A full day of tears

So you know how after you have a baby you're kind of a hot mess? And then stuff happens and your more sensitive and hurt by things than you would be normally? Well that's been me all week.
My phone deleted all of my pictures, a whole YEAR worth of pictures. A year of my kids life has been erased it feels. The videos of Emma's dance recital, Addies cute little selfies, pictures of all our adventures and our first year in our new house are all gone. Almost 9000 pictures. Its my fault for not backing them up or saving them when I knew I needed to.
 I spent the whole day it happened crying in my bed... luckily Diane had already taken the girls for the day and I could mourn in peace with my sleeping baby. Well then that same day something even worse happened.
I had pulled myself together enough to graciously accept dinner from some people in the ward who wanted to visit and hold the baby. They were here chatting when Emma and Addie came home crying . Ryan was on the brink of tears too. Emma said she wanted to talk in the other room and I said we could talk once our guests left, but then she broke down crying even more and told me Sally died. Sally is our little adopted dog. We took her from my in laws to live with us because she was so good with the girls and such a good little friend to have around.  We had sent her back to grandpa and grandmas house for awhile until we got our yard fixed and had the baby and things settled down. Well, now we won't be taking her back home.
Emma cried and cried and our guests just stood their at a loss of what to do, and then Emma asked if I could print a picture of Sally for her room and that's when I lost it. Because I don't have any pictures of her anymore. So we all sat there crying.
Our poor guests were probably so uncomfortable. They helped how they could and eventually left.
Ryan snapped out of the sadness pretty quickly  and was like "ok we need to pull ourselves together, we just had a cry fest in front of adults we hardly know!" At that point I was past the point of even caring what anyone thought and just wanted to go cry some more.
It was a hard day. Which has kind of made it a sad week. But my next post will be a happy one, because guess what? I had a healthy beautiful baby! And I'm counting my many blessings. Even if I don't have any pictures to prove it.

Emma starts school!!

EmmaLee started preschool! How is it that my baby is old enough to be going to school?? 

She goes 4 times a week for 3 hours and she is loving it! We got lucky last minute with a great preschool option--better than one we had initially planned. Such a blessing. She always comes home with the biggest smile on her face and is always so proud of her crafts. 

Addie was sure she was going to school too. She has her own back pack and everything. 

The first day was a little hard on these sweet sisters. But not as hard as it was on me. Just the thought of things never being the same from here on out kind of punched me in the gut. I've loved having my babies home with me all day! But change and growth are good. Life is not supposed to stay the same, or else everything else becomes stagnant. And how do we grow and become better in that kind of environment? We don't. So I cried the tears I needed to cry and then buoyed myself up and we've all been happy about the change ever since.

So while Emma is at school I soak up all of this baby that I can! She's never been the only child and quite frankly she doesn't like being the only one home. I, on the other hand, don't mind it one bit. I get extra snuggles and naps in with her and it's been bliss. She needs this time with just me; life is about to change big time again. And she has no idea.

But it will work out. 

Change is good. 

Projects

I've taken on so many projects this last month I'm feeling a little crazy.  Here are the most recent ones!

I built shelves for the master bathroom. I always had so much stuff all over my countertops and clutter makes me crazy! So I made some storage space and it's so much better. Organization is wonderful. I need more of it in my life. All of this was about 15 dollars in wood and brackets. So easy!

I finally decided on nursery colors and I've been having a lot of fun getting things together for the room. Here's the only thing I have pictured from the nursery, my cute little elephant and hearts I painted. It was $3 dollars worth of wood (this is only half of it, too) and I had the paint on hand. Easy peasy and so much cheaper than buying decor. 

And our yard. Ahhh, our yard. We've ripped up all concrete, set up a playground and need to plant grass still and get everything put back together. It's such a mess but the girls still manage to have fun with it, so it's ok! We're almost done! Ryan has been such a trooper with my slave driving ways. The yard was my idea but Ryan is the muscle and man power behind it and it wouldn't have changed a bit without him. He's the best. 

Another bigger one, I painted my house. My sister was here to help for this one luckily! It was so fun painting and chatting while the girls would nap. My sister is a rock star! It ended up only taking a couple days and it looks so much better without those yucky green walls! 

I'll add the girls most recent project too ;) They built a cute little dry erase board for themselves at Home Depot. It was so fun! They absolutely loved man handling those hammers... It was actually quite terrifying. But we all survived and they were so proud of the finished product!

