North to Alaska

As of 12:15am Saturday May 14th Alaska has become our new home for the summertime (we'll be here until August 29th). Jay thankfully found another internship and since this, out of numerous others that he has applied for, been the only one to offer him an internship we didn't want to possibly miss our only opportunity so we jumped at the chance and took off once again for an Alaskan adventure. The weather has been cloudy and wet since we got here but the sun is starting to come back out and the temperature's starting to rise so we're crossing our fingers for a nice relaxing summer full of work, fishing, hunting, and spending time with family. The most recent adventure that has been undertaken was a bout of black bear hunting. Jay and his dad (along with a few other people) flew across the bay and on Friday Jay was able to bring down a bear. From what has been described it's quite a beaut standing almost 6 feet tall. The King's are starting to come in also so starting Monday we're going to start fishing in hopes of catching on of these monsters. I'll write longer, more descriptive posts of our adventures here as time goes on but for now enjoy the view that we get to look at every day outside our kitchen window ;-D.

Date Night

This will be a short post since it's 11:30pm and I'm beat but I wanted y'all to know just how sweet my hubby was this Friday.

He kept the details of this date a secret from me for almost a month. Michael got a babysitter so that we could have an enjoyable and relaxing time together alone plus it was going to be an outside activity according to Jay so we didn't want him to get to chilled (it is still winter here ya know... mid 30s are the high as of late). Well after dropping Michael off at a friends place we drove to campus where the activity was going to first start. From there we drove about 10min until we arrived at our destination, a volunteer's farm. We got to go on a relaxing sleigh ride with a fun group of students and eat chicken alfredo cooked outside under the shelter of a large sheep herders tent, it was tons of fun, met some really nice people, and the horses were massive Percherons ... sigh* I miss being around horses, aside from our toes freezing we had a nice relaxing evening together. Okay so it doesn't sound like a very spectacular date but we had a lot of fun on it (which honestly is all that matters) plus it was nice taking a break, just the two of us. Michael was very well behaved with Torrey and had tons of fun with her (though he was pretty excited to see us when we went and picked him up) Well gotta run ta ta for now

**WARNING** Due to the graphic nature of this post viewer discretion is advised ...

Today started out like any other day ... not enough sleep (thanks to baby growing pains), no time for breakfast, Jay rushing out the door to get to school, me wishing I could fall back asleep but the crying baby in the room next to mine begs to differ ,,, etc. etc. So around 1pm Jay comes home from school to drop off my car that we had lent to a friend of ours the previous evening. He had a buisness seminar at 2pm that he didn't want to miss so after wolfing down some homemade mac n' cheese he grabbed his backpack and headed out the door to walk the 12minutes that it takes to get to school. When he left I was in the restroom watching Michael standing up by the tub, it was about his nap time so I went out to the living room to get something (can't remember what now-oh and by the way this was probably 10 or so minutes after Jay had left) when I just happened to glance out our window and see Jay on the sidewalk by our apartment fiddling with his phone, I was like "great, he accidently dropped his phone and it's now busted bet he's really ticked right now." So to see what was up I opened our window and yelled down to see if he was okay. Imagine my shock when he yelled back that he had broken his leg ... "WHAT!!!!" I knock on our neighbors door and ask her if she could watch Michael for a few minutes for me then I rush downstairs to my fallen husband. Sure enough the moment I get close to him I can tell right away that he was right about the broken leg I mean it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when the leg is pointing in the opposite direction that there's something not quite right. He had already called an ambulance (hence the fiddling with his phone) and about 10 or so minutes later they pull up to my now poor agonizing husband. After the ambulance takes him to the hospital I load Michael up and we both head on over there as well. To make a long story short he ended up breaking his fibia and badly dislocating his tibia and hence had to be taken into to surgery to place a metal plate into his ankle to give it the proper support once it was fully healed. It took about 3 hours before he was able to go in for surgery (2 other ankle breaks were before him ... hmmmm go figure) and now he's having to spend the night in the hospital for observation but thankfully he should be able to come home in the morning. He's doing well just very tired (thanks to the anethesia and pain meds) and of course pretty uncomfortable.

FYI: Michael is still recovering from the flu but is doing much better (despite the fact that he chose to barf all over me, the floor, and himself while we were at the hospital ... lol he acted pretty pleased with himself the little stinker).

***NOTE*** If you have a weak stomach do not look at these













Okay I had to show at least one cute picture to help make up for the others :-)

First Thanksgiving

Today was Michael's first thanksgiving, and ours as new parents. What a true blessing it is to have him in our life, especially with the inital trial that we went through with him when he was born. Though we;ve experienced many trials this year as a family we still have been extrememly blessed and I'm truly grateful to God for all that he has blessed me and my family with.

This thanksgiving was a day of firsts ...
First thanksgiving for Michael
First thanksgiving as parents
First thanksgiving without family

Though it wasn't a complete lost, we still got to spend it together and also got to spend time with a new friend. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie, potato rolls, stuffing, corn, and homemade apple pie yum yum (my first time making a pie, tasted oh so yummy). We did have one downside to the evening; right before we left we noticed some water dripping down from one of the cubboards so we went upstairs to see what was going on and low and behold we find the upstairs bathroom covered in about 2 inches of water ... dozen towels later and a shop vac to suck up all the water and we finally got it all cleaned up and the pipes fixed so the water would run through them properly (they got a bit frozen due to the extremem temperature drop the previous evening). Definitely a memorable thanksgiving :-)

Gosh it's been ages!

So since it's been so freakin' long I better add a few updates before pressing onward with the pictures.

1) School has started back up again and for poor Jay the work never ends

2) Michael is now 6 months old and he can ...
- Sit up compeltely unassisted
- Is trying to sit up on his own while lying down (work in progress)
- Trying to rock himself up onto all fours
- Jabbering nonstop
- Smiling and laughing constantly
- When not smiling/laughing he's whining and wishing to be held by mommy (sigh*)
- Absolutely LOVES eating solids (one that he really wishes to try but just can't yet is pizza ... goes to show you that he's certainly my son)
- Grabs at everything (he especially likes the feel of the cats fur)
- Sit up in the bathtub on his own now (makes washing his hair so much easier)
- Found his toes and now sucks on them
- Now has 2 bottom teeth (which are pretty darn sharp by the way)

3) I'm trying to get back into shape (work in progress) ... BYU-I holds some free exercise programs in the evenings that I've been trying to go to (Turbo kick and yoga are the 2 that I'll be doing)

4) Went apple picking for the first time after recently finding out that BYU-I orchards are opened to the public (did you know that they have over 100 different types of apples growing in their orchards! ... because we went so late in the season most of the trees were picked clean but the few apples that we did get were very delicious --- Michael even agreed)

Now ... Onto pictures ...

Michael enjoying the sweet nectar of a BYU-I apple



Future Linebacker

Newest pictures of our chubby guy

So Michael will be 4 months old next week (HOLY COW! time is flying by so fast) so I thought I'd add the newest pictures of our little chunky monkey ... Enjoy :-D

MOM! I'm naked!

Holding his bottle all by himself

Such a big boy siting up on his own

And they call it ... Puppy Love

Michael has this little dog, that his grammie Mangum got him, that hums "rock a bye baby" when you pull it's tail. He absolutely LOVES this little dog and will fall asleep while it plays its little song. This little pup has saved us many pouty fits and is a sure bet to crack a smile or laugh. Hope y'all enjoy the video :-)