Busy! Busy! Busy!

Sometimes my favorite things about being a mom, are the sweet little sounds children make. Carter makes the sweetest noises when he wakes up in the morning. It is so fun to hear him giggle, talk to his toys, and sing me a song. I just love his little voice when he gets so excited as I walk into his room and he giggles “mommy.” These sweet little souls are worth more than anything in the world. I could have never dreamed of something better than being a mother.

My sweet silly little boy <3

Here is what we have been up to lately.

Last weekend we had some more firsts with Carter. Jason got off of work early, so we headed out to Wheeler Farm in Murray Utah. It was a long drive, but worth the free admission and worth it to see Carter’s reaction to all of the animals. He was in heaven, and loved making the sounds he knows each of them make. We saw pigs, sheep, goats, horses, ponies, cows, a calf, turkeys, rabbits, and his very favorite… kitty cats! I was terrified of the geese that kept freaking out and following us, but I survived and overall had a great time. Jason even milked a cow!!!

We didn't take many pictures... Wheeler Farm :)

Carter wanted to stay with the animals.

Saturday, my sweet 8 year old cousin was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We loved being around family, and were so proud of our sweet little cousin Adam. What a great day and a wonderful decision to make. Adam has an incredible testimony, and when I was about to have brain surgery, we had a family fast. Adam, even though he was 7 and not needing to, fasted for me. He went without breakfast and lunch to make sure I would be ok, and it touched my heart. He has so much love for his family.

Everyone at the baptism.

Friday the 13^th marked the 5^th year anniversary of my life changing for forever. It happened on a cold February night in Boise Idaho, and was a beautiful tribute to how our first date went and how our lives, together, would be. After a delicious meal at an unplanned restaurant, a surprise dance under the stars in the park, and it ending in him singing to me and kneeling on one knee… I said yes. Every passing year I look back and see how very lucky I am to have such a sweet and incredible person to spend the rest of my forever with. Jason has always been there for me and I still love him with all of my heart. Eternity isn't long enough J

The cheesecake was AMAZING!

Ballantyne’s Day, I was scheduled for an MRI and a doctor’s appointment, we closed and started moving in our house, we had to clean our old house, and we had so many things to do, Jason and I went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Afterwards, I found out that I am still cancer free Hooray! Oh and I gained 10 lbs, which is actually a really good thing ha ha. Who knew I would be so happy to gain 10 pounds?!

We moved into our house Saturday and boy was it fun. Carter fell off the back of the moving truck and got a pretty good shiner. I was so scared that he had a concussion, but after crying for a good hour, pizza, and walking outside, he ended up being just fine. Poor little guy.

Carter the night after his fall. Look at that shiner!

He is still a happy boy <3

After our awful ordeal, we got everything moved into our new house. Sadly everything didn't magically unpack its self, but we are in our new house! To celebrate we had dinner with our friends Kendall and Mike in the form of amazingly delicious heart shaped pasta. I was so thankful for the distraction and so thankful that the day ended happy. I am so thankful that Carter was OK and that I had my sister to keep me calm, our house to distract my uneasy thoughts, and friends to laugh and visit with. It is amazing how God is always watching over us.

We have always wanted to take Carter to Thanksgiving Point and check out Farm Country, so that’s what we did last Saturday. IT was a pretty fun time, and afterward we looked at some new things for our house. We need to replace our front door and ended up getting a dish washer too. A couple weeks ago we even bought new furniture, and we surprising flit a love seat in our car. It was exciting. I hope the rumor that your to do list never ends when you have a house, isn't true. We have been so busy and unpacking and planning to decorate! Oh and surprise, my teaching license expired, so I've been working on that as well. Oh happy day, life is fun (and I mean that seriously J)!

Farm Country after the horse drawn trailer ride.

Just another day looking a new things for the house!

Carter and I squished in the car after buying a love seat!

Carter loves being close to his cousins. I was able to watch all 3 and while sweet little Carmen was sleeping we went outside. Taylor and Carter decided to bring their cell phones on our walk and randomly sat on someone's steps. They are adorable!!! Oh happy day, life is fun (and I mean that seriously :)  )!

"Say cheese!"

