so it's been a while

We moved and I forgot my password, then I got depressed, then I decided I didn't care about the blog anymore anyway because nobody used their blogs anymore and nobody looked at mine. But who cares. I actually enjoyed looking back at my adventures. I'm sorry -not to you whoever you are- but to me for not keeping it up.
We moved again a few years back. Ben is a teacher now, and he loves it. We bought our house last fall.

Our daughter is in 1st grade and kicking butt. She's a top student, gets amazing grades, can read at like 6th grade level, and I'm just so stinking proud of her and how hard she works. Our son is 6 months old. I was reading what Abby was doing at right at 6 months, and Owen is not quite there yet, haha.
Maybe Abby has always been an over achiever. Maybe I was pushier with her than I am with him. I find that I have very few memories, and the ones I do have are flawed. I'm glad to know she didn't get her first teeth until 9 months. Owen is still all gums, haha. He's a wonderful talker, I'm sure he'll have great language skills. Funny thing though, I know I made a concerted effort to not speak baby talk to Abby. I can't help myself with Owen, haha.

These picture of her are probably two years old. That's her eating the Smiling Fish at Little Blue Elephant in Minot. We love sushi, and we love Thai food. Everything at this restaurant is delicious. Also, Abby loves a good dinner date with Dad.

This girl loves her brother.

She likes to read to him, and she wants to hold him alllllll the time.

So Owen is going to be 7 months in a week, and his only trick really as that he can roll. He can't do that if he's thinking about it. And he really hates tummy time. He likes his jumper. He loves food and his toys. He loves to pull hair and chew on Ben's beard.

We went to Glacier National Park via Canada (our first time leaving the States) this summer with the Hansens and spent some time in Hamilton MT with Ben's Grandparents. It was awesome.

Would you look at that beard? Ben had to pull it out of his shirt after putting it on because the hair had gotten so long. He's still bearded but it's not quite that long.

Here's a pic from Hamilton.

Best burger I ever ate, and I ate the whole thing.
Here's another from Hamilton, and one of Abby with her friend.

 We also bought a camper this summer. We went to the state fair with it, and camped at Clearwater lake twice with it. Ben's parents came up for Owen's baby blessing and stayed in it.

They also came so Mark could make Ben a High Priest. Ben got put in the bishopric right around Thanksgiving. It was so great to have family here for that. We had a great Thanksgiving with them and Anne and Austin.
I'm serving in the young women's presidency, and I enjoy it.We feel very blessed to live the life we live.

Miss us?

Sorry it has been so long since I've posted. Abby turned one and two since I posted last, so sorry I didn't post anything. I actually thought that I did. Abby was sick on both birthdays, maybe that distraction and negative aspect of it kept me from posting. Here are a few catch up pictures.

Abby at on her 1st birthday

A few days later, with her daddy.

And then we moved to North Dakota...

This is our castle

this is a view west from the yard

this is abby's favorite thing at the park. parks are great here.

 Here's a few pictures from our visit to Utah this summer.

And here is abby back in North Dakota, the park, and the cold.

She's swinging on her own! She's so big!

Abby today. Isn't she gorgeous? 

 

And that's what you've missed. A lot has happened. We ate the rooster, gave our chicken's away, and moved to the wilds of ND. We quite like it in the summer. We'll see how winter goes.

Sorry if my language gets out of hand.

This blankity blank freeking flipper of a rooster attacked me yesterday.
I was wearing shorts and flip flops and the bleep bleep turkey cornered me and started attacking me with his large and powerful talons.  Luckily Ben and I have made it a point to carry what I call the "chicken stick", which is just a stick, but meant for handling attacks like I was unfortunate enough to encounter.
Weilding the stick in front of me, I waved it back and forth, trying to persuade the *#!@ to back off. He was not interested in doing so. He kept jumping at me and I kept batting him out of the way, over and over. I kept trying to smash the creep hard enough to stop him, but it took about five minutes of beating at it and a mighty tipple smash to the face for it to finally flee. I nearly passed out several times throughout the day because the adrenaline rush left me empty and frazzled.
I know the jerk is smaller than me, and only a bird. But I bet that $#!@ weighs about 25 pounds, and he comes up to just past my knee. The thing is, I've never had a creature try to destroy me before, and it was surprisingly upsetting to my psyche.
I told Ben about it and he said the beast had destroyed another rooster before we got him. That's all I need, an aggressive bulldog-bird chasing me around the pasture all day. Anyone feel like rooster for dinner????? Anyone???
In other news, we got chickens :D.... Yay....
If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic.
Here's a pic.

