Park City

The Chilton's had planned to spend several days up in Park City for some good skiing and we joined them for a couple days too.  We should've planned it better (and watched the weather forecast) because we drove up in the middle of a blizzard.  It took over 2 1/2 hours to get there and was definitely not the smartest thing we've ever done.
The house they rented was right above Main Street but we had to take 2 flights of these steep, snow covered stairs to get to and from there.

We walked down to the very bottom of Main Street for some delicious pizza. (I'm still wearing my Solly wrap in case you're wondering what's going on with my outfit.)

Peek a boo!

Georgy bought the girls matching jammies!

We slept up in this loft and Bear was too excited to sleep when we were still downstairs talking and hanging out.

Neil slept with Bear since it was his first time sleeping in a big bed by himself and I was worried he'd fall out.

We brought a pack n play for Eden and I had to laugh when she was sleeping up in the corner just like Barrett always did.

Unfortunately that night Georgy got a bad case of the stomach flu so the next morning we just headed home instead of doing some more fun things in Park City.

The Chilton's Come to Utah Part II

We went shotgun shooting one afternoon.  

Rhys was in the Australian special forces and was actually a sniper in Afghanistan so he's a very good shot but he had never done clay pigeon shooting.  He was still a very good shot. 

Neil's a pro.  I don't even know if he missed 1!

Neil, Blake, Howard, Rhys.  Howard was also really good, he used to do it quite a bit I guess.

I was horrible, the only things I shot were on the ground!

We invited them over for our usual big, chaotic Sunday dinner.  I was nervous they were going to be completely overwhelmed, but they seemed to do ok!

We were celebrating Sean's birthday. Shelley made this amazing Ding Dong cake that I ate for days afterward!  I thought this picture was funny because the happy birthday sign looks like a little mustache on Bear.

Tink and Lindsay got out this adorable Wonder Woman costume for Lara to wear.

Everyone was pretty interested in Lara.

Another day we all went to Temple Square.

It was the nicest, warmest day!

Afterwards we went to City Creek for some shopping (and shoe shining).

And Cheesecake Factory for dinner.

Georgy gave these darling jammies to Eden.

 More play time together.

We went to Lucky 13 for dinner before the Jazz game last Friday.  SO GOOD!  Rhys and I got the Peanut Butter Burger and it was amazing!  We had to sit outside because we didn't have time to wait to get a table inside, luckily it wasn't as cold as it had been.  Never mind the weird shadow on my face.

Go Jazz Go!  They played against the Boston Celtics and won!

Tamara has planned on staying home to tend Lara but Georgy was super sick so she stayed and Tamara came with us.

The Chilton's Come to Utah Part I

(I should note that Rhys would want me to put the Chilton's and the Dowden's but that's too long of a title so I lumped them together)

My friend Georgy came to visit and brought most of her family with her.  It's been so fun to have them here in Utah with us! 

From the second they arrived, Barrett's been trying to play with and chase Lara nonstop.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw this.  I would've normally just kept scrolling past it but I thought it was super crazy because this is the guy who owns the house that the Chilton's rented.  Does that make sense?  The Chilton's are staying at this guy's house and then I saw on Facebook that my friend who's a 6th grade teacher had him come speak to her class.  What are the chances!?

Lara got her first chance at playing in the snow.

Oh man, we went out to west Farmington one day to try to spot some Bald Eagles that my friend said she saw 2 days prior.  We went to 2 different places (the same places my friend saw them!) but no eagles.  I was pretty bummed.

Georgy and Bear got a good look at some geese though.   That same night, the eagles were on the news but I still don't know where they were because we did not see one!

We did a lot of just hanging out and letting the kids play.

We had a date to Cutlers!

We planned to dress the girls in these matching outfits that I bought for them, but then when we showed up at their house, Georgy and I were twins too!

We went to drive go karts in Salt Lake.  Too bad there's such a glare through the window!
Over a week later I am still all bruised up from these crazy go karts!  I think I only got hit once (thanks Rhys) but for some reason, the way the go kart seat hit parts of my body gave me major bruises.  I had 1 on each hip, 3 on my back, and 1 on the inside of each knee.

Neil got 1st place, Rhys got 2nd, I got 3rd, and Howard got 4th.  Although if you go by fastest lap times, Howard got 3rd and I got 4th.

Lara watched Eden while Neil and I both raced.

