"I love you."
"I love you, too."
"Always."
"And Forever."
Week 1:
This week, I honestly wish I could erase. It was beyond stressful, frustrating, tiring, awful. But it had some really great times, too. The reason it was so crazy was because I had a lot to do with organizing the swim team order. Scott and I spent countless hours, up past 2:00am most nights this week, sifting through the orders and making sure everything lined up so that I could place the equipment order by the end of this week. The work got done and the crazy part of it is done. Which I am grateful for.
On Tuesday of this week, Melia insisted on taking a bike ride. It ended up being a little longer that I thought it was going to be, but she loved it and it was really cute. When we started, she sat on her bike, peddled off one direction and turned to tell me, "I want to go to Catherine's house." Catherine is our next door neighbor and Melia loves her. We had started peddling in the wrong direction, though
so I had to tell her which house was Catherine's and we rode off to her house. Catherine wasn't home, but her daughter, Maren was. Maren is another of Melia's favorite people. We chatted for a bit and then went back to our bike ride. As we passed our other next door neighbor's, Tom and Peggy, they were out mowing the lawn and Melia took the opportunity to tell Tom all about her bike, how fast she could ride it and that fact that she was so good and loved riding. This of course, was 98% unheard by Tom since he was mowing the lawn.
For our Thursday afternoon activity, I tried to recreate my favorite picture of baby Melia with Ellie. It turned out pretty good! After I came home from work, Melia told me she wanted to ride her bike again. When we got going, she asked if we could go to the park. Soooo we did. It was a long ride for a short distance, but the walk to the park is mostly uphill. Melia did ride her bike the entire way to the park too, which I am very impressed about. As we were on our way out from the park, we ran into an old friend of mine, Vasha. We went to high school together and took one class together at BYU our freshman year. I hadn't seen her since then. It was a lot of fun and Melia took no time at all to befriend her. Vasha and I set up a time to meet back at the park and went our separate ways. I heard of nothing else but our next trip to the park to see Vasha for days - Melia was very excited.
I think it was on Friday that Melia did the funniest thing I have ever witness from her. I was sitting in the rocking chair with a sleeping Ellie on my chest while Melia was getting herself ready for the day. She had picked out her sparkly shoes and put them on, she was in a long t-shirt with no pants on and she put on a red beanie with her Frozen sunglasses OVER the beanie. As I am sitting in the chair, Melia comes in to tell me she is all ready and I ask to take a picture. She said that she had to finish getting ready first...which lead to the best moment of my day. Melia stood in the doorway, adjusted her shoes, socks, and then started twisting her shirt around, as well as her body. She wiggled her hips, lifted her shirt up and pulled it back down, she put her hand on one hip and stuck that hip out, she pulled the beanie so it stood straight up on her head and kept making sure her sunglasses were on right. She is doing all this while muttering to herself about what she is doing. It seriously was the funniest thing of the day. I was crying I was laughing so hard.
By the time Saturday rolled around, we had no plans for the BYU football game, so we decided pretty last minute to head over to Gigi and PopPop's house for the game. It was a lot of fun and Melia always enjoys going over to their house.Sunday was a good day. My best friend, Sophie, lives in Alaska so we don't see each other. She
visits Utah a couple times a year, but that's really it. I called her the day Lindsey Swenson died and told her how much I love her and that I wanted to make sure she knew that. We decided that each month we should do a phone call with each other to catch up and keep connected. So we decided that every second Sunday, we would do just that! So we did. And it was fun, we were able to talk for nearly an hour before I needed to go. One can have a lot of conversation in an hour, and you know what, the more we have these phone calls, the better they're going to get! Every one needs a best friend and I have the best of the best. The very first picture that we took together is framed and sitting on my bedside. I had known Soph for maybe 5 minutes before we took the picture. Melia talks about Sophie and how she is my best friend. It is just great! So great.
Week 2:
This week was really busy. I had something going on every single day this week. My work schedule this week wasa MWF so I was at the pool those days and TueThur I had made other plans as well. Tuesday, Melia wanted to do PlayDoh like all day. Knowing how much she loves Halloween, I decided to pull out my mom's Halloween cookie cutters for her to use with her playdoh. I win for best idea. She loves it. She was so proud of all her playdoh pictures that she kept asking me to take pictures of them. That night for Relief Society, we did a little service project; we made soup and divided it up for families in the ward that needed it. When I told Melia what I was making the soup for, she told me she wanted to come help me. I brought her to RS and she brought the bags of food to the front door with me. She loved the idea of being able to help other people and was jumping up and down when I told her it was time to deliver the food. Her heart is so big and eager to love.
