5 months

Dear Abby,

Its been five months since you came into the world. It has been a fun five months! You have changed so much from that tiny little thing we brought home. You have filled our lives with so much laughter. You are hilarious. I love to make you laugh, and I do it as much as I can every day. You have the most beautiful smile. It reaches your whole face, especially your eyes. It melts my heart every time. You have been doing so many new things. You are almost sitting up, which is wonderful because you love to be up where you can see what is going on. You love to kick anything that is close to you. You also love to pat everything and everyone with your hand. When you get excited you just start patting/hitting whatever is closest to you with your little hand. You love my hair and you are usually pulling on it, sucking on it or just have your hands in it. You love to listen to music, especially Taylor Swift, Christmas Music (even though its only october), and you love BINGO, Old McDonald had a Farm, Book of Mormon Stories and Little Bunny Foo Foo. We sing these songs a lot! You can roll over, but it scares you so you don't do it very much. You still love watching baby mozart. You love doggies, or anything that is furry and moves. Your favorite book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. You smile and laugh every time I read it to you. We tried to videotape me reading it to you but you love the camera more and would only look at the camera. You like to be the center of attention. If no one is talking to you, or if I'm talking to someone else you usually start talking really loud to remind me of who is most important. You get really excited when your Daddy gets home from work. Your little personality is so much fun, I can tell that you are going to be a go getter. You like to be busy, and it keeps me busy. You are beautiful and perfect and I am so grateful that I am your mother. I have learned so much these past five months. I am so grateful for the time that I get to spend with you. I will never have just this one on one time that I have with you, with any of my other children. It's so special and I love it. I am really looking forward to these next months and all the fun stuff that they will bring. 

I love you

Mom

Almost sitting up! Getting so strong!

Riding bikes with mommy at ToysRUs 

Chaos

The computer hog finally left the computer at home so I can finally do a real update. Well first off Abby and I are VERY proud of Kyle. He interviewed at the dental school in Buffalo in September and just started a job last week with KAY jewelers. He is going to be very busy for the next 7 weeks, with school, work and church stuff. We couldn't be more proud of how hard he works...but we do miss him when he is gone. I just love looking at these two cute faces as much as I can.

Abby is growing up so fast its crazy! She started eating rice cereal when she was 4 months old.

She started out not loving it to much. But once she figured out what we were doing she started loving it more and more. She will be five months next week and we can start giving her veggies! Super exciting and I think she will love it... or I might just get more of this face.

Last week my parents and my little brother Carson went to Africa with the group Hope Arising to do humanitarian work. Kyle and I went with them a couple years ago but with Kyle in school and with me and little Abby we weren't able to go. So we contributed to the group by watching Lacee, Halee and Tragdon. It was crazy and very fun. It started out rough because Abby had a cold and just wanted to be held which was hard when I had other kids to take care of.

We had Tragdon's soccer game. He had trouble with the net...

I think this picture embodies how he felt about soccer that day. When we asked him why he wasn't getting the ball he told us the yellow guys were mean and kept taking it away from him. Apparently he needs to learn how to be competitive, I didn't get any of that competitiveness either.

Abby had a fun time at the game, the weather was beautiful!

At the end of the week we went to the Arizona Natural History Museum in downtown Mesa. It was really fun! They have some really cool things there. We panned for gold!

And saw some really cool big dinosaurs. This is Halee, my little cousin Lynlee and her friend Lexi that came with us.

We watched a movie almost every night and had "treat bowls". I've been making treat bowls for my little sibs since Carson was a little boy. Whenever I would baby sit we would watch a movie and I would pop popcorn and put it in a bowl and then I would but different kinds of candy on top of the popcorn. They all love it and it was for them to pick out different candies for us to use during the week. We watched Tangled, How to Train Your Dragon and The Lion King! Everyday we would plug my phone into the intercom and listen to the Selena Gomez Pandora station while we cleaned up the house. Selena Gomez = Awesome.

We had a really good time, and some fun adventures. Every time my parents leave something goes wrong. Someone always gets sick (this time it was Abby) and a TV breaks, or we have ended up in the ER on more than one occasion. So we were anxious to find out what the big adventure would be this time. Originally we wanted to go to the museum on Wednesday and I had all the kids ready to go. Everyone's shoes were on (which is a HUGE task) and I was going to put some things in the car and turn it on before I loaded everyone up. And the car wouldn't start. The kids were devastated. So devastated that they were almost all in tears. It was not fun, but that night my uncle came over and helped us get a new battery in it. Always an adventure but I will take a broken car over a trip to the ER any day.

I am so grateful for my family. I am so proud of my parents that sacrifice so much to help others. I am so grateful for the time I had to spend with my little brothers and sisters and the memories I was able to make with them.