Last minute trip!

So as I mentioned in my last post, I kept feeling like I needed to get all of my Christmas preparations done early. It was a good thing I did! I flew out to Utah on December 18th with Lily and we decided in a quick decision to have Merrick drive out later with Avery and Camryn so we could all be in Utah for the holidays! Whew! So I had basically two days to pack myself and Lily up for our flight, wrap all our Christmas presents and box them up, do all the laundry in the house, grocery shop for Merrick while I was gone plus snacks and things to do for his trip, get library books for the trip, and make a bunch of lists for him to be able to pack the car up himself, etc. etc. I was so stressed and exhausted!! But everything got done and I was able to get on the plane and relax.

I actually met up with my sister Britney in Minneapolis and we flew from there to SLC together. It was a quick flight being able to fly with my sister!! We had a great time chatting away and being just us plus Lily, who did quite well on the flights. After the funeral we spent one night at my Haws grandparents house in Salt Lake. It was a nice visit and it was fun watching my Grandpa Haws interact with Lily.


She got one of his famous horsey rides, that pretty much every grandchild and great grandchild of my Grandpa has gotten multiple times! They loved her and everyone kept telling me I had such a good baby and that made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. Plus I think her chubby cheeks got kissed by so many different people on this trip it’s a wonder she didn’t catch something!
The next day, Britney flew back to Iowa and I went up to Bountiful to spend a few days with my in-laws. Merrick drove out on Tuesday and got there Wednesday afternoon. Everything went smoothly on his drive – 21 hours with just him and my two sweet girls! The only hiccup was Avery getting carsick at one point but she amazingly threw up in a plastic bag and kept it all contained! That was lucky – it could have been a big mess!
While at the Smith’s house I decided to make some sugar cookies and the girls decorated them for me with frosting and fruit snacks. :)


On Friday we went down to my parents house they were renting in Orem and waited anxiously to hear some news from my sister Ashley! She was in labor at Timpanogos Hospital having her first baby. After a long labor she finally gave birth at 4am on Christmas Eve to Rose Margaret Wells. She was a teeny tiny 7 lb 0 oz! It was so fun to be there to see her and when I held her it felt like holding a cloud, she was so light! She was so beautiful and perfect!

It was a great first week of our trip! I’ll blog about the second week we were out of town very soon!

My Sweet Poppa…

Right after Thanksgiving I kept getting the feeling that I needed to get all my Christmas shopping/preparations done early. I knew my grandfather’s condition was deteriorating due to his lymphoma he had been diagnosed with early in the year. On December 15th I woke up to a text from my dad saying he had passed away during the night.

Lily and I flew out to Salt Lake City on Sunday, December 18th and then we drove up to Bancroft, Idaho with my sister, brother, and sister-in-law. The funeral was on Monday, December 19th.

My Poppa was just the sweetest man. Always so genuine and loving and he treated my Granny so well. It was so nice to be there with my family for the funeral to hear more about the wonderful life he lived. I was lucky to live nearby him as a child so we got to spend a lot of time with them, while we all lived in Oregon. They retired to Idaho and built the most amazing round house. I got to spend a few minutes there again this trip and take a few pictures. The round house:

And my Poppa’s beloved windmill. He spent years collecting parts for this and in October he was able to be there to watch family and friends put it up for him.

The valley in Bancroft is so peaceful and has a much slower pace of life.

I was so glad to be there for my grandfather’s funeral, to see a lot of family I haven’t seen in a very long time, and to be there for my mom and my Granny.

We love you so much Poppa! I know we will see you again!

More on my beliefs here.

Elf on the Shelf!

So I’ve been taking pictures of the funny places that our Elf on the Shelf, Doodle, has been showing up every morning. Here is a rundown of the past week and a half.

We opened him up and gave him his magic by naming him Doodle on November 23rd.

The next day he left a message for us on the Magna Doodle (get it? Doodle?!).

Ever since he has been showing up in funny places doing funny things. Dressed up in Aurora’s dress one day:

Then he was found hugging our Santa ornament the day after we put up our tree.

Another day we discovered he had dyed the toilet water green! Or maybe he had just used the toilet…

One of my faves was when he “doodled” on the girls pictures. He’s there on top of Camryn’s picture guiltily holding a dry erase marker.

Once we found he had started a puzzle for the girls to help him finish.

And he was an especially naughty elf last night because we woke up to this:

He had TP’d the tree! So funny. I didn’t take pictures of a few other days. One day we found him in the freezer, chilling out to remind him of the cold North Pole. Another day he had brought some Christmas vinyl placemats for the girls. And another day he had gotten out the girls blocks and set up a little block house for himself. It’s been something fun to look forward to every morning for the girls!

School Cheers

(I meant to publish this post on Monday but was having technical difficulties with the video upload so you got my Monday ramblings instead – sorry.)

So Avery has been learning these cute, quick cheers that they use in her class at school. Each day there is a “special helper” who documents the date, weather, etc for the class. When they’re done they get to pick which cheer the class does for them. They learned a new one every week for the first few weeks of school. When Avery started sharing these with us, we thought that they were so cute, so Merrick decided they needed to be captured on video on his phone. Here they all are. Not the best quality video but you get the gist.

Avery’s cheers she learned in Kindergarten

4 months!

My little Lilykins is 4 months old today! I can't believe it. She's so sweet and wonderful and I've loved every minute of the last 4 months with her! Sometimes when I look at her I get that deja vu feeling. I wonder if it's because she looks like my other babies or if I remember her from heaven. :) My friend Jen always calls her "cherubic." She really is an angel!

So this is what's new with Lily:
- She rolled over one time!! A couple Sundays ago I put her on her side on the floor and she rolled herself over onto her tummy. Then I put her on her back and she rolled all the way over all by herself. However, ever since then she won't even roll over when I help her onto her side. So it was kind of a fluke.
- She spits up quite a bit. I don't think she has reflux though because she's not bothered by the spitting up, but man we sure do clean up spit up a lot.
- I'm not sure exactly how much she weighs yet (doctor appointment is on Thursday) but I think it's around 16-16.5lbs. We've moved into size 3 diapers already because she was having a blowout pretty much every morning in size 2's. I've been tempted to pull out her 6-9 month clothes but I decided to wait another week or two. Her 3-6 month clothes are fitting nice and snug now!
- She's eating about every 2.5-3 hours and takes 2-3 naps a day. Sometimes she'll wake up in the middle of a nap but I can get her back to sleep usually, so she's doing longer naps for me that way. At night she sleeps from about 8-1 and 1-5:30 and sometimes she'll be up for the day at 5:30, which is not my favorite idea. Most days she'll go back to sleep until 7:30, though.
- I wouldn't say that she's full on teething yet but I can see her drooling increasing and I can see her teeth coming down. I think with my other girls I could tell when the teeth were coming soon because the front of their shirts was constantly wet with drool. We're not there quite yet.
- She loves attention and will be all smiles and giggles with you if you talk to her. Lately I've seen her laughing at Camryn, which is new because Camryn is usually too crazy to calmly giggle and coo with her.
- She really loves toys right now. Anything she can get in her mouth. Rattles and the like. I gave her one of my silicone spatulas the other day and she was in heaven chewing on that.

We love our sweetie and can't wait to see what the next four months bring!