Longer...but still so skinny

Ada was finally able to wear some of the clothes that Grammie McLaughlin and Aunt Sarah brought. They are 3-6 months, like the rest of the clothes she is now almost growing out of, but the jeans they brought would not fit our skinny child. Josh just remarked the other day that our daughter has skinny little chicken legs, but with us for parents...I wonder where she gets it from?
She has also started playing more with her toys. She has held them in the past, but has not had much patience for them. Now, however, she will hold, scrunch, bite (or really gum), drool and whatever else she can think of to do with them. She even has a lobster teething toy she loves from Grammie, but will only chew on one side of it (and yes a lobster, rare and I am assuming hard to find, but Josh said she had to have it so she could know her heritage). Anyway, enjoy the pics!

What else can I do but share?

Ada has done so many cute things this week that I have been snapping pictures at just about anything she does! So what can I do with so many pictures, and who would want to see all of them? Why share them of course, as I am sure all the avid readers of this blog will also want to see all the newest batch of pictures I could conjure up. So without further ado...here they are!

Yes...my head is a drum
I don't know why, but I love her yawning pictures!
Now while in her bouncer, she will do a sort of reverse break dance worm move and slowly wriggle herself almost off of it! You think maybe we should strap her in?...

Aunt Devin not so amused
Josh loves to do this...he balances her on his hand. It's their parlor trick.
Something Ada has been doing in every outfit she has on (which makes it difficult with onesies and one piece outfits, but that doesn't mean she won't try!)
Sometimes it seems she is playing peek-a-boo...
In her gym having tummy time

Don't forget to check out the two new videos!

Family pics and a new hairdo

Hello All! Some of you have asked for a new family picture so...we just took one. Ada is the little monkey we all know and love, (and she will be a monkey for Halloween too; we just got her costume from Old Navy) and I just got my hair cut from my friend Stephanie who works at Evan Hairstyling College- which is one of the three hairstyling colleges in this very small city.

We have also discovered that Ada loves to watch Law and Order. And while I am struggling with whether or not this is a good thing, it helps me to be able to leave her in her bouncer and get things done! Josh says maybe this means she will be a lawyer, so we will just have to wait and see. However, once it is time for a commercial, she will tend to look anywhere but the TV. She went to the pediatrician last week for her first round of immunizations, and was only a little fussy so I didn't medicate her as soon as she got home like the nurses said. She is a tough cookie though! She didn't cry-she screamed- but I did. I hate needles and so it is tough to see her go through that. But she is 12 lbs and just over 24 inches! She is a little weed!

Our Family
Ada loves this! The person holding her just doesn't like it when she drools...
Ada has picked this up lately. Josh says it's Baby Power (kind of like Black Panther Power without the hostility), but I think it's from the videos she watches where they tell her to put her hands up.
Dad and Ada wrestling...any guesses who won?
Good Morning

My new hairdo

Until Next time!

