10 months

ten (and a 1/2) months....this is a little late, computer got a virus, and i'm finally getting around to posting. ave is so much fun this month. she is learning so many new things and getting so big. being a mom to this little girl is my greatest blessing right now. i am so thankful for her everyday!

at ten months avery can.... wave hi and bye, clap, give kisses, climb up and down the stairs (which is so wonderful), walks all along furniture, dances whenever she hears music, absolutely loves the theme song to The Office, has two teeth (finally), says dada, says mama only when she's mad and crying, isn't a fan of naptime, loves eating any finger foods, loves baby Einstein, and is a mama's girl.

we love her!

well, ave and i are headed to spend a few days with meag in her new house for a few days before thanksgiving. we are so super excited.

later!

weekend get-a-way

ave and i went on a little trip with my parents last weekend up to northern idaho to watch my sister, syd, play in her state volleyball tournament. i was of course a little stressed out about how ave would do crammed in her car seat for 10 hours, but she was a little angel. it was a short little trip but we had fun while it lasted. we left on thursday and syd's team had 2 games on friday and unfortunatly they lost both so they were out. we stayed over one more night and got up and left saturday morning so we could make it to the declo boys football playoff game in pocatello. syd also turned 16 last thursday. i am seriously jealous of how cute syd is. good luck keeping the boys away. (so many pictures again...sorry, enjoy!!)

avery loved her grandpa this weekend. every time he held her she would just cuddle up with him. he probably put her to sleep at least 5 times that day. it was cute. ellie, the coaches daughter helped kept avery entertained during the volleyball games. she didnt quite understand that avery couldn't play back but still tried bouncing or rolling the volleyball to her.

this is syd's team. not a great picture but the only good one i got. and here's my car-seat loving girls. i was seriously so happy she did so well the whole trip!!

we ate at a floating restraunt while in coeur de lane. it was a little out of our leauge. i dont think they'd had a baby in there for a while cause they kept coming over and asking us if she wanted a cracker or juice. my favorite was when the hostess came and brought avery some crayons and paper and asked if she wanted to color... right, she's 10 months old, maybe she'd like to eat the crayons.

we met up with trae at the football game. since we weren't doing anything super fun for halloween we dressed ave up in her pumpkin outfit for the game. it worked perfectly and she even sported declo hornet colors.

we've been practicing with avery how old she is going to be by holding up #1 and she has just started pointing her finger at things. i think she was just happy the team won and was stating that hornets are #1.

thanks for letting avery and i tag along mom and dad. we sure had a fun weekend!1

family pictures and stake conference

my little sister, mckell, took a few pictures of us the other day... okay like a few hundred pictures. but you know how it goes, usually only a handful of them turn out decent, especially with a little squirmy girl. here are a few that kell edited and played around with. i love how they turned out and i can't wait til she finishes editing a few more.

i cant get over avery's eyes in this picture. kell didnt even do anything to them, they really are that pretty.

this picture of avery could possible be my very favorite. she just looks so innocent and sweet.

on another note, we had stake conference yesterday and it was wonderful. one of the blessings of living in utah is that sometimes we get special guests for our conferences. yesterday President Henry B. Eyring and Elder M. Russell Ballard were at our conference. Our previous conference we had Elder Dallin H. Oaks come speak to us. I loved the messages they shared and feel so blessed to be able to listen to these special witnesses so regularly. it certainly was a delightful little treat and a wonderful experience.

thats all for now,

have a great monday night!!

10-9-2009

its so crazy to me that avery is 9 months old. she has been so much fun lately. i'm amazed at how quickly she is learning things. she is my little copy cat. just over the past few weeks she has gone from scooting/army crawling to completely crawling and standing up on anything and walking (kinda, sorta) along the couch and other furniture. she is getting so big, so fast. but i love it. i love this stage and how much fun she is everyday. being a mom is certainly hard some days but she makes it so worth it and enjoyable. oh man, i love this girl. i love how she is the spitting image of her father. i love that she is adventurous and all over the place. i love that she is finally starting to eat real food much better. i love that she can sit and play by herself. i love that she is a momma's girl, most of the time. i love that she is finally taking a bottle after nine months. i love her blue eyes and chubby cheeks. i love that she is happy and makes us happy.

My little sister Mckell got married last week. they seriously make one good looking couple. there reception and wedding were perfect. if i could go back and do the whole get married/have a reception thing again, i would do it exactly like hers. kell and spence are so cute together. we love having them in logan with us. avery has a major crush on spencer. she gets so shy and smiley everytime she sees him. its cute. also, meag and i made kells wedding cake. it was fun, and hard, and messy, and if you didnt look to closely, it was gorgeous. it helped that there was lots of detail to hide the imperfections. anyways, heres a load of pictures from their big day.

