4th of July

Ok so our 4th of July was pretty uneventful.. but it was her first so I had to take pics.

The day started with going hiking with Aunt Dejah! (My sister) Ever hiked with a baby? Holy workout. I borrowed a friends hiking backpack and we hiked the Big Springs trail, till we got tired lol. Samarah loved it!

My hips.. and legs.. and shoulders ached. An extra 20 pounds you aren't used to is a lot!

Picked Apricots and hung out at my parents for a bit..

Then we bbq'd at home with daddy...

Yes, i did her hair in a fohawk lol.

Cute fourth of july outfit!

She is starting to look less like a baby and more like a toddler!!

That pretty much sums up our day, hiking, bbqing then bed! lol

Random Cuteness

 Ok so Mommy (me) is outside weeding the flower beds, and Samarah is in the middle of the lawn entertaining herself by pulling grass.. I look over every few minutes to check on her.. then i looked over and she was not in the middle of the lawn.. she had crawled behind me AND

This is what I found!

I'm sorry but even though her face is covered in dirt this pic is really freakin cute. Look what I ate mom!

Puppy's sniffin and thinking...thats not food... lol

So we had her little baby pool set up in the backyard full of water to heat up with the sun.. so we went back there and i set her down and she crawled over to it... and got in, clothes and all! cleaned the dirt right off! haha

I even got the splash of the water in this pic

I was seriously laughin, even though she got dirty me and her had a blast playin in the flower beds

Just a random one of me and her

Me and Chris had corn and we turn our head for one sec and she snagged the corn off my plate! she freakin loved it i let her knaw the rest of it off.

She is such a good eater, she loves everything.

Improvised Lasagna

I have a fairly stocked pantry, i buy things on sale and stock up. So when I plan meals I usually just need to buy the fresh ingredients. I usually have pasta and all the canned stuff on hand...

Well I get making lasagana the other morning, and have the meat/tomato part cooked.. and the eggs/cheese part done.. and then i find that I have no lasagana noodles!! It was our lunches for the day and i didn't have time to run to the store. So i'm racking my brain.. and I came up with a plan

I had a box of Manicotti Noodles, so I cooked those up and split them open and laid them flat and they worked great!! Just thought I would share one of the few creative moments I had! Lol!

Guess what we bought...

A Bad A** four wheeler!  A Yamaha Raptor 700

Chris has been getting tons of overtime and is a temporary shift supervisor which included a pay raise.. so overtime on his new raise=money for a four wheeler

He took it out pretty much every weekend since we got it, this is Chris at the dunes, pretty good action shot

The agreement was that we get the four wheeler for something for us to do together.. Since we have such different interests its hard to find stuff that we both want to do together, so I figured this would be a good compromise. But i didn't get to ride it for the first 6 weeks so needless to say I was irritated! Plus he spent a ton of money on gear and stuff so not as much went on the loan as planned.. but we will make it work.

Well I FINALLY got to go on a ride, and when i get to enjoy it too i find that i'm not so irritated! i just need to get to use it too lol! We went up AF canyon on Saturday morning and enjoyed a beautiful ride, and went up Diamond Fork Sunday for an evening ride which was so awesome.

I'm glad we went, because i'm learning how much quality time is a must now that the baby is here. So it was good to spend some time with him away from the baby, and all the to do lists at home.

We really live in a beautiful place, you know?

Camping..

So Samarah officially went camping in a tent for her first time! Woohoo! We decided to take off for the weekend and go up to Camperworld that is just past Treemonton, it has a hot springs... golf course.. atv trails...

So we left Saturday afternoon..

Cousin Nanna with Samarah! i love this pic

Can you tell which side of the car i rode on?

I wanted to even out my farmers tan but not fry my whole arm!

ha ow

They had a pool there and it was fed by the hot springs.. SO WARM

Samarah loved it!

Bought this bad a* little swimming thing. Totally worth 20 bucks. it has a little shade thing too

Aunt Dejah Cousin Nanna and Samarah!

ha love her face. Can I just say, being in the warm pool underneath the stars in the middle of nowhere was an awesome experience, amazing. 

