summer lovin'

June has pretty much consisted of the kinds of things my dreams are made of. And it's gone by in a flash!

Here's the Readers Digest version of all the things I've failed to blog about:

{Parks, Picnics, Sno-Cones, Walks}
We've spent plenty of time outside making up for the dismal spring we had this year... from afternoon walks and sno-cones with our best girls to Sunday afternoon picnics in the park and lots of time on the front porch, we're taking full advantage around here.

{2011- The Year of the Yard?}
Okay, that might be a bit too bold a statement, but we are finally trying to slowly get our arms around our decade long neglected yard. We're breaking it up into small sections and trying to get a handle on things. We actually have a few small areas of our yard that are finally starting to look "on-purpose". Someday it will all look that way, I hope. We even planted a garden this year... a very rookie garden, but a garden nonetheless.


{Excercise}
Thursday night tennis lessons are still pretty much my favorite thing I've done in a long time. I look forward to it all week long and am loving my night out with the girls, our awesome coach, breaking a sweat and learning the game!
I'm also loving my early morning walks to the H-Rock. A great way to start the day.... fresh air, incredible views and fantastic company...


{Self-Feeding}
Any chance I could just spoon-feed her until she's 12 and less likely to make a mess? Hmmm, didn't think so. Since it's inevitable...we're slowly starting to experiment with self-feeding... simple finger foods and small snacks. I'm not looking forward to messier things. at all.

{Sleepovers at Grandma's}

Keeping with our "year of the staycation", we've been spending lots of time at Grandma's house, which is pretty much like a vacation. CJ has been working and gone a lot this summer (between taking his turn as a weekend farmer at his family farm in Idaho to Youth Conference to playing in his dirt up the canyon... let's just say he's been busy), so LJ and I have taken off to go spend time with Grandma and Grandpa. It's pretty great... sometimes we don't ever even get out of our jammies down there and no one even cares.

We're also hard at work on a very special project down there that's keeping us busy.... more about that later.

{Hanging with Dada}

We've spent some time chasing CJ up the canyon to make sure he's well fed as he plays in the dirt and tinkers with his pipedream up at his lot.

{Swimming}

It wouldn't be summer without lots and lots of pooltime. We've taken full advantage of our friends with pools this year. I realize that this is the perfect summer with her. She's big enough to really enjoy getting wet and splashing in the pool, but still small enough to be content to just chill. She LOVES the floatie that we got her and seems to have masterfully perfected the art of "relaxing at the pool". Somehow I think next summer will be different. So in the meantime.... we're loving every minute of our chill pool time while it lasts.

{Reading}

Between reading with Leah (who also LOVES books) and reading on my own, we can't seem to get enough of good books around here lately. Nothing says summer like getting sucked into a great book. I'm reading a lot for my Book Club(s) as well as finally trying to catch up on my huge stack of "must-read" recommended books! It seems that as soon as I get through a couple in my stack, there are several more to add to it, but that's fine by me. That's what summers are for, right?!

{AND still looking forward to...}

So many fun things on our summer calendar in the weeks ahead... just to name a few:

Weekend "away" for CJ's birthday.

Deer Valley Concert. (love me some sound o' music)

4th of July Neighborhood Breakfast (good food, great views and an awesome slipnslide)

Lots more time working on my special project (it deserves it's very own post and then some)

More Tennis

More Swimming

More Picnics

Lots of outdoor cooking (we finally broke down and splurged on a grill. yippee)

Farmers Market (to supplement what we may or may not reap out of our own garden)

HP - 7.2

and more.

iheartsummer.

06.19.11

Father's are a daughter's first love and a son's first hero.

That couldn't be more true!

***

We were so blessed to spend Father's Day together and with our fathers and families.

I've come to appreciate my dad so much more than I ever though possible, now that I am a parent myself. I've always known that I was lucky, but wow.

CJ would say the very same about his own dad.

These men shaped who we are and what we believe in and care about.

***

And CJ... Oh my...

I've never loved Chris more than to see him as a dada with my sweet miraculous baby girl.

Pure.Love.

Happy Father's Day!

elles and sophies and teeth... oh my!

It's here... It's f.i.n.a.l.l.y here! The breakthough we've been waiting for...

Leah officially has her second front tooth!!

And to celebrate its much awaited arrival:

...we took a trip to the zoo to see how the real animals compared to her softer and squeakier versions...

We arrived at the same time as 3 busloads of pre-school kids. LJ was in heaven kicking, squealing and watching them in all of their 4yr old glory.

