Easter Sunday 2014

Kids lately.

Photos of my sweet babies from the last couple months.

Henry

June

 

Our baby June

Taken December 2013. This dress given to her by her Grandma Nyland. has been my favorite. It's from Gap but it looked antique. Perfect paired with the sweet plum felt bow. Love this baby of mine.

Looking back: Henry turns two

Henry turns three years old in a couple weeks. I guess that means this is a good time to blog about when he turned two!

Most of the birthday celebrations were explained here. The guest post on my friend's blog didn't show much from the two parties, so here are some pictures and details from those fun events.

"First second birthday" with my side of the family and our friends (on his actual birthday). We had cake at my parents' house then went swimming.

Eating his (too sweet) cake. Four layers, M&Ms, buttercream frosting.

I just love this video. I love how surprised Henry is to find everyone singing to him! I also love that he notices Plex on his cake in the middle of the song.

I was so happy and humbled to have some of Henry's closest friends join us for this party. This kid is loved! And here are most of Henry's friends who joined us - I thought it would be fun to have all their pictures included her to look back later to see how big they've gotten too! (His friend Suchen came after I took the pictures)

Collin

Clara

Kelsie

Izzy

Amanda

Xander

Ava

Leah

Lacey

I wish I could have captured how happy Henry was at the Lynnwood Rec Center that night. Maybe the happiest night of his life to that point.

Henry's "second second birthday" with Rob's side of the family. What a fun night - another cake (a little less sweet this time, so I thought it was better than the Gabba version) and then to Chuck E. Cheese for games with the entire family!

Another fun video of blowing out candles. Once again, Henry loving the attention of everyone singing to him. I think it was this night that it finally cemented what birthdays and cakes are all about. He's loved birthdays ever since. (oh, and I love that we captured James blowing out the candles - ha!)


Grandma and Grandpa playing skeeball. I loved watching everyone having a good time and appreciated so much that they all came to celebrate our boy.

Enjoying one of his gifts from Grandpa and Grandma!

Phew! Now that I've finally posted about last year's birthday we're almost ready for Henry to turn three! I can hardly believe he's that old!

June at 9 Months

Baby June June (her most frequently used nickname. Others are Junie and Juniper) is just moving right along. Well, kind of.

Still not doing much more moving than last month.. or the month before that. She can roll from her back to her stomach but rarely does. The fact that she seems less reluctant to roll is the only advancement she's made in the moving department. I don't mind. Actually, I do wonder if I should be concerned...? I guess I'm realizing there are other things. She's sat independently for a long time, and now she'll move one leg behind her in order to reach farther. Like she's about to get on her knees for a crawl. Maybe she'll skip rolling all together and just go for a crawl? And she doesn't hate being on her stomach anymore.

Speaking of reaching farther - she has got quite the go-go-gadget arms. The second she's put in a new location she's reaching and grabbing whatever is nearby. Grabby McGrabberson. That's her other nickname:) Her favorite thing to reach for is Henry. If he's close enough, she's got his hair, mouth, or hands in her grasp. He doesn't mind most of the time. I've been trying to convince her that if she only learns to move she'll be able to go after him and won't have to wait until he comes near before she can get a hold of him!

June has become an early riser, just like her brother was for most of his life. We're barely hanging onto 7am, hoping it doesn't get earlier. Our routine has been that she comes into bed with me to nurse in case she'll fall back asleep, which she does half the time, but only for another 15-20 minutes (blessed minutes when I continue to sleep too). And then she hangs out in bed with me while I try to wake up and read my scriptures. She knows her Dad and brother are outside of the room, however, and constantly looks toward the door either waiting for them to come in or trying to send me the message that she wants to go out. I love that time with just her, though, laying next to her in bed singing good morning songs to her smiling face.

June loves to play peek-a-boo. I'm amazed, she totally did this on her own - she'll hold a blanket or clothes over her head and wait for us to say "where's June?" before she pulls it off, laughing. Sometimes you can still see one of her eyes peeking out at you as she waits. So cute.

She's got one tooth on the bottom that's a third of the way in. So far, like her brother, she doesn't demonstrate any discomfort from teething (fingers crossed!).

