I woke up in Utah and went to bed in Florida.....

I'm having a hard time convincing myself that I am really here, but we are having a blast,

I'm blogging as my "journal time" on this trip but I am not allowing myself to waste time editing pictures, so what you see is what you get. The SOOC's. (and some are taken with my point and shoot so I don't ruin my camera- so don't judge :)

The day started with a four hour flight to Tampa. Chase screamed for about the first two hours and we had some very nice and helpful people, and some rude unhelpful people. I understand that it is unpleasant to ride close to a screaming toddler, but looking at me every two seconds isn't helping me quiet my screaming child!

We finally got Chase happy and he was playing down by our feet when the woman in front of Daniel (who had been giving us dirty looks for the screaming) informed us that Chase was "kicking her seat and making her head bounce a lot." So back to screaming. Another woman coming back from the bathroom asked if she could take him for a minute so "his mom could have a break". She stood with him in the aisle by us and held him. What a sweet lady! After a little break I got up and took her place and stood with him in the very small crowded aisle. Everytime someone would try to pass us it because a big obstacle, until a really old man a couple aisles down offered to allow me to "sit on his lap when people needed to pass by us". :) Of course he was kidding but he did lean inward anytime someone came to pass us so that Chase and I could lean into his aisle and the passes became smoother. FINALLY, Chase fell asleep and slept the last 1.5 hour or so.

For about the first 1/2 hour Chase loved looking out the airplane window and telling it to keep "go go go" ing.
My hair immediately grew 3X it's original size from the humidity. I knew it would happen but just wanted to test out if I would be able to fix my hair straight at all on the trip. From now on all the pictures you see my hair will be curly :)


I swear I'm not naked here, we just caught a bad angle on my swimsuit.

We are staying in a hotel right on the beach. We have a beautiful view of the ocean out our window and a private balcony. (pictures to come). We spent the early evening (after grabbing a quick bite to eat at subway) playing in the ocean. Chase LOVED it! We could hardley pull him out of the water. It was nice and warm, and he loved getting a taste of the water and yelling "yucky!"

We are having a blast. Tomorrow we are headed out to meet up with Daniels sister and her kids, whom we havn't seen in about 2 years! WE can't wait for some more fun in the sun!

Chase-English Dictionary

Sorry for the lack of Chase on my blog lately. I'm just so backed up on pictures and stuff on him that it's hard to get started back up.

Chase is now just over 18 months and it's so fun to hear him learning to talk. Most of the time he will talk your ear off with jibber jabbers as if he is having a full on conversation with you. The few words that he does know are these:

gucky- yucky
goggy- doggy: refers to anything that moves and he doesn't know what it is, mostly dogs, cats, ducks, birds, airplanes, etc.
momma- kinda obvious
daddy-
Papa- Grandpa
bupple- Apple: also refers to anything that looks remotely similar to an apple (in his eyes) including: oranges, apples, potatoes, and eggs
greegle- Yogurt and Eagle. He asks for greegle every morning for breakfast and anytime the fridge catches his attention.
dit due- His version of thank you, although it mostly means please or give me that now before I scream.
go go go- This is pretty much the thing I hear ALL day EVERY day. He ALWAYS wants to go go go and now that the door in our new house is in the middle of the hallways he sees it and wants to go go go. (In fact he is at the door right now saying "go go go". :)
nanna- bannana
fwawa- flower
cwacka- cracker
Geegee- Jesus
Beebee- all babies including himself in our family picture.

I graduated....

No wait that was last month. I am trying to get caught up over the next couple of days with my pictures. I have slacked on uploaded them, which causes me to slack on editing them, which makes me slack on the blogging. So here they are, for my sake, a lot of pictures you probably don't care to see (except maybe my mom.)
If you read my moms blog, you have already heard about all the people that helped me get through school including Daniel and Chase. But this is the one picture you didn't get to see and the story you didn't get to hear. My mom hasn't had the chance to finish as much schooling as she would have liked and from the time I was little she taught Jill and I how important it was for us to finish school even though we are women, and even though I just wanted to be a mom. She supported and helped me through all my schooling before I got married and even more after I had Chase. Last summer she drove up every other week to watch Chase for a day. That's an 8 hour drive in one day just to watch Chase so Daniel could be at work. It would have been much harder to finish without all her help.

If you want to see more pictures you can click HERE to go to her blog. I don't have the rest of those pictures yet so I can't post them.

I'm getting old....

I have hit that point where I don't feel as old as my birthdays tell me I am. I know 24 isn't old, but it's older than I feel. 23 is ok, but 24 feels too old. Despite the fact that I turned 24, I felt about 13 on my birthday and loved it! Daniel had to work, so Chase and I hit the gym and then went swimming. At about 3:30 Daniel showing up at home early was the first surprise of the day. He packed us some things (including coats to throw me off) and we left. The second surprise and first stop was to drop Chase off at Daniel's sisters house so we could have the afternoon to ourselves (thanks Alynn!!). Then we showed up at 7 peaks. Thats right, just the two of us. It was sortof rainy and cold so we had the whole park to ourselves and ran from ride to ride doing whatever we wanted. We didn't wait in a single line the whole afternoon. We would jump into the wave pool to warm up when we got too cold and then back out onto the slides. It was the funnest birthday ever.

When we were finally freezing and starving, we headed out for dinner at our new favorite restaurant: Taconos.

I had a blast and just when I thought my special day was through, we picked up Chase and came home to this:


A movie, some ice cream, and flowers! It was the perfect day.

Missing daddy....

Chase and I are missing daddy.....




but still having fun.

Quick catch-up

We have finally finished school- I'm still not convinced that it's forever, but for a while now. I finished off this semester with all A's and A-'s (something I was not expecting, and thanks to one professor who decided that an 88.7 should be considered an A-!) We also finished the packing and moving last weekend. We love our new little place, and miss our old littler place a lot. Daniel has been working 6:30-3:30 everyday and then is home to spend the evening with us- something we have missed for our whole 4 years of marriage. So far in those evenings we have gone on plenty of walks, bought our first new bed together (after days and days of going back and forth between stores trying to decide which one really was the MOST comfortable), and tonight we will start on our garden. With buying us a new bed, we now have a guest room that has a bed in it as well- so come visit us :). I was able to walk to the temple the other evening- I saved almost an hour off my temple time without having to sacrifice actual time in the temple (thanks to the non-commute and I think the movie sessions are shorter???).

I don't technically have internet yet- Daniel will be working on that today and then I can post some pictures of what we have been doing.

I graduated!!!

It was a long hard road.  Especially after Chase joined our family, but I'm so glad it's done (for now).

I graduated with a bachelors degree in Health Promotion with a minor in Nutrition.  I hope to someday go back for a master's in Nutrition, but I am done for the time being.  

I'm so grateful for Daniel and all of his support as I tried to finish up.  He worked his schedule around mine so that he could be home with Chase while I was at school.  

So grateful for this little dude that makes my life so much more meaningful.

Sitting with the health promotion graduates (I'm in the middle)

I love my mom and am so grateful for all her help through the years.