Let's Partay!

Today we celebrated our nephew, Parker's, 5th birthday. It was a fun party with cake, ice cream, and an awesome pinata. (PS My sister-in-law made that cake...and yes, it looked even more awesome in real life!)

House Progress

Yes, we have finally made a decision on our living situation! We are building a house in Plain City, UT. Never heard of it? No worries...no one has. : ) It is north of Ogden. Yes, it is going to be a far commute for Steve, but it will be worth it. We felt really good about the price, which made us okay with the location. We also love the neighborhood where we are building. Here are some pictures of what's been going on so far in our build.

Our footings were poured the Friday before Labor Day. Look at that view out our back!

I couldn't resist a picture of my cuties!

Our slab (foundation) was poured yesterday (Thursday).
When we went back tonight our house was framed!

We are grateful to have a great builder (plug for Hawkins Homes!!!) that is willing to move quickly so we will be able to meet the deadline to get the $8,000 federal grant. We're going to be in before December, HOORAY!!!

Closer to 1 Than "Newborn"

My baby is growing so fast! I feel like I just barely wrote her 6 month post, and yet here I am thinking back on her 7th month.

(Most of the pictures I would have used were posted in the Purge posts. This was taken in the FREEZING Seattle airport after.)

This was a big month for Little Miss E! She had many firsts:

*First airplane ride (champ!)
*First camping trip (champ!)
*First two teeth
*Crawling (at least an army crawl)
*Real intro to solids (champ!)
*She is now a full-blown thumb sucker! She (we) would not survive without that appendage!

As I have looked back on the last 7 months I have come to realize that this little girl was worth every moment I had to wait for her. I love her more and more each day!!! I realize what a blessing it is to have a beautiful, healthy child and I thank my Heavenly Father for her constantly. I hope to never take for granted the stewardship I have been given.

Summer Photo Purge #2

We (E and I) spent the weekend with extended family at the Munro family reunion. This was full of the usual: people watching, eating, people watching, chatting with cousins and friends, oh, did I mention people watching?

Moving...this is really the only picture I have of moving. This was how Little Miss felt about the whole process.

Little Sis Kelsi came to visit. This was so fun and so helpful!!! She helped us in our house hunt by holding Miss E and giving her insightful opinion.

More house hunting. E was a trooper! She hardly cried or fussed at all. The following picture is of one of the two houses we put an offer on and then retracted. Short sells are a pain!

The following two pictures are of my friend Margaret's wedding to her sweetie James. This was a cool Native American ceremony, but it was really hot. E was exhausted as we used this time as our break from cleaning the apartment. We were both grumpy at the end of that long hot day!

On E's 6 month birthday she was able to fly for the first time, from Boise to Seattle. She was awesome!

Beautiful Mt. Rainier (we think?)

Stay tuned! More to come...(lucky you!)

Last and Final!

This last post starts with our big "vacay" of the year. We went to WA to camp at one of Steve's favorite childhood places, Ross Lake. We had a great time swimming and eating before we were basically kicked out of our spot because we had too many people at the campground that knew each other...weird. Regardless of the strange rule, we had a blast!

Lots of small cliff jumping!

Little Miss really was a happy camper (considering she was teething).

Fishing with Grandpa: this particular time resulted in a huge catch for Mason, making Grandpa very proud!

Birthday celebrations

Plenty of naps for E and I

After our return to Gma and Gpa's the kids played and played!

More birthday celebrating!

The next stop for E and I was the Kartchner family reunion where we did lots of work to help Grandpa and Grandma K fix up their house and rental property. E also cut her first tooth this weekend!

E developed a taste for the "hard stuff." (Actually she was just amusingly amazed with the bottle...I swear!)

Lots of fun swimming and sliding at Downata Hot Springs.

Whew...almost done! The following week all 3 of us headed up to Boise for a visit to my family. (E cut her second tooth on this trip!)

E loved listening to Lessley read stories at the cabin.

The usual stop at Starlight Mountain Theater for 7 Brides for 7 Brothers.

Much bonding time with my cute cousins!

Lots of loves and snuggles for E by her Grandma K!

Silliness at the pool!

So as you can see, I've had good reason to get behind in my blogging this summer! Now as we are working on building our house life is getting kind of crazy again, but I wouldn't have it any other way!!!