Wednesday morning Kelsie and I made plans for a play date walk to the park. As we were getting ready, Melia smashed her hand in the folding doors. Really bad. The entire side of her hand swelled up instantly and she had a giant bruise. She screamed for a minute, cried for ten, then she told me she still needed to go to the park. So we did! Kelsie came over, we loaded the kids up; Kowen and Melia in the wagon while Ellie and Emmy rode in Kelsie's double stroller. It was really nice to have someone to go to the park with who has kids close to my kids ages. Kowen just kind of did his own thing, paid no attention to Melia and had a blast. Melia kept trying to boss Kowen around, but caught on pretty quickly that he was going to do his thing and did her own thing. We had the park to ourselves and Kelsie and I just watched and talked. We took a lap around the park, headed home and went on about our days.
Thursday, Melia yet again got to ride her bike to a neighbor's house. Only this time, it was much further. She did a pretty good job, the distance is probably close to the ride to the park and the only time Melia couldn't ride was when it was uphill. When we got to the neighbor's house, they had forgotten about us coming and weren't home. I called and she told me to just go on back to the backyard anyway and let Melia use the trampoline. Melia was so excited she didn't even want to waste time taking her shoes or helmet off! She jumped her little heart away and laughed the whole time!
Friday was an exciting day. We had a play date with Michele and Madeline at the park. Michele is someone I know from church and Madeline is her little girl who is a year older than Melia. Melia was very excited to go play with her and she absolutely had to bring her a present. So we dug through our toys at home and Melia chose a big stuffed turkey to give to Madeline! Hahaha. Melia ran over to Madeline once we saw them and handed her the present with pure joy in her eyes and Madenline was so genuinely excited to have just received a stuffed turkey as a present. It was really cute.
For practice on Friday, one of the swimmers asked if I would race her after practice. I told her I would and I came to practice with my bag packed. I was so dang nervous about this race it is ridiculous. I don't get nervous about competing and this had my heart flipping. But I had a lot of fun getting back in the mindset of racing! We did a 50yd Freestyle and I have no idea who won, it was so close.
Friday night we got last minute tickets with Derek and Brian to the BYU Homecoming football game WHICH ROCKED! The game was a lot of fun, there was good food involced and Melia got to have a sleepover at Gigi and PopPop's while we were out. Matt met us early at Gma's to take Melia and we took Ellie to game with us since she was still exclusively nursing. The game got intense and went in to double overtime, but the COUGS PULLED OUT THE WIN and it was INSANE and so much fun! When we got back to Gma's to pick up Melia, she was so tired. She had gone right to bed without any trouble. She woke up as we packed her into her seat and then never really went back to sleep the whole ride home. She kept telling me that her throat hurt and that she was so tired. I kept trying to get her to fall asleep. As we were pulling into our driveway, she started crying, she coughed, and anyone who has heard someone throwup would recognize that cough, and then she threwup. We were seconds away from getting her out of her seat; but luckily, she missed her car seat and it all landed on her blanket (sorry, gross) She had a little more to get out that we managed to get her out of the car for and she just started screaming and crying. Mind you, it was like 2:00am at this point so I was frantically trying to calm her down. I explained that I know she's sad and hurts, but that people are sleeping so let's try and calm down. For whatever reason, that clicked in her tired little brain and she calmed right now and just snuggled me. That was it. We went inside, cleaned her up, changed her clothes and she went right to sleep. Woke up the next morning happy as can be.
Saturday morning, we had set Melia up to play at Catherine and Maren's house while we went to cousin Nate's wedding. Since Melia had thrown up in the middle of the night, we were a little hesitant about going to the wedding and actually told Aunt Karla that we weren't going to make it. But when Melia woke up, ready to play and eat food, we figured something just didn't settle and she really was ok. Melia was so excited to go to Catherine's because they were going to make Halloween cookies! When we got home from the wedding and showed up at Catherine's, Melia actually started crying because she wasn't ready to go home. We told her that she was more than welcome to stay for a few more minutes while we went home to get Ellie from Grandma and Opa. Melia was very proud of her cookies when we came back the second time.
