're not supposed to wear it ALL the time - beats me. Anyway, my 3 year ring has MUCH more wear than it ought to and the prongs need to be built up before it can be cleaned, otherwise the diamond might fall out. This would all be covered under the guarantee. However, since they aren't the original L****'s they won't guarantee it. When I took it in 6 months earlier (when it was still the original owners) they said something about the prongs needing to be done, but then said, actually it will be OK this time. NOW I'm bugged because I realized it would've been covered under the guarantee but I'm wondering if the Jeweler thought, ah, let's just not worry about it, we'll be gone in a month anyway. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but sort of have my suspicions. Long story short, I found a different jeweler to do the work, because I am a bit fed up with L**** at the moment, and wanted to give someone else the business. The end.

End of March

So the last couple weeks of March were kind of rough. Reese was getting her molars in and had a nasty cough so she had 4 days of fever and 2 weeks of crankiness. I'm glad that she is finally back to her normal self. She was a little sweetheart though, and much more cuddly. She spent lots of time laying on the couch with one of us and her binky and blanket. Last weekend we were invited to St. George with Micah and Rachel. We didn't even have to think about whether we'd accept the offer. We visited their houses to make sure things were ship shape for them to be put up for sale. Reese LOVED running through the various houses and yards - everything was exciting (a.k.a. new to her).

At one house she climbed into this cubby.

So Eric assisted her into getting into the higher cubbies.

She thought she was pretty cool, and we thought she was too.

I was really bad at taking pictures this trip. We stopped at the Meadow hot springs on the way down. It was night time, but Eric bought a waterproof flashlight so we could snorkel around even though it was dark. We enjoyed spending time with each other and with Micah and Rachel, and amazingly enough, M&R want to do some road trips with us this Summer. That is saying something when you have a kid. I was wondering if this would be the last time we'd be invited to drive in the same car :) Reese is a good little gal though, and I guess her few upset moments/squeals weren't too annoying. Hallelujah.