Claire is walking!!!

That's right...she's been walking for over a week now! Woo hoo! It's so fun to watch her little body move like that! And she's loving the independence (and I'm wondering why I am so excited about this!). We haven't had a chance to get video on our camcorder yet, but Nate got this one on his phone...so, sorry about the image quality. We took this tonight at my parent's house. Man, I love this girl!!

Fun-filled weekend

Busy, busy, busy. That tends to be the theme of my life lately. And this weekend was no exception. It started off with a photo shoot on Friday afternoon. Check my photography blog for pics of that and other shoots. Then, straight from there, we headed over to good old WXHS for my youngest brother's lacrosse game. Go Cats! They beat Northridge to claim the #1 seed going into the playoffs! Way to go B! It was a great game! This is also his senior and sixth year playing lacrosse...we're so proud of all he's accomplished! Here are some highlights:

{PS: Warning...there will be a TON of photos on this post!}

Grandma and Claire...I think Claire is upset about a call in this pic.

Action shot

Claire loves walking around!

This was about half of B's personal cheering section...

I had to get a picture of B's socks...he always wears these awesome red and white socks. In fact, he's used them so much that I think he was to put elastics underneath them to keep them up! I love it though because it makes him easy to spot on the field.

After the game; it was freezing!

We had Claire so bundled up that she turned into a squish face.

Brandon with Claire and my nephew, Corgan.

After the game, we had some of our best friends come in from out of town and spend the night at our house. Nate was roommates in college with Soren and we sure love the Carlsons! They have a little boy, Kai, who is three months older than Claire. It was so fun for her to have a little friend around! Lindsey and I took them to the park while the guys went golfing.

Of course, Claire loves the dirt!

Here are the guys: Nate, Jason and Soren

Later on Saturday we went to the zoo. It was Claire's first time! It was fun to watch her reactions to the animals.

We were trying to make Kai and Claire kiss...it was pure entertainment for us at least. :)

I don't think Claire really cares where we are as long as we walk with her. She could do this all day and never get sick of it.

Group shot:

We finished off the weekend today with a few hours of Wii entertainment. Thanks to Nate's brother who "didn't need the distraction" during finals week at USU (good student huh?), we get to keep his Wii for the next week! I didn't get any pictures because we were having too much fun! My dad even played a little tennis with us!

Fun times and a great weekend!!

Roadtrippin to WY

So last week we got to spend five days in beautiful Rawlins, Wyoming. Why would we go to Rawlins, you say? The real question is...why not? Its got a grocery store, a library, tons of cowboys, and a KFC inside a gas station...a.k.a. all the necessities in life. Who wouldn't want to spend five days in Rawlins?? All right, all right, I'll tell you the real reason. Nate got into work on Monday morning and they wanted him to drive up that very day and spend the week at the Sinclair oil refinery. Pretty cheesy, but we've never been apart for that long and we hated thinking about not seeing each other for a week! So in about fifteen minutes time, we all got packed and made the four-hour drive. This is what I got to look at for pretty much the entire drive...

Beautiful, huh? Not boring at all.

Claire and I had many exciting adventures. Our days consisted of: waking up around 9 am, playing in the hotel for a few hours until Nate took a lunch and brought us the car, going to the library, swimming in the freezing cold pool, shopping at the Pamida, and walking into AA meetings (seriously). Here are a few pics from our library adventures (honestly, we spent hours at this library).


She was obsessed with this alphabet board...


Claire kept crawling back and forth between the alphabet board and this giant frog and would yell "Da, da, da" during the crawl. And when I mean yell, I mean scream. I had to keep shushing her because the internet users (the only people in the library) were giving us dirty looks.


PS-Nate did most of the packing for Claire and did not bring ONE hair bow for her. She went bowless the whole trip and I had two old ladies ask me if she was a boy or girl. Grrrrr...

We also introduced Claire to the world of bubbles. She reacted in the way she reacts to most things: at first, very unsure if she wants anything to do with it.



Then she started to warm up to them...


And finally, she had a lot of fun. We got some cute giggles out of her.

Notice the awesomeness that is Nate's outfit? He got to wear this beautiful one-piece jumpsuit everyday at the refinery. I'm ashamed to say I didn't get a picture of him with the matching hardhat and protective eye wear.


