Scotty Boy

Our Scotty Boy is so much fun! Our move from Utah to Arizona was really hard on him. It was about a month of lack of sleep and inconsistency before moving and then a continuation of that once we moved that played a huge part into the rough time for him. I feel like he's finally back to being the great, happy, goofy boy he has always been.

This is the first time we've had a backyard to play in. It is so nice and Scotty loves it. He goes out there several times everyday. His Aunt Abby introduced him to baseball right before we moved to Arizona. Ever since then he has loved it. He has a tee, 2 baseball bats, and 7 soft baseball that he plays with almost daily. When he first got them he was hitting the baseball tee completely and almost every time knocking it over. Now he mostly just hits the ball! Collin also blew up a football, volleyball, and handball for Scotty. He loves to play with them as well and likes to hit them with his bats.

He has been really interested in what the names of letters are. He will point to letters all the time and want us to tell him what they are. I decided to take it and run with it and start teaching them to him. I started with the letter S. He notices it all the time and will point to it and say "S for my name!" He can recognize O as well.

He can count to 10 but every time he misses a number. It used to be 4, then 5, and now it's 7.

He wears underwear now and does a great job as long as I remind him throughout the day. He's telling me more and more now though so I'm excited for that. I'm very ready to stop hearing about his bodily functions and what ends up in the toilet.

He LOVES temples and it makes me so happy. I love driving past the temple and having him get so excited. As soon as we drive past and he can no longer see it, he tells me he wants to see it again.

Easter was so much fun this year. He had fun following the Easter Bunny's trail to his basket, hunting for Easter eggs, dying Easter eggs, and eating his treats. His favorite were definitely Peeps. He didn't like jelly beans.

For awhile he wanted to bring his baby and blanket in his wagon on our walk to our mailbox. 

It was so cute!

He wanted to have a party. We blew up balloons and put candles on some individual cheesecakes I had made.He thought it was the "best party ever"!

He had to wear his boots from Grandma to bed.

We were over at my sister's house. He was riding that bike and then said "Jaylee, come on with me!" while pointing on the seat behind him. 

Collin Graduation

Collin had to be at graduation (I would have made him go anyway). Both his parents and my parents came with us which was a lot of fun. We didn't want to pay for parking at the airport so we rode Frontrunner to the airport. Scotty thought it was great that we rode a train (Frontrunner), trolley (Trax), an airplane, and a bus (to the rental car) all in one day. He loved watching out the windows of Frontrunner. It was so nice and I was extremely glad and grateful our parents were with us. Carrying 2 carseats, a suitcase, 2 backpacks, and keeping track of Scotty with Kylie in the carrier on the Frontrunner and Trax was pretty crazy, but was much easier once we were at the airport and had additional help from parents. Both kids did so great the whole trip! Our flight left at about 8:30 PM. Kylie fell asleep before the plane took off. Scott was too excited that it took him about an hour and half before he settled down and slept. We flew into Chicago. We had a rental car while we were there. I reserved an SUV. Even though we needed 8 seats I reserved one that said 7 online. I thought all SUVs had a full middle bench. Apparently the rental company only had 2 seats in the middle row, so Collin got to drive a 12 passenger van! We had more space that way though and it was easier for me to go back and forth from the passenger and the kids right behind me. We got to a hotel that night around 1 in the morning and had to leave early in the morning to get Collin to Davenport for graduation practice the following morning. We didn't get tons of sleep that night, but both kids slept well which was good.

Driving to Davenport (2.5 hours) was uneventful. It was nice being back in Davenport. It felt like home! While Collin was at graduation practice the rest of us hung out at the school and talked. My memory is fuzzy on how the rest of the day went but at some point we went to the John Deere tractor museum. It brought back so many memories from going there with friends. We went to The Machine Shed for dinner. Scott fell asleep on the way there (pretty much anytime we were in the car both kids slept) He slept on my dad's lap pretty much all of dinner. He was so tired from such a late night, early morning, and no nap really. After dinner our friends the Colvins came to the hotel and talked with us for awhile. We miss them! It was good to talk with them and catch up with them, even though it had only been a few months since we last saw them.

