Labor Day Weekend

So this is kind of like the blog post that never ends. You would think since I'm limiting it to one weekend, that there couldn't be too much to say? Well that's not the case, keep scrolling/reading and you'll find out.

Friday morning Tyler and Jackson went off to SeaWorld. Abbie had a rough night and was wide awake at 6 am, so we stayed home. She was so tired she fell asleep while I was holding her on my lap! I was watching Jackson play and honestly had no idea she was asleep until I looked down.  She then slept for over three hours that morning.

I don't think she's ever fallen asleep like this before!

The only picture Tyler took of the morning, aka proof they were there haha

That night we all went to another high school football game, too bad they don't start til 730! I left with the kids during the third quarter with the score tied 10-10. It got pretty exciting after we left but our team lost in double overtime, 34-37.

Jackson and Tyler having fun

Well, here's another picture of sleeping Abbie - fell asleep in the Bjorn right next to the marching band!

Kisses!

Family Shot

Saturday morning we headed off to Blizzard Beach. Since we're swimming, wet, and normally holding babies and toddlers, I rarely ever take pictures at the water park! We didn't take any this weekend but it was a fun morning. Jackson finally got brave enough to go down some of the bigger slides in the "big kid" area and even went down face first on the kiddy slides. We have a year pass to the water parks, so we'll have to go again with camera in hand.

Saturday evening was a ward party, thrown by the Elder's Quorom - aka Tyler. He was the mastermind behind the event and I think everyone had a great time. He threw another party back during Memorial Day Weekend and it's crazy how many new people have moved into the ward just since then. We had it at the Munns' house and he helped Jacque get the backyard ready before the party. He was on the grill for the first half and swimming with Jackson for the rest of the party. Others were boating, playing in the lake, on the water tramp, socializing and playing on the beach.

Jackson getting ready to "jump" to Daddy, he has gotten so brave this summer.

Hanging out by the dock

Abbie is getting pretty close to sitting up! She can balance for about 30 seconds before toppling over now... and ignore the cradle cap.

A group heading out on the boat

Some of my friends chatting and laughing about something :) Amanda, Semra, Andrea

The next morning was Sunday, so of course we went to church, and I actually snapped this pic of Abbie during sunday school bc she was just looking too cute :)

Think our weekend was busy enough yet? Well guess what we hadn't even begun the main event yet - we went on a little "vacation" to St. Petersburg (in Tampa Bay area) for the night. We went with Jon, Semra and their daughter Sahara. But did we get a single picture of the group? No. Did we get any pictures with them at all? No. That's why I felt like I at least needed to include the one from the ward party of Semra haha.

OK anyways, so yeah we drove over late Sunday afternoon and checked into our hotel at the Marriott Courtyard (one of the perks of a traveling husband - free hotel nights!)  Then we went over to the St. Pete pier and ate some dinner as we watched a band play, dolphins swim, and pelicans fly.

Finally at the pier!

Jackson eating his enormous chicken tender with his BFF.

Lifeguard in training.

Abbie and I watching the sunset

Jackson and Tyler walking back

View from the 5th floor of the pier shops - looking to downtown St. Pete

Posing with the Pelican

The next morning we headed over to the beach for a few hours. Again, our friends were with us but we got no pictures, I promise I did not make them up. Is it sounding like we have imaginary friends? One of these days we all need to take a picture together!

The main reason for this little trip was to check out a Rays baseball game! I went with my kids and my family to a Diamondback game earlier this summer but Tyler was back in Florida. So he wanted to make sure he saw a game with his buddy this year. It was a Rays/Yankees afternoon game so it worked out great!

The awesome thing about our hotel was that it was just a few blocks from the stadium and offered a free shuttle to the game! So after the beach we went back to the hotel, got ready and packed our cars and took the shuttle to the front gates of the ballpark.

Abbie loves being forward facing in the carrier now...

So much so that she falls asleep doing it! She slept pretty well considering how loud the people around us were!

So our seats weren't great but they hit a homerun right in our section -10 rows in front of us!

Tyler and Jackson soaking it in

Jackson is normally down for his nap by 2:30 at the latest so he was getting pretty tired by the end of the game, he did pretty well though. We lasted until the middle of the 8th inning but Tyler did not want to leave since it was tied 3-3. The Rays ended up scoring right after we left and won 4-3 :)

We took our handy shuttle back to the hotel and said farewell to Jon and Semra. We hopped in our car and headed back to Orlando (90 minute drive). Both kids fell asleep when we got in the car but dangit Jackson, he woke up when we stopped to get gas 30 minutes later. Needless to say he went to bed pretty early that night.

