3 down!

3 years ago today I married the most wonderful man I have ever known. He is such an incredible husband and an amazing father. I love being married to him. Our life has not always been easy. We have had our share of challenges, but through those challenges we have grown closer and stronger. I wouldn't trade one minute of our life together for anything in the world. I love him more and more with each day that passes and I am so excited to see what our future holds!

Here's to an Eternity of Anniversaries! I love you Darren! You are my everything!

Here a few pics from when we were dating.. lol

Book Worm

Tray has taken an extreme interest in books the past few months. We went to a fun used book store and got a big bag full of book for him that he loves. With that and our weekly trips to the library to get even MORE books, my house is covered. By the end of the day you literally can't see the living room floor cause its covered in books that we have read and re-read. Ha ha. I will be the first to admit that all the Elmo, Blue clues, Thomas the train, Lightning McQueen, Scooby-doo, etc., hundreds of times a day does get REALLY old really fast but I am so happy with his love for books and reading that I get over it pretty quick lol. Today he decided it was too nice a day to stay in and read. He opened the front door, grabbed his favorite Elmo chair and Thomas book as was out of here. I found him on the side walk like this reading to himself...

He has heard these books so many times (each one seriously get gets read at least 5 times each day) that he will often read them to himself. You can hear him repeating some of the names and words he's heard so many times mixed in with his own version of whats happening. :) I love my little book worm.

My first stroke of Craftiness!

I finally decided to break down and attempt to make something myself. lol I am not a huge craft Guru like many of my friends and really don't have anything around my house that I have made. So I decided to give it a try! It has actually been really fun! Let me know what you think :)

Binkie Clips!

(Any mom with babies who use binkies know how CRUCIAL these are! And you can never really find any cute ones.)

Fin.. Noggin.. DUDE!

This has been our little thing with Tray ever since I can remember. Since he started doing high-fives he's been doing this little Nemo skit.. its adorable.. Turn the volume up and you can hear him say "dude" :)

We had the opportunity to go to the Aquarium in Sandy last weekend. I can honestly say I ONLY went for Tray. Anyone who knows me knows I haaaate fish.. Eww.. Oh they creep me out so bad. My friends in college used to tell me they were going to put fish in my toilet so when I lifted up the lid I'd get a nice little surprise. I think I would have honestly had a heart attack. I still have nightmares about that.

The plan WAS to go to the zoo. Tray is very much into animal noises these days (I will get a good video of his saying them all and post it next time. Its just so darn cute!) So we were going to take him to the zoo as our last weekend of summer before Darren started school.. but thanks to some sad weather we were zoo-less. So we decided to take Tray to see the fish instead. He just loved it! He loves fish. His favorites are of course the "nemo" and "dory" fish, which is so super cute. His favorite of they day had to be the turtles.. but he loved the whole thing. What a fun experience. I talked some of my family into coming with us. It was so much fun to be with everyone. I spent most of my time staring at the ground however. Except for the penguins.. They were very cute :)

The Aquarium Gang

Me and Cassie. I swear we used to look alike...

I did have to get glasses recently as you can see. I can actually see when I drive now! haha

Me and Christie. We are 6 weeks apart. I am 20 weeks in this pic, making her 26 weeks.

Trays Favorite part! The turtles!

My darling son gets very bored of me taking pictures very fast.

Yes.. I touched it.. on a dare. Eww it was sooo gross!!

Tray said he wanted to pet the fish, he was really excited about it too.. he waited and waited...

.. and chickened out! lol We couldn't actually get him to pet the sting-ray.

Silly frogs!

This is my mommy..

Shes pretty much the best! lol

This was MY favorite part!

Return Of The Bump!

Its True!

It's coming back!

THE BABY BUMP!

Tray is going to be a big brother! :) He has a very healthy, very cute, LITTLE BROTHER on the way! (We found out the sex this morning. It was so much fun!)

