Big Boy and Bear Lake

Daxton turned 2 months old on July 25th! Here is his 2-month old bear picture for any of you keeping track. We took him to the doctor on Monday and he is already up to almost 13 pounds! He went from the 23rd percentile in weight at his last visit to the 74th percentile now. He is in the 81st percentile for height, but his little noggin is only 20%. It is so funny, because Arden has a teeny head too, and my head and Preston's heads are both small for our bodies, so he will fit right in in the head department.

Last weekend we went to Bear Lake. We stayed at Dave and Alycia's (my uncle and aunt's) cabin on the lake, and my cousin Jayme, her husband Scott, and their baby boy Ryker were there too. (THANKS for inviting us, guys!!!). We hadn't been to bear lake for too long. With the two babies hanging around, things were pretty low-key, but we had a great time. We ate lots of yummy food, and even made Smores. It was my first time this summer making them, and summer wouldn't be summer without Smores, would it?

We spent Saturday (my birthday) on the beach. Since Daxton was over two months old (by one day) we put sunscreen on him and took him out with us. He slept in the shade pretty much the whole time, but Arden, my little beach baby, ran in the water, dug in the sand, threw rocks and whatever else she could find into the water, and had a great time. It was nice to catch up with everyone, I wish we would all get together more often! Anyway, here are some pictures:

Here is Daxton hanging out in the shade in a camp chair (so cute!)
Here is Arden at the beach! She would live at the beach if she could.
We put Daxton's toes in the water. We thought he would cry because the water was still a little cold, but he actually liked it!
And here is Arden and me:
It is sad when my 2-year old has tanner legs than me! I guess I am finally old enough to not care how tan I am anymore. Since Daxton hasn't been able to wear sunscreen, it has been a pretty shady summer for me. It felt nice to be in the sun, but of course I am a total sunscreen Nazi when it comes to Arden, and now Daxton too. She is always covered in spf 50 and she still browns up like a marshmallow (I must still have Smores on the brain). I think back to when I was young and I know I was a total sunscreen slacker. Especially the summers I was a lifeguard...it was sunscreen for maybe the first couple of weeks, and then bring on the tanning oil (hey, it was spf 2 or 4 or something like that :). Preston finally made me go to the doctor and get checked out to make sure none of my moles looked like skin cancer. Luckily, none of them do, but the doctor told me that since I have so many from being out in the sun so much I should get them checked once a year for the rest of my life. Bummer. Let that be a lesson to you, kids, wear your sunscreen!

Daxton Smiles!

So, here is the moment you have all been waiting for (well, probably nobody but my mom and maybe my sister is all that excited, but anyway...) I finally got around to taking a picture of Daxton smiling!

The first time I remembered to grab the camera, he was smiling really big and I went and looked around for the camera, and finally found it. Then I sat him down and tried to get him to smile again, and he made the biggest, cutest smile anyone has ever seen. I quickly hit the button on the camera, and looked back and Daxton and he was STILL smiling! I was so happy! I excitedly checked the camera to see if the picture looked as cute as I was sure it would, and I was greeted with...a "BATTERY EXHAUSTED" message instead. Bummer! I looked all around for some batteries and couldn't find ANY! Arrrrggghhh! So, I had to wait until the next time we went to the store, but a couple of days later we were able to get a couple of him smiling, so here you go:

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Soooo cute, but I guess I am kind of biased. He is turning into a pretty smiley kid. I have got to say that the first real smile is one of my favorite milestones. Some of the other milestones (first solid food, first steps) are a little bittersweet for me because they mean that the little baby stage is ending (am I the only one who feels this way?), but I can see no downside to these smiles!

Anyway, I have been feeling a little old this past week because it has been 10 whole years since I got married. But, on Saturday we did something that made me feel like a kid! We went out to the Police concert at USANA Amphitheater. The weather was perfect, the band was great, and I was probably one of the youngest people there. Seriously. It was great. My sisters and brother in law came too, and we all had a good time. The Police did all of the good songs (Every Breath You Take, Every Little Things She Does Is Magic, Don't Stand So Close To Me, Can't Stand Losing You, Wrapped Around Your Finger etc. etc.) and Sting still looks great...the other two not so much, but they still sounded amazing. It was lots of fun. Here is a picture of me and my two sisters at the show:

Oh, and Arden did must better in nursery this last week! She didn't push anyone down, and only got into one fight over a toy phone. Yay! Hopefully she will stay sweet.

I hope everyone has a good 24th of July!

10 years ago (How did I get this old???)

10 years ago yesterday Preston and I were married in the Bountiful Temple! Can you believe it has been that long??? I sure can't. Here are some pictures from waaaay back when:

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY PRESTON!!

Random Stuff

This has been kind of a bummer week for me with all that has been going on in our neighborhood, but there have been a lot of cute (and not so cute) things that Arden and Daxton have been doing that I want to remember, so I am going to write them down here before I forget.

Arden is finally potty trained! HOORAY! It took a little longer than I hoped (none of that 3-day potty training around here), but she has finally figured it out. She is so funny, and makes me sit outside the door while she goes #2. I have to be right outside the door though, not down the hall or downstairs in the kitchen, just outside the door. We have been bribing her with Diet Sprite, and it seems to be working pretty good. Hopefully after another few days it will just be habit and she can stop using up Preston's supply of pop.

