August

We kicked off August with my 35th birthday! As I get older, my birthdays aren't as exciting as they used to be. Every year seems to bring me more aches and pains (bad backs run in my family and I didn't get to escape the gene unfortunately). I had a nice day watching Miles enjoy his last day of swimming lessons, hanging out with my three favorite guys, eating my favorite food, and ending the day with my favorite chocolate cake! A girl couldn't ask for more!

On the last day of class they get to go down this really big slide. I was two seconds too late in getting a good picture!

After they surfaced - I thought he'd have a blast, but he was a bit scared apparently

Not happy that swim lessons are over

Getting his certificate from his teacher

Happy birthday to me!

On August 7th, Oliver finally decided to sit unassisted! I think he just finally decided that he wanted to do it. Prior to that point he was completely satisfied with Mom or Dad helping him sit.

Dave started his new teaching gig at Provo High in August. His orientation was on 8/11 and his first official day was on 8/14. If he hadn't worked for this school district before, they would've had him work on the 12th and 13th as well. Instead, I got a couple of more days in the office trying to figure out what on earth I was going to do from that point forward with my job since we hadn't been successful in finding childcare yet. Dave is enjoying his job but is trying to adjust to having very big classes (like 40 kids in one class) and teaching Earth Science all day with no Biology (his favorite).

Finding childcare was a lot harder than I ever imagined! I even enlisted the help of coworkers whose job it is to find resources for families. We toured a few licensed home daycare facilities even, but they either didn't feel quite right or were just too far away considering we both work fairly close to home. We were also struggling with the cost of childcare considering I work for a nonprofit and don't get paid very much. I couldn't wrap my brain around the idea of working just to give it all to a childcare provider. I really enjoy my job though and hated the thought that I might have to quit so I desperately called my mom and asked if she would come back out to Utah and watch the boys for a couple of weeks while we continued to search for childcare. She came out on 8/16 and stayed until 8/29. She was a HUGE help and I'm so thankful she was willing and able to come to Utah again!

We enrolled Miles in soccer again to see if he would like it this time around. He took more of a soccer class while in Kansas and this was strictly just games so I wanted to try it out. On 8/12, his coach organized a little get-together at the soccer field so she could hand out their uniforms and sort of get an idea of what their skills were, etc. It was fun to learn that we knew his coach from our neighborhood and from church and that the assistant coach used to be in our neighborhood and church but had moved right before we moved back. They both have boys that are close to Miles' age that were on the team as well. It was fun to see familiar faces!

#27 having fun running around

Soccer stud!

One of Miles' #1 fans!

Among the many reasons to move back to Utah includes the fact that there is a transracial playgroup that meets weekly. When we lived here before we went as often as we could. I think it is a wonderful opportunity for Miles to be able to play with other children that look like him and see other families that look like his! This time around we've only made it to one event so far, but hopefully as we settle into a routine this year we'll be able to go more often. On 8/14, we went to Bridal Veil Falls. Miles had a blast running around with the other two children that were there. They climbed rocks, got their feet wet, and fed the fish.

Climbing

Smiling

Watching the fish

Hangin' out

Miles' first soccer game ever was on 8/21. The first game didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. Miles kept saying he was hungry and was acting very lethargic. I was getting pretty frustrated also because I hadn't heard that the first 20 minutes were set aside for warm-ups and also some soccer instruction (since they aren't allowed to "practice") and then the actual game would start leaving only about 30 minutes for the game. We ended up leaving to get Miles some dinner and then returned. He wasn't too interested in playing though so I was worried about how the season would go. The concepts of there being only one ball, staying within the white lines, and scoring goals and in the right goal was very foreign to him and it took a few games for him to figure it all out.

First game!

Miles continued to have soccer games pretty much every Thursday evening and Saturday morning through the end of September with only one bye week. The score was never kept, but Dave thinks that he was on one of the better teams in our "league." He had a couple of kids on his team that really figured out the game and became superstars. I think overall he enjoyed the experience and had fun running around and making new friends. We'll see if he wants to do it again next year.

