utah and homeward bound!

when we got back to salt lake, we celebrated our 5th anniversary! my dad and katie watched Prim and Jon and I went to bruges waffles and frites for appetizers which actually turned into dessert! then we went to the copper onion and shared a burger and fries which was soo good!

prim wouldn't go to bed as easily as we hoped she would, but we were secretly happy that she was awake when we got home. we took her outside and she helped us let go of each of the five balloons one by one. each one representing another year of marriage, each better than the last. 

my dad likes to get prim up in the morning and get her dressed (and i like to sleep in a little bit!). almost every night, even in normal life, i pick out prim's outfit for the next day and leave it on her changing pad so the morning is easy. when i came down to see my babe, she was wearing her headband on backward. ah but still so cute!

baby alex came to visit with mike and kim! they are the best friends, they always cater to us while we are in town. that really is not necessary, but we appreciate it so much. 

they are four months apart. don't they looks alike with their pale skin and bald heads?? so cute!

kim text me and said that mike got teeny a present (we told them a few weeks previous that we were expecting again!). i didn't think it was weird at all. i opened the card and it said something along the lines of "we know the perfect gift for your new baby..." i pulled out a tiny onesie and on it read "A new friend!!! baby bird coming december 2015!"!!!!! i was not expecting that at all and freaked out! i am so excited for them!!!! all four of our babies are going to be so close in age, i hope they love it growing up as much as we have so far!

amanda nanny's this sweet little boy named sam. we took primmy over to meet him and i think she liked him more than he liked her:)

aunt amandy

here prim is with her great-aunt nancy.

we always try to fit a good hike in with amanda while we are in town. this time we did the living room hike. it was both easy and hard and was the perfect challenge for us. poor jon was sick and was huffing and puffing in this crazy altitude that we aren't used to.

finally our babies get to meet! here is elliott checking prim out.

elliott with his hot mom and mom's hot friend. we walked from their house to a cute everything shop and got sodas and treats. 

elliott wasn't too interested in prim, but he did such a good job sharing his toys with her! even if she was playing with a toy he wanted, he would just go get another one for himself. so sweet.

love my ladies.

dads walking to little caesars/7-11 for firewood. 

a couple days before memorial day we went up to idaho for our usual celebrations.

happy memorial day!
we got pictures with the cousins and couldn't resist getting a few of Prim by herself. the flag was Jon's idea.

this was one of the first times we did this with Prim and she loved it, haha!

all packed up. katie blessed us with all her baby toys Casper has grown out of. As usual, our car was packed to the actual brim.

as we were passing Payson i remembered the new temple! so we did a very brief detour in order to pass it. so beautiful.

we drove straight to the grand canyon! neither of us had ever been before and thought that was a real shame. we only spent an hour or so there.

from there, we drove to John and Kat's which was a couple hours away. they are spending the summer at his parents house while John trains with Edward Jones. it was so good to see them and although they both had to wake up ridiculously early, they waited for us and stayed up to chat! Prim was an angel on the drive and visited with us until we were all ready to go to bed. it was pretty late so it took awhile, but she finally fell asleep between us. such a dear. 

december with amanda.

[originally posted on 5/29/15]

amanda came at the best time.

wearing daddy's hat!

we went to the church christmas party to debut the little darling. she wore the funny Mrs. Claus (Sister Claus according to amanda-lots of lols) outfit that kathy got her and everyone died over it.

here she is wearing the gender neutral shirt amanda got her and the monkey that we posed with in our pregnancy announcement we sent out. 

and the little teddy bear my dad got her. it looks so big next to her but it is actually really tiny!!!!

we were so glad to have aunt amanda here to help us and cuddle the little baby.

another one of our first outings, amanda and i wanted something to eat and stumbled upon ihop. (??) not sure what that was about but it was yummy and made us feel perfectly yucky afterwards! i took this picture of Prim lounging for Hannah because she's wearing Gracie's pants hannah sent us.

wearing the undershirt daddy drew for her before she was born.

she was loving the "book" amanda was "reading" to her. it is supposed to be really interesting to her because of the bold colors, i think it was too stimulating haha.

this was me and jon's favorite thing ever. she always looked so cute while we burped her!!! we'd always say (and still do) "don't forget to burp babay" in an indian accent because of the nicu nurse who taught us not to forget.

at this point i was definitely still coping with not breastfeeding Prim. jon and i found it really important for me to still get skin to skin time with her, so we'd cuddle or i'd feed her skin to skin and it really helped.

our trip with amanda was very low key. we didn't really go out much, just stayed at home and looked at/held prim all day long. i was so grateful for her help feeding, changing and holding prim while i was busy getting my strength back and trying to sleep in. i love all of my sisters and am so lucky that they love babies and are always willing to help us out with ours.

aw my four week old ready for her flight! security was the easiest thing in the world (especially since amanda was with us) and i never want to go through security without a baby again hahaha.

our first flight the stewardess said "aw, how old?!" when i told her four weeks she gave me a very condescending look. luckily i'm not easily offended or i would have wrung her little neck.

second flight's gate was across the hall from the first flight! it was so easy, we just walked right over and got on the plane. we took this picture when we got on the plane and prim was already snoozing. a few minutes later the woman next to amanda was looking around as if she wanted another seat. we asked "do you want to move?" and she was like "yeah..." too bad for her, prim slept the entire time and literally did not make a peep.

dream child!!!

we made it!!!!

the first event of our vacation was meeting auntie lizzie!!!!!!!! prim is so spoiled with love and i'm 100% okay with that!