Vacation!

I am sorry that I have been a terrible blogger for the past two weeks! We have moved from California and are on our way to Utah again. We have made a few pit stops in St. George, Spanish Fork, and we are now in Idaho Falls. We get to move into our new apartment on the 2nd so we are excited! We are so excited to see all the family and friends we have missed for so long!

Little Miss Avery is just a growing away. She has had a lot of fun visiting new people and seeing her cousins! She has had some new milestones since last time I blogged. She has rolled off the bed 3 (yes 3!) times. SAD! I woke up to her one morning standing up in her crib, staring at me with a cute little grin. She can sit up by herself- she will be on her tummy and push up to sitting position. Both being able to stand and sit have made the beginning of nap times a little interesting. Avery will also wave and moth of the time it is in response to someone waving at her. Today was a big day: Avery started taking crawling steps in a row for the first time! She has scooted her way around until now, but now that there is more space at Grandma's house I think she has a reason to crawl so she has! Yay! Here is a little clip of her first little crawls. Everytime I put the camera down she would crawl really well, but I finally caught a little on the camera. The video at the end goes weird, so sorry! But enjoy! She is a cutie!

I will post the last of our pictures from Cali and also pictures from the trip soon. Love all of you!

Paralympics 2012

I always get excited when there are races going on (I LLOVE racing but HATE training) and Michael Phelps (14 gold medals... no bronze) and Dara Torres (she is 41 with a 2 year old) has gotten to me. I have talked to Michael about how we can work this into our lives and it might just work. I'm not saying yes for sure, but I am leaning more that way than no. Who can stop with just a bronze? We're going for the gold baby! Well, we'll see. We still have 1472 days left to go.

I am probably going to regret this post by the way.

Girl's Morning Out

This was a couple weeks ago, but I am just super behind on blogging. Sorry folks. Lately Avery and I have been taking walks to get out of the house. Sometimes we even have the car so we can go to a park and walk around. I finally remembered to take the camera to one of our girl's mornings out. This is at a park called 'Breakfast In the Park'. We saw ducks and fed them Avery's stale Cheerios, we walked around, and Avery went swinging for the first time. She was kind of in a daze this morning, I think she was kind of tired, but she seemed to like the swinging. Look at her cute little socks. Grandma Adams gave those to us before she was bor and she finally fits into them. I love them!
This is us walking around on the track. She is so cute! I love that little baby!
After walking around in the park we stopped off at Jamba Juice and got a smoothie and banana oat cake. Avery loves the food and smoothies. Go figure... just look at those cheekies!
I love my little baby! We are the best of girlfriends! We always have fun together. Although I want to keep her small forever, I am excited for when she is older and we can have conversations and go shopping! More fun to come for sure!

Knott Just Monday...

Nope, not at all. It was actually one of the best Mondays ever. One of our best friends, Lindsi, came to stay with us Saturday to Tuesday. I know, serious fun. We decided to be super crazy and go to Knott's Berry Farm. On Monday Michael went to work early and left after a half day and then we made our way 20 minutes down the road to Knotts. We left Avery with a young women from our ward. Michael and I felt like kids again. We were running ride to ride and basking in the freedom of not having to lug around Avery (though we do love her dearly, sometimes it is nice to get out without having to worry about making her comfortable). This is Michael and I before our first ride. I was so dang excited. I think that Michael and Lindsi should have been brother and sister growing up. But then maybe their parents wouldn't have made it. Monday turned out to be a great day to go to Knotts because there were barely any lines. This is a picture of one of the few times that we spent in line. Cute, huh? My favorite part of Knotts was sitting between Michael and Lindsi on the rides. The things they said were priceless... here is just a little snippet:
Michael: "I am so scared, and I am a man!"
Lindsi: "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this..." throughout the whole ride. When we got off the ride she told us it was her favorite. Oh Linds.
So I wish that this next picture were a full body shot, but what more can you ask from a 16 year old girl that could barely figure out how to take the picture? As we were waiting in the line for the water ride we were trying to figure out where on the ride would get us the least wet. We never came to a conclusion and we were assigned seats so it didn't really even matter. Well it turned out that we sat in a spot that got a ton of water. Especially Lindsi's seat. Note to self: Don't wear white pants to an amusement park. Lindsi and I did not get this note and we both wore white shorts. Bad news bears. For more reasons than I will discuss...
Michael and Carly, so hot right now. We found this secluded waterfall in a cave in line waiting for the log ride. The log ride was supposed to be a high attraction of the park, but we were left disappointed.
Poor little Avery had to stay at home. Maybe in 10 years we will be fun parents and bring her to Knotts.
Knotts was so dang fun. We started off strong but after 6 hours we were dead and ready to go home. I didn't think I was going to be able to walk the next day, but I did! YAY!

