Yay for warm weather!

Back in March we had another great visit to AZ.  Although it was still snowing off and on in UT, it was high 80s in AZ.  Harper got to have her first experience at the park, and looooved it!

the swing

 She didn't stop smiling

 She also ate sand for the first time - YUCK!

Love, LOVE this sweet face!

Pretty sure this is her "That is an interesting texture" face

Just Do It!!!

I have tried a hundred times to post something on this blog and then I start looking at pictures and I love ALL of them, so naturally I try to post EVERYTHING - and in chronological order too - 

The result.......................

That's right! Nothing! No post! Nada!

Now Harper is 9 months old, I've been working as an RN for almost 1 1/2 yrs, and Skyler only has ONE year left until the finale of school FOREVER.

There is too much to play for real catch up on so here are some "recent" pics. We'll call this "Summer 2012":

Memorial Day - a.k.a. My "Due Date"...

 Contractions...starting 4 days after "due date".... need I say more

 First time I saw Harper

 Tired, anemic from hemorrhaging, and in total bliss

Harper's first bath at home

 Baby Momma friends 

 Katie w/Harper

 Happy 1st Father's Day!

 Favorite summer past time - concerts in the park

Baby Camry and Harper: Shopping buddies from birth

 Baby Blessing

 Adeline born April, Harper and Grayson born June

 First "swimming" experience

 Cutest one-time-only swim suite ever!

 First date without babes.  

Window shopping at City Creek:  a favorite pastime 

 One of my favorite pics of Harper

 Welcome to the world Emerson! Cousins meet for first time

 So proud of my 'manda/fellow RN! woot, woot!

 Starting her young has paid off.  She loves to hike!

 Just starting rolling from stomach to back at this point

Harper's first AZ dust storm a.k.a. haboob :) 

YAY FOR SUMMER OF LOVE! 

Pregnant!...Well, not anymore :)

Anyone who reads this already knows that we were pregnant and had a beautiful little girl.  I'm deciding that I'd better just start posting pics to-date, rather than try to play a catch up game otherwise I'll never blog again! But I did want to share some pics from the prego photo shoot we had done :)  Some of them are a bit cheesy, but I'm still glad we did it.  It was just such a surreal thing to go through being pregnant for the first time, and I know that we'll never experience that "first" again so I wanted to capture it.


**A short advertisement plays before the slideshow starts**

Create your own free photo slideshow

What the!?!?

So last night I wake up at 3:48am to take a potty break. Skyler decides he might as well take one too so he can fully enjoy the last ~hour 1/2 before he needs to wake up for work and school. As we are getting settled back into bed I hear this sound...It was just one of those faint, annoying, potentially scary sounds (like the sound of a water leak or a bug). After asking Skyler if he heard it, and him confirming that "yes" he too heard something I decided I had to know what it was if I was going to be able to fall back asleep. Naturally I asked Skyler to get up and investigate :)

Mostly I was worried it was a bug because we often will crack our windows at night and one of our screens has a gap in it at the moment because after a window cleaning frenzy a few weeks ago I couldn't get it back on.

Here you can see the gap in the screen - It's maybe 1 1/2 inches wide

So Skyler, without turning the lights on, goes towards the window to see if it's a sound coming from outside or a sound in our room. He pauses a moment, listening, and then bends over and pauses a moment, listening, and decides he needs to turn on the lights because the sound is in fact coming from in our room and NOT outside.

Don't worry anyone - It wasn't a bug, it was only A BIRD on the floor in our room!!!! Yes, at 3:48am we found a little sparrow in our room! Who knows how long this bird had been in our room? All I could think about was the diseased bird air we had been breathing in deeply all night long! Skyler grabbed some tissue to grab it and take it outside, commenting that it was obviously hurt/sick. Next thing you know the birds flying across our bedroom as I'm flinging the blankets over my head. It ended up landing in our laundry basket which actually made things a little easier because Skyler just carried that outside.

The bird in our laundry basket...

He said he shook the bird out of the laundry basket and it took off flying...into the fence in our front yard. Who knows if the poor thing lived or not, but it sure added excitement to our mid-night potty break!

Oh Dear - It's Been A Year!

365 days ~ Of course things have happened! (and some pretty big things too). SOOO, I'll try to update with the basics:

************Disclaimer: I should have probably labeled this post "Jaw Surgery"*************

1. Skyler got into PT school at the UofU. This is where we left off with posts last April. Now, Skyler is finishing up his first year of PT school with "only" 2 more years to go. He is SO amazing at this stuff. His brain is a sponge and he's constantly teaching me (or trying to) about the interesting things he's learning. Keep up the good work Sweetie!!

Here is Skyler with some of the lovely ladies in the PT program with him. I felt like a GIANT next to them!

2. One of my BFF's from AZ, Lauren, got married. Skyler's parents flew us down to AZ so we could be there for the wedding. Thanks mom and dad Nelson! I got to be a bridesmaid for the very first time and we got to spend time with family, including new little baby Levi.

Skyler and I at Lauren and Daniel's wedding reception

Hanging out with family after Levi's baby blessing

3. I had my jaw surgery!! Recovery was one of the most miserable things I've been through, but I am SOOO happy with the results I would do it again in a heartbeat (I say after enough time has past to forget how horrible it was LOL)

Day Before Surgery: Last pic of me with "old" jaw

Here I am with my good friend the Jaw Bra I was so swollen I couldn't close my lips

My friend Jeri came to visit me. She said I wasn't very nice, but I'm pretty sure I can blame it on the drugs. I hardly remember her coming by - and yes, I am smiling in this picture....

The swelling was pretty extreme, but the bruising wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I'm smiling as big as I possibly can in this pic. It seems silly now, but I was SO worried that this was my new face...

I went back to work and school the week after I had this surgery. I would not recommend that! The second week was the hardest part of the recovery as Dr. Egbert removed and re-applied the rubber bands here and there to fine tune the jaw placement.

Part of the fun experience was having my jaw banded shut completely for the first week after surgery. Then slowly I was able to start eating soft things a.k.a. mashed potatoes.

Here I am enjoying a heavenly discovery - Gerber's peach baby food. Next to the discovery of instant mashed potatoes which I was able to suck through my teeth, this was the next best thing.

I didn't loose my sense of humor [completely] in the experience

Little by little the swelling continued to go down and I started looking a little more normal.

Here I am, first time in makeup since the surgery. I waited just over 2 weeks to wear it again.

The before-and-after shots are pretty cool I think.

Okay, that took forever to post those pics and I probably need to go accomplish something like cleaning or laundry. More on the rest of our lives to come................