Growth Spurts

Apparently babies have growth spurts around 9 months. I have been noticing that Sawyer has been sleeping a lot more lately. I just thought I was getting better about getting him on a schedule and making him a healthy, happy baby. I am so grateful for these growth spurts. Sometimes they are not very fun but this time we will take a sleepy baby any day. Here are some recent pictures of him.



At nine months, Sawyer loves to crawl and explore. He loves shutting doors but he hasn't quite figured out how to open them once they are closed even though they at not latched. His head gets in the way when he tries to open it. He loves hats, as you can tell. When anybody is wearing a hat he can't help but be super distracted. He loves Cheerios. He eats them all the time. Actually he loves to eat, anything and everything. He also, discovered the toilet paper roll last week. Now he can not leave it alone. He loves to go in there and roll the roll until all the paper is off. He just laughs and laughs and laughs when he does this. He loves his little lamb. He tackles it and loves it all the time. He is so much fun. We love Sawyer so much. He has brought so much joy into our lives.

Spring Break

Whoa, what a week! This past week was Spring Break at USU. We decided to take advantage of the time off and go and visit my sweet grandparents down in little ol' Circleville. We left on Wednesday pretty early to make an eye appointment in Sandy at 10:00 am with my cousin Richard-he is awesome! After the eye appointment we stopped by and said hi to Travis' cousin Brooke and her kiddos. (Travis had his eyes dilated so I had to drive through Utah Valley and the road construction. It was just a little scary, where are the lines? It was a good thing Travis couldn't see that well :))It was a nice little break to get Sawyers wiggles out. Since he started crawling he hates to be confined for very long. My mom and my sister Vanessa met us at my grandparents to spend some time with us. Okay who am I kidding, they really just wanted to see Sawyer.
Thursday was such a nice day. It had been bad weather up in Logan so it was nice to actually see the sun. That doesn't happen too often up in Cache Valley. My mom, Vanessa, and I went running together. I am in better shape than I thought. I actually kind of kept up with my mom. I know that doesn't sound like it should be fast but my mom is a super athlete. After running the boys and Vanessa went fishing. I had to wait for the baby to wake up. They were unsuccessful, unfortunately. I guess that is why it is called fishing and not catching. Since March Madness started last week we watched a lot of basketball. On Thurs. evening we even commemorated the playoffs and went and played ourselves. Boy am I rusty, but Rowdy, Travis and Vanessa were awesome. After basketball I made apple dumplings. They were delicious- you got to have some reward for working out twice a day right?
Friday was a bit more of a lazy day. Sawyer got up really early but fortunately my mom was still there and wanted to hold him while I slept some more. We decided we should go trap shooting. We love shooting clay pigeons as a family. We also had to try out my grandpas awesome new over and under shotgun and the mini clays that Uncle Todd got for Christmas. The gun was awesome, the mini clays were so hard to shoot. They flew so fast. Vanessa and I ran home from the shooting.

Saturday was the big Yardley Cattle Bull Sale in Beaver. I haven't been in years. It was fun to go and see family and share memories. Mariah and her family met us down there. Her boys are so dang cute. I love them to pieces. They are so cute with Sawyer they love him so much. Sam always tries to feed Sawyer food, which gets Sawyer all excited except Sam doesn't really understand that babies can't eat whole cookies by themselves.

It was fun to go down and see family. It is always hard to leave. I almost cry every time- I blame this on the last pregnancy. It woke up my emotional side. Some say this may be a good thing but I kind of liked not crying.

Snow Days

A couple of weeks ago we got hammered with a lot of snow, as you can see. We do live in Logan though. Gotta love it. As all of the husbands were all outside shoveling the driveways on a sunny Saturday morning they noticed this phenomenon in the sky. Of course they had to come and get their blushing brides to see what all the hub bub was about. It was so crazy. There was a full circle of light around the sun with Sun Dogs at all four corners, i.e. west, north and south. In the middle of the circle of light was the rainbow. You could actually see the particles that made up the rainbow. It was amazing.

