September

Gotta love this cute face!

And now to catch up with a little of September!

To start, this is what happened when we went to visit Tyler at work one day. When we were leaving he buckled Sophie in and apparently handed her 3 chocolate covered pretzels. When I got home and went to get her out, I seriously thought this was blood! Luckily it wasnt but she was a huge mess! Look how tan our little blondey gets though. She must have Tyler's skin coloring and my hair!
This dog is not ours. (Thank goodness!) But one night we went for a family walk and this cute little dog followed us home. Sophie was soooo loving it! It ALMOST made me tempted to get a dog, but not quite. Anyways, the dog followed us from one of the neighborhoods above ours and would not got home! It finally came in our garage and was running around and Sophie was chasing it all over the place thinking we got a new dog or something. She was squealing and so excited. So, when I went to get the camera it full on ran into our house as fast as it could! It actually scared me to death. Long story short, Tyler eventually drove it back to the area where we found it that night. It was fun having a dog for an evening though, that is definitely long enough for me!
Also in September, it was our friend Mark's wedding. He has been our friend from college and he is also Tyler's brother Justin's friend so Justin and Mega and their daughter Mia came to Utah from Texas for the wedding. We were excited to see them! One night we went to Olive Garden and there was a really long wait. It was a really nice night though so were just waiting outside talking, and Mia and Sophie started marching around in a big circle (Sophie copying Mia) then grandpa started in and they were all marching around. It was pretty funny. I wish more of Sophie's cousins lived closer cause she loves to play with kids!

September in Utah was perfect weather this year! Mark's wedding night was gorgeous and it was nice to be outside. Todd and Kimiko came from Logan and we had a fun weekend with everyone! Here's all of us outside the reception. Me with my tan sister in laws!
So I forgot to mention that 'brother, Todd lived with us this summer while he worked with Tyler. By the end of the summer Sophie sure loved her Uncle Todd! He is so nice to her and between him and Tyler she has been so spoiled with attention! For about 3 months after he moved out she still thought our spare bedroom was "Todds room." We actually really have missed having him here! I love this picture of them!

August!

I know I know.. Everytime I blog again I say I am going to be better and I get too overwhelmed because now I am so behind! I still cant decide if I should just give it up or try to move forward full force! Anyone anyone?
Well lately I have been feeling like my baby isn't a baby at all anymore! She is getting way too big. I definitely have never felt like time has gone by this fast before! It seems like its speeding up or something. In 4 days, Sophie is 20 months old. Crazy. She gets more and more fun every day and I wish she'd just stop growing! We have been loving how things are with her lately. She sleeps in until about 9 30 every morning (which means so do I) and usually takes about a 3 hour nap from 2-5. Its a pretty awesome schedule. Its been hard for us to take the leap of trying again when we love her so much and are content with just having us 3! Lately I've been saying to Sophie "We're best friends hu?" and She says "beffriends!" We couldn't love her more!

Anyway I have decided to just go back to a few of the main things that have happened since the summer post I last did. First of all, in the end of July, Ashley had her baby, Cooper! I was probably the most excited person there was (besides MAYBE my mom). Leading up to the birth though one of my favorite things was Ashley coming over to our pool very pregnant and laying out with me and Sophie. The day she had Cooper she looked more like an indian than a white person. It was so fun though to have those memories with her out there reading our magazines, floating on our floaties, and playing with Sophie on her "step". I wish I had a picture of that!


After he was born we couldn't get enough of him. Sophie even was always saying "Coopa Coopa". On his blessing day, in the middle of his blessing, Sophie was really worried where he went and she was saying "Where's Coop?!" Cooper is the cutest little boy ever and we love having a new nephew!
A few weeks after Ashley had Cooper, Josh got to come to Idaho for a visit (it had been WAY too long!) and he even brought his wife and kids with him. We hadn't seen him in so long, but Emily and Abby hadn't seen him for 4 years! 4 years since we had all been together. So, of course we had to get family pictures. Some of them turned out okay, but I love this one so much with me and my cute siblings! Its wierd how out family goes brown blonde brown blonde brown, hu?
We had a lot of fun things planned for when he came out and we tried to be in Idaho as long as we could to be with them. Sophie loved playing with Henry and Lala (Olivia) and they were so cute to her.
One night we rented a movie projector and watched a movie on the trampoline and chairs. We were all laid out on my moms whole backyard with pillows and blankets and watched the movie on the back of her house. Even though the people on the tramp always move to the middle and half the people fell asleep it was one of my favorite nights there! We also played night games at the park by my moms house one night. Walking to the park it reminded me of the good old days of having all my siblings together again! I wish it happened more often.