I thought this was a cute video from his 3rd game - ignore the lady's butt!

 

While Grandma was here we had to have a little fun! One evening while Dave was at work at Target we decided to go to one of our favorite parks in the mountains. There is a little stream that runs through the park. Miles used to love playing in that stream and I was confident he'd love it now as well. He wasn't very happy when it was time to leave, but we'll definitely go back!

Two of his favorite things - sticks & water

Picture with Grandma

He could do this for hours!

Oliver got to eat some leaves!

We had to leave one of Miles' soccer games a bit early to attend a back to school night at his new preschool on 8/28. My mom was still in town so she put Oliver to bed for me and I took Miles to this event (Dad was at work at Target unfortunately). Miles had a blast playing with the other kids and getting his face painted. It was fun meeting his teacher and seeing his new classroom. This preschool was recommended to us by Miles' assistant soccer coach. So, he has a friend from soccer at his new school and also a friend from church (a cute little girl that lives in our neighborhood). I was hopeful that he'd feel more comfortable with preschool already knowing a couple of "friends."

He wanted a dragon

Such talent

A happy little boy with a dragon on his face!

As I mentioned earlier, my mom left Utah on 8/29. While she was here I approached my boss about all of our struggles with finding affordable and appropriate childcare. I sort of gave her an ultimatum. I told her that I either needed to be able to work from home or I'd have to quit. I did tell her that I had found a lady in our neighborhood that could watch the boys on Wednesdays and that I'd be willing to put in some hours in the office on those days, but that the rest of the work week would have to be done from home. She apparently likes me enough to keep me around. She came up with a plan of hiring the runner-up to me to cover my in-office hours for 15 hours a week and then allowing me to work from home for 10 hours a week. So, my hours got cut drastically (from 29 to 10), but I get to work mainly from home with a couple of hours in the office on Wednesdays. I get to keep my foot in the door and hopefully down the road when the boys are a bit older I'll be able to move back in to a more office based part-time position. We'll see. Right now we are doing a trial run to see if splitting this position works and makes sense and we'll reevaluate in December. I'm trying to make it so they feel like they can't live without me in the process!

And that is August! September has been crazy so that will be a FUN post!

The rest of July

After having a rough couple of years financially, Dave decided that once we got moved to Provo that he would try and find a part-time job. He was first hired by Wal-Mart, but Target wasn't too far behind in their job offer so he decided to go back to Target. He enjoyed working there before and was excited to return. His first day was July 22nd. I think he enjoyed having something to do while he waited for the school year to start back up. The boys got a lot of time with Dad during the day while Mom worked and a lot of time with Mom in the evening while Dad worked. Not ideal, but hopefully we'll be able to get our finances back in order again quickly.

Fun with Dad:

Practicing his name

Splash pad fun

Bike rides to the river to throw rocks

Fun with Mom:

Time at the park

Playing with the ducks

The 24th of July is a big deal in Utah. The day is known as Pioneer Day and every year a big celebration occurs to celebrate the anniversary of when the first group of LDS pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley back in 1847. July 24th also happens to be my mom's birthday so I always tease her that she should move to Utah so her birthday will be celebrated BIG time! In honor of Pioneer Day, we bought a new rug for our living room. Ha ha! We had been looking for something to match the crazy pattern on our chair. It took us a while to find something we liked, but we finally found it. It was a floor model and had a couple of dirty spots, but we got a good deal on it and it cleaned right up.

We convinced Miles to take a nap so that he could stay up late and shoot off the fireworks we had purchased for the 4th of July but didn't shoot off because he hadn't napped. We put Oliver to bed and took the monitor outside with us while we did our own little firework show. I was amazed Oliver slept through all of the noise. There were several fireworks going off all around us for several hours.

Sparkler fun

A little nervous about the sparkler

 

Dave turned 36 on July 26th! He had to work at Target on his birthday so we had a small party for him that day that included cake, but he got to eat at his favorite restaurant, Tucanos, later in the week on 7/31 to officially celebrate! As adults our birthdays are always low-key, but we do manage to eat at our favorite restaurant and eat cake! Any birthday is complete with at least those two elements, right?

