More weekend fun

On Sunday we went to church with my mom and then we went to see my niece Lily get baptized. They had been debating for a long time when to do her baptism, and finally decided that they would do it up in Utah (they live in Albuquerque) when we were all there together. It was neat to be able to be there for that. We weren't able to go to Ashley's baptism (sorry Ashley!) because it was right before Jake was leaving for Iraq. So it was great to be there for Lily's. Afterwards we went back to Amber's for food and visiting all night. I love getting to hand out with my family. I hate that we all live so far apart from each other so we don't get to hang out very much.
This is my niece Lily with me and Mckayla. The girls were so excited to see Lily's baptism. They now are talking about what they want to do at their own baptisms. Of course they are talking about what they want at their weddings too.

Here's some pictures I stole off of Karley's blog that I thought I'd share. Here is the only smiling picture of Jaxon from the entire weekend that I have seen:

Here is the girls eating at Karley's moms house with her son Karter who is 4. We were supposed to all wear either dark blue or gray, but I had a hard time finding anything that wasn't light pink or yellow or purple. I got these dresses at Marshalls on clearance and they were the closest I could get to a dark blue dress. I think they were cute though.

Here is a really cute picture of the girls and Karter. The three of them really had a great time together. Karter is such a cutie.

On a yucky side note, though we had a lot of fun over the weekend our drive home was pretty bad. Jaxon and my little neice Abigail came down with some sort of stomach bug Sunday night. Jaxon threw up many times on the way home and had terrible diaherria. He went through all of the clothes we had for him, including wearing anything that he had already worn over the weekend. As long as there was no barf or poop on it, it was deemed clean. It did explain the grumpy mood he had had all weekend, but it was not a fun drive home. It mostly affected the two youngest, but several of my family members said they felt a bit sick for a day or so after the weekend.

We had a ton of fun for our last trip for awhile. We don't plan on doing much traveling this spring. But anyone who wants to is welcome to come visit us! Probably the next time we see most of my family members won't be until this summer at the family reunion in Michigan, that makes me sad. But we are about to have a baby, and we won't feel up to traveling for awhile after that.

Hannah's Wedding

Last weekend we drove up to Utah to see my sister Hannah get married. We left on Thursday after Jake got off of work and drove all night to get to my sister Barbara's house around 8am. Not a fun drive, but we had a great weekend. Friday we hung out with Karley, my best friend from high school, and then we went to a family dinner Will's (Hannah's husband) church. With the family alone we nearly filled the church. You all know that I have a big family and 8 of the 9 siblings were there with accompanying spouses and children. But Will's family beats ours believe it or not. He also has nine siblings and he is the youngest and was the only one not married and without kids. So they had quite a gaggle of people too. It was a lot of fun though. Very crazy fun as all of the little kids were running around playing the whole night. We preformed our traditional "sister dance" that turned out really cute. And we played family feud against the Bairds. We won of course!
The next day Karley watched my kids while we went to the Provo temple for Hannah's wedding. My sisters had brought their kids to the temple and I am so glad that I didn't. Jaxon slept the whole time we were gone, and woke up covered in poop, so we were able to wash his clothes before the reception. I can't imagine having to deal with that at the temple. Plus, he really needed the nap. We didn't take any family pictures or anything at the temple because it was snowing really hard and it was freezing cold outside, so there was no need for the kids to be there anyways. It is funny because a lot of my sisters spent considerable time on their hair and then we had to walk up the hill in a blizzard to get inside the temple so all hair efforts were lost.

Above is me with my sister Hannah and below is me with my friend Karley. It was so awesome to see her, even though we didn't get to spend a lot of time together. We had made a deal last year that we would get together during the year and it never happened, so I am glad that we got to get together this year.

This is Jaxon with Karley's son Ty. He is such a cutie. Jaxon is only about 3 months older than Ty, and they became little buddies while we were there.

Here is Hannah holding Jaxon at the reception. He was being pretty clingy the whole time and only happy if Jake or I were holding him. So you won't see any smiling pictures of him.

Here is Hannah and Will coming out of the temple together. Hannah looked so gorgeous and happy. I am so glad that she found the right guy. All night people kept talking about how happy they looked together.

We went to the reception Saturday afternoon at Will's church in Provo. We were able to see a lot of old friends from my ward that I grew up in, as well as some old friends from high school. It was fun to get to see people again.

After the reception we went up to my sister Amber's house for a Valentine's Day/birthday party for my two nieces Ashley and Lily. Mckayla and Lyla really enjoyed making valentines and didn't want to stop making them until they had made at least one for everybody in the house. Lyla says we need to move to Utah because "In Utah is snow and cousins and Grandma!" What more could we ask for?

Belly Shot!

I have had a few requests for pictures of my belly before this baby comes out, so I am finally giving in. This is a picture of me with my younger sister Jessica who is due on April 15th. This was this past weekend at my sister Hannah's reception (to be blogged about later). It is completely unfair how tiny Jessica is. I am very huge and feeling like I will pop at any moment. Though I am only at 37 weeks, the baby has dropped and I have been having frequent (though not regular) contractions. So we will see what happens this next week!
PS. I don't know why my hair looks so red in this picture. It doesn't look red at all usually, I think it was just weird lighting or something. I haven't dyed it in a very long time and it is pretty much my natural color at this point.