Another one of my favorite things we did was go camping and floating the river at Warm River. We reserved a spot and camped out all night. That night I was lucky enough to have Henry and Olivia both fall asleep on my lap! I love them so much. Isn't it weird how much you love nieces and nephews?! Even if you don't ever get to see them! I love those kids.

I also just loved seeing Josh love spending time with his kids! Henry was like his little buddy that didn't want to leave his side. I wish he got to see them more! It really does make us all so sad. Oh, the hard thing about divorces! Isn't this the cutest picture of them?
Sophie was loving all the kids around at Warm River! All my little cousins were there and they all loved to play with her. While we were there though somehow she managed to fill up her little toy cups with river water and started chugging the water down! I was so worried about her because she had major diarrhea for almost two weeks after. She is so fast at everything too, that it was almost impossible to prevent, (she eventually was fine though). Also, Josh brought his dog to the campsite and Henry accidentally stepped in its poop and didn't know it, and climbed on Monica's lap. There was poop everywhere! Kids really bring excitement to things.

Now, Josh is living in Germany! There are so many things I have loved about the Army, but I do NOT love how he has to live so far away! We are all hoping we can save some money to go see him while he is over there. It was a fun week with them here though and it will have to last for a few years til we see him again.

The next weekend my Grandma and Grandpa Allen came to Utah from AZ. They barely ever come out here because their health is getting alot worse and it was so nice to be able to see them since we hardly ever do! They are so nice to each other and have had such a good marriage their whole lives. My grandma was a little out of it, but my grandpa told us some stories and bore his testimony to us. It was really cool to hear, but sad because he told us that this would be his last time to Idaho and Utah and that they had come to terms with things being "the last time" for them. They are such good people and I will never forget hearing his testimony. I was so glad we got to see them and Sophie could meet them! One of my favorite memories of them is when they would come stay with us in Idaho, how much my grandma loved it when I played the piano. I would sit there forever and play song after song, and later she I would hear her humming some of my songs to herself.

Last but not least, in August Tyler took me to a Tim McGraw concert. It was for my birthday present and it was one of my favorite presents I've ever gotten! It was really one of my favorite nights I can remember with him! The concert was outside and the weather was perrrfecct. I LOVE Utah's summer nights!
We had a babysitter and went out to dinner for Wings before the concert, but made sure to get there with plenty of time before it started. Tim was with Luke Bryan and the Band Perry who both did awesome too. Alot of really lucky things happened that night, for one Tim opened his part of the concert in the middle section where we were and and I immediately weaved my way down to the front of the section and right when I did, he walked by to walk up to the stage. So (obviously) I stuck my hand out and acted like a total idiot! But at least I got to touch his hand! haha. I was so excited its a little embarrassing to admit. The other lucky thing was right before it was Tim's turn, this girl came up to us and said "hey we are leaving do you want a wrist band for the front general admission?" Of course we did, so we took turns going up to the front and that's when I pushed my way to the very front again and touched him again (apparently I am pretty good at that). Afterwards we went to Village Inn and ate (yes again), and then went and picked up Sophie. It was such a good night with my best bud.

Actually 9 years ago for my 16th birthday, my friends surprised me and took me to a Tim McGraw concert at that same place! I have the best friends. We all made shirts and drove down to Utah, it was one of my other favorite birthday presents! Isn't this picture so good of him!

Lovin Summer!

