Alright, Time to BRAG a Little...

As most of you know I just had another baby girl, Emree Ellouise, making us a busy family of 4!! (I still can't believe it) I have been trying to recover as fast as possible these last few weeks and have spent a lot of time just laying around trying to heal not doing much of anything for anyone...as it goes I guess when you've just had a baby. I just can't stop thinking about what an amazing and ridiculously good looking SUPER DAD, JD is! He has been doing so much for me, our two girls, school, church, and sacrificing anything and everything to serve others through his entire day. So I just wanted to brag about Jd today and how extremely lucky I am to have him in my life!

I posted this picture, along with the first one you saw, because I wanted to brag about what an amazing dad Jd is to both our little girls. I wish you could all see how excited little miss lydia gets to see her dad come home each day. She runs to the door and screams with excitement as she gives him the biggest, longest bear hug ever! It's seriously the cutest thing to see. I love to just sit back and watch them play together as he makes all of her stuffed animals come to life. He always has new and interesting scenarios to keep her entertained along with a different made up voice for each of them. Just the other day they played dress up with her animals and she thought it was the greatest thing ever! Now why can't I think of that??

Another wonderful thing that lydia loves to do with her dad is dance! Every day he turns on some kind of catchy repetitive beat from his new electric piano and they each get their groove on. She runs and grabs her stuffed animals, hands one to dad and then dances her little heart out while holding all the other ones. I love to watch her try and mimic all the cool moves Jd does. With that kind of training, from such a professional dance teacher, she will be pro in no time.

I could honestly go on and on about all the fun things JD does with his two girls, but that would be one really long post. He always finds a way to make time to just play with his two girls and I will let you know that that means the world to them, and me.

What a handsome man! This is Jd all decked out for his leading role as one of the apostles in the play Savior of the World! They had many rehearsals and it took alot of time out of his busy school schedule to be a part of this play. I posted this picture to show that even though JD is extremely busy with school, studying for boards, tests, working with patients, lab work, AND his after school job.....big breath....He still finds the time to do missionary work. Now I'm not just talking about fulfilling his church calling as Young Mens Second Counselor, scouts and going to mutual every week. On top of all that he is always thinking of how he can share something so special to him and that is the gospel. He was a part of the play so that he could invite others to come and feel of the spirit.

He has just recently given out a Book of Mormon to a girl he met on the bus and has been taking time out of his busy week to go to discussions with her and share his testimony with her. For example he is taking a HUGE test tomorrow, boards, and took time out of his night to study yesterday to go to a discussion. I have seen him sacrifice his time in building up the kingdom of God in so many instances, it truly amazes me and sets such a wonderful example for myself and our kids. Not to mention how he wakes up extra early for his personal scripture study and then comes to wake me up so that we can then read together. He makes sure that we have Family Home Evening every week and is always remembering to pray with lydia before meals and bedtime.

I just feel so blessed to have a guy who sincerely and honestly cares so much about this gospel and knows what wonderful changes it can have in the live's of others. He has sacrificed so much of his time to serve in the church when he could of made up many excuses as to why he just didn't have the time.

Alright, so I wish we had a current family picture because we now are a family of four....it's a big difference, really. I posted the picture below to show how much Jd truly takes care of his family. He really is the MAN of the house and makes sure everything is in order from the bills being paid, applying for future opportunities (GPR's and Jobs), keeping the house tidy and clean while I am down and out, making delicious meals, grocery shopping, allowing me to rest while he again takes the time to take care of lydia, making sure we are protected and safe at all times, takes care of internet and phone dilemmas, even down to renewing our library books and gives all of us more love and care than any other man I know.

I added the pictures below because I just couldn't end this post without bragging about how FREAKING GOOD LOOKING JD is! Am I right? Or am I right?

Well Jd, I hope you know how extremely special you are to me and how much I appreciate everything that you do for our family. I love you so much and I am so grateful for the example that you are to me and so many others. You truly are my everthing!

Emree Ellouise

On August 30, 2011 at 11:47am the world changed forever....................... at least for Lydia.

The story:
August 30th 6:40am: I wake up McCall for our daily scripture study
7:00: "I think I'm having contractions, can you wait around for awhile"
7:30: We drop off Lydia at a friends and head to the hospital
8:30: McCall's finally registered in and she's checked by the nurses, she's dilated to a 8!
9:30: McCall pleads with the nurses to tell the anesthesiologists to hurry up for the 30th time
9:45: All is peaceful, McCall has never felt so blessed in her life (epidural given)
11:40ish: ready to push
11:47: Emree is born into the world, but the spelling of her name remains in jeopardy

This is after Emree's first bath

Lydia really wasn't this happy to see her, she actually walked into the hospital looked at the baby, ignored her and went about doing her own thing. She was pretty whiny for the first couple days, because of lack of attention but is doing much better now.

