Monday, August 8, 2011
It's Swing Time!
Jayden enjoyed his swinging experience at the park this past week. He eve tried out the slide once - he probably needs a few more months before he's slide ready. But the swing he was digging. Here's the story in pictures!
Saturday, August 6, 2011
A Moose-tastic Adventure
My mom came to visit this past week and I just had to show her the amazing mountains that were practically in our backyard. We spontaneously decided to drive up there one afternoon and boy, am I glad we did! We saw these!
We both decided that we could die happy now. Ok, maybe that's a bit dramatic but we were ecstatic to see such amazing animals on our drive into the mountains. We spent a good 30 minutes just sitting on the side of the road taking pictures. In Sherry-like fashion, my mom got uncomfortably close to these giant animals to get these great photos. (She's known to make our family very anxious as she strives for the perfect photo. In this case, I just let her do her thing. Who could blame her??) Oh, and lest you think she was actually inches from these animals, I will reassure you that she actually has a great zoom lens on her camera so although she was close, she was not THAT close.
We both decided that we could die happy now. Ok, maybe that's a bit dramatic but we were ecstatic to see such amazing animals on our drive into the mountains. We spent a good 30 minutes just sitting on the side of the road taking pictures. In Sherry-like fashion, my mom got uncomfortably close to these giant animals to get these great photos. (She's known to make our family very anxious as she strives for the perfect photo. In this case, I just let her do her thing. Who could blame her??) Oh, and lest you think she was actually inches from these animals, I will reassure you that she actually has a great zoom lens on her camera so although she was close, she was not THAT close.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Snowy Mountains - Adventures Closer to Home
Amazingly enough, DJ and I finally took a drive just 45 minutes west of Laramie and found an oasis of sorts. It surprised us when we found that we were that close to a completely different landscape! Mountainous (read: Sound of Music-esque), lots of trees, great wildlife, gorgeous wildflowers and the list goes one. We just couldn't believe it took us that long to find it. Granted it was not easily accessible 7 of the 12 months that we've been here but still, it really shouldn't have taken us this long. I can't wait to spend more time up in the mountains!
Please excuse the shocking whiteness of my legs - they don't see much sun. But seriously, couldn't this be a scene from Sound of Music?? I felt like I was in a setting for a movie!
Jayden is all about the waving these days.
Most of the snow had melted by now but there was still quite a bit for being the end of July!
I couldn't get enough of all the different varieties of flowers - wildflowers are my all-time favorite!
We went on a great little hike; we just didn't know up front that it would require hiking through some snow that was still covering the trail!
These gaping holes definitely freaked me out since we were walking right over the top of these drifts!
See how tall this drift still is??
It was crazy to me that we could practically drive all the way to the top of the mountains that we can see from our house and it only took us about an hour to get there. At this point we are 10,800 feet high.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Love Letter - Three
Dear Jayden,
You are a mover these days! You learned to crawl just over 2 weeks from your 11 month mark. And you get faster and faster every day! Today you turned 11 months old on me even though a teeny part of me is not ready for you to grow up. The rest of me though is anxiously devouring every little minute with you, taking in all your sounds and gestures.
These days you are waving at everything including inanimate objects like the wall, the door or a tree. But more and more, you appropriately wave bye-bye as people leave. We all get a kick out of it.
Lately you've been pretty attached to your momma and although it may be frustrating for others, I love how needed you make me feel. And I remind myself when I start feeling frustrated that this is a season. Soon you will be headed out the front door to college.
I love how closely you examine everything that comes across your path. Your Nana is pretty convinced that you are going to be an engineer or maybe an accountant like your momma! You are very into details. It's so amusing to me how you will find the teeniest tiniest little fleck on the floor and just sit there and inspect it before carefully trying to pick it up. I realized today that I probably don't have to worry about you eating something you shouldn't because by the time you decided to put something in your mouth that you shouldn't have, I would be aware that you have something you haven't seen before! (Don't worry though we are still constantly jumping at everything you put into your mouth - typical first-timers!)
Something else that is so cute is how you drink from a straw. You've never taken a bottle or a sippy cup but you love drinking out of a straw! As it seems with most other things, if daddy or momma is doing it then you want to too!
You'll pick up your cup, take a drink and then fling it to the side like you never want to have anything to do with it again before reaching for it 5 seconds later to take another drink. I always laugh.