The birthday boy!

Tucanos

And that completes our month of July!

July

Now that August is almost over I think I'll post about July! Ha ha! I'm a bit behind again, but life is just the way it is and I'll eventually get caught up again someday.

Our renter had mentioned that her plan was to be out of the townhouse by the end of June so she could spend her month off at home. She is a professor and is from Texas. That gave us the opportunity to get some cleaning done before we moved all of our stuff in. So, for the 4th of July we decided to take a trip to Provo. We scheduled the carpet to be cleaned while there and did some touch-up painting, cleaning, etc. While in town we did do a few fun things as well.

One day while Dave was painting and Oliver was napping, Miles and I decided to go exploring. I took him to a park that is close to our townhouse. We spent a lot of time there when he was little. He, of course, doesn't remember any of that, but he had a blast anyway.

He was too afraid of these ducks sneaking up behind him to pose for a picture for mom!

Some nice people shared their bread with Miles so he could feed the ducks

He found friends who would chase the ducks with him

And other friends who would play in the stream with him

We didn't do a whole lot on the 4th of July. Our new/old church always has a pancake feed early in the morning on the 4th. We decided it would be a good opportunity to see a lot of our old friends and to tell them in person of our decision to move back. Most of them already knew we were moving back though. It was good to see several of our old friends again and have some yummy breakfast as well! Afterwards we had our neighbors take our annual 4th of July family picture in our Old Navy t-shirts!

Then, while Oliver was napping and Dave was working on the house, Miles and I took off for more adventures. This time we ended up at a new splash pad in Provo. Miles LOVES splash pads and I'm excited that we now have one super close to our house! The parade in Provo was still going on, but once it was over the splash pad filled with people quickly. That is about when we decided to leave!

We told Miles that if he took a nap we could do some small fireworks at home after it got dark, but he didn't take a nap so we didn't get to do any fireworks. The rest of our 4th of July was pretty uneventful. The next day we headed back to Fruita to meet my mom there. She agreed to come out for a couple of weeks to help us out.

On July 9th we picked up the moving truck. Jake, Dave's brother, came from Bountiful, Utah to help as well. We really couldn't have done it without my mom and Jake's help! We are very blessed to have such wonderful family! We got the truck mostly loaded on the 9th and left for Utah on the 10th. We got a smaller truck thinking we had gotten rid of enough stuff, but we ended up filling every inch of the truck and every inch of everyone's vehicles. We even left a few things behind that we knew we could pick up when we came back to clean.

Dave's traveling companion in the moving truck

We made it to Provo!

We had one day at the townhouse to unload the truck before heading off to Vegas on the 12th. It was a whirlwind of a week for sure!

We had originally planned to move to Utah later in the month of July, but because of my new job at the United Way we had to move everything up. They wanted me to start on July 14th. We were crazy to think that we could accomplish a move to another state and a trip to another state and start a new job all in a matter of six days! Needless to say we were all exhausted, but we surprisingly survived it all.

Our trip to Las Vegas was to see the New Kids on the Block perform at Planet Hollywood on the strip. My mom agreed to go with us and watch the boys in the hotel room while Dave and I attended the concert. It was nice that they could all go with us but not have to attend the concert. Dave and I got to spend a nice evening together. While there we also got to do some swimming in the hotel pool and then stopped by the Hoover Dam on our way back to Provo. I've always wanted to see the Hoover Dam and have been close many times before. We almost didn't go this trip either, but I just couldn't let us pass up the opportunity again.

The strip in the distance - we made it!

The backseat drivers!

The strip

Yea!

Our pre-show selfie!

My phone camera takes horrible inside pictures, but that's them on stage

Swimming!

Dave, he's a silly one!

The Hoover Dam - It was a HOT one!

The view from above

Panorama view

State line (Miles was not a fan of the heat!)