All in all it was a pretty fun weekend! Too bad Tyler had to go out of town the next morning and then has school this weekend, boo! But I think we fit enough fun in to last a while...

End of August

For most people the end of August signifies the end of summer, but for a family in hot Florida with kids who aren't in school yet - September really won't bring too many changes. But I'm kind of ready for summer to be over - I'd love to be able to run outside, go to the park, and theme parks without sweating, and start gearing up for the fall! So I'll just have to start baking with pumpkin and bust out the Halloween decorations to make it happen...

Since Abbie turned 4 months through the end of August, there haven't been many "blog worthy events" occur with our family. But there have been some fun moments and memories caught via phone photos. 

Waiting for Daddy to come home on the front porch, I think we were all ready for him this day!

All summer Jackson has refused to wear flip flops, last year he lived in them, but this year he wouldn't even let me put them on. But he let me put them on him one afternoon and now he loves wearing them ... finally!

Figured out how to make her smile for pictures, turn the camera around so she can see herself!

Abbie tried rice cereal for the first time, she ate it just fine but didn't love it...

And here is me, trying rice cereal for the first time at 4 1/2 months - look alike??

Trains have taken over our house and Abbie is starting to get in on the action.

 I am now the Young Women Secretary in our ward and was put in charge of New Beginnings a couple weeks ago. It's fun being in Young Women again, but it's just such a different place than I had in Mesa. We probably had 40-50 girls in our young women program and this ward has 8, with 2 new girls coming in this year. It's very small but they are great girls.

I got these prints framed for a handout for the girls, the only picture I have from the event.

I love that she still falls asleep in my arms every day, Jackson normally fell asleep best in the swing for naps, so I love that I can rock her to sleep so easily.

We did a babysitting swap with our new friends, the Carters, and got a taste of life with 5 kids, they were all great but I'm good with 2 for now :)

Jackson and I went to the splash pad for one of the last times this year.

We went to our first high school football game of the season. Both kids were great.

Happy Abbie after "facetiming" with Grandma on a Sunday night.

The girl gets around! Between rolling over and scooting, this girl made it all the way off the blanket after starting facing her toys.

Happy little beauty girl.

She got her first cold last week and had a hard time sleeping with her clogged up nose. This day she took her afternoon nap in my arms for 2 hours, not the most productive day of me, but I was glad she finally got some sleep!

I don't think I have any pictures of me holding both kids - it doesn't really happen too often, so I tried taking this one while watching a movie one night.

These kids are my life and I'm so grateful to Tyler who works hard and lets me spend my days with them :)

Four Months

Oh Abigail why must you get so big so fast, and why must you be so stinkin cute! We are so in love with our baby girl. She turned four months old on Sunday so I took some pictures when we got home from church. She had been wearing her white knit tights, but I had to take them off to document the leg chub :)

I took about 100 pictures, and of course the first picture I took turns out to be the best haha.

She would not stop grabbing her dress and sucking on it. Seriously, everything goes to the mouth right now!

Love my chunky baby girl :)

 So we went to the doctor for the first time since May and boy has she grown, she is now 15 pounds 9 ounces, which sounds huge - but is still 2 pounds lighter than Jackson was at this age haha. She is in the 80th % for weight. She only grew 1 1/2 inches which kind of surprised me - she's only 24 1/2 inches and in the 35 % for height. She's long enough to be growing out of 3-6 month clothes but maybe that's just the chub doing that :) Either way she is growing way too fast, oh ya and has a huge head just like her brother. At least she's in the 98% and not off the charts...

At the doctor, after being weighed - letting all the rolls hang out

The beauty girl hasn't made a ton of changes this month. Other than the fact that she is now rolling over. She rolls from back to tummy effortlessly. She loooves being on her tummy and still sleeps that way. There have been a few times where I have set her down on her tummy and come back to find her on her back. I haven't seen it happen but she's obviously rolling both ways now, my little ambi-turner :)

While she's not officially scooting forward intentionally, she is quite the little mover. She'll  be on the blanket facing one direction and then I'll come back and she'll be facing the other way - she does this both on her back and tummy. I am going to guess she'll be scooting in a month or so.

