Kissing Cousins

Claire and Logan are becoming more and more aware of each other. Logan loves to hold her and love on her. Claire loves Logan and will laugh at him hysterically even when he is doing nothing. One day Claire and I visited Logan in his room and he was just so full of love for her! It was so sweet!
Here is Claire and Logan exchanging kisses...I think I will make sure to save this for black mail later on...hehe

Logan showing Claire his room.

Logan, unable to contain his love for her, pulls her into a big bear hug!

They just love each other!


The close up of the bear hug...Claire doesn't know how she feels about this...I love the look on Logan's face!


He looses all of his strength because of his love for her and has to sit on the floor!!


Now all body control is gone!!!

He is holding on tight. How cute!!

I LOVE this picture!!

It is so fun to see Claire and Logan grow up together. They are such wonderful, sweet precious babies...and I swear I am not biased at all!!!

Teaching Them Young....

Claire was quite interested in my box of oreos...hehe, wonder where she got that from? hmmm

Yes, there is a hint of pride on my face. She knows where the good stuff is!!

She is so funny! She is getting so good at holding things and bringing them to her mouth! No, she is not eating solids, yet, but she is definitely practicing!

I just enjoy my baby too much!

Happy Birthday Ry-love!

Ryan turned 28! We had a wonderful laid back birthday. We have been so crazy busy running around with buying a house and getting ready for school to start that we loved taking a day just to relax and enjoy our little family.

Here is they happy, handsome birthday boy!
For Ryan's birthday I got him tickets to a Boise State University football game up in Toledo. In a few weeks we are going to go watch it. I figure if you can't bring the boy to Boise, bring Boise to the boy, right?
My parents got him this amazing, electric pen that writes, records lectures and then does all this other crazy stuff. Ryan spent all night playing with it. He thinks it will really help him with school.
His parents sent him a wonderful birthday card with some much appreciated cash.
Thanks everybody!


This is our happy little family and the delicious ice cream cake. Thanks daddy-o for the cake!

Claire, thought the cake looked incredibly delicious...Sorry Claire, you're not going to eat solids for about another 6 months.


Claire and Daddy had the same thought...

We are so happy Ryan was born 28 days ago (yesterday). He is just incredible and the biggest blessing to us! We love you Ryan!

Shopping

Claire is such a blast! She can sit up all the way now and so she now loves shopping! I just couldn't get over how cute she was in this picture!

5 months (a little late!)

So the dangerous thing about digital cameras is that once you start, sometimes you just can't stop! These are Claire's 5 month pictures, and I kind of went a little over board, but when you can...why wouldn't you??
Claire is just growing and developing by leaps and bonds!!
At 5 months she:

• weighs over 20 lbs
• can sit up all by herself
• loves to sing even more than ever
• will growl in either pure joy or to get attention
• has become a definite mama's girl (and believe me, mama LOVES it!)
• her fine motor skills are quite advanced
  
• loves to be the center of attention
  
• is the biggest flirt ever!

She loves to relax!


She loves to smile :-)


She loves to strike a pose...


This is the face she makes right before she growls.


This is her, "I am trying to figure this life out" look.


She seriously has the most preciously chubby cheeks ever!!


This is her growl face!! GGGRRRRrrrRRRrrr!!


This is another pose she is striking


This is just her being a baby doll!


She is such a diva ;-)


Don't you want to just kiss that face??!?!?!?


Silly girl!


Oh...and she might be a little mischievous!


I just love her more than life itself...literally! Ryan and I just can't get enough of her! When we have free time all we want to do is play with and love on her. We get kind of frustrated when she sleeps all the time. I had know clue how in love with a baby you could be until Claire came along. The first couple months were more difficult than I expected but it's just because Claire is more special than I could have imagined! We love you Lilia Claire!!

Cousin Time

Claire and Logan were hanging out one day on the kitchen table. I just had to get some pictures. It would have been a sin not to document their beauty!!!

Claire and Logan are really starting to get interested in each other... I love it!

I just had to get a close up of Claire's headband... I made it!

Green!

I was raised in the beautiful green midwest, then at the age of 16 we moved to the desert of Arizona. I lived there for 3 years until I moved to Idaho for school. After I married a native Idahoan I just assumed I would never live in a green beautiful paradise again.... Well, I am grateful that fate intervened and here we are enjoying the beauty of green all around us! The other day Ryan, Claire, Sophie and I all went on a hike. It was our first hike with Claire and it went great!
This picture is really blurry but it depicts the depth of green all around us! Beautiful! (yes that is Claire sleeping in the stroller...hehe)

Here is a close up of her sleeping preciousness! Oh and her precious chubbiness! Yup! 100% breast fed chub!

