we are happier here.

y'all, we bought a house! and strangely, that means i have so much more time for things i love-like writing on my blog!! i wish i would have written a blog on our normal day-to-day while living at my in-laws butttt i didn't have time! we lived on the third floor and with two kids, that meant a lot of running up and down the stairs and figuring out when i could feed them and feed myself. going to the grocery store was a huge chore because it was 25 minutes away and finding 50 minutes, let alone an hour and a half where both girls were awake and happy was a rare thing. now we have our own house with a kitchen on the same floor as us, laundry room on the same floor as us, garage on the same floor as us. i can get to the grocery store in 2 minutes (the nice HEB in 15) and when i get back i can unload the groceries with the door open while both girls are in their high chairs or playing and i can hear or see them both. it sounds simple, but trust me-it isn't. i can even do laundry while they are in their room together or one is asleep and one is awake. before i would have to do laundry while both children were asleep because carting our clothes down three flights of stairs and leaving one (or two) babies awake upstairs for the 5 minutes it would take to take the clothes down and start the laundry was not possible. it was extremely challenging. but here we are, in our own little house in san antonio, texas. life is good. 

 this is me as a baby. funny picture, but i think lucia looks like i do in this!

lucia grace  

 wearing shoes i wore as a baby 

(it took me 15 minutes to get them on her)

 primrose as the enormous bear at costco

 little babies

 this was this morning. i can't believe her hair is long enough to do pig tails and she is this tall and skinny. she is supposed to still be a chubby infant with no hair, i don't get it. she wears an eye patch 3-4 hours a day to help strengthen the muscles in her left eye. she wears glasses all the time because she is far sighted. she got them at about 16 months.

i found this picture of my gran while unpacking some boxes. i assume Don took it and i just think she looks so beautiful. 

primrose is one!

how cute is this announcement? my sister in law made it!!!! she is talented.

we took a risk and celebrated Prim's birthday outside! it rained off and on all day but was great weather during the party. this is in our backyard, john and kathy got it cleaned up and put down the mulch! so nice.

we haven't given prim real sugar yet and didn't want to do a cake smash, so the party was fruit themed. we started giving her fruit at about 11 months in moderation so that she could enjoy some at her party and boy did she.

jon made this cute little vase! i'm so proud:)

she loved the watermelon and pineapple the most i think. as you can see, she got a scratch right before her party. she fell under someone else's care.........right onto a branch.

john and kathy got her a swing! i don't even think they knew how much she loves swinging, it was the perfect gift for her!

okay at the end of her party she was looking like a ragamuffin, promise she's not homeless. she fell again and got a huge scratch on her forehead. i'd say that's what we get for having her party around a campfire, but both falls were out on the driveway. poor baby.

playing with the new toy from aunt kaitlyn.

i sent my sister katie a text saying "one year ago today". because on the 14th last year, we had a bonfire and i went into labor that night. she said "what a difference a year makes". i said:

"yeah...." haha. pregnant again.

jon's cousin and her kids were in town over the weekend and prim was in heaven! they were so sweet with her.

her birthday was the next day, sunday! she is almost always this happy. if she isn't this happy, she's at least content. 

she loves her dada. sometimes while we are all hanging out she'll say "dada?" he'll say "yes, baby?" and she'll say "dada?" when i get her dressed i tell her to go show daddy your outfit and she runs to him and shows him. 

i think she loves her mama too. just recently she's started saying mama more often and it makes me want to cry with happiness. when i get home or when i get her out of her crib she says "mama!!!!" she is such a sweetheart and she is so well behaved. we got unbelievably lucky with her and tell her every single day how she's such a good girl. she repeats or tries to repeat everything you say. on the morning of her birthday she said "happy birthday" (and hasn't said it since). that day we  taught her to say happy and now if we ask her to say it she says "happy happy happy!!!" she's walking and getting faster every day. we are all amazed at how smart she is. one of my favorite things is asking her to say something and she stares at my lips as i say it then tries to repeat it herself. the night before her birthday party, i tried giving her a bottle and she kept pushing it away. we'd been weaning her off for about two weeks, and that was the final one. i was dismal getting her off her bottle, but she really has been doing great on all food and milk. i could go on and on about how much i love this child. she is heaven sent, an angel in a baby's body. we are grateful every single day for her. happy first birthday to our little angel baby!!!!

