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. 

we made it!+moab!

our flights were relatively easy and Prim was well behaved as usual with just a few moments of fussing. my dad picked us up late friday night and we went straight to bed.

prim's first time eating avocado was fun to watch. she would make faces and spit it out, but she loved playing with it. i figured out that she like it mashed into her formula but not at all plain.

her first sink bath:)

grandpa got prim this little baseball shirt and she really rocks it, doesn't she? we figured it would be fitting for teeny as well, no matter the gender

for mother's day my dad hosted dinner at his house. we all ate and walked to the park afterwards to play.

mother's day was pretty sad, as usual. i think it would have helped if jon were in town, he was in moab still with alex. the positive side is now i get to be a mother myself and smother my baby with love. she is such a sweetheart and all the ups AND downs are worth it every day. that night i fed her and we laid in bed until she fell asleep in my arms, it was a good ending to the day. i love her so much.

how could i not?

monday was our 5th anniversary, so it was another sad day. we weren't together for the first time! when planning our trip, we did not think it would have been that big of a deal, but we are not spending another anniversary apart again if we can help it!

we went to little robbie's piano recital! he is doing so well in his lessons and did better than all the other kids (no joke, he had 0 mistakes). i'm so proud of him.

on wednesday, my dad and i met up with jon in moab!!!!!

the first thing we did was hike to a little water hole. the forecast now said that this would be the only sunny time we'd be there, so we figured we'd better swim while we could.

ugh our little nature baby.

can you believe her??

 

the next day we drove to zion! this was my dad's first time here.

lucky for us, it got real cold real quick.

seriously, can you tell we are cold? we went to the visitors center to watch the movie about how the arches are formed then drove around to look at the formations and hope that the weather would clear up a bit. highlight of the drive was a german couple asking us to take their photo. jon promptly said yes, counted "1-2-3!" and said goodbye, all in german. my little german-american.

my dad and i had never hiked to arches so we decided to do that. we kept getting stopped by asian people who would freak out over her and ask to take her picture. she had a hat on most of the time but when jon really wanted a reaction he'd take it off and reveal her bald head and they'd lose it.

it is a pretty easy and beautiful hike although it does get kind of sketchy at the very top, especially with a babe. now i feel like a true utahan having done this!

sad about her outfit. the whole time leading up to our trip it said moab was going to be really warm. i literally did not pack her (or i) winter clothes and it was so cold!! it was overcast the whole time we were there and was not warm. i just had to layer summer clothes on her and put her in the same hat/jacket the whole trip. and sockies on her hats as mittens. i've only been in texas for two years and it's already difficult for me to imagine it being anything but hot anywhere else. 

on our way down a couple of men from the middle east somewhere stopped us and took prim's picture and talked to her in a foreign language. one of them bent down to kiss her on the mouth and jon casually dipped away and said "noo...." so funny!

 

angel

filling our water bottles with water from the rocks

how sassy am i with my chocolate muffin?

this is at landscape arch. this was the last hike of the trip. we had planned to stay an additional day, but we left early. prim was up multiple times in the night and would cry for like 10-20 minutes at a time. my dad kept telling us that this was not a big deal, it's not like she fussed the whole night. it was just really out of the norm for her and with me, her and jon all sleeping in one bed-it got pretty old. during the day she was an angel and acted like everything was fine...silly baby. it was a fun trip anyway and we left just a day early so all was well.

we thought she was teething, but i think it was just a change in scenery that was making it difficult.

six month old baby!!!!!

and right before leaving moab, jon's wheel fell off! can you tell? the straight part is supposed to hit the middle of the tire and hold it in. here it has fallen out and the tire is just propped next to it. luckily this happened while we were on the main street in moab and there were multiple car shops within walking distance. jon got it fixed within like an hour and a half (crazy) and then we made our way back to salt lake!