I'm pretty sure we could have left right then and she would have felt satisfied. It's honestly as excited as she ever got seeing the real attractions.


But mama needed her fix of friends first!



We met several of our friends to stroll, play and of course... PICNIC.

Love this bunch of cute kiddos and their mamas.

Leah got to.... pet (?) a coyote pelt.

(gross? yes, I know... but I'm trying really hard not to inflict my germ issues onto her quite yet)

And with the little time we had before the potential earlyafternoon8montholdmeltdown could rear it's ugly head... we made good time as we attempted to see as many animals as we could (although most of them were of very little interest to Leah).

She was pretty enamored by the tiger that was literally right in front of us and she also seemed pretty fascinated by the giraffe... a life-size version of her beloved Sophie!

All in all... it was a pretty good day with me and my littlemiss...

...even if she's still significantly more interested in the kind of animals she can chew on.

It'll come.

forts, swings, picnic and park...

It's all just a day in the life...

...at grandma's house!

Grandma & Trey built the coolest fort EVER this week... it took up her entire living room, used every dining room chair, every throw pillow they could find and nearly every blanket in the house. It was pretty much da bomb. Leah LOVED it. She loved the fort and she loved hanging out with her cousin Trey. He's so good to her and the two of them pretty much have the best grandma in the world.

After we got tired of lounging in the fort, we were ready for some fresh air... so Grandma packed us a yummy picnic with gourmet sandwiches and all the fixins and it was off to the park to enjoy the afternoon.

it was practically a perfect day...

...in every way!!


...and enough to tire this littlemiss right out!

all i want for... june?...

... are my two front teeth!

We're teething around here and it's been tough. Really tough.

It's probably been one of my toughest weeks since she was teeny-tiny.

Her two top front teeth are coming in. The left broke through on Sunday and the right is so close and is making her soooo miserable.

Her bottom teeth didn't seem to bother her at all when they came in. They both came in within 5 days of each other and with hardly even a hiccup in her normal schedule.

It's different this time.

fussy. sleepless. clingy. sad.

poor thing.

She's literally chewing on e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.

and a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g!

Can't we just have a breakthrough already?!

*



In other baby news (is there any other kind of news these days? sorry!), we lowered LJ's crib mattress this week.

No longer a newborn crib, she's now rockin' a big girl crib. :(

Although we weren't there quite yet, we knew that it was going to quickly become hazardous (I'm slowly learning that things like that sometimes happen even from one day to the next)

So, for once... we're finally ahead of the game!


***


and lastly...

HaPpY bIrThDaY to the best dad and grandpa in the whole.wide.world!

We Love You!

xox

eight

YEP... another month is in the books and the littlemiss is eight months old.

8eight8 whole months.

We took full advantage of the beautiful day today and celebrated from almost sun-up to sun down. The only bummer of the day is that daddy-o is out of town this weekend and missed out on all the fun. :(


(photo courtesy of Gina and Instagram)

I carted LJ along to cheer us on in a little pick-up game of tennis on our neighbors' court. She was a great cheerleader squealing and kicking each time the ball bounced and flew!
(BTW... still loving everysinglething about Thursday night tennis lessons with Coach Karl-with-a-K and the girls)

Pretty soon she got bored of hanging out, watching us play tennis so we needed to be on the move... we weren't quite ready to go back indoors, so we took a nice walk to the H Rock with G (another something I've been loving lately... 6:30am H Rock walks with the girls)

I think she was even happier than me to finally see the sun shining in these parts...

And by the time we got home.... look who was all tuckered out and fast asleep:

And as an added measure of celebration, today momma officially kicked off sno-cone season (in honor of the occasion of course).

Turns out they are just as yummy as I remembered!

A pretty good day if I do say so myself.

***

A few other highlights and newflashes from this past month:

She's big enough and sitting up well enough to ride shotgun in the carts as Costco. She looks pretty proud and happy to me.



She is literally rolling and scooching all over the place. No where near crawling... but figuring out how to get where she wants to go. It doesn't take her long at all to be under the furniture and across the room...

The days of leaving her to play unattended on the floor are pretty much gone.