I'm seeing her become a little picky with what food she'll eat. The last few times I've tried to give her pureed baby vegetables she won't open her mouth even though I can't always figure out how she even knows she won't like it (I guess she smells it - I don't usually see her look at the spoon). It's those darn super sweet flavors like banana and peach that she's gotten used to. She is getting to be really good at grasping little bits of food on her try (or the floor, or the lawn:)

Something I don't know if I've mentioned yet - June is really sensitive to the sun. She's always squinted a ton even in mild sunlight. Her eyes tear up the whole time we're outside in the sun and today, the first time I haven't put a sun hat on her, her forehead became really blotchy. It's not severe, but strange to me and it just means this summer won't be fun for her if I don't always make sure she's got her sun hat on or she's in the shade. Shade, by the way, is harder to come by here than in Washington.

She's not talking much more than I've already reported. We'll hear her experiment with sounds on occasion but nothing consistent other than her "dadada."And the happy yelling. And the content "mumbling" while she eats something tasty.

I know last month I talked about her clapping. It's one of her favorite things to do and she'll do it on her own or as soon as I start singing a song, especially if I sing "patty cake." She'll rarely do it when we try to show someone her trick, like when we're skyping family, for example.

We stopped swaddling June this last month. She's actually done really well with the transition, though she does get a lot of nap time battle wounds - scratches on her face from her nails. We have a new nap routine. Instead of nursing her to sleep I sit with her on the rocking chair in her room, read a book then rock her a bit while singing to her. I love that short time with her and I especially love that she yawns as soon as we walk into her room at nap time.

We're so enjoying our little baby. As big as she's getting, I love getting her cuddles and try to be aware of how little she still is.

Videos (I went a little overboard):

Utah Bucket List: Station 22 Cafe

Our first item checked off our bucket list! We enjoyed some delicious food at Station 22 Cafe in downtown Provo. This town has changed a lot since both of us lived here previously - good changes. One of those being the improvements of downtown Provo and lots of new and interesting restaurants. Before moving back we joked that now that there are restaurants we'll want to eat at, we won't have the money to eat there. We decided, at about the time we came up with our bucket list, that we would save up our date money and eat at one of these restaurants every three months. That might sound really infrequent, but we only go on two dates a month and one of those is always to the temple, so every third "date" date will be like tonight's. I am so so excited about this... an actual restaurant! I like going to our typical dining spots: taco joints, cheap Asian food, food trucks. But every once in a while I like (need?) a sit-down "nice" place.

Back to Station 22. We had heard mixed reviews about the place, mostly good despite a 3.5 rating on Yelp (I consider that rating the lowest I would want to try if the ratings were my only guide). We ordered the Jack Kerouak burger and the Memphis Chicken Sandwich, shared both entrees and had a salad on the side. Yes, a salad, not fries. Our sole healthy decision of the night. Both burger and sandwich were good, we were happy with our meal although we wouldn't rush back (that's what Rob said, but the deep fried cookie dough the waiter tried tempting us with makes me want to rush back).

My favorite part of the meal was the great ambiance in the restaurant. It felt like an escape from Provo to me. The other great thing about Station 22 is their soda selection. It's fun to have an "activity" to do while waiting for the food - after ordering we stood from our table to go select a soda. Rob chose caramel root bear.

Oh, we also rode our bikes to Station 22. How fun is that?

Utah Bucket List

Well, we're here for another 2+ years and we want to make the most of it so we created a bucket list: what we want to do, see and eat in Provo and around Utah!

Originally I was going to purchase a notebook and create a passport-like booklet for the things on our list, but I didn't know what kind of keepsake I could put in the notebook for each item (vs. a blog post where I could just include a picture) plus, I'm not very sentimental - a little notebook like that would be something I would want to get rid of a few years down the road.

So, if I can keep this up, here are the posts you'll be seeing in the future as we check these items off our Utah Bucket List:

Restaurants (first things first, let's be honest):
Station 22
Black Sheep
Pizerria 712
City Trolley
180 Tacos

Places:
State Capital
Zion National Park
Arches National Park
St. George
Manti Temple
Park City
Salt Flats
Timpanogos Caves

Activities:
Springville Art Museum
Provo Center Street Parade of Homes
BYU baseball game
BYU volleyball game
Ice Skating
Rodeo
Temple open house
General Conference
Alpine Slide
Thanksgiving Point
Sundance Film Festival
Ski lift ride at Sundance
Outdoor movie
Sheepdog Festival
Camping
Tube Provo River
Y Mountain
Hike Timpanogos
Bike riding in the canyon
Bean Museum

Any suggestions for our bucket list?

PS. We've already done the following things. They would have ended up on our bucket list if we hadn't already done them by the time we made one:
Ride Train to SLC
Lights at Temple Square
BYU hockey
BYU gymnastics
BYU Museum of Art
BYU Paleontology Museum
Seven Peaks
Waffle Love