A few months ago there was a groupon deal for cheap Seven Peaks passes... My friend Jenna lives right by it and had been trying to get me to buy one for a while, so I caved in and tried to talk a few more people into too! It has been pretty fun to have, especially when there are people there that can take turns watching Sophie so I can slide it up too! A few weeks ago we went with my dad and his wife and a few of their kids, and AShley, and Abby. Ashley as you can tell is pregnant and couldnt go on rides but she sure is a tan little prego girl! I love that picture of them both touching their chubby bellys!

This is one of the times that I can actually get Sophie to eat/drink! She wears herself out at the pool, and always falls asleep on the way home. The funny thing is all I have to do is bring a few of her favorite water toys and she will sit in the shallow part and entertain herself forevvver. I'm pretty sure she thinks she owns that shallow step at our clubhouse pool. I'm not complaining though, its nice for me!
Jenna brought her little girl over to play in the pool one day too. I love the picture below because they are both so cute in their swimsuits. It is funny to watch them play together. Charlotte is definitely the "cool" one, and Sophie is kinda the crazy one. She follows her everywhere though and they always want the same toys, of course.


A few weeks ago we took Sophie to the zoo for the first time. She loves animals, a little too much. She is not even scared of them to come up and get in her face. I think it will only take once for her to get hurt and that will all be over! Anyways, at the zoo she would just point at everything and say "whatsat? Whatsat?" We couldnt even get her to look over at the camera once for a pic.

She loves weekends when we get to hang out with daddy. Its actually really sad because Monday mornings are definitely the hardest for her. She cries and cries when he leaves. Lately she has been glaring at me when I try to take her from him when she can tell he is about to walk out. We stand in the doorway and wave bye to him and blow kisses every morning.



We have been lucky to have Abby in Utah alot this summer! She would seriously stand on her head for an hour to get Sophie to laugh. The night Abby rode the shuttle to Utah, me and Sophie went to pick her up late because Tyler had softball games. Sophie was so tired and I was worried she was going to be really cranky, it was like 9 pm. After about five minutes of Abby being in the car in the backseat with her, she had Sophie laughing and laughing so hard. They are little buddys and I think next to me and Tyler, Abby is one of the people that loves Sophie the very most! Sophie loves her "Abbum."

One thing that is really funn is for some reason Sophie loves baby things. For a while we could NOT get her to go to the day care (for an hour) at the gym. She would cry and cry. Finally one day I was shocked that they didnt come get me from my class... I walked down and looked in the big glass windows to see what Sophie could possibly be doing and she was sitting in a baby cuddle swing rocking back and forth with the biggest smile on her face. I swear she was over the weight limit even. She looked so big and it was really one of the funniest things to see. Its not just swings either, at church she sees baby car seats and tries to go sit in them with the baby. Well the other day I got this swing out to let Ashley borrow it for her new baby, (coming soon!!) and Sophie wanted to climb in it so bad. So I let her and turned out the music and she was so happy for a few minutes just being a baby again.

My favorite stage!

I have been LOVING the stage Sophie is in right now and don't want her to get any bigger! She is getting to be so much fun. I need to be better about writing down all the fun stuff she does. I love to see her frankenstein walk around the house and hearing her little feet smacking the kitchen floor to come find me. I love watching her walk in circles around the living room chair acting like she has a serious purpose. I love to hear her jibberish in the backseat while Im driving. I love to show her new things and have her actually take it in and repeat them! In the last few weeks she has added alot of new words to her vocabulary. A few of my favorites are "Whereditgo?", Apple, shoe, Ippo (her pillow pet hippo), bird, Emma, and Abba. My all time favorite thing she does right now is walk over to me and grab my legs and buries her head in me to give me hugs.

A few of her favorite things right now are balloons, any and all animals, Toy Story, Yo Gabba Gabba, swimming, babies, and books.

We went to Rexburg for the 4th of July this year. It is one of my favorite holidays! A year ago from the 4th we actually blessed our sweet new baby! It will forever remind me of that special day and how much we love(d) her. There really are some things that Idaho is just more fun for, and one of them is the 4th! You would think that a baby would be really upset in the 3 1/2 hour car ride but somehow we can get Sophie laughing her head off at the most random things. This is one of my favorite things about her. She laughs and laugh so hard that she can barely breathe sometimes. I really have never seen a baby that can laugh as hard as her.