Hiking around in AZ

These next pictures are from a Saturday in September where we just went up into the mountains for some hiking as a family. These are the mountains we can see from our house. They don't look that big from our house, but get bigger once you are up in them. This is a sign that is posted in the beginning of the canyon, I just think it is funny.
In case you can't read the sign, it says "TRAVEL CAUTION: Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area"
Below is a pretty waterfall (the only waterfall) on the road up.

This is the bumpy dirt road with a million switchbacks that you have to drive up to get to the top: Well worth it though.

Here's me and the kids. There usually are no pictures of my on this blog because I am the one always taking the pictures. But Jake got me this time.

Here's a cute shot of Jaxon with an awesome background. I just can't believe how long his hair was. We have been keeping it pretty short lately, but he has to get a haircut a month to keep it that way.

Our trip to White Sands in August

Last August we went to White Sands, NM on a camping trip with my sister Katie and her hubby Gordon + kids, and Gordon's sister Betty and her family. I didn't realize that I had never written about it until I saw that the pictures from it were still stuck on our other camera. I don't actually have pictures from our time we spent actually in White Sands because we were warned not to bring our camera to the dunes because the sand is really fine and can ruin electronics when it blows. So we took some pictures there with a disposable camera that I never got developed.
Here is Jake, Gordon and Jaxon at the look out point up in the mountains. Though we played at White Sands we camped in the mountains because there was no camping available near White Sands. You can see the sand dunes over Jake's left shoulder off in the distance.

Left to Right: My nieces Eve and Lily, then Lyla and Mckayla, and Jake and Jaxon.

We also went to a solar observatory while we were there. We walked around to the different giant telescopes that they use to observe the sun. It was very high in the mountains and was a beautiful drive.

This is my sister Katie with most of the little girls. They had so much fun together. We did have a lot of fun playing on the dunes the one day we went, but the kids were pretty content to run around the campsite and play together.

On our drive through New Mexico we went through a terrible lightening storm. It was pretty freaky, but also very cool. After many many attempts I was able to catch a shot of some lightening through the windshield. I am pretty proud of that. We actually stayed in a hotel the first night because we didn't get there until after dark and it was pouring down rain. We didn't want to set up camping stuff in that weather. It also poured down rain the second night and I think that every single tent leaked. So much for rainflies!!!

White sands was really cool. It was different from other sand dunes I have been to because, not only are they white, but it is really fine sand so it has a much different texture. Only a few feet below the surface it hardens into a plaster-type feel that is so hard that they just plowed through to it to make roads and parking lots. They just use snow plows to clear the sand down to the plastery-type surface. No other sand dunes can do that. You always have to park on the edge and hike in to it. The most fun thing to do at the dunes is to go sledding. We got sleds at the visitor's center and went sledding in the summer. It was a blast, and not nearly as cold! After dark though, the wind started to blow and the sand blew so hard it felt like it would cut through the skin to the bone.

We had so much fun on that trip, and hopefully I will get those pictures off of the disposable camera soon so that y'all can see what the dune look like!

Long Lost Pictures

Long ago I had posted that we had lost the battery charger for our camera, and were unable to download any of those pictures. We never found that battery charger, and I went to several different electronic stores but was unable to find a replacement for a long time. We tried buying one online, but it didn't work out either. Someone suggested I got to a specific radioshack here in town, and though I had tried a radioshack I hadn't tried this one.
This radio shack is unappealing when you first walk in. It isn't well put together and is run by a husband and wife duo. But, when I asked the question about my camera battery the guy looked everywhere and then found a "universal" camera battery charger and worked with it for 30 minutes to figure out how to get it to work for my battery. The thing was totally complicated, I never could have done it on my own. I was so impressed with the incredible service of this place and the knowledge this guy had. Though it was a radioshack it had that "mom and pop's electronics" sort of feel. It was really nice to go to a store like that.
Now our camera works again!! And I was able to download all of the pictures off of it from last summer! There were several pictures on there that I had totally forgotten about. So the next couple of posts are going to be way way backtracking. I really use this blog as a family history/ scrapbooking type thing because I don't scrapbook at all and this is the only place that I journal about our family's comings and goings. So really I have to write about the pictures for posterity's sake.

Look at what Sophie gave me!

Mckayla has a good friend at school named Sophie who she has been talking about constantly since Sophie moved in. On Friday she came home from school all excited because Sophie had given her a present. I small shiny white rock. Only it wasn't a rock. Any guesses?
The girls have been obsessed with rocks since Jake has taken them rock hunting a few times and it is the Tucson gem and mineral show so we got to go up and see some really awesome rocks. We now have a small rock collection growing in their bedroom. Mckayla was very happy to recieve a small white rock from her friend and it even had a certain smell to it....
When I asked where she got it she said that Sophie gave it to her for a present, and when I asked where Sophie got it, she said that Trevor had given it to her....
I had her give it to me and go wash her hands. I didn't throw it away in front of her, but quietly got rid of it at another time. She didn't know any better, as I'm sure Sophie and Trevor didn't either. So, any guesses as to what it was??? The answer will be revealed in the comments section in a little while.