This place really didn't have any trees we lucked out and pretty much got the only one there... I think the biggest attraction is the hot springs. It was really quiet and peaceful there. Later in the night we made smores

Me and Nanna takin a cruise on me and Chris new four wheeler..

I remembered everything except a beanie for Samarah which was probably the most important.. the cold night air on her little head.. She got sick after we got home :(

The birds were being so freakin loud on Sunday Morning Chris was throwing rocks at them haha.

We went on fathers day weekend so we left early sunday morning and came back and got pizza and spent the day together! It wasn't as hard as I thought to camp with a baby! I want to go more!

Hard to believe

You know how everyone says.. I can't belive my baby is however old they say.. or i can't believe its been 8 months its flown by etc etc..

Well for me, it did not fly by. at 6 months it definitely FELT like it had been 6 months.. 6 months of sleepless nights, exhaustion, pain, upside life, learning new routines, juggling work and home. everything seemed that long. When I look at other aspects of my life though, that is what flew by. thats 6 more months i've been married, 6 more months i've been at my job, 6 more months i've owned a house. etc. and that is what flew by for me.

After about 6 months it all of a sudden changed, now its flown by so fast. Once she started crawling and smiling and laughing and learning its been so fun and is now just wow, now i understand what they mean, but it wasn't like it for her first few months. I think part of that might have been contributed to the baby blues but who knows.

At first, i felt like having a baby sucked. And now I love her with a love that is the most intense, amazing feeling I had no idea a feeling like this could be real. Now she is almost 1 and i think the time is just going to fly even faster than it has the past couple months.

Bunco

So about a year and a half ago I was invited to play Bunco with some ladies in my neighborhood. It was a little weird the first few times, then I started to love it! Getting together once a month with women to chat and have fun did a lot for me! Since I just come home from work and hubby is always gone since we work opposite schedules, it was nice for me to interact with them and i started to look forward to it. Well now because I work so late I don't get to go anymore :( i'm sad

Well.. I signed up to host months ago so i decided to still host this month. It was my turn to host on tuesday. And can I just tell you i was totally scared! i have never done anything like this i've never planned a party or an event and i'm not creative and I was just stressing and freaking out.

I have to tell you what happened leading up to it. but i'll share photos first. It turned out great. I did a black/white theme and had it outside in my backyard

These would be mini oreo cheesecakes, can you say yum?

Cookies and cream popcorn, it was amazing.

After it was all said and done i look back and think why did i stress so much? but i have to work and find time to clean my whole house and yard and watch the baby and plan a party. so it wasn't easy.

After the game we sat around my firepit and chatted and made smores. it was so fun!

So my truck has been having problems and I had taken it to the shop and just got it out but as soon as i got it back it started having problems again. so monday i get off work and have so much to do to get ready for bunco, buying the gifts and the food and cleaning etc. so drove up to TJ maxx in orem to buy the gifts (like 8pm), when i came out my truck wouldn't start. I had Samarah with me and someone came over and jumped me. well.. i barely made it out of the parking lot. my truck died in the middle of the road. I couldn't get it in neutral to push of road.. yadda yadda long story short sat in road over an hour, brother came, towed me to shop at like 10 at night. neice drove me and samarah to walmart to buy stuff, they were out of half the stuff i needed for dessert, samarah was screaming, tired, had a full diaper i had no diapers with me.. didn't get home till past 11. i'm thinking F this i'm not hosting tomorrow. but i woke up tuesday and everything worked out! had to leave work a few hours early to get everything ready and buy the stuff i needed that they didn't have at walmart

As a side note.. my garden is growing!!!
Remember the before?

Now! check it out! i have peas. lettuce. tomatoes. broccoli. onions. corn. carrots. zuchinni. squash. cucumbers. I can't wait till i can eat the stuff!

And my flower beds are growing and looking great, i just need to plant more flowers!