We went to Rodizio Grill for dinner after go karts.  YUM!  Eden does SO well when we go out to dinner!  She almost always will just sit quietly in her carseat.

Playing outside in the pine needles...

Grandma GiGi

Valentine's Day is also my Grandma Roselyn's birthday.  This year, one of her daughters (although no one will admit to being responsible for some reason) had a great idea to send everyone in the whole family a stamped card to write on and send back to GiGi for her birthday.  If everyone did it (I hope they did!) she'd get over 100 birthday cards!

This is her opening just some of them. 

Kathy hosted a little get together for her at her house.

We had to hurry and grab a picture with the birthday girl as we were leaving. 

What a woman!

Valentine's Day

Barrett got to have his first Valentine's party at school this year.  It actually wasn't a party at all, each kid just brought valentines to pass out.  He picked Angry Bird valentines and little packs of m&m's.

I love this cute mail truck that Miss Sharon made all the kids.

❤️My sweetest valentines❤️ with their valentines they got from Pops and Lala in the mail. 

8 Months

Eden is pretty impatient and gets very mad when she has to wait for my milk to let down or switch sides.  She'll suck once and then yell and then suck again and yell again and do that about 10 times before my milk is ready.

If I'm feeding her in the other room and you hear someone screaming, it's either her because she's mad that my milk hasn't let down yet or it's me because she's pinching and scratching me to death.

She's still very ticklish.

She loves taking everything out of any type of container. 

I think her hair might be getting curly... That has me a bit worried because I have NO idea how to do curly hair!  This is just out of the bath, if I don't comb it straight down it goes like this.

I finally decided to put most of her 3-6 month clothes in the bin and get out her 6-12 month clothes.
Wears size 2 diapers still, usually Pampers Baby Dry because Huggies seem to always leak.

She has the cutest voice and has said both dada and mama in her ramblings as she discovers new sounds.  She does really well with dada though, so I think that's officially her first word.

She got her first pony tail and toothbrush a couple weeks ago.

She's so funny! She loves putting anything in her mouth and I laugh so hard when she uses toys as her binky.

This is the toy she was sucking on, it has just enough of a binky shape to stay in her mouth I guess.

Her favorite thing to do right now is stick her tongue out and spit.  It was pretty cute and fun until she started doing it when she ate.  Now I need a bib too! (For the record, it's still very cute and fun when she spits, it's just much messier when she eats)

She does "so big" now, which I absolutely love. 

She will also put her raggie or a paper plate in front of her face to play peek a boo.

I got her up from her nap one day and I had put makeup on while she was sleeping (something that definitely doesn't happen every day!)  For the longest time after waking up, she just kept looking at me like, "Who are you!?"

She's up to 14 lbs now!

At about 7 1/2 months I noticed I was almost out of my freezer storage of breastmilk (I stopped pumping when she got thrush in October and never got back in the habit) so I had to start mixing her baby cereal with formula instead of breastmilk.  I know that's not a big deal at all but I was kind of sad I had to do it.
I started giving her 2 meals a day a couple of weeks ago.  Call me crazy, but I think food helps her nap better. 

She still spits everything up!! I was hoping that the medicine she was given for her Laryngomalacia would help with that but it definitely hasn't.  I'm looking forward to moving on from the spit up phase someday.

Naps still aren't consistent.  I did discover something by accident that seems to work pretty well.  Sometimes I'd put her down and if she was talking after a few minutes I'd just go get her up.  Well one day I couldn't go get her right away  and after 10-15 minutes she'd gone to sleep!  I know that doesn't seem like such a "discovery" but it was to me!  Anyways, I still try to put her down 2-3 times a day but she doesn't always concede.  I don't know how I'm ever going to get her on a schedule.
She almost always goes down to bed at night very easily.  She does still wake up between 1-4 times and I've considered  letting making her cry it out at night but then I figure it's not that big of a deal to get up.  I get up, change her diaper, nurse her on one side and then we both go back to sleep.  It takes a total of 10-15 minutes and it reassures her and we get a little extra cuddle time.  Eventually, yes, I do want her to sleep through the night, but this won't last forever, so for now,  I'll hold off on torturing us both.

At 8 months postpartum, I FINALLY hit my pre-Eden weight.  None of my pre-Eden clothes fit yet but hopefully that's coming soon!  I'm almost positive that when I went back to work 13 weeks after having Barrett, I was back to my normal weight AND wearing all my normal clothes. Why couldn't I have been so lucky this time!?