I have one more month of babyhood with you and I will drink it in. But in all reality you really don't look like a baby anymore, other than the wonderful baby chunk. But that will soon be gone as you continue to move yourself wherever you want to go. You have 7 teeth and when you grin it looks like you have a full set of teeth. You have a full head of little boy hair, no longer is it baby hair. You wear big boy clothes, more often then not you are wearing a t-shirt and pants or shorts rather than a snapped onesie. And you have little boy mannerisms - from the way you place your hand on one leg and the other hand on the wheel of your train as we steer you around to the way that you feed yourself your own food at the dinner table, I know my baby Jayden days are soon over.
But my love for you grows every day and it will only grow stronger and more determined as you grow stronger and more determined.
I love you my baby Jayden! Happy 11 month old birthday!
Love,
Your momma
You are a mover these days! You learned to crawl just over 2 weeks from your 11 month mark. And you get faster and faster every day! Today you turned 11 months old on me even though a teeny part of me is not ready for you to grow up. The rest of me though is anxiously devouring every little minute with you, taking in all your sounds and gestures.
These days you are waving at everything including inanimate objects like the wall, the door or a tree. But more and more, you appropriately wave bye-bye as people leave. We all get a kick out of it.
Lately you've been pretty attached to your momma and although it may be frustrating for others, I love how needed you make me feel. And I remind myself when I start feeling frustrated that this is a season. Soon you will be headed out the front door to college.
I love how closely you examine everything that comes across your path. Your Nana is pretty convinced that you are going to be an engineer or maybe an accountant like your momma! You are very into details. It's so amusing to me how you will find the teeniest tiniest little fleck on the floor and just sit there and inspect it before carefully trying to pick it up. I realized today that I probably don't have to worry about you eating something you shouldn't because by the time you decided to put something in your mouth that you shouldn't have, I would be aware that you have something you haven't seen before! (Don't worry though we are still constantly jumping at everything you put into your mouth - typical first-timers!)
Something else that is so cute is how you drink from a straw. You've never taken a bottle or a sippy cup but you love drinking out of a straw! As it seems with most other things, if daddy or momma is doing it then you want to too!
I have one more month of babyhood with you and I will drink it in. But in all reality you really don't look like a baby anymore, other than the wonderful baby chunk. But that will soon be gone as you continue to move yourself wherever you want to go. You have 7 teeth and when you grin it looks like you have a full set of teeth. You have a full head of little boy hair, no longer is it baby hair. You wear big boy clothes, more often then not you are wearing a t-shirt and pants or shorts rather than a snapped onesie. And you have little boy mannerisms - from the way you place your hand on one leg and the other hand on the wheel of your train as we steer you around to the way that you feed yourself your own food at the dinner table, I know my baby Jayden days are soon over.
But my love for you grows every day and it will only grow stronger and more determined as you grow stronger and more determined.
I love you my baby Jayden! Happy 11 month old birthday!
Love,
Your momma
Sunday, July 31, 2011
California 2011
DJ and I decided to take a trip to California to visit our best friends Chad and Joy in Vacaville (about 30 minutes south of Sacramento) for our summer vacation. We hadn't all spent time together as a group since our wedding and before that in 2006 when DJ and I went to California for Spring Break so it was a long overdue rendezvous. AND we had never spent time together as the families that we are now - Chad and Joy have 3 kids so along with our little family of 3 we had a much larger group then in years past!
We had such a great time - lots of laughing, which is what I will remember the most, great conversations, lots of golfing for DJ (Chad had to watch since he was due to have back surgery the following week), some fabulous girl time (even once without kids!) and delish food, oh, and some much needed down time.
We also were able to visit a couple of wineries, which was a first for DJ and I and we walked around Old Sacramento before our flight on the last day. It was fun to see some things that we hadn't seen before especially since I've made several trips to that area already both for fun and business.
The bad news is that after the first day there our camera battery died and then I lost my phone after the second day there so we were without any camera for most of our visit. (I did end up finding my phone before we left, thank God! Actually I didn't find it, a person on a tour of one of the wineries found it and turned it in. The world really is full of more good than evil.)
Here are some of the pictures that we did get...
I forgot to mention that we spent a couple of nights in Denver prior to leaving for California both for ease of traveling and for family pictures that we scheduled with a photographer in Denver. DJ was able to take Jayden swimming for the first time in the hotel's pool. Both DJ and Jayden had a GREAT time with that experience!
Since Chad wasn't able to golf, it was like DJ was being followed around by his own personal photographer on the first day he got to golf. Here are some of the best photos...
That was a gorgeous course set among the vineyards in Napa.
It kills me that we didn't get one photo with all 8 of us together. We went to a vineyard called V. Sattui and it would have been the perfect photo op but as it goes, when one has kids, those sorts of things just kind of get pushed to the side.