Nate's wedding was really nice to go to. It had been awhile since we got to go to a sealing so it was fun. After the sealing, we had a couple hours to burn so we went home and got the girls ready to go to the luncheon with us. When we got to the luncheon, we sat down and saved seats for Dallin and Matt. Gma and Pops joined us as well and we enjoyed a good afternoon with family. Melia had a lot of fun talking with Dal Dal and the food was pretty good. It was a nice way to end the week, that's for sure.
Week 3:
This week was a good break. It was nice and slow and not much happened. On Monday, Ellie had solids for the first time! It was actually pretty hard haha. She just didn't know what to do with the spoon and kept trying to suck on it haha. But she figured it out very slowly; it took her a couple weeks to really get it down. The extra rice cereal has helped her last a little longer between feedings, which is the idea, and she seems to be taking it pretty well.
The next big thing was really the weekend. Friday was double booked with my long-time friend's bridal shower. Melanie Blood had her shower Friday night and it was really nice. It was intimate; her sisters, cousin, best friend and myself. It was personal, fun, and we all just sat and talked for a couple hours. I had to leave a little sooner than I wanted to because Scott and I had set up a double date with my cousin Tim and Elise Six. That was a lot of fun too! We carved pumpkins and chatted about a ton of different things. Both of our girls were really good throughout the entire date and allowed us to focus on our company and activity. We were all there until almost midnight carving and talking.
Saturday morning, Scott and I got to go on a little date! A family friend has some horses and always tells me to come ride them, so we did on Saturday! It was a morning ride and we were able to go through the local trails. It was a lot of fun and it makes me wish I could ride horses more often. Saturday evening, we had a family photoshoot with Amanda Peterson. Oh it was so fun to get pictures taken! I loved it. Melia was a little hesitant at first, but she warmed up. She loved the fact that we were in the mountains taking pictures and she loved that she got to help Ellie with pictures, too. We had Dallin and Matt come up with us so that we had someone to help get the girls to smile and to take them while Scott and I had couple pictures taken. It worked out really well and we were only out for an hour! Afterwards, we all went back to our place for some dinner and just spent some time together. Dallin hung around for a little bit after we finished eating, but Matt had to go get some homework done.
Week 4:
This was another pretty slow week until Thursday rolled around. Then it got real crazy. Thursday night, we went to Cornbelly's with Grandma and Opa. We got there around 7:00pm and were there for about an hour and a half. Melia had a ton of fun! It was way busier than I thought it would be so it made it a little hard to do some of the activities. Now I know to go during the day. She still got to do a lot though. She went through a mini maze, played in the corn kernal beach, got to go through the belly of a monster, play on a giant haystack playground; she jumped on a trampoline of sorts and then we finished the night with the tractor cow train. Melia had a lot of fun at Cornbelly's and she kept calling it, "The Halloween Park" which really isn't all the inaccurate haha. She is already talking about going back and riding the mechanical bull! HA! She wanted to ride that so badly while we were there, but she is just too little. After we got home from Cornbelly's Ted and Steph flew in and
Friday morning, Stephanie came home a little after 10:00 and we just hung out all day. Melia absolutely loved having her Aunt Nan here with her all day and wouldn't stop playing with her. At one point while Ellie was napping in her crib, Melia was tired but wouldn't nap so I set her up with a show on my phone, laid down with my arm over her and fell asleep. I woke up to Ellie about 30 minutes later and saw Steph asleep on the floor as well haha. Melia just knows how to wear everyone down and somehow manages to fight sleep.