Cutest Baby Around

Sawyer is growing up so fast. Everybody warns you about how time flies when your baby is actually here and how fast they seem to grow so enjoy it while you can, I just didn't realize who fast time would really fly. When Sawyer was first born I remember it seemed like it took forever for those first couple of weeks to pass. People said just wait in two weeks from now you will have the whole mother thing down. I kept waiting and waiting for those two weeks to be over with, shoot I am still waiting for the time when I actually feel like I have the mother thing down. I don't think you ever quite do though.

Sawyer keeps us laughing all the time. He does the funniest things. Just yesterday I was sitting down without socks on. All of the sudden Sawyer crawled over and started biting my toe. I pulled it away, of course and let out a little yell because it scared me. He started to cry, I don't know though if it was because I scared him or because he really wanted to bite my toe.

He is on the move constantly. He loves playing peek-a-boo. He loves jumping and looking at pictures of other babies. He loves looking in the mirror at his "buddy" and giving him kisses. He loves eating. You could never tell this by looking at him. He is so small for his age but he eats constantly. If someone is eating near him, he is not satisfied until he gets a bite. We just love this little guy to pieces.

A Little Vacation

This past week I was able to go down south to visit my family. Vanessa, my sister, so graciously, volunteered to meet us half way and pick me up in SLC. I was so excited. It was fun to go down and spend some time with my sisters and nephews. While down south we decided to go surprise my grandparents in Circleville on Wednesday to try to avoid the "BIG" storm that was supposed to hit. My mom actually met us there too. It was fun to spend the day there. It would have been better if the baby would not have been such a mommas boy, he didn't want anybody to hold him. He is teething and is having a hard time, but what baby doesn't.

Thursday we all went and watched Spencer wrestle. He did so good. He pinned the kid in the first two minute period. What a stud!!! My sisters and I also made lasagna. I am going to toot our horn a little about the lasagna. It was awesome!!! Thanks for the help mom.

Friday Travis came down. Yay, I thought I was going to get a little break from always having to hold Sawyer, boy was I wrong. For some reason he didn't even want his dad. What a silly boy!!!

Saturday we had a funeral for Travis' Great Aunt Reva. It is sad that funerals have to bring the whole family together but it sure was fun to see everybody. We hung out with the Hollingsheads for Saturday evening.

Sunday we went to church with my family then headed down to Minersville to celebrate Katie's birthday. We played lots of games, we all love games.

Monday we visited the famous Beaver Pawn Shop. That place has everything. It was fun to go explore. The drive home was crazy with traffic. We are so grateful to have such great families. We love them so much and are so grateful for all them do for us.

JJ COLE

Well we have ourselves a little model. Sawyer was asked to do some modeling for the baby company JJ Cole. I love their stuff so I was more than willing to let my baby be one of the many cute faces of their company. Sawyer was actually "discovered" at the Fireside that Elder Ballard came and gave. I guess it really does pay to be spiritual. It was an excellent fireside though. I love it that we get so many general authorities to come and give fireside up in Logan.

Sawyer did okay with smiling for the camera. Our first shoot was on Tues. the 15 at 8:00 AM which is before Sawyer usually gets up. He was good at first but he got a little out of control so I hope they got some good shots before he started crying. Normally he is such a ham for the camera I felt really bad he was crying. Our second shoot was later that day. He did so much better the second time. I wonder if they could photoshop his face from the second shoot for his first one. Our neighbor was also asked to do the photo shoot. It was fun to have somebody I knew there with me.

Always an Adventure

I knew the day would come when Sawyer would be on the move constantly but I was not ready for it. Not even in the slightest. He is so adorable that I don't mind right now and he doesn't move too fast yet but this is his first week of really crawling. Today was actually the first day he even really explored on his own. He was everywhere.

He is so funny. He has discovered the door stopper and loves to make it make noises. He loves cords, which makes for a very nervous mom. He finds them everywhere, even ones that are behind things. He also loves, loves anything that crinkles such as plastic bags. NOT A GOOD TOY!! Today, he was trying to get under his crib to get his bag of diapers. It was hilarious. His head kept hitting the crib and he didn't know how to duck it. He just kept backing up and moving forward. He was getting so frustrated. It was hilarious.