And last but not least I decided to take on 80 lbs of peaches. That's right. Yikes! Needless to say, I got them all canned, frozen, jammed, and baked away. Ive never done anything like this before so it was a fun learning experience. And the taste of a summer peach is permeated into my taste buds, which isn't so bad. 

Now it's time to wrap up the loose ends of these tasks and be done with projects so I can take a nice long nap! ;)

Aunts and uncles for daysss

The month of August was busy. I feel like it flew by. We took Amy and Hannah home with us from our trip to Idaho. Then a week later Andy, Alycia and Bryce all dropped by for a week and then Alycia stayed another couple weeks after that. So we had a house full for the month. It was a blast! 

I convinced them to cut their luscious locks. Emma also go a little hair cut. The haircuts turned out so cute!! 

We did lots of swimming. Lots and lots. That's the best part of living here! You can go swim at any time of day and it feels great! We did pretty much everything we could do while they were all here. It was nice but I seriously needed more sleep! I'm still feeling sleep deprived from all the hustle and bustle. 

But it was worth it. Having family around is good. Me and the girls are missing them!!

Idaho pictures

And a few pictures from our trip to Idaho. Dreamy, beautiful idaho. 

Temple and monument trip

There are so many fun things to do in Utah! while we were at snowbird we decided to take a day and go to temple square and shopping and then another day at "This is the Place" heritage park. We haven't been to the the salt lake temple square for a few years, and there's so much to see and so many teaching opportunity for the kiddos. 

Then the park was fun too! There was lots to do and learn and Emma is obsessed with pioneers so it was really fun for her to go to "pioneer school" and do pioneer crafts. They had a petting zoo, panning for gold, and lots of activities for kids. We would have stayed all day if Addilyn had been able to nap earlier. She was pooped about halfway through. Next year we will have to finish it out!

Snowbird

We got the opportunity to go to Snowbird! It was such a fun getaway with just our little family, and nice to get away from the intense heat! Such a fun beautiful place! 

Our first day there.. So excited to finally be at snowbird! 

After church we played Memory and Go fish! Addilyn didn't last long with go fish but she had fun with memory. EmmaLee got both of those games down really fast!  And she's so competitive, it was pretty fun. Ryan was feeling the pressure!

Enjoying the great outdoors! We spent the majority of our time there outside. 

We decided to ride the tram up the ridge trail mountain then hike the 4 miles down. Me and Addilyn struggled. I wanted to be carried, she wanted to be carried, we both whined a lot! Ryan and Emma were rock stars though. Ryan and Addie paired off and me and Emma paired off. We all made it eventually with our hiking buddies motivating/carrying us! Going down is so much worse than going up I've decided! 

Morning time was my absolute favorite. Smelling the fresh mountain air and standing on the balcony looking over the view was amazing! I wish I had got a picture of the view, but this view is pretty darn cute :) 

I didn't get many pictures but it was such an amazing week!

More summer :)

A few more summer days for my blog!

Lots of days at the museum! We hd some sweet friends come with us when they were visiting st George! So much more fun with friends. 

Cute girls. 

Emma adores Abby! 

Addie disappeared right before we went swimming. I found her "burying tee tee in gass!"

Lots of trips to the school playground next to our house. 

Splash pads and swimming! Looking fierce, Em! 

Library visits! One of our favorite things.

Addie babe!

AddiLyns personality has blossomed so much over the last couple months. She's gone from a sweet little people pleaser to a sweet spunky and very spirited little lady! 

Her listening face is my favorite. She zones in to what I'm saying sometimes and you can just see her soaking in the words.

She loves babies!! She goes up to moms she sees with babies and and asks if she can "hold it." So sweet! 

Sometimes I'm surprised at how much she looks like me. I only realize it when we take pictures together. 

This is one of my favorite pictures. I decided I needed some privacy in the bathroom so I locked the door. I opened the door to Addie making this face haha! So betrayed that I would lock her out!

Sunday baking

Every Sunday I make some sort of goody because well, food is delicious, and also because this girl loves to bake! And she loves to EAT! She's proud of it too, she talks about how all she ever wants to do is eat and eat and eat eat EAT!  She's my little momma to be. She loves feeding people, loves serving people food she's made and is seriously learning to become such a good helper in the kitchen! I love it!

Bedtime

Sometimes bedtime is so difficult with these babes! But sometimes it's so sweet. I love this picture so I'm just going to put it here for memories sake. These girls are my favorite!