She's drinking out of a straw like a pro. She figured it out about a month ago and can put down the water now like a lush. :)


Bringing the indoors out. :)

In addition to weekly playdates with cute Sawyer, we've also spent a few fun afternoons with some of our best girls, including Leah's cousin Lydi. This picture makes me so happy. I'm not sure two little girls could be any cuter. It's just going to continue to be more fun as they are finally starting to notice each other a little more! :)

And lastly, our little bathing beauty is still absolutely loving bathtime. Even her sourest of moods disappear when she realizes it's time for a bath. She's starting to throw a little attitude when it's time to get out and get dressed. We're having to let her stay in a little longer these days just to play and I have a feeling that's just going to get worse the older she gets. But when she gives me that little smile, somehow I don't seem to mind! :)

I feel like a broken record, but I can't say it enough....

I LOVE BEING HER MOM.

I feel so lucky and so blessed and so, so happy!

Happy Eight Month B-day Babyroo!

the year of the mini & stay 'cations

Every year since CJ and I have been married, we've saved for and splurged on a big, long vacation or two each year. Travel is something that we both LOVE to do... and it kinda seems like we don't function as well if we don't have some kind of trip on the horizon to look forward to.

Well this year is a bit different with a new littlemiss in tow... so we decided that it would be the year of the mini-vacations and close to home stay-cations. No super long flights, no super long trips but enough short close to home get-aways to keep our batteries charged! It's kind of a year-in-training of sorts for all of us and our new chapter of family vacations.

We started to wonder if the sun was ever going to shine this year in our neck of the woods... so for our long Memorial Day weekend, we decided we better go searching for it. It also gave us a chance test drive LJ's thoughts on roadtrips. Yikes.

We took off for St George on Friday morning, not knowing what to expect would happen in the backseat. Turns out, it wasn't pretty. She did great until about Spanish Fork (which by the way, is about 15 minutes past her longest car ride to-date) and then it felt like she screamed all the way to Beaver (I think there were a few short periods of reprieve in there... but they were definitely few and they were definitely short). We finally stopped to eat, stretch, feed and play which made that last hour to St George much more pleasant!!

(Thankfully our drive home on Monday afternoon was much more pleasant as she slept nearly the entire drive. thankyouverymuch)

I kept trying to tell her (through her tears and screams) that it would be worth it when we finally got to where we were going, but I think 7 1/2 months is still a little young to reason with?

Luckily... once we arrived, donned our swimsuits and hit the pool, she agreed that it was worth the drive and was nothing short of delightful for most of the weekend!!

We got her a pool floatie so she can relax, hang out and kick in the pool without having to be held. She LOVED it. She would kick and splash and then when she'd get tired she'd just lay her head down and relax. Several times she was would close her eyes and nearly fall asleep. I'm pretty sure she was thinking that life was pretty, pretty good! :)

When she wasn't in the pool, she was soooo good to just hang out in her stroller and watch all the people. It was heaven and allowed momma and daddy a little relaxation time to replenish our lacking vitamin d.

She's such a content, low-key baby most of the time.

It kills me how big she looks in this picture... sitting up by herself, sippin' a nice cold drink.

She's growing up waaayyy too fast for me.

*


One of my bffs lives in St George and we managed to get some together catching up and hanging out. We snuck off for Saturday morning pedis and left the daddies in charge for a little while. It was heaven and desperately needed!!

Saturday night we met Jill and her husband and enjoyed dinner at Benja Thai & Sushi. It was incredible! We even ran into another SLC bestie who was down there with his family for the weekend. It's a small world in a small town.

Sunday afternoon, Jill and Matt had us over for a delicious dinner and more great company! Leah LOVED all the attention from her adorable kiddos and she loved the loads of new toys that they shared with her.

Leah (sporting sweet potatoes), Paxton and Sena

A St George trip wouldn't be complete without a trip to the temple grounds. Such a beautiful temple. Unfortunately it was a little chilly that night and we weren't quite dressed for it... so a few quick photos was all that we got.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. Leah is getting to be such a good little traveller and doesn't seem to mind sleeping in all these strange jail cell type cribs....

(in fact, she even seems to like it)

even when it looks like she's clawing to get out...

(she's used to snuggling up against her bumper at home when she sleeps... here, the only thing to snuggle up against is cold metal bars with her limbs hanging out. somehow she didn't seem to mind)

The C*K*J's at the end of a warm, sunny and happy weekend together!

She's never seemed to love her crib more than when we finally made it home after that long drive!

Home*Sweet*Home

***As hard as I tried to run away, hide and ignore it, another birthday seemed to find me on our journey (I'm now officially closer to 50 than 20, sigh). The good news of it all is that I was spoiled rotten with treasures, treats, suprises, love and well wishes. Thanks to everyone for all the love!

XOX