I just realized that we don't have a picture of McCall and Emree which is what we really need, because McCall was absolutely amazing throughout the entire process. Thanks to her I have two beautiful daughters!

Ward members have been really great, when I needed to go back to school the following week there were awesome girls in our ward that volunteered to watch Lydia for the entire day to help McCall rest. And we received some amazing meals as well. Her mom is coming in tonight which should help out a lot.

Cincinnati and Funny Sunday

These pictures are totally out of order, so you'll get a mix of Funniness and Cincinnati:
About two weeks ago we headed up to Cincinnati (about an hour and a half north to us), first off we headed to the children's museum.
McCall found a random glass tank with hundreds of yummy cockroaches. Gross! I made the mistake of showing this picture to Lydia while I'm writing and she has been saying Gross! for the last ten minutes, she just can't get over how gross they are. I can't blame her though.

Funny #1: This was the after effects of the ten minute storm we had a couple weeks ago that left some people w/o electricity for a week, knocked down several trees and flooded various streets. This is a pic of us in the car trying to get out of our apartment complex.

Before church one morning. Lydia loves to jump in the front seat, for some reason she always thinks I'm going to let her drive.

Back to Cincinnati, we headed downtown to Fountain Square where they had a free band playing that was most possibly the worst band I've ever heard.

Back at the Children's Museum in Cincinnati, I thought this would be funny... you can determine that for yourselves.

In front of the Children's Museum, a great shot of downtown Cincinnati, it's really a beautiful city

Funny #2: McCall, "Hey, can you take a picture of me?" Me, "OK, why?" "Cuz I'm pretty sure I'm going into labor tonight and I want to have a picture of me at my fullest."
This was two weeks ago and still no baby...

Lydia at the zoo, styling.

Funny #3:

McCall, "Alright I'm going to go wash my face before bed."

Me, "No, I like your face, don't wash it off." (Good dad joke, Mckay will appreciate this)

McCall after pondering thoughtfully, "What if we had to draw our faces on each morning? That'd be awesome. And what if we had to draw faces on our kids until they were old enough to do it themselves."

This led to a very intense discussion on face drawing and what people would look like if they were bad artists, etc.

Funny Sundays 8-14-11!

So for the last 24 hours we have been without power thanks to a brief rain/wind storm that left many of us without electricity. Well if any of you know McCall's fettish for candles, yesterday was her dream come true.

So before we went to bed last night she had to blow out a million candles... as I lifted my head from the pillow on my bed I looked at one solitary candle on the nightstand. "Aren't you going to put that one out as well?" "Oh yeah!" she says. She grabs the candle and heads in my direction. I guess because my angle to blow was off (from laying down) she thought it was obviously a good idea to tilt the candle so I'd have better access to it. Keep in mind that these candles have been lit for a while and have built up a considerable amount of hot candle liquid. So as she tilts it the burning wax drips all over my neck and down my chest and back, oozing for what seems like eternity.

Meanwhile my brain was telling me to scream "My skin is burning!", but strangely, my nerve endings were contemplating "You know what? This definitely is not as bad as I was expecting?" That was all McCall needed to laugh for the next ten minutes, trying to apologize but failing to do so each time.

Funny Sundays

When I come home, I usually take Lydia for a walk because she loves the outdoors and hates being cooped in all day. Usually during these walks she gets running so fast that she'll trip over her sandal, a rock, etc and fall down. I try and remind her to take it easy, but to no avail.

Lately she has been carrying this ball that she is pretty fond of on our walks. On this particular day last week, she was having a tough time staying up for some reason (probably a combination of her being so excited to be outside and her attempting to catch her ball that she never manages to hold on to). She must have fallen at least 4 times. With her last fall, she wasn't too happy and I decided she had been through enough.

As she cried, I comforted her and carried her back to the apartment. I climbed up the stairs and set her down. When she saw the door she got really excited and with the ball in front of her darted full sprint at the door. At this point I was too far away to prevent what was about to happen and so I stopped, watched, and laughed as that ball ricocheted her off the door pushing her in the opposite direction and slamming her into the ground.

I think both of us were crying when we came in the door, her because of pain and me because of excess laughter.