After V. Sattui, we went to another vineyard for the specific purpose of taking a tour. Someone DJ works with used to live near the Napa area and recommended this particular vineyard (Groth Vineyards). What they failed to mention before we went is that most people that work there really like the product they promote. And I mean they really like it, enough to consume it in great quantities while on the job. Needless to say our tour was quite interesting while our drunker-than-a-skunk tour guide meandered through the process of educating us on the finer art (or should I say science?) of making wine. We were quite thankful we had Jayden to turn our attention to during the, ahem, more detailed portions of the tour.
I took pictures in an attempt to passively alert our guide that we were there for the short version of the tour. All was lost on our guide however.
DJ doing a great job of acting like he's always wanted to know about the different species of grapes and hundreds of types of soil present in that particular valley.
Joy is pretending to laugh at Jayden when really we are doing all we can to hold in our laughter at our guide.
Our inebriated tour guide
Best friends for life!
Before my camera died after our first day and I lost my phone on the above tour, I was able get a few pictures of the kids altogether. I'm so very glad the Files' kids got to meet Jayden. They all loved each other!
Caden and DJ spent some quality Tiger time together on the Wii.
As mentioned in a previous post, this guy officially became a crawler in California!
Carter gave Jayden lots of love that week - it was sooo cute!
Thanks to Joy and Chad for being the best hosts friends could ask for! We had the best time!
We had such a great time - lots of laughing, which is what I will remember the most, great conversations, lots of golfing for DJ (Chad had to watch since he was due to have back surgery the following week), some fabulous girl time (even once without kids!) and delish food, oh, and some much needed down time.
We also were able to visit a couple of wineries, which was a first for DJ and I and we walked around Old Sacramento before our flight on the last day. It was fun to see some things that we hadn't seen before especially since I've made several trips to that area already both for fun and business.
The bad news is that after the first day there our camera battery died and then I lost my phone after the second day there so we were without any camera for most of our visit. (I did end up finding my phone before we left, thank God! Actually I didn't find it, a person on a tour of one of the wineries found it and turned it in. The world really is full of more good than evil.)
Here are some of the pictures that we did get...
I forgot to mention that we spent a couple of nights in Denver prior to leaving for California both for ease of traveling and for family pictures that we scheduled with a photographer in Denver. DJ was able to take Jayden swimming for the first time in the hotel's pool. Both DJ and Jayden had a GREAT time with that experience!
Since Chad wasn't able to golf, it was like DJ was being followed around by his own personal photographer on the first day he got to golf. Here are some of the best photos...
That was a gorgeous course set among the vineyards in Napa.
It kills me that we didn't get one photo with all 8 of us together. We went to a vineyard called V. Sattui and it would have been the perfect photo op but as it goes, when one has kids, those sorts of things just kind of get pushed to the side.
After V. Sattui, we went to another vineyard for the specific purpose of taking a tour. Someone DJ works with used to live near the Napa area and recommended this particular vineyard (Groth Vineyards). What they failed to mention before we went is that most people that work there really like the product they promote. And I mean they really like it, enough to consume it in great quantities while on the job. Needless to say our tour was quite interesting while our drunker-than-a-skunk tour guide meandered through the process of educating us on the finer art (or should I say science?) of making wine. We were quite thankful we had Jayden to turn our attention to during the, ahem, more detailed portions of the tour.
Before my camera died after our first day and I lost my phone on the above tour, I was able get a few pictures of the kids altogether. I'm so very glad the Files' kids got to meet Jayden. They all loved each other!
Miss Adalyn Paige, aka the next Pepsi girl (I'm convinced of this by the way. Just put a curly dark wig on her and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference!)
Thanks to Joy and Chad for being the best hosts friends could ask for! We had the best time!
Monday, July 18, 2011
Just needed to find his inspiration!
DJ and I had a date night this past week while we were in California (more on California later) and Joy and Chad watched Jayden for us. When we got back, Joy told me she had good news and bad news. The good news was that Jayden crawled while we were gone! The bad news was that we were gone. Ha! I wasn't too disappointed though because Joy was just as excited for him as I would have been. The whole week Jayden seemed a little smitten with his Auntie Joy and it seemed that he went the extra mile that night by crawling for her. Thankfully Joy took the time to get it on video so here is Jayden's first night of crawling!!
Watch "Crawling!!" on YouTube
Watch "Crawling!!" on YouTube
Monday, July 4, 2011
Happy 4th!!
Here's a little video of Jayden at the Freedom Festivities here in Laramie. There were bands playing, booths, and lots of kids activities (which Jayden was too young for of course) going on. With the exception of a looming storm, we had a fantastic time and it was great to get out of the house to do something different!
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