{8 months}

well i completely missed avery's 7 month update. now its september and ave is 8 months old. can't believe it. i know i say it every month but she is growing up so fast. the past two months have been a whirlwind and she has learned so much. she had been scooting/army crawling for a few months now and just decided to start crawling for real a few weeks ago. however, she still prefers the scoot. she's had kind of a rough few weeks. she hasn't been sleeping through the night since the back packing trip (grrr) and she's been sick the past week. cold, cough, tugging at her ears. i don't know if its teething or just a cold/ear ache. everytime she has a bad week i blame it on teething. i guess that means she's been teething for a month now. anyways, the picture of her in the green is from a while ago. i haven't been able to get her to sit still or look at the camera long enough for a decent picture for her 8 month old shot. i kinda like this girl.

i've been kind of frustrated with the whole eating solids situation. she still doesn't love it. at all. i still try everyday. just a little here and there and nothing. she usually wants nothing to do it. every once and while she will devour mac and cheese, some PB & J or green beans and she always loves snacking on KIX but other than that i don't really know what to do. she'll chew on big kid foods and does okay with most finger foods when she's in the mood too. i guess i've got a stubborn gal on my hands and when she wants to eat she'll let me know. until then i'll keep trying.

this is how mobile she's getting. leave a box of diapers around and she's bound to find a way on top of it. the other day she climbed an entire flight of stairs by herself. (i was watching her of course but still. too early for that.) i dont think she'll be walking any time soon though. she has no clue what to do with her feet. the concept of one foot in front of the other hasn't clicked yet.



the rest are just cause i think she's cute.

as for other updates, trae is back in the swing of school. his last year! he's got a loaded schedule and is also prepping for the gmat that he is taking in january. with that on top of work, church, and family time i guess you could say he's pretty busy. he is such a hard worker and makes it possible for me to stay home with avery, so i am pretty blessed.

here's just a quick picture of my cute sisters (minus mckell) from labor day weekend at home. sure love these girls.

bon-d-fam-back

well. we made it through last week. whew. sure glad to be home. we left early last monday morning, drove six hours, about three of those on gravel road. we got there and started our seven mile hike. it was a hard hike. it took us a number of hours. but it felt good to do a hard thing carrying someone on my back. i guess i got lucky getting to carry avery since my pack weighed only like 20-25 pounds and trae's was double that. i was most worried about avery. what if she hated it. that would mean that i was hiking for three hours with a screaming baby on my back. but she loved the hike. loved it. she cried for like ten minutes, probably cause she was hungry, so i fed her while walking so that we could get there before dark. i was so relieved that she did so well. then came night time, which meant bed time. oh, i dreaded bed time. imagine a tiny mummy sleeping bag on a very rocky surface with a baby laying on your stomach all night . all night except for the 5-10 times i was up with her each night. i think the hardest part for me was worrying about waking everyone else up so i picked ave up everytime she started to cry. but that's okay cause morning finally came each day. and thank goodness for that. except that meant night time was coming again. ahhh. anyways, we ate great the whole time though. our first night we actually had steak and potatoes (yes, on a back packing trip). on tuesday the boys fished, we took some hikes, some went swimming. that kind of stuff. avery got pretty sun-burned this day. she woke up the next morning all puffy-eyed and swollen. she was not a happy girl wednesday morning. we got up, ate cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate, packed up camp, and headed out to camp at a different spot. Since ave was not so happy i was not looking forward to the hike but she did AMAZING. she loved it again. she took a few good naps in her back pack. i should have kept her in her pack all day. we hiked back to the trail head and decided to camp at the main camp site instead of hike to a different lake and stay the night. so, naturally i bagged the sleeping in a tent and decided to camp in the car. i set up avery's pack-n-play in the back of the subarban and was praying for a decent nights sleep. turned out that this was by far her worst night yet. she froze in the back of the car so she ended up sleeping on my stomach again so we both could stay warm. avery lost her voice almost completly. it almost made me cry every time she tried to cry. it was the saddest little voice ever. she is still trying to get it back all the way. anyways...it was hard with a little one. but overall we had a pretty good time. back-packing is not a easy thing. dont think that i will ever be an avid back-packer but i did enjoy it. the nights were difficult, but the expereince was good and made me really appreciate home. however, there are some absolutely gorgouse places hidded deep in the wilderness. i still can't get over how beautiful it was. that made it all worth it.

on thursday we packed up, again, and headed to mackay, idaho to go stay in a cabin. we were all looking forward to showers and toilets. 'roughin it' took on a whole different meaning to me after back-packing. the cabin was beautiful. my mother in-laws siblings and parents came up and we had a little family reunion. we had a good time. over the course of the week avery turned into an utterly and completly momma's girl. she certainly had an eventful week and enough stimulation to last her another six months. it is good to know she i loved and that so many people are willing to watch her and play with her all the time, however. we had a great time at the cabin but were certainly ready to come home. my father in-law dee had shirts made for us for our back-backing trip. he named our trip the "bon-d-fam-back". i really have to give it my in-laws for pulling this off. the planned everything so perfectly and went through so much hard work to make it fun for the rest of us. thanks!

we'll, thats how it went, kinda. avery is now sick so we are still trying to get back in the swing of things but our beds sure feel fabulous.

3 years later

and i'm still in love. Trae is such a amazing husband and father. He's perfect for me, really. I am so lucky to have such a patient, hard working, loveable, good looking husband. Can't believe its been three years. looking back we've been through and experienced quite a few new things. so glad it was all with him. 3 years down... forever to go.

little sister mckell is living with us right now which means we have an automatic babysitter tonight. we haven't been out just the two of us too many times since miss avery greeted us so i am totally looking forward to a few hours without the little babe.

p.s. back packing trip was, for the most part, a success. so so happy to be home however. avery slept 17 of 24 hours yesterday. i think she was worn out. post coming shortly.