Rock Star Baby

I am SOOOO cool.

She's mobile!

Well the big news of this week is that Kylie has started crawling. It's very much low to the ground, belly dragging across the floor kind of crawl. But it's a crawl. She's a pro at rolling around now and does so with quite force now. Her little legs are so strong now!

Last Saturday we went to Cherry Hill with my family and played in the water all day long. My sisters had fun holding her and we were able to hit some of the big slides, play in the pool (though I got sunscreen in my eyes and could hardly do anything because I couldn't see) and floated down the lazy river a bunch. Kylie LOVED the lazy river. I had bought a $3 yellow float tube for her and she just sat in there floating around with everyone and loved it. She was giggling for my sister Vaylene, and laughing and playing. She had a fun time! I'm so glad she loves playing in the water. I wish I had some pictures but I didn't take my camera with me since I didn't want to risk having something happen to it. I'm sure I'll catch some pictures of her in the water at Bear Lake this weekend.


Hanging out on the deck (still unfinished of course).








































Sweet potatoes are yummy.

I've Been Tagged!

A- Attached or single: Attached for seven years.
B- Best Friend: Jared
C-Cake or Pie: Cherry Pie
D-Day: Fridays (weekends is about to start)
E- Essential Item: Laptop
F- Favorite Color: Red, Slate Blue & Ivory
G-Gummy Bears or Worms: Bears. Actually cinnamon bears if you really want to know.
H-Home town: Logan, Utah
I- Indulgences: Chocolate, yum.
J- January or July?: July. I heart the summer months.
K-Kids: My sweet, sweet Kylie Morgan.
L-Life is incomplete without: My Family and Strawberries
M- Marriage Date: July 10, 2001
N-Number of Siblings: Four Sisters, All younger than I am.
O- Oranges or Apples: Oranges
P- Phobias or Fears: Snakes. All things revolving around snakes.
Q- Quote: Well this isn't my favorite, but is the only one I can think of at the moment. "If we only plan for tomorrow we'll only have a bunch of empty yesterdays."
R- Reason To Smile: Our perfect, beautiful baby girl. I love her!!!
S- Season: Spring. I love getting out in my garden, planting flowers, tulips, everything.
T- Tag Three: Laura, Cally & Vaylene
U- Unknown fact about me: I've never had wisdom teeth. Or Braces. But I keep the dentist in business with cavities.
V- Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: Oppressor with a soft heart. I can eat a turkey sandwich and say "I hope your life was worth it."
W- Worst Habit: I hate to talk on the phone. Sometimes I don't answer the phone because I hate it so much! Hence our voice mail says "please leave a message and I might call you back".
X-Rays or Ultrasounds: Neither... ha!
Y-Your favorite food: Strawberries, Lasagna, Chicken Enchilada's from Chubby's (I miss that place.)
Z- Zodiac Sign: No clue.

I tag Laura, Cally & Vaylene

**Missing**

I can't believe it.

We have this small space (it's really just a park strip) with gravel in it that is next to our mailbox. Probably about twelve feet by four feet. There is no sprinkler system in this area and it gets extremely hot in the summer. This year I decided I was going to do something about it to make it look better. So a few months ago I divided some of my perennials and planted them in this area and took some of the gravel out. Nothing crazy, just some shasta daisies, sedum, iris etc. So I go out to get the mailbox today and see this neatly shoveled out hole where one of my purple iris's USED to be. Yup, somebody not only wanted one of my irises but they brought a shovel with them to get the job done.

Even if some complete strangers came up to my door and asked for a start it would be no big deal. I'm always splitting them and trying to give them away. A few years ago I had a tulip thief also but the three year old down the street confessed to that one :). But bringing along a shovel? Wow!

Bad Dream

This morning I woke up almost in a panic. I know what your thinking... big time lame-o. But since it's my blog you get to hear about it.

I dreamed that I was attending an adoption conference at the Marriott Conference Center at BYU. I hung up my jacket along with my camera bag on a hook along with everyone else (not that I would normally leave my camera bag unattended) and attended the conference. For some reason I left the conference about twenty minutes before everyone else left too. I went to find my camera and jacket and someone had moved everyones belongings to a different area of the building. I went and found my jacket but I could not find my camera bag anywhere. After some time it sunk in that most likely someone had stolen it. So I was running around like crazy, panicked as all get-out trying to find my camera bag. In the dream I had just bought two new lenses for the camera which weren't cheap and I couldn't believe that I had been so careless to have let someone walk off with my equipment.
Thankfully that's about the time Jared woke me up and I realized all was well and my camera bag was safely in the back room. Phew.

#3 Post Placement Visit DONE!

This past Tuesday we had our third (and hopefully final) post placement caseworker visit. I don't know our caseworker very well now. Debbie, our caseworker through our whole Michigan ordeal was transferred to another position at another agency shortly before I returned home in February. This should be the last visit as long as were able to finalize in August. But we may have to do another if the paperwork gets stalled or something.