She hasn't been watching much TV lately since it has been summer, but when she does want to watch something while we are eating breakfast or whatever, it is always "Pocahontas." That is kind of a bummer for me since it isn't my favorite Disney show, but it came on TV once and I TiVo'd it for her, and she loved it. She doesn't watch much of it, she just does plays and colors and pretty much ignores the show except when they are singing. She loves to sing the "Colors of the Wind" song all day, but doesn't know very many words, so it ends up going like this "Siiing..all a voices....a mountaaaain...Paint a colors...a wiiiiind" repeated over and over. Also, the tune she uses has nothing to do with the tune in the actual song, and the tune itself changes each time she sings it. It is so cute though. Preston called last week while he was out of town and she was chatting away at him. She was telling him what we had been doing that day, and she said something like "play a toys...take a baff...sing a voices of a mountain." I laughed and laughed, but Preston had no idea what she was talking about until I told him. Such a funny girl.

We had a "Stake Fair" on Saturday. It was a lot of fun, even though I missed the greased pig chasing contest and seeing some of the Stake Presidency get dunked in the dunk tank. I was too busy talking with friends and watching Arden running around like crazy with some of her little friends and having a great time getting all dirty. Here are a couple of pictures of her (most of them were so blurry they were unusable because they were running so fast and my camera isn't the best).

Now for the not-so-good things. Arden, my sweet little baby girl, is becoming the nursery bully. Yup, she pushes kids down. She doesn't do it during play dates or anything, and I don't know if she does it in nursery because there are so many kids or because I am not there, or what. We have talked to her about it a lot, and every time I even say the word "nursery" now, she automatically waves her finger back and forth and says "No pushing!" However, the words don't seem to be getting through to her actual behavior. If anyone has any bright ideas about how to get her to stop, I would love to hear them. I am thinking of having the nursery leaders come and get me if she tries it again this week and try and put her in a "time out" in the hall or something??? Help?

Daxton is doing great. He is so low-maintenance compared to Arden (except in the middle of the night, of course) that he sometimes gets pushed to the back burner and stays in his bouncy chair for longer than I would like to leave him while I am dealing with Arden crisises (hopefully there will be less of these now that she is potty trained!). He is such a sweet boy though, and I feel so blessed to have him. He is a good little eater and is getting pretty close to chubby, especially compared to how skinny he was when he was born. I hope he will forgive me, but here is a picture of him taking a bath so you can all see his cute round tummy.

He is also (finally) starting to smile at me now! It just makes me feel so happy whenever I look down and see him smiling up at me!! I just melt. Unfortunately while I am melting I keep forgetting to grab the camera, but I will try to capture a smile sometime soon and post it for you so you can all melt too. He is awake a lot more during the day, and is really starting to talk a lot (he is good at vowels..."Oooooo," "Oooohhhhh," "AaaaaAAAhhh"). Sooo cute.

If Tomorrow Never Comes

The older I get the more I realize that life isn't fair. Terrible things happen to good people, and sometimes I just can't figure out the reasons why.

We have been having a tough time around here this week. One of my good friends, Char, has twin boys who are about 19 months old. On Wednesday night, one of her boys, Mason, choked on a pretzel. Despite Char's heroic attempts to dislodge it and the best efforts of the ambulance crew, Mason was without oxygen for 8 minutes. He was life flighted to Primary Children's hospital, but the neurological damage is such that he can't survive without life support. Char and her husband have made the heartbreaking decision to take him off of life support later today. I would ask anyone who is reading this blog who already isn't praying for Char and her family to please do so.
This has really made me realize how precious and how fragile our lives are. Anyone can be taken from us at any moment. I hope that I can remember this and try to appreciate the people in my life who I love more and not take for granted that they will be with me tomorrow.

Independence Day

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! We had a busy and fun holiday. We went to the North Salt Lake fireworks on July 3rd. It was a fun time, Arden had a great time playing in the sand trap at the golf course and playing with Grandpa, Manda, Matt and Val while waiting for the fireworks to start. By the time the fireworks started, Daxton was already fast asleep, and slept through the whole thing (if he can sleep through Arden every day, a few little fireworks shouldn't bother him at all!) Arden wasn't sure about the fireworks at first, the loud noise scared her a little. But by the end of the show, she was naming the colors and saying ooooh and aaaah like the rest of us.

The next day we went to the Riverdale parade with my family. My sister recently moved to Riverdale and had heard that a lot of candy was thrown in the parade and that the parade itself was pretty short. Short parade, lots of candy, sounded perfect! So we headed down there and were not disappointed! Arden scored a TON of candy (with the help of Preston, of course) and the parade was short enough that she didn't get bored or too hot. Then we did the BBQ thing, first at my parents' house and then at Preston's parents. By the time we got home Arden was tiiiiiiired. Here is a slide show of some of the pictures we took:

The next day we kind of laid low and relaxed in the morning, and then headed to our nephew Matthew's 1st birthday party in the evening. During the day, I was running on the treadmill and trying to find something to watch on TV (we don't have our satellite TV in the basement so I am stuck with network stations). I ended up watching a show about Medal of Honor winners. With all the rushing around and eating food and watching parades and fireworks, I hadn't had much of a chance to really think about how lucky we are to live in this country and to really appreciate all of those who have given their lives so that we can enjoy all of the freedoms that we all seem to take for granted. Forget Batman and Hancock, those guys are the real superheroes. I am so glad that there were and are people like them who are brave enough to give their lives for our country. I really doubt whether I would be brave enough to do anything that those men and women have done, and I hope I never have to find out!

On another note, the potty training is going pretty good. After the first few days, Arden is finally getting the idea, and even went #2 in the potty this morning all by herself. Preston found her sitting on the potty doing her thing, she didn't even have to tell us she needed to go, she just went all by herself. Hopefully things will keep getting better and we will have this whole potty thing perfected in another couple of weeks.