Spotlight of the Week

Gracie

Our sweet Gracie turned 1 at the end of June and had a wonderful birthday. We kept it simple and didn't have a big party. We had her favorite foods for dinner: macaroni & cheese, jello and green beans. She had a yummy Strawberry cake for dessert - which she made a mess of. She ended up bypassing picking up the cake with her fingers and went straight to licking it off the plate. That's my girl!

Gracie is the sweetest baby you will ever know. She is happy and mellow and always ready with a smile. She is starting to get sweet little ringlets in her hair, and has beautiful blue eyes. She has her mom's dimpled cheeks. She loves to suck her thumb, which is probably why she is always so happy. She just started walking on August 14th, and now she can't get enough of it! She is so cute to see with her arms and legs as far wide as they can go waddling around. She is very proud of herself as you can see in the pictures.

Gracie is Mama's girl and loves to snuggle me, especially when she's tired. (I, of coarse, take full advantage of this, knowing very well she'll grow out of this too soon) She has a handful of words: Dada, Hi, Mama, Ash (which means any of the kids), tickle (said while she tickles her own tummy)and lots of fun sounds. She loves phones and pretends to talk on them. She now throws a fit whenever I talk on the phone because she wants to talk too.

We love our sweet baby!

What we did this Summer...

As this summer comes to a close, I wanted to update everyone on what we have been doing!

At the end of May, we took a trip to Park City to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary and it was a blast. Grandma and Grandpa Jack and the kids joined us and we had so much fun together. Our room had its own hot tub on the patio - which we enjoyed so much. We were able to get adjoining rooms and the kids were able to be with Grandma and Grandpa whenever they wanted. (Great for Ian and I - maybe not so much for G&G Jack?!) We shopped and went on walks and the last day rode a roller coaster down the mountain. That was so much fun! It was the best vacation ever.

We also took Ashlyn and Noelle to Lagoon at the end of May. It was fun, but we made Ashlyn go on the old rickety roller coaster thinking she would be so proud of herself for doing it. Uh, no - it didn't exactly turn out that way. She had a major panic attack, had a migraine for the next 3 hours and eventually relaxed enough to ride the littlest rides at the end of the day. We felt so bad for making her go on it. We made the best of it though, and she has good memories from that day. So, hopefully we haven't scarred her for life!

We celebrated Gracie's first Birthday at the end of June (see this week's spotlight)and Noelle broke her right elbow about a week later when she fell off her scooter.

She got her cast off the day we went to Bear Lake with Ian's sister, her 4 kids and his Mom. We were only at Bear Lake for the weekend, but it was so fun. The kids enjoyed playing on the beach and in the water. I didn't get any pictures at the water. I didn't want to get sand in the camera - sad huh. They would've been so great! Here is a picture of all the kids oldest to youngest = top to bottom.

I celebrated my 30th birthday at the beginning of August and was treated like a queen. Ian stayed home from work to spend the day with me and it was the best present!

We rented a tent trailer a week later and planned to go camping over the weekend. However, Ian, Gracie and Shaylor got sick Friday and we thought we'd have to cancel the trip. We woke up Saturday to everyone feeling better and decided to go. It was a lot of...well, I was going to say fun, but really it was just a lot of work. Dinner didn't work out so well (It burned.), we couldn't let Gracie down and she didn't want to be held - so we took turns wrestling her, we had 'neighbors' who stayed up all night partying and kept waking Gracie up, it was FRIGID when we woke up and we couldn't get the heater in the trailer to work. We were going to stay all day Sunday, but we called it quits at 9am and went home. Not the greatest camping trip! It was beautiful scenery though, and we had a lot of fun playing games Saturday night!

We had a lot of fun this summer having BBQ's and water parties and playing with friends. The kids have started doing chores and earn a little money. They are actually better behaved with the responsibility. They help me out so much! It has been a fun summer. After they start school on Tuesday, it is going to be very quiet around here.

Welcome

We are so excited to start up our own family website and share a little bit of our lives with you. We'll be posting pictures and stories and lots of fun things so we can stay connected with family and friends. This will be an easy way to do it without e-mailing tons of pictures!



So, check back often as we'll be updating it as much as we can!



Love to you all!

Ian and Amelia



P.S. OK, so for everyone who knows me as "Amy" (which is pretty much everyone) I have decided to start going by my full name. Call me Amy or Amelia, I don't care which one, but if I call and say "Hey, this is Amelia", you'll know who you're talking to!