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Saturday morning we went boating with my friend Jenna and her family. My mom and Abby gladly watched Sophie which made it a pretty relaxing day! Unfortunately the boat had some problems about half way through, so we didnt get to stay out as long as we wanted, but it was still better than nothing!

Jenna's little girl Charlotte is a few months older than Sophie and she is hilarious! She had this life jacket on and was making the funniest faces. I dont think she could figure out why all the sudden she was so top heavy and kept falling over. She is such a good girl though, she didnt even complain once!

Sunday afternoon my mom made a nice bbq dinner and then we decided to take a drive to Warm River to see the fish and Mesa Falls. They are pretty cool to see, but Sophie was a little freaked out by the falls. She looked so worried with her eyebrows furrowed the whole time trying to figure out what was going on.

Sunday night my sister was driving through town and noticed that people had already put their chairs out for the parade so we figured, why shouldnt we? Me, my mom, and Abby (everyone else was too busy playing Call of Duty!) went and put our chairs on main street at midnight and came the next morning to find out perfect reserved spot still waiting for us! It worked out so good. Sophie loved the horses and the little girls dancing the most. She actually was really paying attention to everything almost the whole time. It was so cute.

That afternoon we had a picnic at the Sugar park with my moms whole family. We set up to play water kickball which turned out really fun! The kids- including Tyler, all loved it. It was also fun for Sophie because they had swings and lots of little cousins that like to play with her!

That night we went to the best fireworks show we've seen! If you havent been to the Idaho Falls fireworks, they are worth the drive!! They spent 13 million dollars on them this year and they were awesome! My mom stayed home with Sophie and it was fun to go out to them and walk around the shops and booths set up there. The fireworks are right above the river in front of the IF temple. It was a perfect night!

On our way home Tuesday we stopped at a Wendys that had no one there and we let Sophie walk around for a while in the parking lot. Thats where I took this cute picture! It actually makes me kinda sad cause she is looking more like a little girl than a baby now. She is getting alot skinnier now too since she has been walking and we cant get her to eat almost any regular foods! :(

Cabin fever!

For the past five or six months since I quit working part time I have LOVED it, but I will admit that January and a little bit of February are giving me some cabin fever! I just want the sun to come out so me and Sophie can go on walks and go out to the pool every single day!! I really cannot wait. But since we have been cooped up inside I have had to lean on my friends and some family to keep me sane!

Me and Sophie met up with my friend Brittany and her little boy Desmond. He was so funny and cute with her. He loves kisses and could not get enough of her! Sophie is pretty funny with little boys. At church she likes to find them and smile at them sitting around us. If any walk out to the bathroom or something she stares at them and smiles. Its so cute, but a little scary! I think we are going to have our hands full.

Sophie had fun playing with these other two babies at my friend Michelle's house. We wanted to get together and try out that Dance Central game and get out of the house! She is getting alot more mobile and likes to stand up now, but she still can't move forward and crawl. She looks like she is so close and then won't move her hands! We have decided to not push it anymore or worry about it so we have moved on to standing with her and letting her do her own thing. It's funny to watch her with other babies because she likes them alot until they get in her 'bubble.' She gets scared I think because they can crawl up to her and she can't move! Its pretty funny to watch.

Michelle and her little boy were so cute playing this boxing game. He was hilarious to watch play the Kinect. He was trying to play this racing one and he was just standing there and jumping up and down and waving his arms. He is so cute!

My poor little Soph has gotten a little cold and a cough mixed with teething off and on in the past week. The cough never seems very bad during the day but in the night its hard to hear her up coughing and not be able to do anything about it. It seems like its never going to go away! I have been trying not to take her out in the cold very much and I have been putting Baby Vicks Vaporub on her before she goes to bed but I dont think it really helps with her nose at all. This picture she looks a little bit sad and sick feeling.. :(

Here is a picture of all her teeth! She is nine months old and is growing in her 7th tooth! She has so many they are so cute. She has four on top and in the process of three on bottom. Its pretty funny though she can eat like saltine crackers and just hold them and bite them right off with her teeth.