Claire had a hard time sleeping in the hotel crib......until we found the perfect spot for her. Can you tell where she is?

She slept like...well, a baby...in the dark, quiet bathroom. :) My poor child.

We did find one treasure in Rawlins. Anong's Thai Cuisine. This was the best Thai food I've ever had. I'm still craving the Pad Thai...yummmmm.

All in all, a pretty successful road trip with only one speeding ticket (I'm not admiting who got the ticket) and otherwise no other accidents. I'd recommend a road trip to Rawlins anytime!

Drum roll please...

The day is finally here! I am officially launching my photography blog! I'm so excited to finally turn my favorite hobby into a profession. I'm excited this day has come! Woo hoo!

So keep me in mind for when you need family portraits, newborn photos, birthday pictures, birth or wedding announcements, or just any time you need a photographer!

Check it out here:

Melissa Sue Photography

Weekend update

{Disclaimer: Wow...I took way too long to blog about last weekend! I do have an excuse though- we've been out of town all week on a spur-of-the-moment trip. Pics of that to be posted soon!}

Last weekend was one busy weekend! I'm sad to say that most of it was work, but we got to play a little bit. We've been working on getting our backyard in and that's basically what we did the whole weekend. On Friday, Nate got five truckloads of compost and dumped it all over the yard. Then he rented a gigantic tiller to till the compost into our soil, which is basically concrete. Here he is, hard at work.


After working all day Friday, we got up bright and early on Saturday and this time rented a trencher to dig all our sprinkler pipe trenches. Again, there is no way you could do this without a machine. Our soil really is concrete.



My brother, Brad, actually saved the day by bringing all kinds of tools for us to use! So a big thanks to Brad (who I didn't get any pictures of) and Ry for coming and helping.



We ended up getting about half of the pipe installed, so we're hoping to have another fun-filled weekend this weekend to finish up. :)


A funny thing that happened on Saturday morning...Claire started waking up so I went into her room to get her and I do believe that Claire was in her own personal heaven. Can you tell why from the picture?


She was all smiles because she had THREE BINKIES all at once! She kept rotating them out every 15 seconds or so because she couldn't decide which one to have in her mouth!


On Saturday night, while the guys were at Preisthood session, my mom, sister, sis-in-law and I took the babies and went to dinner at Costa Vida. YUM! Then we all went over to the S. Davis Rec Center (my newfound favorite place) to take the kids swimming. It was a blast! Here's the group, minus me.


Claire and me...man, she loves the water!






It was my nephew, Corgan's, first time in a pool. It was kind of cold and the poor kid didn't have too much fun. He was in this position the whole night. Literally.



Claire was in love with her grandma the whole time in the pool. She didn't want anything to do with me once they started playing. If I tried to hold her, she'd just reach back for Grandma!


The rec center has this awesome waterslide that is pretty big and goes fast. Ang and I decided to take Drew and Claire on it. From the pictures, it doesn't look like the kids had that much fun, but we loved it!



Seriously, Corgan did not move from this position. But isn't he darling anyway?




Finally, here are the three kiddies. I love this pic because it looks like Claire and Drew might be enjoying some kind of inside joke and Corgan was sitting up all by himself.



What a fun and busy weekend!

Swim class + Claire = FUN

Claire and I started our Mommy/Tot swim class today! Yeah! It was so much fun! Here she is in her swimsuit, all ready to go.

She was so excited this morning while we were getting ready. It was like she knew we were doing something different today. She kept dancing all around the furniture.This class was honestly one of the funnest things I've ever done! Here we are, right before class started. I didn't get any pics of us in the pool, but I'm sure I will get a ton over the next few weeks.She wasn't very insterested in the class part, and especially hated the part where I had to dunk her...but she loved playing motor boat and blast off. Then after class we got 15 minutes to just play around in the water and she LOVED that part. We went to the really shallow area, where she could stand with the water at her neck and I would hold her hands while she walked all around the pool. She was giggling almost the whole time! It was so adorable. I'm so excited that we get to do this twice a week for the next four weeks!

After class, all bundled up in her towel...

Here she is after our 10-min drive home. I think she was asleep before we left the parking lot.