Graduation was the next day. We had enough time in the morning to swim for a bit. That was Kylie's first time swimming. She liked it. It was then time to get ready to go for graduation. Graduations aren't fun, but it was so exciting for me to see Collin acknowledged for all his hard work! He graduated Magna Cum Laude and was also on the Dean's List every trimester. All that while being married and having 2 kids. I was so emotional seeing him walk across the stage. We were sitting right above where they walked in and out. As he was exiting he looked up, found us, and held his hand up with the I Love You sign - that's when I was very emotional. I really am so proud of him. After graduation we went and found Dr. Katie Clark (the clinic doctor Collin learned from and worked with). She is so great and we all loved her! After that it was time to drive back to Chicago. We went to the temple as soon as we got there. The men went first and then the women. It's a pretty temple and I'm glad we went. Collin and I meant to go there the whole 3.5 years we were in Davenport but always went tot he Nauvoo temple instead. After the temple, we went to dinner and then our hotel for bed.

The next and last day was spent sight seeing Chicago. It was so cold nobody wanted to get out of the car. We just drove around downtown before heading back to the airport. We got to the airport quite a bit earlier than we needed to, but Chicago airport has a playground that Scott played at for awhile. Our flight back to SLC had our friends from our Davenport ward, Jared and Holly Brown, on it. That was fun to talk with them for a bit. When we landed in SLC we realized we had to really hurry to make it on Trax, otherwise we would have had to wait an hour for the next Frontrunner. It took forever for our carseats to be unloaded. We made it on Trax just in time.

It was a fun, busy few days with lots of good memories!

Frontrunner

Trax, or as Scott called it "Trolley", like Daniel Tiger

Before we ever took off, with a sleeping Kylie

How they looked at the end of our flight

Dr. Katie Clark

Look at this crazy parking garage, with a river right below it!

The Bean

Illinois is very proud of Abraham Lincoln coming from there.

Lake Michigan

Wrigley Field. I really wanted to go to a Cubs game while we were in school, but we never made it. At least I got to see Wrigley Field while in Chicago.

Kylie Baby - 8 months

Our Kylie Baby is 8 months old now! I swear every year goes faster than the previous one. She continues to be so happy and a joy in our lives. Here are a few things she's doing now:

-For the last month she's been doing an army crawl until about a week and a half ago. She has finally figured out how to crawl with her knees up underneath.

-She's pulling herself up and standing next to anything she can. This morning when I went in to her room to get her out of bed she was standing up. I guess I need to lower her crib now.

-She still loves Scotty. He can make her smile and laugh more than anyone else. She always wants to play with whatever he's playing with. Thankfully he usually plays nice with her.

-The last few days she has started to scrunch her nose up. It is one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

-Her hair is growing more and more. When she wakes up in the morning she's got some bed head going on now. It's down over her ears now and it must tickle her cause she will move her hand over her ear to move the hair off.

-She got her 2 front bottom teeth around 5.5 months. She's working on her top ones now.

-Still not sleeping great. I had her going about 4 hour at night for about 2 weeks but now her teeth are bothering her and is back to sleeping awful again.

-At 7.5 months she weighed almost 19 pounds!!!! Her legs are starting to slim down now that she's crawling though. 

-She is finally taking long naps most of the time. She takes two 1.5-2 hour naps a day usually. She is so much happier now that she's not taking lots of cat naps throughout the day.

-Most of the time she uses her left hand to grab toys or food. I'm curious to see if she will be a left handed girl.

-She really is so happy all the time. We are so lucky to have such a happy baby.

This is one of my absolute favorite pictures of her. Her whole face lights up when she smiles.

Her first Easter

She crawled over to our toy corner and was so proud of herself.

The first time she pulled herself up to her toy all by herself.

She loves to be outside, but didn't necessarily like the splash pad.

She loves getting to play the piano. I hope it sticks.

This was today. Standing in her crib, bed head, and you can kind of see her scrunched nose.

I just loves these two little kids!