Life is good!

So here we are, and I have yet again been terrible with keeping you in the loop. Not because I don’t have the time (I can always make time), but because I always get a terrible case of writer’s block when I being a new post. So much has happened and I just can’t find the words to share it all, so here are some important events and some fun pictures to look at J

After our crazy winter snow, and it snowing ALL DAY LONG for a couple of days, Carter got to play outside in the snow for the first time (and actually roll in it). Last year we got snow, but Carter wasn't walking and having your little baby roll around in the freezing snow didn't really appeal to me. We have had so much fun with him in the snow this year. We got him the cutest little snow pants, bundled him up, and out we went. Oh my goodness I just love new things with Carter. He is so fun!

Carter waiting to go outside to play in the snow!

Daddy and Carter in the snow!

Mom pushed him in his car for awhile. It was hard to drive in snow!

My uncle Bill Lee is the new Utah County Commissioner. We are so proud of him, and it was so fun to go to his inauguration. Carter had fun running around with my cousins and it was nice to see lots of family including my grandma and grandpa.

Utah County Commissioner Bill Lee (with my grandparents)!

Carter got another hair cut and boy is my sister-in-law amazing. She cut his hair with scissors and he did so good. At the very beginning, there were a few tears. We had to distract him with his obsession... a ball!

Hair cut time!

Our favorite time of day is when daddy comes home from work! With in 5 minutes we are laughing, running around, and being silly. More then once we have ended up in our bed taking silly pictures and just hanging out together. I love my boys!

One of those fun moments taking silly pictures.

Moving to Utah, we decided we would no longer rent. It was the time for us to make a really grown up decision and become beyond broke for a long awaited house. Well, after a couple of weeks of looking, we entered the house that would make us broke. We are so excited to be home owners! What a rush it has been, and we get to move in next month! Here is to move number 9! Don't worry, there will be lots more pictures once we move in! We can hardly wait :)

Our new house! I took this right after we made the offer :)

My amazing little brother came home from his mission! We are so proud of him, and think he is amazing for serving in the Philippines and blowing us away with how much he has learned. We weren't able to be there at the airport, and haven’t seen him yet, but have gotten lots of talking in. In April Jason will finally have some time off and we’ll be able to see him for the first time in 2 years! The count down in on little bro.

My little bro and sis after Dyelan got off the plane!

This weekend Friday night date night turned into a family outing, and it was so much fun! We took Carter to a nickelcade and had a blast. Jason even got the jackpot and we won 1000 tickets. I’m pretty sure everyone was looking at us. Yay for daddy and getting us lots of toys :)

Daddy won 1000 tickets in 1 turn!

At the Nickelcade not really knowing what to do....

Saturday mornings are my mornings to have a girl’s day. My sister and I have started on an exciting project of making quiet books for our cute little kiddos. I just love it when I’m out and Jason sends me little messages to let me know he and Carter are thinking of me.

This was a picture of a text that said. CHEESE!

While Carter and daddy were out, they said We Love You!

Daddy and Carter went to the park and sent me a text saying, Hi mom, we love you!

First page in our quiet books.

I love being a mother to the cutest, sweetest, most polite little boy on the planet. Each day I am amazed at how much I have been blessed. Life is so good!

Isn't he the sweetest?!

Carter is the best big cousin. He gives Carmen hugs and kisses too <3

Happy 2015!

It seems like only 2 days ago I was frantically trying to get ready for Christmas, New Years, and Jason's 30th birthday celebration. I could hardly believe it was almost here! Now it's Jan. 2, 2015 and the start of another wonderful year. We sure had lots of fun, but some advice... never move in December. It make things crazy!