Our first post placement visit happened in Michigan. Abbie's caseworker must not have wanted to drive the three hours to see us so he had us fill out a few questions via email and that was our "visit". Judging from the look that our caseworker gave me when I told her this I'm sure he was stretching things with that one for sure. Our second visit happened in early March and we were able to meet with the director of our agency. Two months after we were in Michigan the agency decided to switch our caseworker to the director because he was more familiar with Michigan law and the legalities we were facing. At this second post placement visit we had a good chat and he assured us that our adoption was quite the anomaly and wasn’t typical at all. But with even how bad our ordeal was I wouldn’t change anything because I KNOW Kylie was meant to be our daughter.

Supposedly all the paperwork should be in now so we'll just kick back and wait for a phone call letting us know that we are official. I believe they are going to submit the paperwork now, but technically they are supposed to approve it six months after the February 8^th date, which would be August. So we’ll see. Usually adoptive parents finalize in their home state but somehow the judge or attorneys (never did straighten that out) decided that we were going to finalize in Michigan. It’s ended up being a good thing though. We won’t have to fly out there for it, and we didn’t have to hire an attorney in Utah to do the paperwork which is fabulous.

I’m very excited for when we’ll be able to have her sealed to us and for her blessing. We'll be having a big celebration afterward with tons of family, friends and food which will be awesome. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that we will be able to have her with us in the temple and to hold her in there knowing she will be ours forever. How amazing is that! I feel so fortunate that we will get those special memories of being in such a holy place with her. I know she won’t ever remember any of it, but what wonderful memories and pictures they will be.

Baaaaaad Baby

My aunt Julie sent me this email forward and I thought it was funny so I thought I'd share. Man if only my photoshop skills were this good.

We all know that Moms love to dress up their kids. But when Dad is a graphic designer, anything is possible. It all started out with the innocent baby picture below...

Swimm'n...

Today I went swimming with my friend Britta and her adorable little ones (Abby & Landon) to the indoor South Jordan Aquatics Center. I've never been there before and we had a fun time! It wasn't busy at all and I was impressed with all the activities in the pool available for families and mostly children. There's an alligator slide, a big slide for big kids, a whirlpool, a lazy river type thing and a bunch of fountains that spray water everywhere. We had a good time. Kylie did well in the water and wasn't scared at all. And the pool was even warm (well the smaller one anyway)!

I think Kylie did well considering we jumped in the pool right during her nap time. Afterwards was another story. By time we left she had had it and was crying inconsolably. It's a feat to try to get a mommy and baby showered and dressed while baby is wigging out. But we made it back into Britta's Jeep and she took a snooze. Thanks Britta, Abby and Landon for going with us and hitting Cafe Rio after! You rock!

Fun Stuff

I thought I'd take just a moment and write since the house is completely quiet at the moment. The little one is taking a long needed nap. I can see why mom's love naps so much. Kylie is so close to crawling I can smell it. I can tell that she's starting to move faster just even in the past few days. She's rolling all over and scoots herself backwards. I'm happy to report that after reading Britta's blog it reminded me that I needed to clean my bathrooms. That lead to one thing to another and happily my house is spic and span again. I love coming home to a clean house!

The yard is coming along. The landscapers trenched the sprinklers last Saturday and have been here during the evenings twice this week. They are now ready to fill in the trenches. The next step is to have the topsoil and compost delivered, finish grade everything, put the sprinkler heads on the funny pipe and connect the drip irrigation. And prep for sod. Then their work is done and mine will have just begun. Meaning that I still have to find some flagstone I like for a few pathways, get sod ordered and delivered and start looking for trees. As far as plants go I'm just hoping to get the trees in this year. Here are some of my favorites that I've been thinking about. For me plants are like chocolate. There is always room for one more :).

Paul Scarlett Hawthorn











Emerald Gaiety Euonymous














Shademaster Honeylocust (these are for the parking strip in the front yard)















Blue Atlas Cedar

Japanese Barberry

Tri-Colored Beech (needs shade from the afternoon sun)











Malus Sargentii

Bruneria (my sister has some of this and I want to try it out too)










Prairie Fire Crabapple (we have one of these in the front yard and I LOVE it. So I'd like to plant another in the back somewhere).

Purple Sandcherry

European Snowball











Carl Forester Feather Reed Grass

Digging to China

My sister posted about this on her blog last week and since it happened at my house I thought I'd share as well. These pictures were taken during the summer of 2006 when my sister Teresa, my brother-in-law Matt and their son Jake (who was a baby at the time) lived with us. Teresa and Matt were looking for a home so they spent the summer at our house. It was so much fun! They eventually bought a home up in West Bountiful. I was really sad to have them leave especially since Jake was so fun to have around. Anyway back to the story...

Our neighborhood has had a problem with sink holes in the past. In fact, before we closed on our home the previous homeowners had to tear out and replace the front sidewalk and steps because a sink hole had formed under the sidewalk and damaged it. One day Teresa decided to water some plants in my front yard and accidentally left the hose running on a patch of lawn in the front yard. I came home that evening and couldn't figure out for the life of me why there was a huge deep hole in my front lawn. It was about a two feet in diameter but it was at least six to seven feet deep. Yup, it was a sink hole. I still don't believe that leaving the hose on did all of the damage. I just think it was enough to exacerbate the problem. We haven't had another problems with them. I thought it was pretty funny that it happened in the first place.

If you look really closely in Matt's hand he's holding a shovel down in the hole. It was THAT deep. We filled it in the next day.