Monday, October 5, 2015

September 2015

Abby was able to be part of the great-grandkids musical number, "You are my Sunshine" at the cemetery, after Grandma Riggs's funeral. It was so sweet! This was one of grandma's favorite songs, and the words were changed a little bit to say "...You'll never know Grandma, how much we love you..." Every time we sing that song now, Abby wants to sing it with the new "grandma" words.

Our family spent Labor Day weekend at Grandpa Price's cabin. It was perfect weather and we had fun with the Teryx, a quad, and Noah's dirtbike. We spotted lots of deer on our rides and Abby also had lots of fun on the swing.







We took a drive on Sunday to see the Snowflake temple, then we spent a few hours there having a picnic and playing a little guessing game with each other.


I had to capture this picture of Abby... she was watching out the window and waiting for Dad, Kaitlyn, Sophie, and Noah to get back from their ride. She had been asleep when they left but once she woke up, she couldn't wait for her turn to join in on the fun!

If you look hard, you can see Sophie and Noah pushing Abby on the swing in this picture :)


Being able to stay home with Abby is one of the best things that's ever happened to me! I didn't get that luxury when Noah was a baby so I appreciate it every day. I do lose my patience with her once in awhile, but I feel like I am a much better mom to her than I might have been to Noah with all the stress I had in my life at that time. Anyway... Abby entertains me every day. On this particular day, I was working out with my free weights, so Abby went and found hers (that we took home with us from Grandma's care center when we cleaned out her room). She wanted to do what I was doing, but then she saw that I had shoes on and she didn't. So she ran and put on her Minnie Mouse high heels!

A little while later, I took a shower and when I got out, this is how I found Abby:

I told her she couldn't sit up there so she made a comfy little place to sit with her blankies and "panda boos" while she watched tv...


She is such a crack up! This is how I often find her when she's tired... holding her face against her blanket.

This is how I found Abby another day - changing her baby's diaper with HER diapers and wipes! the headband she put around her head made it pretty funny also.
Here she is hiding between the pillows on my bed. She wanted to be left alone and was ticked when I found her. Even more ticked when she saw I was taking a picture!

Here she is mad again. She wanted to just spend some alone time in the cupboard that houses our crock pots and bread machine! I don't know how she even fit inside there but she did and was able to close the cupboard even. It was when I opened the cupboard to see her, that she got mad!

One more funny picture of her... I thought she was downstairs with Sophie this night but as I walked by my bedroom, I saw a little light on. It was the light coming from my old phone. She was laying on her stomach and just surfing the internet. It looks light in this picture since I used the flash, but it was totally dark in that room and she was fine to just hang out in there alone, with the phone.
 
We spent a lot of time at the Gibbons' house this month, helping to clean up or organize as they got ready to move. Abby loved the time she spent with Roxy! Roxy was pretty creative on ways to keep Abby entertained...




One of the perks of Auburn's house is seeing her pets. Here's Davis and Abby looking at Rudy through the door.
Asleep on Auburn's couch

I took the picture (on the left) of Abby and I thought it looked so much like cousin Otto! I had to look through Megan's instagram account to find a picture of Otto for a side-by-side. I can't believe how much they look like each other!

I tried out curling Abby's hair for the first time and had to take pictures just to document how cute it was! It of course was messed up within an hour though.


One night when Sophie was over, we were getting Abby ready for bed. I was ready to sing songs to her to get her ready to be put in her crib. She didn't want me to sing her songs, and instead said to me "I cuddle Sophie" as she walked down the dark hallway and found her way into bed with Sophie. Sophie had already gone to bed and didn't know Abby was sleeping with her. I waited 5-10 minutes to check on Abby, and when I did, this is what I found. It was the sweetest thing! She had her hands wrapped around Sophie's hair. She has slept in that bed every night except once since then (2 weeks ago), even when Kaitlyn and Sophie aren't around. 

Russ was able to take the kids on a canoe-ing adventure at the salt river with Matt, Krysta, and their whole family. I had other plans that day and couldn't attend but I loved that Krysta sent me a picture! Russ said that everyone had a great time.
 
Earlier this year, our stake presidency challenged our stake to memorize the proclamation in commemoration of it's 20th anniversary since being read by President Hinckley. We worked on this thing for every family home evening over the course of 9 months. I am so proud to say that we met the challenge and memorized the whole thing in time! Abby even participated in this challenge with us. During our last "practice" before our deadline, we were reciting the prolamation without our poster hints. Abby knew something was missing so she ran into where we keep the posters and brought them all in to us, which wasn't easy for her. I love that she knew what we were doing!

Russ got Abby ready for bed... haha!!! Usually the shirt goes on under the pants but oh well. 

Ellie spent the night and Abby really wanted to sleep next to her. She found her way from my bedroom, downstairs, and up into the chair with Ellie (who was already sleeping). I love that she loves to cuddle!

We went to lunch for Suzanne's birthday and Abby had leftovers, so she got a to-go box. She told everyone that it was "MINE" and that she was going to take it home to eat it with her daddy. She would say "he sit next to me and eat it". Haha! I told Russ about her plans so he made sure to sit down with her when it was time to eat. At one point he got up from the table and someone else tried to sit down, but Abby said "NO! That's daddy's seat!"

This is Abby alseep on the church pew during Sunday School. What's significant about it to me, is that I have never been able to hold her as she naps or deal with her after sacrament meeting, until now. I was called to the primary presidency before I was even pregnant with her, and I was just barely released a few months ago. I am excited to be able to drop her off and pick her up from nursery more often now, and I am counting down the days until I get to sub in nursery with her (this coming Sunday).