As you might have already read, Jason accepted a new job in Utah. They gave him a choice of when he would like to start and us being crazy and thinking about never paying a zillion dollars for rent again, decided that he would start December 8th. Bad. Idea. I am so happy we are where we are now, but my goodness, moving right before Christmas makes you feel as if you'll never be ready for it. Plus Jason wasn't able to get the time off for us to go to my parents house, so I was sad to hear that we would be having Christmas by ourselves. We had so much fun! Talk about the excitement of creating your own little family traditions :)

Growing up we never went out to eat. 5 kids just meant a circus and a huge bill so... we had the awesome tradition of going out to eat (it was Red Lobster at first but has changed since then) on Christmas Eve. We always had a magical time and even when we lived in New Mexico, it always seemed to snow the night we went. As kids we were convinced that was the only reason it snow, because we kept our tradition. Well, we decided that all of us kids would still keep the tradition even though we're all grown, have our own families, and weren't with our parents this year. We went to Olive Garden for dinner so it didn't snow lol, but we sure got a crazy winter storm later in the week. 

After dinner we went and looked at lights around the neighborhood, and headed to my sister's house to play games, visit, and reminisce in wonderful memories. We ended up leaving their house at about 11 pm! Carter loved the fact that he got to stay out so late :)

Carter and Taylor at our Christmas Eve Dinner.

All of us at Dinner Christmas Eve. 

Christmas morning was always a magical thing too. I was always so excited to see what everyone got, and we had the biggest breakfast of our lives on Christmas day. I must say it was a fantastic idea, because we'd get our cooking out of the way, and veg and play with our toys the rest of the day. Jason and I however, decided to switch it up a little bit. He and his mom would always have a big Christmas dinner on Christmas day. I thought, how fun would it be to have our favorite cereal for breakfast (we hardly ever eat cereal but it's our favorite) and then cook a huge Christmas feast! it was a wonderful day to remember, and I hope we keep our little family Christmas tradition forever :)

We google chat-ed with the rest of our family while opening presents. Technology is amazing!

Carter loved what we got from Santa :)

Carter was so good with opening his own gifts, it was so fun!

Carter and Jason, all ready for our Christmas feast.

Christmas night we got the best present of all! We were able to google chat with Dyelan! He is serving a mission in the Philippines and is doing so well. It was so awesome to actually see him while we were talking to him!

He only has 10 months left!!!!

Another family tradition we had growing up was looking at lights Christmas eve. While we still did that on Christmas Eve, we decided we really wanted to see the Hogle Zoo lights in Salt Lake City. Although it was so cold, Carter laughed and giggled, and loved looking at all the different creature made of lights. We also saw some of the animals and had a wonderful time.

Carter was all snuggled and warm in his stroller :)

Here is us in the gazebo. My goodness was it cold!

 After all of our wonderful Christmas creations, we then started preparations for New Years Eve and even more importantly Jason's 30th birthday (both the same day). I was going to plan a surprise party when all of my plans were blown. That's when we decided a family party with homemade pizza, some yummy cake and ice cream, and a new years count down would do the trick. We had so much fun and loved that everyone (siblings in Utah and their little families) were able to make it. They stayed until 2 am and Siehara ended up spending the night. It was so much fun!

Tain and Karalee making their pizza.

Andres and adorable little Carmen!

The cutest nephew ever, Taylor!

Siehara making her pizza, and don't worry Karalee we don't blame you for sneaking a pepperoni :)

Jason's dirty thirty birthday cake!

The birthday boy!

His favorite gift that was destroyed seconds later, an air plane :)

 Well, those were the holidays for us. I am so bummed Jason had to go back to work today, but I guess you can't just sit around a be lazy all the time. Here is to another year we are going to fill with wonderful memories. Happy 2015!

Change and all Its Glory

Well, I've only started this blog post about 1256563243 times and finally decided I had to finish it! I’m only a stay at home mom so I have all the time in the world to work on these posts right? Oh my goodness was my thought wrong. Our lives have gotten just a little bit more crazy than usual too.

The last time I did a post was in October! I certainly have a zillion things to catch you up on.

Carter and Jason playing with oobleck :)

Carter wearing mom's shoes!

Carter wearing dad's shoes!

