Count down to the holidays...

Time is flying and I can hardly keep up. I recently passed my neuroscience certification test. Preparing for that test totally consumed me. For the last couple weeks of October all I was doing was studying/stressing, so now that it's over with we are a much happier family :) I have decided I will use my bonus to go on a nice vacation with Cris to reward myself for such hard work.

Anyways...the kids are still doing well. Karson still seems to really like school, and wishes that he could have the same teacher for the rest of his school years. He lost his first tooth not too long ago, which was pretty exciting. He was going to let Cris pull it out with some floss, but that was too scary for him and ultimately he let me just pull it out with my fingers LOL. It was a fun experience for all of us.

Chloe is of course keeping us very busy. She loves attention and does almost anything she can think of to get it. I adore her! Cris on the other hand seems to be getting warn down by this "stay at home dad" thing... which is pretty understandable. By the end of my maternity leave I was pretty excited to get back to work and be involved in more adult conversations. Hopefully Cris can find a job that fits his criteria sometime soon; I get the feeling that he's getting a little stir crazy being around the house so much. But back to Chloe... she only says a couple words so far. Lately she has been saying "mama" and "dada" and "bubu" for bubbles. If we catch her in the right mood she tries to repeat what we say... like animal sounds which are always fun :) She is growing up fast.

We recently went to Utah for Thanksgiving, and I will be the first to say that Chloe is not as good of a traveler as Karson was. He used to sleep for about half of the drive and was mostly content in the car, especially after he was old enough to enjoy watching movies. Chloe cried for most of the drive and hates being in her cars eat. I worked the night before we left and decided to try to sleep in the car... which was a big mistake, but I knew that if I only slept for 2-3 hours it would be close to impossible to get out of bed and into the car for a 6 hour drive... so instead I got maybe 3 hours of crappy interrupted sleep in an uncomfortable car.  But I love to spend time with my family, so it was worth it. I got the opportunity to see my beautiful cousin Ashley who I haven't seen for about 3 years now, and I also met her new husband. We ate lots of yummy food, spent times with fun family, and just relaxed for the weekend. It was hard to come home and jump right back into work (with an extra 12hr night shift on top of it), but oh well. I love this time of year, and am looking forward to Christmas for the kiddos.

Almost to Granny's... Yay!!!

Chloe wants whatever Karson has... of course. Let the sibling rivalries begin ;-)

Swingin' around in the Planetarium in Granny and Gramps's garage

Just me and the kids at Granny's house

Every year Cris goes up to Fish Lake in Oregon with his Grandpa's friend and his cousin. They usually go the first weekend in August, but I had to work that weekend. I had the following weekend off, so Cris went on his trip and I took the kids down to Utah to celebrate my birthday with my family. We had so much fun! Granny got 2 new kittens and Karson couldn't get enough of them! He held them about 75% of the time we were there... it would have been 100% if we would have let him.

We went to the Hogle Zoo... which is undergoing some construction, but we still saw lots of cool animals. The coolest animal we saw was the polar bear. It was showing off for us by doing the backstroke in its pool haha. Chloe was so tired that she fell asleep within minutes of getting back in the car. My grandparents came over that evening with a delicious ice cream cake... mmmmm!

The next day we went up to my grandparent's cabin. My mom rented a paddleboard so we took that, a kayak and a wind surfer down to the lake until the stormy weather hit and we headed back up to the cabin for some 4-wheeling. The kids loved the 4-wheelers!

 Stand up paddleboarding!

Sunday we headed back to my parent's house and had my dad's family over for a little birthday party for me... yay for another ice cream cake! Then on Monday we went to the new rec center in Provo. They had the coolest pool ever! Inside there was a lazy river, a rock climbing wall, slides and a huge kiddie pool. Outside they had a couple bigger slides, another kiddie pool and some lap pools. We had so much fun! Chloe loved the lazy river and Karson was all over the place, just having a blast. Tuesday, we headed home :( It's always sad to leave, and Karson asked me to turn around almost the whole way home. Cris was missing us and it was our 2yr wedding anniversary, so we had to get home.

Mmmmm blueberries!

Provo Rec Center

Camping, camping and more camping!

We took Chloe for her first camping trip of the summer a couple weekends ago for a redneck wedding. She did pretty good, and we had a fun time! The wedding was right along the river up at Boiling Springs, which was so pretty! Chloe loved running around in the dirt and actually slept semi-okay for us (with a lot of patience/determination on Cris's behalf). It was a good trial run, but we were kinda bummed that Karson wasn't with us (he was off spending a fun-filled weekend at Aunt Janet's house instead).

The next weekend we made our annual family trip to Lava Hot Springs and had a blast!  Mom and Dad made some delicious Dutch oven meals, and the weather was somewhat cooperative. It rained for awhile on Saturday, but the sun came out just long enough for Mom, Dad, Karson and me to float the river a few times. We sat in the hot pools on Saturday night, which put me right to bed when we got back to camp LOL. I had full intentions of staying up to socialize with the fam, but fell asleep while putting Chloe to bed... oops! We spent our last day floating the river, and it was nice and sunny until the last few minutes of our last float... when it started raining again. But I do have to say the rain was a nice break from the hot weather we have been having.

Cris had a couple unfortunate experiences during our trip. On the first day there he got tossed around by a waterfall while floating the river and scraped his back up. The last day he slipped walking down to the river barefoot, which resulted in a blood blister on his heel about the size of a half dollar... ouch! And if you didn't already know, we came home to a destroyed chicken coop and 4 dead chickens :( Sad day! Fortunately, one of the chickens survived and we were able to get her home... so there might be some more chickens joining our family in the near future. It has been a busy summer, and I think we're about ready for school to start and life to change pace for a little while :)

Cris caught a whopper!!!

