8 months

Well my little girl turned 8 months on Sun the 19th. Here is a little update on what she is doing. Right now Amerie is professional crawler she is so fast she is into thing before I can blink. She is at the stage of pulling her self up on what ever she can. Including your legs, her sister etc. When Tayla and I are on the couch reading she will crawl over to us and do this squawking thing until I pick her up so she can be on the couch too. The newest thing she has started to do is standing up from sitting position by herself without help. She is getting really good at it I'm just waiting for her to take a step. She also has started to clap for her self. I'll start clapping when she stands up so now she will start clapping when she stands up.(which usually makes her fall). Any who there is a long post with lots and lots of pics coming soon that shows off our little Bubba's life so far. Just want to give the folks back home a precursor to what is to come.

Birthday Shout Out

Today is Andy's 28th Birthday and the girls wanted to give him a shout out.

Here are a couple more of pics for you Dad!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD WE LOVE YOU!

Love,

Tayla and Amerie

I just want Andy to know how much we love him! Thanks bud for all you do for us and all your hard work. I am so luck to get to have you for eternity. Happy Birthday!

Independence Day

Independence Day this year was great we started off with the Ward Breakfast at 8 am then we went to home depot for the children's workshop. We came home Andy got some studying in then, we headed to the Beach. Our Friends planed a BBQ on the beach (thanks Suzi and Levi) It was a lot of fun. Tayla loved playing in the sand and water and we had a good time visiting with friends. And of course eating.

Tayla loves playing in the sand which I thought would never happen she was so anti-sand when she was younger

Our little girl is part fish I think she loves being in the water

Warming up after her little dip.

Amerie waving hi to all you back home

Well after the beach we came home and Andy study a little longer while the girls and I got to play around the house waiting for Fireworks! Andy had this idea that we could see the Fireworks on the Bay from the Home Depot parking lot because it is on a hill and you can see the Waterfront from there. That way we wouldn't have to fight the crowds.We were able to see the fireworks but they were so far a way they were kinda anti-climatic. Tayla lost interest real quick she thought is was more fun to roll down and run up the big hill.

Waiting for the fireworks

Tayla having a little snack as we are still waiting for the show to begin.

Ok I just had to throw in these cute little pics we took on the 4th. So I have the hardest time getting both the girl to look at me and smile at the same time.

And I have an even harder time catching Amerie's smile at all. Which is so ironic because she is such a smiley baby, one of these time I capture a good smile.

I just want to say how grateful I am to live in a free country and thank you to all the Men and Women that have fought and some that have given their lives for our freedom.

Our little Builder!

Andy got to spend a little bit of time not studying today so we decided to go take advantage of the Home Depot kids workshops. Tayla and her Dad built a picnic caddy! Tayla had a great time her favorite was the bang banging (hammering). Andy was trying to get her to glue the sides and she keep saying I want to do the bang bang.

Our sweet little builder love the little orange apron they gave her and also the little pin to put on it when she completed her project. She didn't want to take them off.

That annoying look Andy has on his face is because Tayla was being silly and wouldn't sit still so we had to take multiple pics so she wasn't a blurr. The girls get so excited when they get to spend some time with their Dad so who could blame her for jumping of the walls!

Rain Update

As the day went on I heard really how bad the rain we had today was. Checkout these links to see ...

Click here to read about a friend from the ward whose car was taking on water! Scary!

Then the news has a story too, click here for that.

I'm so grateful that our family is safe.

When it Rains it Pours!

All last night we saw flashes of lighting and heard thunder so loud that it shook the house a couple of times. So this morning this is what we woke up to...

Puddles! Not little puddle either but BIG Splashing Puddles!

So it was just to temping not to pull on our boots and go puddle jumping!

We love the rain. Andy made to comment that it uses to down pour like this in St. George but it only lasted couple minute here it goes all night!

Tayla jumping down our own waterfall

If you look close you can see the water fall a little better in this pic.

Our neighbors lake.

If all the raindrops where Lemon Drops and Gum drops Oh what a world it would be! I would stand outside with my mouth open wide singing ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!

These pics don't really give this rain storm justice. It was pouring! And Tayla loved every bit of. When she came in I had to dump a couple inches of water out of her boots. We also had a planer with flowers that Tayla and I planted that was full to the top with water because it was rain so much sorry I didn't get pics of it I was to worried about getting the water out and the plants to someplace that was safe.

DC Day Two

Amerie has become a natural on the Subway

Our partners in travel the Ewings

The three stooges
We went the Arlington Cemetery on the Second Day. I love the spirit there. You can feel how sacred this place is. I am so grateful for all the soldiers who are willing to give up their lives for us to live in America a free country!

The tomb of the unknown solider, right before the changing of the guards they played taps for a child that had passed away from an elementary school. Andy said that it was pretty amazing( I was keeping kids quit away from the tomb at the time so I didn't get to hear it)


After Arlington we went back into DC to hit a few more monuments, This time Andy and Tayla decided to ride in style!

They took out the paddle boats to see the Thomas Jefferson Memorial

and the Washington Monument( forgot to turn it sorry)

Amerie and I walk the loop instead (they wouldn't let Amerie on the boats because she couldn't were a life jacket) We also got to see the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. After the ride Tayla of course had to pick up another bug, this time it was a unsuspecting caterpillar. She has a tendency to squeeze a little hard when she is trying to pick them up so usually they don't survive the ride. If you look close you will see this one was no exception. So Andy told her to throw it down the drain grate and she asks why of course so Andy comes back with it is his home. Which would have been fine if we didn't see 100s of more caterpillers that Tayla wanted to take back to there "home"


With living back here we don't get to see a the Temple as much as we would like to. It hard to go from living some where and being able to look out your window and see the beautiful house of the the Lord to have to drive a while to be by the temple. So when we have the opportunity to be close to a Temple we jump on it. The Washington DC Temple was a nice ending to our DC Trip. Even though we didn't get to attend a session because we had our sweet daughters with us we got to walk on the hollow grounds.

We had a wonderful time in DC. Still more to come from our travels to Nauvoo and more.