Brother and Sister working on washing dishes together :)

We enjoyed having the missionaries over for dinner one night...

Thursday, September 10, 2015

August 2015

Cute Abby

Abby loves when her bff Kozie comes over :)

Kozie got to spend an entire day with us and even got to eat dinner with us. These 2 girls are so cute together.

Visiting grandma Riggs (about 3 weeks before she passed away. Grandma was a little bit confused when we visited her. She was still so sweet though and even sang along with Abby when Abby got on her bed and sang "twinkle twinkle little star" and "you are my sunshine" with her.

I wrote in last month's blog post about Abby hurting her leg. The x-rays didn't show a break line so her pediatrician sent us home with a splint. Over a week later, Abby was still crying about her leg hurting, and not using it to walk on. So we took her to an orthopedist, and they noticed a fracture line in the x ray. They put a cast on her leg and she was so happy about picking out PINK as the color!

Poppy (and Uncle Dan) turned 60 on the 10th of August so we got together with our whole family and Dan's whole family to celebrate. We made it a "decades" party and it was mostly a combination of disco and hippie!


 




The grandkids sang "I'm so glad when Grandpa comes home"

Almost everyone from both families! We were just missing Russ's girls, and of course Barton & Riggs too. 

Davis & Abby loving the swings in the Baldwin's backyard

Life father, like daughter!

We weren't able to make it to Bahama Bucks on the last day of summer (like we traditionally do), so we made a trip there with Suzanne and Ellie after school on the first day.
We made a trip to St. George in mid-August to deliver Tayler's stuff for college. We stopped the first night in Flagstaff and found the creperie, the same place Russ and I went to when we were dating. I have dreamed about those crepes for 6 years and was so excited to have them again. I hate to say that they tasted better 6 years ago, but they still looked pretty so I took pictures! We also took a family selfie to document our stop at the creperie!


We weren't satisfied with just the crepes so we had another meal (Mexican) down the road in Flagstaff! haha! We had a good time walking around in nice weather and eating a few meals.


The drive to St. George was so pretty... this picture was taken out the window as we drove, but it's so pretty that it almost looks fake!

One of our first stops in St. George was SWIG! The drinks were delicious and the cookies were even better!
We hiked "Dixie Rock" with our swig drinks in hand...


This is the view from Dixie Rock... the St. George temple is so pretty!


 Next, we walked around the temple and read about it's history. So pretty!



Not pictured: later that night we stopped by swig for the second time that day and purchased drinks and cookies for our drive home the next day! Yum!!
Sunday, we drove home and passed through Zion National Park on the way. It was beautiful! 

We drove through a mile-long tunnel that Abby didn't love.



We also got on a shuttle bus (Abby thought it was a "city school bus" and LOVED it)... and did a short hike to the "lower emerald pool". It was so hot outside and felt really nice to get sprinkled by some of the waterfalls when we made it to the destination!


(Notice the waterfall behind us!)




We stopped at the creek on our way out of the trail. Abby just sat on a rock since she couldn't get her cast wet.




This tree was huge!


Cute snacking babies! This is Abby with Kozie and her cutest baby brother, Boston.

This is just a fun screenshot I got of Russ one day as we were facetime-ing him on his way home from work. haha! 

Abby takes after Noah (and her mom)... she likes to line things up.

There's a fun fondue place in Gilbert called ELF (everybody loves fondue) and they put on a fun game during the month of August. They would park their truck somewhere, then post on instagram, a clue about where to find it. Every day I saw our neighbors winning the contest by taking a picture with the truck and posting their selfies. Surprisingly, one day I happened to be really close to where the clue pointed to, and already in my car... so I got there (to Costco) quickly and posted my selfie. We were the winners!

Winning got us free lunch, so as soon as Noah got home from school that day, we went and had some yummy fondue!


Sweetest cuddle bugs, both watching something on their phones.

Cute matching sisters at church!

We signed Abby's cast on a Sunday night before she got it taken off the next morning! I was so glad to get rid of that dirty thing. 

This is what her poor foot looked like when the cast came off. Moisture had been trapped in there. It broke my heart to see this sore on Abby's leg/foot. She babied her leg for another week and a half after this, because now her skin was hurting. The good news that we got at the doctor's office was that her bones were healing nicely. The skin looked horrible on the first day but actually started to heal pretty quick.

We did a lot of visiting with grandma Riggs during her last week. It was so sad to see her laying there looking so weak. She still knew who we were even though she was often confused and saying things that didn't make sense. One day when we were there, I went to give her a hug goodbye. I said "I love you grandma" and she said back to me "I love you too" and then said "goodbye Abby". I didn't have Abby in my arms and I hadn't mentioned her either. Grandma had mostly been sleeping during our whole visit. It was so sweet that she knew who I was and that Abby belonged to me. Abby really loved to visit Grandma too, which made me happy because when she was younger, she would have NEVER gotten close to grandma and hugged or kissed her. I hope Grandma knew how much Abby loved her before she passed away.
This is a picture of Abby with Grandma on a different day. I had to crop the picture because I noticed afterward that it was inappropriate... but Abby was just so cute in the picture that I had to post it!

Russ went out of town for the last weekend of August and the kids slept in my bed. This was at night...

... and this was the next morning. I love how Noah has his arm around Abby :)

Russ made it back safely from his trip and Abby was dressed as a gymnast with an injured head!