This Christmas

Ok... So I started this post before Christmas, but things got a little to crazy. I still wanted to finished this post so I have these memories written down... So sorry about the late Christmasy post :)

I have been wanting to post about our new Christmas traditions, but i haven't posted about a lot of others things.. so here is what we have been up to the last few months...

( I couldn't get the pictures to all line up, and i was sick of messing with it, so heres what you get..)

 This little girly turned 2!!!

 And got a new BIG GIRL bed for her birthday!

 We had a great Halloween!

 We blessed Avery at the beginning of November.

and now she is already 3 months old!!

Scratch that...

 4 months old :)

So this Christmas we started a new tradition at our house. I know you have probably all heard of the Elf on the Shelf, and well we started our own Elf on the Shelf, but with a little twist. Growing up Cam and his brothers and sister had little elf shoes that they would leave out every night for the elf to come and leave them a little surprise, and he really wanted to do that same thing with Abbey and Avery. I also thought that the Elf on the Shelf sounded like such a fun idea and wanted to tie that in, but I thought that the Elf that came with the book was, well, a little creepy looking. So I found a stuffed Elf on the Shelf and decide that she didn't look creepy at all, and since we are also doing the Elf shoe I didn't need the story because we were making up our own! So we now have our very own Elf that comes to visit us, her name is Ellie. Everynight Abbey would put Ellie and her elf shoe in the window and then Ellie would leave her a little treat and sometimes she would hide her shoe in funny places. Abbey LOVED this! Every morning she would run into our room and say, "come on, lets go find Ellie and my shoe!" We had so much fun with Ellie the Elf, and the elf shoe that I hope this will continue to be a fun tradition for our family.

 The first night Ellie came she brought Abbey her elf shoe, and some new christmas pajama's!

 Every morning after Abbey would find Ellie and her shoe she would take Ellie and her shoe and go and sit on the couch and eat her treat that Ellie left for her!

 Ellie was sometimes found rockin' out with the guitar, hanging out up high, or building snowmen!!

 ** I also had to post about the train Cam built for Abbey, and the large snowmen that Cam and (Abbey) built. We had an large box that our entertainment stand came in, and Cam asked Abbey what she wanted the box to be, and she said, a train, so off he went to build her a train!! And yes, it is still on our living room. I have no idea how we are going to get her to part with it!!  

Introducing

Avery Mae Tait

Born September 8, 2011

6 lbs 7 oz

19 inches long

It has taken me a while to getting around to posting about our new little Avery. I kept meaning to but when I finally got some "me" time, I chose sleep over blogging :)  Anyway, a week before Avery was born when I went to my doctors appointment my doctor predicted that I would have her within the next week, week and half.  At that point I was just barely 37 weeks, and I had Abbey when I was 37 weeks and 3 days. So that's when we began to play the waiting game. The day of my Doctors appointment I starting having lots of back pain, and cramping, and as the weekend went on I kept having on and off contractions, but nothing that would justify going to the hospital, but enough to make the day miserable.  I thought for sure one night while at the grocery store that I just might collapse into a ball on the floor as I was holding on to the shopping cart with all my might, as I tried to finish some last minute shopping. See last time when Abbey was born we were completely unprepared, and so this time I wanted to be completely prepared and not have a thing to worry about after the baby was born. So I was stocking up on anything that I thought we might need for the next month or so. After that Friday night at the grocery store I was almost positive that there was no way I was going to make it through the weekend. But then by Sunday the pain had subsided greatly, and I was no longer having contractions. Cam asked me on Sunday if I had to predict when she will come when would I guess it would be. He predicted Thursday, and agreed it was a good guess. But soon the anticipation was killing me so i decided to just go on about my days, and try not to wonder about when she was actually going to come. On Tuesday my contractions began again, but not as painful as they were over the weekend. I was getting pretty sick of these contractions and just wanted my water to break like it did last time! Then on Wednesday night I started to get these severe leg spasms, but didn't think anything of it because things like this had been happening for a week now and nothing had come of it. But sure enough Thursday morning at 5:30 am my water broke. As soon as it broke I woke up Cam, and the the first thing he said was "Good, it's about time!" So we hurried and jumped out of bed and started to get ready. Which we really didn't have a lot to get ready for because my bags had been packed for a week now. We raced around at first and then said, what are we doing we don't really need to race we have plenty of time. My labor with Abbey was 19 hours long, so we didn't think there was any need to rush. So I calmly called my sisters friend who had offered to watch Abbey for us, and let our parents know that we were heading to the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital I was already dilated to a 4 1/2, but again I wasn't expecting things to progress quickly.  The nurses however were predicting that I would have her around 9 am, and well they were pretty close. She arrived at 10:24 am that morning. Just short of 5 hours after my water broke. I was in complete shock that it went that fast, but so excited to finally meet my baby girl!

.

 Even though it was a quick labor it did come with a few little bumps and bruises, or I guess I should say Breaks and Bruises! This poor little girl was born with a broken collar bone, and I either broke my tail bone, or severely bruised it. They told me that if it was broken it would heal faster, but if it was bruised or fractured it would take some time to heal.. possibly up to a year! 