Her sleeping schedule is still about the same, she hasn't really gone much longer in the nights, still about 8 hours on an average good night. She still takes one long afternoon nap and shorter naps in the morning and evening. I can see her transitioning into a 2 nap a day schedule in the next month or so though. But the girl always falls asleep in her carseat if we go out in the evenings.

Abbie on her first four "month birthdays"

One day while I was holding Abbie on my lap in the guest room I looked over at the exersaucer that had been sitting there for six months and realized - oh wow she is probably old enough to play in there now! So I plopped her in and she loved it!

And Jackson now loves it too!

Just FYI the exersaucer is now normally downstairs, not teetering dangerously at the top of the stairs :)

She is still the most smiley happy girl ever! She is very easy going and will sit or lay in a room contently watching Jackson play. I am so happy that they love each other so much :)

Life as of late

We have had lots of fun these past couple weeks. Lots of swimming, Disney, and watching the Olympics!

Some memories I want to remember...

Watching Olympics with Jackson - at first I didn't know how he'd feel about watching shows other than cartoons, but he's been loving it! Some of his favorite things to watch are rowing (super random but he loves yelling "row row row!" and moving his arms like the athletes), gymanstics (big jumps!), swimming and diving, basketball (when they showed womens bball he looked at the tv with a super concerned look on his face, finally he looked at me and said, "oh its mama hoop") and his favorite is track and field (like mother like son)

Oh how I wish this video wasn't upside down - I don't know how that happened while I was filming but this is just too cute not to share. He figured out this starting block on the couch setup on his own. Right before I filmed this we had watched a hurdle race and i explained what they were doing as they started in the blocks and jumped over the hurdles. He wanted to try... (probably his favorite phrase right now "I try!") 

I am loving seeing my two amazing kids interact. Jackson is so in love with Abbie. Now whenever she cries he says, "sorry baby, no cry sorry sorry" and rubs her head until she stops crying or he gives her a binky. The great thing is that most of the time, this works and she'll stop crying. She is so in love with him. She will sit in a room content if she can watch Jackson playing. If we leave the room she gets sad. He has finally started saying Abbie! For some reason it was a really hard word for him to say but now he calls her Abbie most of the time, but still calls her baby and Abigail.He is really good at making her laugh and smile...

Last Friday we went to Disneyworld with a friend who works there. We don't have passes yet but wanted to go while Tyler had some free time. It was dang hot but we had fun. We started at Hollywood Studios, then went over to Animal Kingdom. We went home in the afternoon and planned to go to Magic Kingdom in the evening. The weather wasn't looking great so Tyler decided he wasn't into it but I still wanted to go. So Jackson and I went alone and it was one of the funnest nights! We rode dumbo, buzz lightyear and even the barnstormer rollercoaster! He was barely tall enough but I was sure he'd be too scared but he absolutely loved it. We hung out at Pooh's house, joined in on a dance party with pluto and goofy, and checked out the new Casey Jr Train play area. When we left the park I bought him his first toy story characters and he was in heaven. He just held the box smiling the whole ride on the monorail. He has loved playing with Woody, Buzz, Jesse, Bullseye, the aliens (ooooooh) and his favorite dinosaur, rex.

Oh in other news, Abbie is rolling over! Not from tummy to back like a normal baby, but from back to tummy. It's funny how different she is from Jackson in this regard. He haaated being on his tummy but she loves it and prefers it to her back.

We went to Blizzard Beach last Saturday and while Jackson is still scared to go down the bigger kid slides by himself he'll ride the crazy tube slides as long as he's with Tyler or me. But he's getting braver in that he will jump off the side and dive in now. He used to only jump from the steps but now he'll do it from the side. Also they have these big glacier things that float in the water for kids to climb on (kind of like the lily pads at sunsplash) and he loves laying on those and then rolling or scooting head first in the water from there. He does this all with now floaties and loves loves loves his freedom in the water.

Kind of a big deal, it's crazy how much he looks like Tyler here.

Fun night swimming

In his starting blocks again!

Fruit for dinner and her first successful roll!

He loves wearing Tyler's hat right now

Riding Dumbo with my buddy

Buzz Lighyear ride

After riding the Barnstormer

Hi Mr. Gorilla!

Digging in the boneyard

Lion!

Cheetahs and cute Jackson in the mirror

Abbie's first time at Disney - meeting Mickey!