Lindsi left the next day and we were sad. It was so fun to have someone to share my day with! After I dropped Lindsi off I got home but locked my keys in the car. Boo. The landlords were able to let me in, thank heavens. I waited for Michael to come home to open the car to give me my keys, but he had to stay at work late. He got home at 7 the next morning. Yep, you heard it, he worked 24 hours straight. What a man!

Yummy Treat

http://www.bakeorbreak.com/2008/05/08/brownie-peanut-butter-cups/

Just so you know, this is not a link. I can't figure out how to make it not be one. Oh well. I have made these a few times and they are pretty good. The next time I make them I think I am just going to use a brownie mix instead of the homemade brownie recipe in here. I feel like the mix is more moist and chewy. So I will let you know how it goes. But in the mean time make these and enjoy every last crumb!

Can you guess...

We are preparing for our visitor with a 12 pack of this in the fridge:

Can you guess who it is?

Happy Anniversary!

I just wanted to wish my Mom and Dad a Happy 30th Anniversary. They are the crazy nuts that started our crazy family. Why they ever thought it was a good idea to have 8 kids I have no idea, but I am glad they did. I feel lucky to have them as my parents. Thanks Mom and Dad for all you do for each of us!

8 Months and Lovin' It

Well usually... Every time I got my camera out to take pictures of Avery she was sad. Probably because the first time she was in need of a nap and the second time she was in super need of going to bed. So the first two pictures are of her today and she doesn't have her huge grin on, but still looking as cute as ever.

Avery's little personality shines through more and more each day. She is really good about playing by herself. I think most times she would rather play by herself and just have me sitting by her. But she does love Peek-a-boo and being tickled. She thinks it is hilarious when we put things on our head and loves it when we jump with her in our arms. I think one of her favorite things to do is to go out and watch people (just like her dad). Whenever we go anywhere she just takes it all in and will stare at people and just watch them. It is funny to see her face and reaction when she watches those around her. Along with her awareness of other people, she has become a mama's girl. She is a clinger. She will smile and talk and have fun with whoever as long as Mom is holding her. Most of the time she will go to Michael and be happy but we have had a couple experiences where that wasn't the case. Mike makes fun of me and tells me that I love it because I am her favorite (I do... most times). Well for her 8 month birthday she got this cute little penguin. She was tired after we got it so she didn't play with it much but I think it is cute and will talk Avery into loving it. When you hit it it falls back and then comes back up and makes cute noises. Michael and I are excited she is liking toys more and more because now we can buy toys we want to play with and blame it on her and not our childish wants.
Avery is starting to crawl... well army crawl/scoot. She can get from sitting down to her belly pretty gracefully and can reach anything anywhere close to her. When there is something she wants she can get to it. I put out a trail of marshmallows on a blanket and she would grab the blanket and pull the rest of her body behind her, but by golly she got all of those marshmallows. Another thing to get her crawling is shoes. She will cross any distance to be able to bite on one. She is always on the move. She will sit near me and then get into my lap just to scoot back off and try and get on again. I am a human jungle gym. Along with crawling she does this hand thing, that we think is supposed to be waving but she just does it where ever and whenever. It looks like she is doing that thing on Clueless when they sing "rolling with the homies'' but her little hand keeps going with her wrist turning all over. It is quite impressive.
I think this picture looks like she is going to go to play in a tennis match and she is like "what I am cute and I know it." This picture is for Alisha who bought the outfit because of the little visor. Mike loved it. And apparently so did Avery.
Avery has become attached to certain objects. She loves the blanket that Grandma Haynie gave her and sleeps with it (usually on it) every night. She loves the purple Tinkerbell blanket my Aunt Colleen made and gets SO excited when she sees it. We usually play on this blanket and she loves the fairies and yellow ties. Lately she has become attached to her two pink teddy bears. This one is the bigger one and she has a little one that Kiara's roommate's grandma made for her. The gets so excited to see these and will hug and snuggle with them. Oh and Avery does this new thing when she is excited where she will pant like a dog, tongue out and everything. Of course I think it is so dang cute and extremely funny.
We went to the doctor this past week for Avery's 6 month well check up (I know I am behind and am a bad mom, bot she got all the necessary vaccines). Can I just say that having to hold your baby down while she gets shots is just the worst thing. I need to make Michael go with me next time so he can realize how sad it is and how brave I am for not bawling. Anyways our Missy Moo weighed in at 19lbs and 14 oz, which is actually lighter than I thought she was (you try carrying her around all day). She was in the 90th percentile for weight and her head and 50th for height. She is happy and healthy and developing properly... what more could we ask for?!!!