The water level looks so low

We made it back to Provo the night before my big day; my first day at United Way. I was really nervous about starting a new job especially since we hadn't secured childcare for the boys, but with Dave still on summer break we still had time. My mom was also around for another week to help watch the boys. My new job is only part-time so at least I'm not away from the boys too much, but it proved to be hard to find part-time daycare that didn't take my entire salary. I'll talk more about my job in my August post.

Thankfully my new boss is a mom herself and is very understanding of family needs and the need to have a flexible schedule. She also was only working a few hours a week during the summer so she allowed me time off to do things we needed to do like go back to Fruita to clean the duplex before our lease ended at the end of July, etc.

We spent the weekend of July 18th thru the 20th in Fruita tying up loose ends and cleaning up the duplex. My mom also followed us to Fruita so she could leave for home from there making it a two day more manageable trip. Miles was glad to be back in Fruita. Not too long before we moved to Utah Miles made some friends in the Fruita neighborhood. He was really missing them and was glad he could see them again. He still says he misses Fruita and wants to go back and I know it is because of his friends. I had to get a picture of them together so he could remember them.

So cute!

Miles started swimming lessons in Provo on July 21st. I knew after the big move that he'd want/need something to do so I thought swimming lessons would be perfect. His lessons lasted two weeks. Because of work I only got to see the first and last day of class and I was really impressed with how much he had learned over the two weeks! He's turning in to a good little swimmer.

First day

So excited to be in the water

Swimming under water!

This post is getting super long so I'm going to do a part 2. Stayed tuned...

Eight months

On July 25th, Oliver turned 8 months old. Below is a list of what he is up to these days.

•  Oliver now has a grand total of SEVEN teeth! They were just popping up right and left this past month! He handled it pretty well. We did have to give him Tylenol a couple of times, but overall it didn't affect him too much. We do swear by those teething tablets and give those to him often as well.
• He has been doing well with baby food and seems to like green beans the most. He is still taking soy formula, but we've thought about trying a milk-based formula again. We'll see if we ever get brave enough. His spitting up has drastically decreased so we'd hate for that to start up again if he truly is lactose intolerant.
• He is officially sleeping through the night. We can pretty much count on him sleeping from about 7 p.m. until about 6:30 or 7 a.m. Some mornings he just wants a bottle and then will go back to sleep for another hour or so, other mornings he is ready to start his day. He still takes two or three naps a day depending on their length. He isn't really on a set schedule yet, but is usually awake for about 2-3 hours in between naps.
• He's doing much better at sitting on his own. He still isn't very interested, but he will sit unassisted for longer periods of time now. He usually ends up lowering himself down on his side and then rolling over on to his tummy.
• He is getting closer to crawling. When on his hands and knees he will try to move his knees forward, but his hands haven't figured out what to do yet. Sometimes it causes him to face-plant on the floor, which doesn't make him very happy. He loves to just rock back and forth on his hands and knees.
• He loves to reach and grab for things. It definitely is hard to eat or drink anything while holding him. Even reading a book with him in your lap is hard because he just wants to grab it. Of course, everything he reaches goes directly to his mouth.
• He loves to pat things. Often through the baby monitor we can hear him patting his bed. While reading books to him he loves to pat the books. Dave even mentioned one day while carrying Oliver, he was patting his back. It's cute! 
• He still loves to jump! He is a wiggle worm and is hard to hold because he just wants to move! He can pretty much get anywhere he wants just by rolling around on the floor. He finally figured out a more efficient way to roll from his tummy to his back. Miles has been good about picking up his smaller toys that might be a choking hazard for Oliver.
• He is a big boy! He is wearing a size 5 diaper and recently moved up to size 18 month clothes!
• There is no doctor appointment this month so we'll get his stats next month (although it will be late because our new insurance starts Sept. 1st and we want to wait for that).
• Oliver loves his big brother and often laughs at his silliness. He seems to enjoy sharing a room with Miles as well. Oliver is also a huge daddy's boy! He's started saying "dadadadadada" a lot more and Dave is hopeful he knows what it means but he doesn't!

He's our happy, easy-going, sweet baby boy! We all love him SO much!

Click here to see Miles at 8 months!