First Time on Ski's

Mikkele went to Lake Powell last week with my mom and brother and a whole bunch of aunt, uncles, and cousins. She has gone almost every year since she was 15 months old. (She had a melt down as she was getting in the car last year to leave and ended up staying home.) Each year she has made improvements in her confidence and skills. This year they were able to get her confident enough to try water skiing. My Uncle James has a boom on his boat that lets the kids hold onto a bar on the side of the boat, rather than a rope behind the boat. So she tried that first to get the feel of being up on ski's. Then she tried the real thing. By the end of the trip she was a pro. She wasn't jumping the wake or anything yet, but we have to leave room for improvement next year. I wish I would have been there to see her, but I wasn't about to take 2 babies to Powell. The video's and pictures are great to see her at it though. Enjoy!

Getting in position

Good form

Coming back into the boat

Swimming in the lake

She waves in this one towards the end. Wait for it...it's pretty cute.

Hallie's Baby Blessing

We had Hallie's baby blessing Sunday, July 19. We were fortunate enough to have quite a bit of our family there. It was a really nice day. Jeremy did a great job on the blessing. My mom did a fabulous job on Hallie's dress. We had a yummy get together afterwards. It was an all around great day. Thanks to all that made the sacrifice to come and support our family. We really appreciate it.

Our growing family

The proud mama and papa

When my dad makes the trip to Utah from Texas pictures have to be taken and it needs to be documented that he made the trip. Thanks mom and dad for making the sacrifice to come up and support us on this special day.

Baby "Chub Chub" is 2 months old!

We had Hallie's 2 month check up yesterday and can I just say that she is a CHUNK! Since we had the weight issues at first and switched her to straight formula this little girl, who isn't so little anymore, has just taken off. Here are her 2 month old stats:

Weight: 12 lbs. 10 oz. 90%

Height: 23 1/4 inches 75%

Head: 39 cm 50%

A little about Hallie, or Chub Chub as I've started calling her....She is really starting to show a cute little personality. She is smiling more and more and is starting to coo a little bit. Oh the stories she tells us...so cute! She has started the lovely Gallier trait of puking up everything right after eating so that in an hour you're hungry again. How she's gaining weight I don't know, but Mikkele was the same way. Because of her being hungry all the time, she isn't sleeping as well at night as she used to; however, she will eat and go right back to sleep. She takes a really good morning nap, and we are working on getting the afternoon nap to be as good as the morning nap. She is such a joy to have in our family.

Isn't My Mom Amazing!?!?!

My mom has spent the last few months doing very little but sewing, sewing and more sewing. And I'm the one benefiting. She has made numerous blankets and burp rags. Some of them have been more time consuming than others, but all beautiful. Hallie is definietly well equiped in the blanket/burp rag department. (Which is a good thing with the amount of puke that comes out of that child daily.) Her most reasent creations are Hallie's blessing dress and some bedding for Grant. She basically constructed the bedding from her own thoughts and ideas, and the dress was 3 patterns combined together and then drastically changed. She doesn't ever give herself enough credit for the amazing work that she does, so I wanted to post pictures of her creations and publically thank her for all of her hard work. She is really, truely, very amazingly talented. Thanks Mom! You're the best!

The DressThe Bed

Grant's bed by itself was anything but attractive. (Click here to see what it looked like before.) It looked like a jail cell of sorts and he kept hitting his head on the bars of the bed. So she added giant bumper pads of sorts to make it feel more cozy and to help him from knocking himself out in his sleep. As well as a quilt and a pillow case to match.

Oquirrh Mouhtain Temple

On Saturday, my parents, Alisha, Adam, the 3 kids, and I had the opportunity to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. It was a very different, but beautiful temple. It had more earthy tones; even the exterior was more of a brownish color rather than the white/gray color that most of the other temples are. The Celestial room of the temple was beautiful, of course. One thing that I really liked was the chandelier's in both the Celestial and Sealing rooms. They had more of a geometric shape to them, very beautiful. Mikkele was especially excited about the baptisimal font. She is looking forward to the time (3 more years) that she will be able to go do baptisms for the dead. It has been a neat experience to go with her to this temple as well as the new Draper Temple and see her excitement and desire to one day be able to go to the temple. Here are a few pictures we took after the tour....

Grant, Me, Mikkele, Alisha, Hallie, Adam, and Dad

Alisha, Hallie, Me, Mikkele, Dad, Grant, and Mom

Papa and Granty walking around to keep Grant happy. Or is it the other way around???

My cute Mikkele

My Laundry Room

Call me crazy, but I am so excited about the changes we have made to our laundry room. First just a little info about our house and the laundry room. Our house was built in 1959. There have been a lot of upgrades done, but there are also a lot of things that could still be upgraded. There are also things that I LOVE about it being older and there are things that I absolutely HATE about it being older. One of those things is the "laundry room". It's really not a room at all. It's a little space at the end of my kitchen. There is no shelf or cabinets for me to store our laundry supplies, so therefore it is all stacked on our dryer. No so attractive, especially when it is in full view when you're sitting at the kitchen table. So it has been a dream of mine (one of the many) since we bought the house (2 years ago) to install some sort of shelf or cabinets to hide all of my crap. And yes crap...let's face it...more than just the laundry supplies end up getting piled on the dryer. So anyway the other day we were talking with our neighbor that is a carpenter, and he told us that he has some cabinets that are just sitting in his shop that needed a home. So he and Jeremy worked out a trade for some mechanic work and WALAH I have cabinets in my laundry room. I am beyond exstatic about how great they turned out. Now I just wish I could redo my kitchen right now. :( But here are some of the before, during, and after pictures. I'm sure you won't be as excited about it as I am, so just be excited that I'm excited. :)

BEFORE

Some of the crap has already been cleaned out, mind you. Like the bra's that were hanging on the rod drying when he came over to measure. Can you say EMBARRASSING?

DURING

AFTER

Stocked full with my crap, with even some room to spare for more crap.

Softball

We finished up Mikkele's softball season yesterday. This was her first year of girls pitch. Her team ended up doing really well in regular season play and finished 3rd overall. Since they did so well they got to go to the tournament. It was double elimination tournament that went Monday-Wednesday of this week. Teams were from all over, even as far away as Manti. We won our game Monday, but lost 2 games yesterday. Mikkele and I were both ok with that though. It was hot, and the kids were getting tired. If they kept winning they could have played up to 4 games yesterday. So we're ok being done.
Mikkele is still figuring out the game a little, and trying to decide which position she likes the best. She decided she doesn't like playing catcher. She tried pitching a little and wants to pitch more, but needs to get a litle stronger and more accurate. She mostly played outfield and 1st and 2nd base. She is pretty aggressive when she is up to bat. She really wants to smack the ball. Because of that she struck out a bit, but when she hit the ball she did great. She even sacrificed her body a couple times and took a couple hits. But hey...it gets her on base and moves runners. No problem with taking one for the team every now and then. And of course since it's girls pitch and the girls are still learning how to pitch there are a lot of balls pitched and there is a lot of walking. Which makes for some REALLY long innings.
So overall it was a good season, she learned a lot, got a lot of good experience, and I'm glad it's finally over. :)

Up to bat waiting for that perfect pitch.

Good eye. Way to watch it.

Playing center field. The outfileders play really far up since the girls don't typically hit the ball past the dirt of the infield.

Hitting the ball during tournament.

Scoring a run during tournament. This is the game that they won.

Team picture after the last game yesterday.

Happy 4th of July

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July. Here's a couple pictures of Hallie in her red, white, and blue. Hope everyone has a fun and safe 4th.

Small smile. Love it!