Independence Day/// 13months!!!

We had a great 4th of July celebration. I managed to stay home all night on call so that I could watch fireworks with the kiddos. Chloe seemed to be amazed by the fountain we lit off for her, and Karson had a blast lighting his own fireworks. We thought about going to watch the fireworks in Boise, but Chloe does best if she goes to bed early so we skipped it this time...maybe next year.

Since my grandparents recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, my mom threw them a fun little open house. We spent all day preparing food and decorating, and it all turned out great! Lots of friends/family came to congratulate my grandparents on 50 years together, and they seemed to be quite pleased. I asked people to send me their favorite memories of the couple... but only got a few responses :(  I decided to improvise and decorated a little notebook to write memories in and set it out at the party. Grandma loved it!

Chloe and Colton

Favorite new outfit

The next day we decided to take the Kayaks that my grandpa rented from the college out to the lake. We had so much fun! The dogs ran around in the water until we dragged them back to shore (since it's so shallow quite a ways out from the beach). My brothers practiced rolling in the kayaks, and Chloe and Karson had a blast just playing in the water. After a couple hours at the lake (and seeing lightning hit too close for comfort), we headed back to Mom's and the boys took a nap. We decided to stay one more night, and I'm glad we did. I never want to leave their house... being with them makes any place "home." But once we got home, it was nice to relax and unwind. I was supposed to work Monday night, but was forced on call all night (which was secretly what I wanted)... and now we're back to the daily grind.

Fun things Chloe's doing:

Mmmmmm

• walking/running around like a little drunk person
• babbling cutely
• handing things to whoever will take them with a little "uh" sound, and then taking them back...over and over and over again
• giving kisses sometimes when asked
• playing with Dad and Karson and giggling wildly... I absolutely love this!

Grandma bought Karson a new Cars suitcase at the thrift store, and this shirt and tie were inside of it (among other treasures that someone may or may not be missing LOL), and Karson wore the tie all day on Saturday... too cute!

What Karson is up to:

• tying his own shoes! *Props to Cris for teaching him this :)
• adoring his sister/entertaining her whenever he gets the chance
• working on his reading skills
• being the entertaining kid that he is and making me laugh with his every day comments :)

What Cris is up to:

• enjoying the stay-at-home dad life
• maintaining the yard/making future plans for our garden
• taking good care of the kids :)

What I'm up to:

• still working in the same unit of the hospital... some days are harder than others but I really like my coworkers
• studying for my CNRN  (neuroscience certification) it's taking over my life but hey... it comes with a nice bonus!
• slowly but surely hopping back up on the yoga train... all these hot 3 digit days make it really hard to go to hot yoga, but I will get back into it!
  
  
  

  

  I crocheted this cute little hat for a friend of my grandma's, and who better to model it than Chloe!

No longer a "Zero"

Chloe is now our cute little one year old. Crazy! I miss the newborn/tiny baby days, but not as much as I love to watch her grow. The more she learns, the more fun she and Karson have together and it is adorable! I had to work the night before her birthday, but when I woke up we all went mini golfing at Wahooz. Chloe had fun following the boys around, and taking their golf balls whenever she was fast enough. She decided to crawl around on one of the courses and Riley hit a ball right up her shirt LOL. On the last hole, Karson got a hole in one...which made the tiki guys shoot fire up into the air... it was pretty cool. Riley and Cris both missed, so they got sprayed with water instead.

After golfing, we had a couple friends over for a BBQ and some cupcakes. What a good day :)

Chloe's first birthday party :)

After lots and lots of fun planning... Chloe's big day finally came. I spent most of the day cleaning, decorating, and preparing food. Karson also had a soccer game at 3:10... which was a little too close to the party time, but it all worked out. We had just enough friends over that it wasn't too stressful, and I didn't feel like I was running around from guest to guest feeling like a chicken with my head cut off... I only had that feeling when I was trying to get all of the last minute things thrown together as everyone was arriving (thanks to the soccer game). 

I decided to make loaded baked potato salad, fruit salad, Lindsey's crunch coleslaw, beer-butt chicken (that caught on fire so the skin was just a little burnt to a crisp...but still good! LOL), blue raspberry pina colada punch, and chocolate dipped marshmallows. The little kiddos played in the kiddie pools and had a great time with rubber duckies and other squirty toys, and played on the slide Karson got for his 1st birthday. The adults played some horseshoes and just enjoyed each other's company :) We decided not to do cake since I had made cupcakes for Chloe's birthday on Thursday, and she didn't seem like too big of a fan. She really enjoyed the strawberries and the chocolate marshmallows though. Chloe got lots of cute clothes, and a couple fun toys that she has been enjoying the last couple days. Here are some photos of the party...

Chloe's first pony tail! Unfortunately she pulled it out before the party started while she was napping :(

Made this sign with some pinspiration from here

 

 

Surprisingly addictive! I'm not a big fan of marshmallows, but when paired with the chocolate they are hard to resist! The only thing I would do differently is put more chocolate on them!

I made some cute decorations out of baby food jars, Little Mermaid Squinkies, sand, seashells (from my trip to California) and string (got the idea here)

Photo chain from birth-12months

Mmmm strawberries!

Hello Daphnee!

 

Such a cute toy!

McKinnley with a yummy marshmallow