Baby is due to arrive Jan 15. Making me about 19 weeks pregnant. We are very excited about the new addition to our family and can't wait to meet him. Although we are A-OK with it still being a few months away lol. Darren will be starting school in a week and half and he'll be able to get his first semester under his belt before baby comes. I was convinced up until this morning that we were having a girl and had really only thought of girl names. So now we get to start on the boy names. Darren was hoping for another boy all along saying we need 2 boys together before we can have a girl (typical boy thing to say right?). So when we saw baby's boy stuff Darren lovingly gave me the "I-Told-You-So" look. Ha ha silly boys. They are determined to keep me out numbered :)

First pic is a profile shot of baby's face. The second is his glory shot, right between the legs lol

I Lost 12 Inches!!

Well I wish I could say its off other parts of my body... but oh well, what can ya do right? Today I went into the salon not quite sure of what I wanted. I have been debating for MONTHS whether or not I should just chop it. I always want to but rarely have the guts to. So I went into the salon today thinking "Chop? or Trim?" As you can see we went with the whole chopping idea. I'm still trying to get used it.. but I am sure once I do I will love it lol Darren actually really loves it which is a shock since he is one of those men who firmly believe that women should have long hair. My dad is going to kill me though.. I don't think he will be as accepting as Darren was. Anyways we cut 12 inches off the back. I didn't even know I had that much hair back there to spare lol But it was enough to donate which is always a nice feeling. I was itching for something new and I definitely got it. Hopefully I'll get used to it soon. :)

Festivities and Fun

The past week and a half have just been so much fun! Filled with lots of family :) On Saturday of the week before last Darren and I drove down to Sandy to pick up my little sister who was coming to spend the week with us. Yay! I know I have said it before but Tray just loves my siblings. When they're around Darren and I don't exist anymore ha ha so having Cassie for a week was such a treat for all of us! We wanted to make sure she had fun while here in Logan so we did all the good stuff :) We went swimming, went to the zoo, went up to USU campus, and OF COURSE went to Caspers.

Cassie helping Tray feed the ducks at the Zoo.

Family Night at Caspers :)

We had such a blast with her here and were very sad when we took her back. We had planned for my whole fam to come up on Saturday the 3rd for all the 4th of July festivities. It didn't work out though due to us finding out that Logan was doing their fireworks on Friday this year and my siblings had all already gotten Saturday off of work. So we decided to head on down and celebrate the 4th in Sandy which was just So much fun! I LOOOVE the fourth of July. It is my favorite holiday! You just can't go wrong :) My mom had the whole day planned out and we had a blast! The day started out with the Carnival that I went to every year growing up. Tray had so much fun making crafts, eating yummy treats, getting a million balloon, and riding the train. It was so much fun and so different being the parent at the carnival. Darren sacrificed much sleep to spend the whole day with us and I can't thank him enough. It really was awesome. After the carnival we went to lunch, then to a movie, there was a parade but we were all pretty pooped and opted out of that one. We then had a BBQ with all my siblings and a million of their friends and a few dates :) After the BBQ we all dawned our sweatshirts and headed out to watch fireworks (blankets had been set down earlier that day to save perfect seats of course) Sitting there surrounded by family and friends, enjoying each others company and the beautiful weather, it was SO easy to sit in wonder and amazement at this amazing country we live in. I laid there cuddled in blankets wrapped in Darren's arms watching Tray being played with by all his aunts and uncles, without one care or worry in the world. Just so very happy. 100% happy! And I realized how TRULY blessed we are. When it came time for the fireworks everyone stopped playing, found their spot on the blanket and watched the display that had been timed with patriotic music. Tray loves fireworks. Or "pop pops" as he calls them, and enjoyed them more than anyone I think :) They were awesome and our view was perfect! I couldn't have asked for a better day! A HUUGE thanks to my Mom and Dad for making it all possible. We have the best family ever!

Tray marching off toward the Carnival. He is so funny.

Tray and Daddy riding the train.

Making some crafts.

When we came home the next day we brought my little brother Quinton back with us to spend a couple days with us. Tray had a blast having his Uncle Boo all to himself for a few days. We all loved having him here and were so sad to see him go so soon! All in all it has been a great couple of weeks!

Tray loves playing any kind of ball with his Uncle.

Quin teaching Tray to play guitar.