Halloween

Our Halloween was a little crazy. We had a wonderful party of carving pumpkins with some less active members in our ward and the missionaries. It was super fun, and I was so excited to make our cute little costumes. We finally decided that Carter would be a police officer and Jason and I would be his prisoners! I had a lot of fun making our inmate shirts, and ordering Carter’s costume (I’m not that crafty) and it all turned out great. I was especially excited to walk around at the trunk or treat and show them off. Well…. Jason got home at his usual time, we inhaled dinner as fast as we could, got into costume, took pictures and were on our way. We were running about 30 minutes behind, but last year the entire community it seemed came to the trunk or treat and it went on until 9pm. As we pulled into the parking lot at 7, only 3 cars were left ha ha. We had missed the entire thing. As we drove home I was a little sad. We really didn't do anything for Halloween and all our friends did the smart thing and went out of town for the festivities, so we couldn't even crash someone’s party. Carter is in that stage though where he is afraid of everything, so it was probably good.

The time leading up to Thanksgiving

Well, after our Halloween extravaganza, Jason was contacted by Nestle for some more interviews. While I was going through my treatments, they had contacted him, but we really felt like it wasn't the greatest timing to switch companies and so we turned them down. Well, we were very surprised to hear that they had a different offer and wanted Jason to hear what they had to say. He had an all-day interview and the main HR manager left before Jason was even done, without saying goodbye. We thought that that was a very bad sign, but no worries because we were in need or want of nothing. It seems like a huge whirlwind, but a week later they had an offer. A day after that we accepted their offer, and a day after that we were house hunting in Spanish Fork UT.

The moving guys came Monday the week of Thanksgiving. It was the easiest move in my life, because I simply had to sit there and entertain Carter. The movers packed up everything! They ran all of our stuff and stuck it in a semi, and 4 hours later we were standing in an empty house. We didn't have much time to be sad though, because they needed us to be at our new place to unload the very next day. Monday they packed us up, Tuesday they unloaded at our new place, and Wednesday we left on our way to my Grandma’s for Thanksgiving. Talk about one of the craziest weeks ever!

The kiddos with their pumpkins!

Carter at the Halloween parade. 

We got all dressed up!

We made our costumes!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was wonderful! We were able to stay at my aunt and uncle’s in Nampa Idaho who I lived with during my student teaching. I love their family so much and it was so nice to chill with them for a few days. Carter loved all the attention he got, and I am quite sure I only saw him when it was time for his nap and time for bed.

We had Thanksgiving Friday afternoon instead of Thursday so everyone who was able to come would be there. We played games, ate so much food, ate pie right after everyone’s second helping, and we all got sick. Well not all of us, but we had to stay an extra day because Carter and I got the stomach flu. There is nothing worse than waking up to your sweet little boy puking all over himself in the middle of the night. Luckily it was only a 24 hour thing, and we got to stay an extra day with grandma and grandpa!

Moving

Monday after Thanksgiving was insane! We got back in just enough time to pump up our air mattress, put Carter down for the night, and then clean the master bedroom and bathroom in our old place. We were planning on staying the whole week to say our goodbyes and to get our house nice and clean for our land lords. After spending one night and a full day cleaning like crazy and living in an empty house, we decided we just needed to leave. I was able to say goodbye to some friends, and our neighbor across the street, but I was so sad that my epic girls’ night with all the awesome people I had come to know and love, never happened and we wouldn't have time. Wednesday Dec 3^rd we drove to our new place excited but so sad. Spring Creek was one of those amazing places that we hated at first, but realized we were meant to be there. We met so many wonderful people and it was always share a special place in our heart.  

A couple days after we moved in, we got the Christmas tree up!

My sweet little boy.

New Adventures in Spanish Fork UT

Well, this is our new home. It isn't my favorite, but we are planning on house hunting to buy a house in January. Another big grown up decision, and you know… I don’t like being a grown up anymore. We will definitely have many memories here. We just found out Jason doesn't get a lot of time off for Christmas, so in all 25 years of my life, this will be the first Christmas away from home. Except for I have to remember that where my parents live isn’t my home any more. The place I have with my wonderful husband Jason and my sweet little boy Carter; that is where home is. I am so blessed and have a wonderful loving Heavenly Father who has always been looking out for me. He was especially looking out for me when we were asked to move to Spring Creek Nevada. I wasn’t happy about that move, and I’m not very happy with this one, but change is always hard and what Heavenly Father has in mind for us may not be at all what we expected. Change is hard, but most of the time it ends up working out for the better. 

Here are those family pictures I promised forever ago :)