Funny Sundays

So I was thinking... something I don't do a lot of... that I love the "Because She Does Blog (on Thursdays)" that my sister Shelby does and the "Awkward/Awesome Thursdays" that my sister-in-law Makana blogs, and I thought well we could think of something to do once a week also and I came up with this idea: Funny Sundays!

I figure we say a lot of funny things or have funny things happen to us during the week, and we usually end up forgetting about them oh so fast, so this will help us in that regard. But hopefully it has a two fold effect:

1) It will serve as a journal of funny things for us and

2) It will remind the rest of us that admist the stress and tribulations of this world the Lord has blessed us with something amazing: laughter!

Now I can't promise how long this will last or how often I'll actually do it, but oh well.

So here are my funny quotes/stories of the week:

McCall looking at some horses as we drive by: "Geez, what would it be like to just eat all day long?" Pausing. "Oh wait... I do that." (her being pregnant makes this quote better)

JD: "Name this movie, "I'll finish it for you now." "No Jonny, finish it for mama"

McCall: "Oh oh, um... Legends, no Living... I can't think of it.... oh Legacy" (funny if your familiar with Living Legends and Legacy)

So I went to help a less active member move out (it seems like whenever I do these moves the people are always a bunch of pack rats). Anyway, she had six of those BIG boxy tvs, heavy suckers. I found out later that five of the six didn't even work. Why are we moving them then? I found even later that she was downgrading from a two bedroom apartment to a one bedroom. I guess her room needs a t.v. in every direction, just in case they decide they want to work again.

She also had a fish tank with no lid, the water was so murky that I had to concentrate really hard to even see any sign of life, plus there were three moldy rubber duckys sitting on top of the water. "Are you sure you want this in the moving truck?" "Yeah just take out a little water so it doesn't splash out much." "Ok" The lady was moving to a different ward. I heard when that ward's Elders quorum got to it, there was fish and glass everywhere.

Utah Trip

Utah was so fun!! We just got back from our month stay in the home land. JD did his extern for Dental School out there at the Mountainlands Community Center and loved it! He was able to really pick his speed up and also learn A LOT of Spanish at the same time.

It was fun seeing everyone and reminiscing in the old days when we actually did live there for real. Here are just a few of the good memories that we made while we were out there.

First off we have lydia ready to go surfing on her chair. It was so funny, everytime we would sit down to eat, she would lie on her belly, like it was no big deal, and continue to eat the rest of her food. Don't ask me... who knows what she was trying to accomplish.



Second, I love this picture! Ok, this was taken during the dance party of my two amazing friends, Andy and Whitney's Wedding....oh Jewish wedding... may I add. She had so much fun groovin to the beat and was adorable and hilarious to watch. She takes after her mother.. what can I say. :)

We bought season passes to Seven Peaks for a steal of a deal! Included was unlimited access to Trafalga, Seven Peaks, the Trafalga in Lehi which had laser tag, a rock climbing wall, arcade games, roller coasters, race cars and much more. So we thought we would go for a little date and visit Mtn Rushmore, which was also included in our steal of a deal passes.

This occasion was pretty funny. We were walking over to the dance floor at our friends wedding and another kid ran past her and accidentally bumped her. She just started crying like the world was going to end... I was happy we finally caught this adorable face on camera.

Oh.... a precious daddy daughter moment. We had to be at the wedding early for pictures etc. and so JD was able to spend some quality time with his little sweetheart. I found them asleep in the shade and am so happy I was able to get some pictures without them waking up. I have never seen her do this before, so the fact the she was cuddled up to her daddy just sleepin in the shade outside was so cute. I love this picture as well. You can just tell how much she loves her Dad!

Oh Ella, besides the fact that you passed on the flu to miss lydia and the rest of us, it was fun to see you. We were able to go to Cafe Rio which was delicious and then to the mall afterwards, which is where these two really had some bonding time on that yellow dinasaur.

Here we are at Seven Peaks with Brandon, Shelby and Daxton! Dax was so cute and would just relax on his dad's back sporting his awesome sun glasses...while on the other hand... Lydia would go crazy as soon as she hit the water and wanted you to completely let go of her. She didn't care if the water was 2 feet deep, she knew she could do it on her own, which made it pretty difficult for a prego lady to keep a hold on her.

We had so much fun seeing everyone and we really do miss all of you. Thanks again to all those who opened their homes to us and allowed miss lydia to wake them up all through the night. We feel so blessed to have such good family and friends and hope to be seeing all of you again very soon. :)