 Abbey has been pretty good with Avery. At first she didn't quite know what to think. Transitioning from 1 to 2 hasn't been as hard as I anticipated it would be. I thought for sure Abbey was going to have melt down after melt down, but she has just handled it really well. She is a little bit more hyper than usual, but is just a ball of entertainment! She seems so big to me now and it makes me so sad that she is no longer my baby but my big girl!  I will say this, having 2 kids does make having 1 kid seem like a piece of cake!

Our first picture as a family of 4!

Time to Catch up... once AGAIN...

Well I wanted to be a better blogger, but as you can tell that is just not happening. So I guess here we go again, playing catch up. I thought I better blog about what we have been up to so far this summer since the arrival of baby girl # 2 is quickly approaching.

First of all, Aunt Kailey moved to Arizona at the begining of August so we made sure to get in lots of play time with her before she left. We went to the park many times, and spent a day at the pool where we had a great time! It was really hard to say goodbye to her and miss her very much, but we are SO excited to see her in a few weeks!! YEA!!

Then every summer Cam's family always has a family reunion up at Bear Lake. We spend the week relaxing on the beach, swimming, and enjoying great food and company. It is always something we look forward to every year, and it is never a disappointment. This year Cam's brother's family who moved to Washington last year was able to join us, which was great because Abbey LOVED playing with her cousins!



Who wants to climb a rock wall when you can climb a Palm Tree??





Playing in the sand with Cousin's



Playing at the playground. Where she probably would have played the entire trip if we let her!

 And now we wait for the arrival of Baby Girl # 2!!

I'm Back!!

So it has been a while since I last posted. You have to be in the mood to blog I think and well it has defintely taken the back burner here lately. However I need to get better at updating because my sister is moving to Phoenix here in a couple of weeks, so since she is really the only one who reads this I decided I better get back into the blogging mode for her! Also since I have't posted in like 3 months I don't really feel like playing catch up so we are just going to start with the most recent :)

For the past 9 months or so me and my Friends from High School had been working on putting together a benefit dance concert in Honor of our friend Stephanie who passed away last June from a very rare form of Ovarian Cancer. She loved to dance, and so we thought there was no better way to honor her then to dance for her! Needless to say it was a HUGE undertaking and about 6 of us worked long and hard to make it all happen. We had lots of help and support from family and friends, and also the Petersen Family and we couldn't have done it without them! It  was a huge SUCCESS All together we ended up rasing over $9,500 that will now go to the Small Cell Ovarian Cancer Foundation that Stephanie's Family has set up in honor of her! Here are a few pictures from the night.

Back we when were on 9th Grade Dance Company, Stephanie cheographed a Dance called Dreaming of You. We thought it would be so neat to have a dance in the program that Stephanie choergraphed herself. So I taught these 6 wonderful girls Steph's dance and they preformed it beautifully!

Melissa, Fedd, Cortney and myself. Just a a few of us girls who put together the Dance Concert!

The gift we gave to the  Petersen Family. It is a Frame that is signed by all who were involved in the Dance Concert, and inside is a program and ticket from the concert along with a Teal Crane and a photo of us girls.

A Group of us with Steph's dad! Do you like all the Preggo Belly's!!

Abbey's BIG News!

Snowy Days

Well I have been meaning to post about our snowy day adventures this winter for while now, but just haven't gotten around to it. So I thought I better post these now before spring comes and snowy pictures is the last thing I want to be posting about.

Sick of being cooped up in the house we decided to go for a drive up the Canyon one day.  The trees all looked so pretty with all the snow on them so we had to get out and get some pictures.

Walking around in the snow for the first time up at 2nd Dam.

She absolutely LOVES being outside. It doesn't matter if it is raining, snowing, windy... whatever it maybe she loves the fresh air!

Eating snow for the first time :)

 Then a fews days later we got dumped on.. AGAIN, so we decided to go sledding. We took Abbey earlier this season and she wasn't a big fan, but this time she loved it!

Aunt Kailey and Abbey (eatitng snow.. again)

Getting ready to sled down the hill. She looks a little unsure about it. She is remembering that it wasn't all that fun the first time, and she is wondering why we are tourturing her again.

But she loved it, and apparently I did too :)

She loved it so much that she would clap the whole way back up the hill. I don't know what she thought was more fun, Going down the hill or going up??

Happy Valentines Day!!

Last Black Friday Cam and I decided to brave the stores and see what Black Friday was all about. We were going out for one thing, and that was a backup hard drive. That was until I found out that Michaels was selling Cricut Machine's that day for only $55!! It was one of the best purchases I have ever made! I LOVE it!! I have so many project ideas, but saying how long it took me to make these... it might take me a while to finish them :) Don't worry I started working on these like 3 weeks ago and just finsihed them on Saturday! Just in time for Valentines day! I didn't use the circut for the heart flower bouquet. I saw the idea in a random wedding magazine and thought it would be a cute idea for Valentines day!