Grandma Moore gave her this cute purple little lamb dress. She looks so cute in it I had to take a picture of her before church yesterday! It is SO hard to stay the whole three hours at church with her. Actually it is almost impossible because her nap time is at 10, and our church is at nine. Unfortunately she has passed the stage of falling asleep in her carseat at all. I dont know how people do it with a bunch of little kids! Right after sacrament is over she starts going crazy because she wants to be in bed. We usually end up trading off on who takes her home and who stays for the other two hours because if not one of us just sits in the hall fighting her. Yesterday was Tyler's day to bring her home and when I got home I found these two on our bed asleep watching Baby Einsteins. She almost NEVER falls asleep with us because she likes to be in her crib but apparently she was realllly tired and couldnt fight it.

Her little face looks so round and chunky in this pic. I love this! There is nothing Tyler loves more than cuddling with Soph. This weekend Sophie was so attached to Tyler for some reason. I think she just misses him so much during the week while hes gone. It's hard because he gets home at almost 7 and Sophie goes to bed at 8-8:30 usually so he only sees her for an hour in the evenings. She loves when he gets home, when she hears the garage opening she stares at the door to see if he's coming in. Its kind of sad but I can't really say the word "dada"during the day with her here because she gets excited and thinks he's home and then is let down. At church yesterday she wouldnt even sit with me! She would cry if I tried to take her from him, and when I was sitting in the hall with her he came out and she started screaming when he walked away! Normally I would've felt bad about it for myself, but I just thought it was cute. And its kinda nice to have a break. More and more I have started realizing why people would say its hard to have kids! I look around now and think how do they this with twins?! Or how do they have 4 kids under 4?! Being a Mom is really rewarding but also takes alot of patience!

I miss my bro!

Lately I have been starting to really wish that my brother Josh lived closer. He has missed out on so many things since he has been in Iraq and Afghanistan, and when he was here he lived clear in Texas! Living so far away from him makes me realize that I never ever want to move really far away from the rest of our family members because its too hard and expensive to see each other. He has never met Sophie and we never get to see his cute little kids either! I love them so much and have only seen them like 3 times. He is one of the funniest people I know and I just really wish we lived closer! It was his birthday recently so I have been thinking alot about him and all the fun times growing up together. It was so funny how hard he tried to annoy my parents. His one set job growing up was to water the trees in our yard, we had moved into a new house and the trees were all tiny at first and needed watering in the summer/fall. You would think this would be a fairly easy job but actually the trees outlined our whole huge yard and it was hard to drag that hose all the way around the house. I can still picture him out there trying to figure out ways to make the watering easier/faster while dressed in sweats and a hoodie in the summer time, and of course shorts and a tshirt in the colder fall weather. I am cracking up here thinking about how he dug and dug for hours out there trying to dig a canal to every tree so that if he watered in one spot it would magically drain through the canal to every tree in the yard. Sadly, that did not work!

I loved riding with him to school in the mornings. He has the worst road rage and in high school was super mean to people that got in our way. People that dont know him probably think this sounds really mean but since it was him it was so funny to watch how mad he got. My favorite year was the year we got to drop Ashley off at the Junior High. Ashley was always in the back seat with us and some reason he loved to pick on her on the way to school! Some mornings when we were rushed my mom would make us nutrimeal shakes to take with us and on our way to school Josh slammed on his brakes and Ashleys went flying all over her outfit. She wanted to go home but Josh wouldnt so we dropped her off at school with chocolate all over her outfit! Poor ASh had some bad experiences in that old white neon.

These are his cute kids! Olivia and Henry. She is a few years older than him but he weighs the same since she is the tiniest cutest little girl ever! I wish they could play with Sophie and she could get to know her first two cousins!

No one else better move away from me! It seems like so many of my friends and family members are leaving and I just want everyone to stay here!!