My September 11th story

I know that this date has become the "What were you doing when Kennedy was shot story" of our generation, where everyone commiserates about what happened to them on this day seven years ago, but a lot happened that day for my family too.
I was in Philly at the time, taking my older brother Britt to the airport as he was leaving for his mission that day. As luck would have it, he was leaving very early that day and we, my whole family and I, were there to see him off. My little sister Skye, was very young at the time and she was playing in the little play area right next to my brothers' gate (remember when you could actually see someone come and leave while you were outside the gate door?). Mom says for everyone to say goodbye to britt, and so Skye comes running over, but trips, falls and busts her head on some plastic part of the apparatus and gives herself a HUGE cut on the head, which of course bled everywhere. My mom, torn between helping Skye and seeing Britt leave, tells my other brother Perry to get some napkins from the nearby Burger King for her head.
Skye was being helped by the medical staff there at the airport, until they told us she needed to go to the hospital. So, there we are, happily driving to the hospital until Britts' then girlfriend, now wife, calls frantically asking if we had listened to the news and if Britt was on that plane.
We flipped on the news and found out what was happening in New York. Tragic as it was, Britts' plane would not have gone north to go to Salt Lake. Insert sigh of relief here.
So Mom decides to drop off Devin and Perry at school as there is nothing else they can do. But when we are dropping Perry off, we hear about the plane downed near Pittsburgh, and Mom looses it. We want to make sure it wasn't Britt, but he was leaving on his mission, so he had no cell phone (plus, this was back in the day when everyone did not have cell phones-usually one per family-I know scary right?).
So my Mom, dealing with Skye in the hospital and now thinking Britts' plane could have been downed, calls the airline-which I am sure was fielding about a million calls at that point. According to them, Britt was somewhere in the Midwest, St Louis I think. And as we are finalizing things with Skye, Britt calls from PHL airport. The story with him was that apparently the first plane hit the tower and word got to nearby PHL just before his plane took off and they grounded all planes. However, they also closed off the city as we were close to NYC. So, no one was getting in or out. So, how to get to him? Well, my Mom called a close friend in our ward and she bullied her way into Philly to get him. But then the next hurdle...as he has no cell phone...how to know where he is? And this lady also had to small children keep in mind. So she paged him, over and over again until Britt, who was never a great listener (haha) finally heard her and they came home.
As you can imagine, much crying, hugging and all around good stuff at our home, until we all realized...how was Britt to get to the MTC? They grounded all flights for a long time, and with Britt being set apart...being at home was slightly excruciating. So, Britt takes a Greyhound bus from PA to SLC, arriving at the MTC so nasty and stinky that even the uber-sweet MTC receptionist tells him where he can get some fresh clothes and for heavens' sake a shower.
So what did we all learn from this ordeal? Everyone needs a cell phone, don't let your kids play in those hazardous airport playgrounds (which they really don't have anymore so all you moms out there can rest easy), and always always answer pages in the airport.
So that is what I was doing that day, not the saddest thing to happen that day by far, but stressful nonetheless. But those who know our family well would expect no less! But as we all look back seven years ago, we can all be thankful for our families, our friends and for all those who helped save people by performing selfless acts of the best kinds of service there is. And I hope that the people who thought doing such a task would weaken our country, and our resolve have seen that they were sadly mistaken. As everyone remembers seven years ago's Sept 11th, we think of pain, sadness, loss, but also unification. God Bless the USA!!!

An anniversary and a vacation

We just came back from vacation to Bear Lake Utah, where we used our Garmin for the first time, thanks Papa! It was a great drive and Ada slept the whole time. It kind of reminded us of our trip from PA to Idaho last year around this time, until we reminded ourselves that indeed there was a baby in the backseat! It was great at Bear Lake. It was a bit colder than Rexburg as we were so close to the water, which by the way, was incredibly blue for a lake. Another great commodity for the area are their raspberries.
I was a bit skeptical as I thought, raspberries are raspberries, but I was mistaken! We went out to eat on Wednesday to the Bear Lake Trapper Steak House, and there were stuffed bears and other outdoorsy trapping acoutrements everywhere. So what did we have at the steak house?...why seafood of course! And according to the reigning seafood expert we so happened to have with us, (aka my loving husband Josh) it was really good! That was my first time having crab legs and I loved them -and I am assuming that Ada didn't mind either as when she ate later she had no qualms.
Ada also had her very first time in a pool and there were a bunch of rowdy- and somewhat trashy- kids and adults jumping in and splashing her. So while she wasn't screaming bloody murder, she didn't seem to like it that much. But we were not giving up! I lived a lot of my life around water-mainly beaches in FL-so Ada was not going to harbor a fear of water on my watch! So we tried again early the next morning and we were met with much more success (please see additional videos). As we left, we decided to sample the famous raspberry shakes they advertised at every shop in town, which was a lot! And they were sooooo good! We were so glad to get away, even for a few days to enjoy our second year anniversary and to have Ada with us!

Josh and Ada, admiring the scenery
It has been getting a lot colder here already! Here is Ada in her new lightweight bear jacket.

the view from our patio
our hotel
Master of the grill!
New bathing suit and swim cloth diaper! The diaper worked great!

Bye Bear Lake!