Baby So BooBoo-tiful

Not to outdo our beautiful new baby niece and nephew, but...

Juliana is "so boo-tiful" with her gorgeous new boo boo.

[Before]

Last Sunday, sporting pig tails!

[After] Saturday morning after taking a fall in the tub

...still smiling even when it hurts!

[Now] Wednesday, face looking boo-tiful as ever!

"Don't go changing to please me. I'll tumble for ya!"

(Blake's future dive off the couch will someday find it's very own blog treatment.)

okay my turn

Well I don't know why Joel thinks I should post about something that happened so long ago when we are anxiously waiting for baby news from Texas and Florida.
But here is a quick summary of my Idaho trip. Well Joel suggested that I might like to go to Idaho to see my Grandma, well it started that we would all go but when that idea turned too expensive it was decided that only myself and Juliana would go. Then I invited my sister who was so anxious to go check out BYU- I do

So it was off to Boise by way of Salt lake city by plane, in Salt Lake we met up with Shalene who saved the front row of the plane for us. We then found my baby brother in Boise and stayed at his house the first night. Then we got up got gas and travel food and jumped into his car to go to Rexburg Idaho (306 miles)to go have a campus tour of the school. Shalene fell in love with it and says that is where she is going. Then we met up with some old friend and family and visited with them for the rest of the evening and the next morning. On Friday morning we jumped back in the car and drove to Salmon Idaho (156 miles)to see my Grandma. She hadn't seen Jules yet so that was really fun. We spent the night there and then left Saturday afternooon to go back to Boise (248 miles). We drove through some really pretty country. We stopped and saw an old ghost town (Gilmore) http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/id/gilmore.html
and also stopped at craters of the moon.
http://www.nps.gov/crmo/

We got in pretty late on Sat night to my oldest Brothers house. Where we visited and played Wii all night. I then drove to my baby brothers house and Juliana and I went to church with them then we went back to Middleton to hang out with the older bros family and celebrate Shalene's birthday. She turned 17.

Monday we just got to hang out and relax and the girls all went to have pedi's done. That was fun. On Tuesday we headed back home, although Monday we realized my tickes were booked for Wed not Tuesday so we had to make phone calls and rearrange things which ment that I spent the whole day in the airport with juliana. Not fun. by the way I hate the Vegas airport. yuck. But all in all we got to see a ton of people and had a great time with just the girls in the car.

So now I'm on another excursion at my mom's with Blake and Juliana, we came up to celebrate my sister Kim's B-day yesterday and have to head back home today sometime. I really miss being closer to my family.

Also today marks the start of the Biggest Loser that I am taking part of both at work and with some of my family so wish me luck I haVE A LOT TO LOSE,

the next 12 weeks should be fun.....

Baby steps

Well, here we are in October. After boycotting a September blog -- Andrea can blog about her trip taking Juliana to see her Grandma and we're gonna skip Josh's hospital adventure -- it is time for another update. Besides, what else do I gotta say about September besides I celebrated getting a year older? As we look forward, the days seem to crawl by too slow when we're only counting in baby steps. But when we look back at our achievements over time, our steps were big in every way.

Let's start with the "babiest"... (yes, that's one of her names). Juliana is growing and getting stronger day after day. She will be 10 months on Oct 11th. She quickly took to crawling around 6 months and by 8 months was already reaching for the table. By 9 months, she can scoot around and grab what she can reach. Jules is almost ready to walk, as we can see how she props herself on tables and couches to get around. She has a new hairstyle, too. Instead of a poof, her mommy has her wearing a cute little ponytail-on the side/bob/weave/curl whatchamacallit hairdo. She likes her new high chair because she likes to eat in style. Mysteriously, she still doesn't have any teeth breaking through. We will enjoy her toothless grins for now and we can laugh at her 'got milk' smiles.

Blakers is almost 40 inches tall, because he almost measured up enough for the kiddie batting cages at the stadium. He's already in to throwing balls - not very straight, yet - and making a fast break for the cookie jar when he comes home from day care. A nice lady from church has been watching the kids since school started, but she will go back to teaching soon. Luckily, we got word that our local La Petite is taking infants and toddlers now, so we will start them there in a week or so.

Blake is 2 1/2 and is almost done potty training! We started him on Pull-ups 6 weeks ago. Andrea took him to the store last Saturday to pick out Big Boy Pants, which he proudly wore the whole day. He went potty the whole day and he he's been dry every morning for 2 whole weeks! He's racking up stickers and sweets for doing such a good job. The next step is to get him to tell us when he needs to go. At La Petite, the teachers will have him go every 2 hours, so he'll pick up good habits there. We've heard there are kids who can potty train in a week (don't know who they are), but we still feel like Blake has learned fast enough.

Josh's school soccer team finished it's season with only 3 wins. Josh, wearing #7, was co-captain and played mostly defense and midfield this year. (add photos).

Josh is 13 1/2 and well on his way to earning Eagle at 14. That's because he is set to earn his Life rank at the next Court of Honor this month. He had a productive summer in Scout Camp and is enjoying 8th grade and a brand spankin' new school. Josh is scheduled to get his braces taken off in early November, so he can't wait (and neither can our wallets).

Andrea still is the smartest person at her pharmacy and is training the military pharmacists how to do their job responsibly. It's kind of like she's the babysitter. Those of you who go to the base pharmacy know what I mean. She took Juliana to visit her Grandma in Salmon, Idaho and saw her brothers and their families, the new Twin Falls Idaho Temple and BYU-Idaho along the way. I'll let her tell the story in another blog.

Then there's boring me... My social life is at home entirely. I remember the days when I had my brother living here and friends who would call me and hang out, but now I enjoy the slower pace of life. It's nice to know modern technology can keep us connected across the miles. You know what I enjoy? Seeing my kids learn new things and wonder how they're going to turn out in 2 or 5 years.

Andrea and I got some BlackBerry smart phones to try to feel smarter. Well, I am still testing it out, but the more I play with it, I guess I can get used to the "electonic leash". See, it grabs all your messages, from text to e-mails, so there's no hiding from, say, your boss or the hospital. But for us, these phones are for personal use, not business, and we got a way sweet deal to replace my broken phone. It's got an internal GPS so I'll never lose myself or my car, I can FaceMySpaceBook, I can read the scriptures in church like a nerd... I can do almost anything except bailout the national debt. Hey, I figured out how to spy on you as you read this very blog! Looking gooood!

I had another birthday recently and, hey look... I'm turning into my father. Now I know who I'm gonna be for Halloween! If you're bored like me, then go Yearbook Yourself. Just make sure you show me some of your pictures. Have a Happy Halloween. Until next time...