Oh yes, we are that hard core! Look at Ry four wheeling it with Claire snoozing in the stroller!

Ok, look at these two kissable faces!! Oh the love I feel when I look at this picture is purely precious!

It was almost exactly a year ago (August 12, 2010) that we moved to Ohio. So much has changed and gone on. I love how Heavenly Father has a specific plan for us. It is wonderful to hand the reigns over to Him and be along for the ride. It is amazing where you end up! I am so grateful for His love and guidance. Through Him and His plan we can be more happy and find more joy and fulfillment through anyone or anything else!

Vlade Loveland

Meet Mr. Vlade Loveland (pronounced Vah-lah-dee). My brother came home with a stray cat. My dad threatened to take him to the pound so I was able to convince my dear husband that once we move into our new house, it wouldn't be a home with out a sweet little kitty....I am a sucker for homeless animals!

Vlade is a Russian blue. He is around 6 weeks old. He was in really good health when we got him and then the vet assured us he is in tip top shape. He is very calm and quiet. I just love the little guy!


Seriously? How could I have said no? Could you have?

Chilling with my buddie

So Claire and I don't look too much alike, but we are pretty much best buddies! (Oh and don't mind my brown toot...long story but I am in the process of getting a veneer for it...)

So, I have never been one for taking pictures of myself in the mirror, but come on! Claire was just too cute in the mirror so I had to take a picture of us together. They didn't turn out that well, but if you look close enough you can see her preciously cute face!

This is a bad picture but her face was so precious!

Ry-guy- You Rock My World

I just needed to document this story about Ryan, to depict what kind of a husband he is.

Lately, Claire is on ANOTHER growth spurt! When she does that she eats like CRAZY! When she eats like crazy, my milk production increases, when my milk production increases I can literally feel the increased hormones and chemicals in my body. I tend to get more stressed, depressed and life over all is just a little tougher. It doesn't help that during her growth spurts she has to wake up every hour or so to eat because she gets THAT hungry. Hey, I am not frustrated with her though, how else does she weigh 20 pounds before she is even 5 months???

Well, now that you have the background information you can see that the last couple days I was not in the best mood, infact I was super upset. Luckily, I have come to understand that it is just a hormone imbalance from the huge milk production; that knowledge helps where I direct my bad mood (I don't get upset with Ryan any more:) but it doesn't help the fact that I am in a bad mood.

Yesterday, I was at the pinnacle of bad moods and was spiraling down into a that muddy pit of self pity and depression. Ryan suggested that we go on a run because he knows that is a quick fix to the hormonal imbalance. We live out in the country surrouned by tons of corn fields and farm houses. It is safe, but it is just too secluded for me to run by myself. The thing is, is that Ryan has been sick, so sick that he called in sick that night to work. I told him that it would be crazy for him to be running when he was sick. He said that he would ride his bicycle beside me instead. Well, it was 93 degrees with 60-70 % humidity, I told him that would be ridiculous to bike because it was way to hot to be outside. During this whole interlude, I wasn't very convincing; tears wear streaming down my face because I just had all this pent up emotions from those dang hormones! He said, "No, you are going on a run, you need it. I will drive my truck beside you the whole way." Really? Who does that? Ryan is super frugal and never wastes a dime, let alone gas like that. It was kind of a big deal for him to offer that. After some intense coaxing and prodding he got me outside and after 4 miles, I was able to run off my hormones. He drove right beside me the whole way, cranking out the country tunes and having a wonderful talk about our life and our future. Needless to say I was a much different person when we came back from that run.

I don't know what I did to deserve a man like him. He is my best friend, my rock, my partner, my sweet heart and just my EVERYTHING. He evens me out so perfectly and I am just so grateful for his continual sacrifice and love that he gives for Claire, me and our future family. I love his rock steady testimony in the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love how seriously he takes holding the priesthood and his temple covenants. I love him completely. It is amazing how he anchors me down during the turmoil that is called life and helps me soar during blissful ecstatic moments that is also called life. I just hope that our children and our children's children and our children's children's children (and so on and so forth) understand what a wonderful man he is. I love you so much, Ry-guy. You really do rock my world!