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. 

primmy's first christmas

[originally posted on 5/31/15]

i got to utah about five days before jon could come. lizzie or amanda slept with me through the night because i was nervous to be alone with prim. my postpartum depression and anxiety was the worst at night. it helped so much to have them there and taking care of prim by myself those nights was actually exactly what i needed. i had been feeling so bad about not being able to help out with her and feeling like i was failing as a mom, but waking up with her every night that week and doing good with it-i felt so much better. those nights were actually when things turned around and my depression backed way off. things have been improving ever since and i no longer feel like i suck at being a mommy.

this is when the little kidlets met prim for the first time. they were so cute with her and excited to meet her!! ahh it melted my heart.

uncle sam's first time meeting her as well!

while we are apart we don't talk to each other very often. [deployment mode] but when we did talk, we thought it was super hilarious to pretend to be taking myspace photos. how funny is jon's?

my little christmas baby.

its so good to all be together.

katie is such a dear and gave us sooo much baby stuff you guys. this was her first time in the little bouncer. i think she liked it.

she looks so old in this picture! sitting up like a big girl. she's about five weeks old in this. 

and now she looks so tiny!!! i wore her like this at my dads while i did my puzzle.

playing with auntie lizzie.

here we are at......burlington. i sent this picture to jon-he was so mad we were at that place with such a tiny babe.

but we had fun coat shopping!!

my dad took this and posted it on twitter for my family and they loved it.

great grandma becky!

my sweetest aunt in the world threw us a baby shower. it was low key and exactly what i wanted and needed. we all just visited and caught up with each other.

meeting uncle alex!!!

and nana for the first time! it was so sweet to see them together.

here are the little kidlets at build-a-bear. they built that little bear for miss primrose and gave it to her for christmas. they included a voice clip saying "we love you prim!" so that she can listen to it while we are far away. cutest and sweetest gift.

our little christmas baby all dolled up for church in the outfit camille got her and little sockies from lizzie. she had sparkles on her head for days after wearing this.

christmas eve tradition, finding a live christmas tree:)

so magical.

here we are on christmas morning bundled up to go to jon's moms house. those little reindeer jammies fit her for one night! she looks unhappy in this, but she really loves christmas.

miss primmy and harley dog.

this is the gift jon got me after prim was born. he told me what he was getting me while i was in labor, but he obviously had to wait to give it to me until we had her! and knew she was a her! he gave it to me on christmas morning. he is so thoughtful.

christmas was so fun and so exhausting. i didn't get any pictures of the actual day! we spent the morning with kim and alex opening gifts, having breakfast and playing with harley in the snow in the backyard. the afternoon we went to my dads house and exchanged presents. it was very crazy with everyone there and all the babies excited about their gifts. we had a birthday dinner and cake for lizzie at night and drifted off into a very nice sleep. this was the first night prim slept for 6 or 7 hours. christmas totally took it out of her, hahaha. (she was almost 6 weeks old)

aw mike and kim brought over sweet alex! it was our first time meeting each others babies and it was so fun. he is such a cutie, but prim simply wasn't feeling it.

her new years eve outfit. we weren't sure if we were going to a ball or not on actual new years eve so we had her wear this to church. her aunt katie got it for her and it looked so cute!!!!

wow you guys. it was so cold. for the most part, we kept prim inside and my dad was nice to stay with her while she slept so jon and i could go out and run errands or do whatever. 

lizzie and i would walk every morning even though it was freezing. on one of our walks we had to run across a busy street that was probably 15 or 20 yards wide. while we were doing it i yelled to lizzie "i'm running!!!" at six weeks postpartum and 4 weeks after getting out of the hospital, i was so proud of my body. i know that some women are jogging on the daily by 6 weeks and some women are hardly walking at that point. the whole childbirth thing is totally crazy and in that moment i felt very fortunate. 

on the coldest day of the year (no joke) we all went out and took family photos. the photographer did a good job and hurried to pose us and take pictures quickly. unfortunately, the pictures didn't work out because of something on her lens, so sad!! but we did get this cute one of our bundled baby.

here katie and robbie are babysitting primrose while the rest of the family went to see the hunger games. that movie was awesome and it was funny to hear katniss calling for prim! we named our primrose after the character in the book. 

hahaha. primmy really did not want to get her hands and feet inked, but she did a good job. my dad was a professional at it and did it so quick so we got lots of little footprints to give her nana and put in her baby book. this circle one is for her baby's first christmas ornament that jon's aunt and grandma gave us.

do you guys even geocache?

her juicy sweatsuit.

we took the whole family and the birds to go see the tree of life at draper park. we got hot chocolate before hand and let the kids run wild in the park. to say it was cold is an extreme understatement. 

and our final photo of 2014!!!!!!!!! the four of us hung out at home and watched the ball drop on tv.
prim was definitely the life of the party, she was outta control.