Yep, big bad bum-brain is the one in the middle. There are 12, although we thing one of them may have joined the herd, because Ben is sure that he only got 11 to start. They are very silly, and sometimes I get a kick out of them.

In other news, Abby is 9 months now :D! I am happy about this one. She is getting more and more sweet every day. She is also getting her first teeth, two bottom ones at once... YIKES! I'm happy for her though, I'm excited to see her grow and develop well. Isn't she beautiful?! I love her so much!

She's six months :D

I can't believe she's already six months. she walks with our help, has sat up on her own for 10 seconds, and she is so close to crawling I can almost taste it...
Here she is!

Pictures

 These are just a few of my favorites from recent days.

Abby's night in her crib.

I already posted this story on Facebook, but if you don't get there much, I'll re-post it here.
Abby slept in her crib for the first time last night. I started trying to get her to sleep around the normal time, which is about 11:00. Every time I sat her in her bassinet she would start screaming, which is not normal for Abby. I'd take her back out, feed her and put her back in, and she'd scream again. I checked the bedding for something that might be irritating her, but there wasn't anything abnormal. Ben was trying to get to sleep (he had to wake up at 5:00 this morning) so I decided to take her in the living room and help her wind down. I fed her again and we spent about an hour getting her wiggles and air bubbles out. I took her back to the bassinet around 12:30, and she started screaming again. Normally when she gets upset she's quick to take her binky for comfort, this time it only made her more angry. So I quickly scooped her up and took her back to the living room. I prayed that she'd get to sleep and then I thought of putting her in her crib. I don't like the idea of sleeping her so far away from me, but I was willing to try anything. So after another feeding, I put her down in her crib around 1:30. She screamed again, but this time I wasn't afraid of waking Ben up, so I let her holler. I sang to her, held her hands and gave her her binky. By 2:00 she was finally deeply asleep. She slept for 5ish hours in there, and only sort of woke when she got cold, because she'd kicked off all her blankets. I could have let her stay in there longer, but Ben was gone and she was a little too cold for my comfort, so I brought her back to bed and she slept until 10:30. I hope tonight goes better...

So here is a reenactment of Abby's journey in her crib. I'm amazed at how much she moved in the night.

This is how I left her at 2:00 (accept I had the top blanket tucked into the sides).

This is how I found her when she peeped at 5:30

 The blanket by her head was wrapped around her legs. She must have grabbed it and whipped it off. She really hates to have her legs covered.

This is how I left her at 5:40

And this is how I found her at 7:30

 When I found her like this I thought several things:
If you ever want to sleep with us when you're older, I'm saying NO.
How in the world did you get there?
Aren't you freezing?
She was. So I cuddled her real close and fed her, she was toasty warm in no time. She's pretty happy today, so it must have been an alright experience for her. I suppose now that we've started we just as well keep it going. No more bassinet for Abby.

update on pics and us

So a new semester for Ben has started, and if he can pull it off, it will be his last, so hooray. I know he can do it, but he is super busy this semester. Not only is he doing a full time internship in SLC, he's also doing school full time in Logan, and still doing the road kill pick up on Saturdays. The internship is six weeks long and it started today. Good Luck Ben! One of his classes requires that he attend plays and events through the semester. the nights of the plays are only weeknights, so that's going to add to the busy schedule. Ben also has to read like 10 novels, and he has around 30 pages of readings per class period for his other classes, not to mention a paper to write for each play and novel and reading that he does. It is likely that he won't get much sleep in the next 6 weeks, but they will fly by, I'm sure. 

 I have a lot of pictures of Abby to share, but Ben has them at the moment, so here are some from my phone. I'll put the others up later.