the month of june! san antonio status

well, jon drove from arizona to san antonio straight through. we didn't get home until 5am the next day. he literally drove for like 20 hours straight. we knew our drive would require lots of stops with this little baby. she'd sleep, wake up and cry so we'd pull over, feed her and let her get fresh air for awhile then get back in the car. she did so good!! our final stop was to feed her and put her in her jammies around 8, her normal bedtime. that's about when i fell asleep too and jon drove solo until we got home. i would not recommend that, my friends. sketchy, but hey-we made it.

this was the day after our long drive. hard to believe you'd be tired after sleeping for almost two days straight!!! when we got home she started to say "bah bah bah". she went to sleep not knowing how to say it, and when she woke up that's all she was saying. it is so amazing to see this child literally learn something new every day. 

this was also around the time that she really seemed like she was going to crawl. i recorded her so much thinking i'd see her just get up and go. little did i know, it would be weeks before she actually did.

i stare at her while she sleeps. this little thing is going to break my heart. 

see what i mean?

started getting more hair than we knew what to do with!!!!!!

swimming with daddy at nobu. this pool is pretty cool, but she always did really well. it would take her a minute to get used to the temperature then she'd be fine for awhile until she started to shiver and we'd go home!!! she and i spent quite a few days there sitting on the ledge behind jon. it wasn't really hot enough to get in every time. 

here she is playing with ice in her bumbo on the deck. she loved doing that. 

she started doing this weird fake smile/grimace and it was so funny! this is the best picture i got of it. i swear she would do this when i would be trying to make her laugh and it simply wasn't funny. she would do it a lot to people she didn't see very often as well. it was like a sympathy smile for at least trying to get her to laugh. 

you guys, i can't. this is when she was still sleeping with us in the mornings and napping probably once a day in our bed. this was before we sleep trained her, so i would have a hard time getting her to fall asleep. she would almost always fall asleep if i cuddled up next to her and pulled the comforter up by our faces. this is also around the time i posted a photo of her on her photo stream wrapped up in lots of blankets. i got a firm talking to not only from my father in law, but from my step mother in law the next day. sometimes she wouldn't fall asleep until i bundled her up in blankets! she'd almost always fall asleep within minutes, then i'd go in and take all the blankets off of her (mostly so she wouldn't sweat to death) and let her sleep next to pillows so she wouldn't roll. needless to say, she stopped sleeping in our bed pretty soon after this :( 

jon got primmy a little jacket to match his. he's really into patches right now and jackets that have velvro areas to attach the patches! it looks so cute on her and the little kid patches are smaller and have brighter colors. she doesn't appreciate them yet, but she will. 

the draper temple where we got married. the middle is an image i bought for us before we got married ."love you so so so much" and the one on the end i bought for her a few days before she was born. "and baby makes three". 

wow, i can't even explain how much it rained this month. it just rained. and rained. and rained. fortunately, there was no damage done to our house or property. a lot of other people northwest of us were not so lucky. 

our little 7 month old angel baby!

lizzie got this dress in Vanuatu. how cute??? it looked amazing on her and was unfortunately the only time she got to wear it. it was so stuck on her that i had to cut the underarm seam in order to get it off of her. that was traumatizing. if teeny is a girl, i'll put this on her when she's much smaller to avoid what we all went through.

we worked so hard on this! we painted over it probably ten times. jon liked it!

father's day twinnies.

LOOK AT THIS!!! i was getting ready while she was at my feet, and she grabbed my leg and started licking it. i am so obsessed with her.

at the end of june we went out to Jacob's well with our friends, the vinton's. it was so cool! in the last picture you can see the well, the middle spot where i think it's about 25 feet deep. people would cliff jump from the top. the rest of it was around 4 or 5 feet, really slippery with moss and pretty cool water. prim baby liked it, she was good in the water and out of the water. also, jon got braces!! his retainer broke while he was in the MTC and his teeth have been shifting ever since. rachel (pictured above) has a brother in law orthodontist here and he is pretty inexpensive so she referred us there. i'd been wanting jon to get braces for awhile because he was self conscious of their shift and why not while he's in school? the ortho said he'd have them on for 4-6 months, hopefully he was being truthful.........