Saturday, Scott, the girls and I were on the constant move. In the morning, we went to breakfast with the family. Matt and Stephanie were there, Scott, the girls and I and PopPop even came. We went to Kneaders for breakfast and had a lot of fun talking and just being with family. Afterwards, we all went over to Gma and Pop's house and sat on the back patio and chatted some more. Around 12:30, Scott and I left with the girls to go see some of my residents from BYU! I set up a little reunion with some girls and we met at the Rock Canyon park for a couple hours. McKell, her husband and their new little baby boy William came, Ashleigh came and Miranda even stopped by for a little bit. We seriously sat and talked for 2 hours and it was a lot of fun. I so wish I could keep up better with all
Sunday, we went to church with Ted and family at the old ward. It was a lot of fun to see familiar faces. Most people didn't know we had Ellie and all commented on how beautiful she is. They also were blown away at how big Melia is getting. Melia didn't skip a beat at church and was super excited to go to nursery class. Even though it was a new place, she took right to it, literally dragged Matt with her, and loved every second of nursery. Sunday night, Stephanie and Ted flew home so we said goodbye to them at Gma and Pop's house and went home to bed. Melia was very cute about saying goodbye to her Aunt Nan. She loves all her Uncles and Nan and always tells me how much she misses them just seconds after they leave. It is very cute.
Week 5:
Monday was HALLOWEEN! Another day where I was just on the move all day. In the morning, I had to drop Scott off at work so that I had to car to go back to his office for their work party. Once I got home from dropping him off, I had to get all three of us girls ready, in our costumes, and up to his office. We got the office party, ate good food, had good company and Melia loved seeing all the kids in their costumes. At one point, one of Scott's coworker's son, who is a speech pathologist, had a conversation with Melia (since I was talking to him about how she has a lisp) and right in the middle of a sentence, she takes a cherry tomato, pops it into her mouth and bites it. When she bit it, it sprayed tomato juice and seeds all over this guy haha. I mean, all over him. He laughed, we laughed. It was hilarious. When the party was over, we went up to my Grandma Tarbox's house and hung out there for a couple hours. Melia loved playing there! Great Grandma came outside and played on the swing set with us, we got to eat some food and play with her toys. Melia loved showing Great Grandma and Grandpa and Diane her Halloween costume and just talked away. It was nice to be at Grandma's house and just be able to talk to her. I never get up there.
When we left from Great Grandma and Grandpa's house, we picked up Scott, dropped me off at
Tuesday, was pretty relaxed until the afternoon. I signed up to make a chili for the Relief Society Chili Cook Off and just hadn't bought ingredients for it. My mom and I just grabbed whatever we had on the shelves and made a chili. It actually ended up being really good. It was a sweet and spicy chili and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. We went to the church early with my mom to help get things ready and wait for Scott to come pick us up for some dinner. Scott and I had received movie tickets from his boss to see Inferno. Melia and Ellie were staying with my parents the the RS activity, so we wanted to make sure Melia was fed and ready to go before we left. As we were pulling out of our driveway (after grabbing some forgotten things from home) Amanda pulled up with our family pictures. The time couldn't have been more perfect. We dropped the girls back off at the church, headed up to our movie and enjoyed our evening! I really enjoyed the movie and the fact that we had the night off. We got home, picked up the girls and uploaded our pictures. I love getting pictures back and going through them for the first time. They turned out really good and I love them. Amanda did a great job capturing the personalities of our girls and our family.
Wednesday, TODAY is Ellie's 6 month birthday. She is sitting up really well, well enough to sit in the wagon with Melia. Ellie is crawling better and better every day, and she loves attention. She babbles nonstop, drools nonstop and is growing like crazy. She wears 9 month clothing, sometimes 12 month clothing and still has no teeth. She is totally in love with Melia and smiles a great big grin every time she see's her. Any time Ellie hears Melia's voice, she turns to try and find her and keeps looking back. Ellie loves bath time, hates her car seat and loves to be tickled. Melia loves to make Ellie laugh and is quite proud of the fact that she can lift Ellie up (despite constant reminders not to). Melia is learning more every day and is eager to practice what she already knows. She uses "real" scissors now (the super dull kid ones, but they are a step up from her plastic scissors) and she loves to color. Her imagination is incredible and she is always making up voices for her stuffed animals and toys. Melia told me this week, on the verge of tears, that she doesn't want Ellie to grow up because, "I want her to be my baby forever." Despite how fast our lives are moving, how quickly our girls are growing up, they will be our babies forever. Love runs deep in this family, and our love helps us to Keep Moving Forward
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| Ellie 11/02/16 |
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| Melia 11/02/16 |
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| PC: Amanda Grace Photography |
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| PC: Amanda Grace Photography |
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| PC: Amanda Grace Photography |
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| PC: Amanda Grace Photography |
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