Rice Cereal, YUM!

Well Lydia is 4 months old now. Holy cow that's weird to me, it seems like I've had my little lady for forever :) I can't imagine life without her now. We just started introducing her to rice cereal and these are the pictures from her first feeding. Btw, she LOVES her rice cereal!This is her waiting for another bite, hahaha, you can tell she likes it.
This is her face after the rice cereal ran out. She screams.... She becomes contented if I let her play with the spoon, as seen here.

Isn't she just plain adorable? I think so :)

Oh, and the other day I wondered why she wasn't making any ruckous in her jumpy chair and I came in and found her sound asleep in it. It was so funny! The poor thing, I know her head must have kept conking on her chair as she fell asleep.
She loves her toes and attacking her toys. We can't stop her from rolling over onto her tummy, and laugh as her neck gets tired of supporting her big head. She's developing great so far and really is just the best baby. Love you Liddie!

Vacation to Washington- The Best Part

Wow I just took for ever posting a ton of pictures from our vacation. However, this picture illustrates the best part. . . . Lydia getting to meet my family. My brothers and sisters adored her and I loved having her meet them even though she won't remember it. I love my family so much and it's so hard being so far away from them. This trip and every trip back home is so great and now it holds even more meaning because I have Lydia. Spending time with Brigham and Lydia and my family all together is where I feel truly at home.

Uncle Ryan feeding baby Lydia

Vacation to Washington- 4th of July, Fireworks

A person cannot understand what fireworks in Maple Valley Washington are like until he/she has experienced it. People go crazy, spending thousands of dollars on fireworks. Our family doesn't ever really buy that many because you can stand in the middle of our circle and huge displays of light can be seen in every direction. It sounds exactly like a battlefield and it lasts until about 2 in the morning. You really can't understand until you've been there. Ask Brigham :) We bought some mortars (sp?) this year and of course my brothers had their list of fireworks ready to go. They had been saving their money up all year. Of course if I wasn't so practical these days I would blow all my money on fireworks too because they are so, well, explosively fun!

Brigham and Dad lighting of our contribution.

Kenny caught running to light his next firework off.

My Dad got this big grin on his face everytime he lit one off. It is captured here.

The spectators and sparklers.

A couple of the good fireworks. It's hard to get good pictures of them.

I love having fireworks on my birthday and I had a really good birthday this year!

Vacation to Washington- 4th of July, Deep Lake

For the first half of the 4th we went to Deep Lake which is my favorite lake of all time! I love that in Washington you can pretty much drive 15 minutes in any direction and you're at a different lake. We swam, barbequed, and had a great time. It was a perfect birthday activity!



It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the lake was gorgeous!

Kyle, and Mom keeping track of the kids and watching the swimmers with Kayleen ready to go out swimming!

The people back on shore.

Lydia laid out on the blanket all day while Mommy and Daddy went swimming.

Brigham got fried because he didn't put enough sunscreen on and laid out on the raft more than actually swimming in the water.

Kayleen was a handful to keep track of because she always runs off without telling anyone where she's going which is kind of scary at the lake. However, she's a cute handful!!


This is on the way home from the lake. Lydia got a little sunburned and was completely exhausted, if you can't tell. She was so tired that she fell asleep and slept through all of the fireworks and completely through the night. Poor little girl! We'll have to take her when she can actually enjoy it because we sure did!

Vacation to Washington- Hiking

On another day of our trip we went hiking to a place called twin falls. We had fun hiking and especially had fun playing in the river. Brigham almost drowned after falling in from losing his balance from trying to help me make a large jump from one rock to another. He didn't let go of my hand as he fell in and almost pulled me in with him. Luckily, I didn't get pulled in, he didn't crack his head open on any rocks, and wasn't swept away. Brigham just ended up wet and I ended up with a scraped leg, bruised arm, and sore abs from laughing. Besides that, we only had two people accidently submerge a foot into the water (one of them me when Brigham tried to pull me in), and one hungry baby, otherwise no other unfortunate incidents occured.

We are a hiking family!

Lydia is ready to go!
My mom and sister, Sadie.
The falls.
Sadie, Kenny, Ryan, and Kayleen

After seeing Downtown Seattle, we went to the reptile museum in Monroe, Washington. It was so awesome! They have a lot of unique reptiles and we had a good time looking at them and touching them. I took so many pictures I had to leave a bunch out. There were just so many fun things!

A huge toad that hibernates 10 months out of the year, and a two-headed turtle, crazy!

This is called an alligator turtle or something like that. The other turtle has a weird shaped face that creeped us all out.

We all got to hold snakes. My dad doesn't usually like to but he even let it slither inside of his shirt and everything! That's a little too gross for me!

Brigham of course loved holding the snakes. They also had a yard full of turtles were you could walk around with them and pet them, as Kenny is doing. Just watch out for the turtle poop!

Lydia would rather look at people. The big alligator only started moving around when we put Lydia up close to his cage so he could see her through the glass. I think he was thinking, "Mmm, a snack!" The cobra, my brother Scott is looking at, was moving around a lot.

Kyle was his usual inquisitive self. My parents seemed to enjoy themselves, especially my dad.

Lydia and I infront of a big snake, Kayleen in front of some type of lizards.

Ryan and Brigham in front of the alligator that wanted to eat Lydia and Brigham in front of the cobra. The reptile museum had a variety of deadly snakes, cool lizards, alligators, and bugs. In fact there was a tank full of cockroaches and I learned they can withstand levels of radiation that humans cannot and can live a week with their heads cut off. Pretty gross! I recommend visiting if ever in Monroe :)

Vacation to Washington- Downtown Seattle

Brigham, Lydia, and I had the best summer vacation to Washington. It was awesome for Lydia to meet her aunts and uncles and to see her Grandpa and Grandma Nelson. We had such a blast and were going nonstop doing fun things the whole time. We sure wore Lydia out, but it was nice for Brigham and I to take a break from the daily grind, and of course my family spoiled us like usual. I'll have to show the vacation pictures in parts because there are too many to post all at one time since we did so many fun things! This is the first part, Downtown Seattle

As is customary, Brigham and I always visit Pike Place Market when we go to Washington. We love looking at the fish and fresh food and little trinkets they sell.


We brought Kyle and Scott along this time as well.

A view of the ferries on the Puget Sound

After Pike Place we ate lunch at the Spaghetti Factory on the water front, this is my brother Scott and I waiting to be seated. Notice our similar fake smiles. That's how we roll.