Walking Along

Aspen is walking now!  About 2 weeks ago (or so) she was standing at our coach and Ben walked by her, well she wanted to follow, so she did!  Before that she had only tried taking usually 1 occasionally 2 steps then fallen over.  She went probably 5-7 steps, to the end of the carpet then fell down.  After that she didn't do much.  Then last Sunday (Mother's Day) while me and my sister in law were out searching the neighborhood for our children that had wandered off, my Mother in law had her walking and from then on she hasn't stopped!  It was so crazy that it was so all of a sudden.  She just must have been too chicken to do it before and needed Grandma's help or something.  She does really good, she has even gotten to where the change in flooring doesn't always tip her over.  She is still pretty careful about her walking though, just takes slow well placed steps.  So if she tips over she will usually just start crawling since it's a lot faster.  If she is just walking just to walk though she will just stand up again and keep going.  It's funny all the nieces and nephews when they see it for the first time come running and yelling telling us that she can walk :)  Hunter did that for the first few days now he doesn't really pay attention, it's old news for him.  Haha.
Mother's Day was pretty good.  In our ward they do pie and ice cream for us.  And in Primary our 2nd counselor for her sharing time had the kids decorate a little box (it looked like a Chinese take out box) then picked a plant/flower to put in it.  The plant that Hunter picked I thought was just a plant, but it turned out to be a flower.  I bet some of you are impressed that it stayed alive long enough to find out that it was a flower :)  A few weeks ago for family night we planted some bell peppers and some flowers (they were seeds not the already growing ones) and birds ate, and tipped out the bell peppers, and the flowers had just sprouted when I forgot to water them and they died.  Yep, I can't keep plants alive.  I have always hated when I was given a plant cuz they don't last long with me, in fact I think I usually took them over to either my mom or Ben's mom.  (By the way I always hated when they insisted on me taking a Mother's Day plant when I didn't have any kids, just cuz I was married didn't mean I was a Mom yet.)  Since this plant was from Hunter and he was so excited that he picked it, I was determined to at least remember to water it everyday so hopefully it would last more than a day.  And today I actually remembered to open my blinds (for the first time) so that it could have more than just a sliver if light.  It was pretty cool watching what I thought was just a plant grow a bud, then slowly have a flower starting to emerge, and in the time from when we ate breakfast to when we went to eat lunch it had all of a sudden popped open to be a pretty pink flower.  Needless to say me and Hunter were pretty excited, me because I had managed to keep the thing alive, and Hunter because his plant now had a pink flower!  (I must admit I was excited about the flower part too, just a little more in awe that it was alive.)  And yes it is still alive :)
Also for Mother's Day Ben's youngest brother Tyler called from his mission.  His last time before he comes home.  It's so crazy!  It does not seemed like almost 2 years have gone by!  When he left on his mission I was pregnant with Aspen.  He will be coming home to a niece and nephew that he hasn't ever met (the nephew will be 2 months away from turning 2.) and a new sister in law.  I'm pretty excited for him to come home, we always had tons of fun.  And he would play Ticket to Ride with me quite often, I think Ben got burnt out on it cuz he doesn't hardly ever play it now.  In fact I think the last time he played it was with Tyler.  I need him back to help with my Ticket to Ride addiction :)
Aspen got her one year old shots finally.  Since I had to cancel her appointment right after her birthday (since she was sick) I had totally forgotten about them til now.  I was lucky and Ben ended up going with me so he got to hold her.  I really don't like holding them when they get their shots, and not fully for the reason you would think.  Yes I hate that it hurts them and that they are sad, but really I have this crazy fear of needles and always imagine them stabbing too hard and stabbing me too (baby legs just aren't that big) or that they kick their leg right as the nurse goes to give them the shot and they poke me instead.  My poor kids.  They can probably sense my fear.  Haha, they must not cuz they have both usually done pretty good.  Aspen did not like it this time, but pretty fast after we left she calmed down and didn't seem to be bugged by her legs much after.  Although it sure made her mad when I took her bandaids off!
I have a few more updates to post, but it's late and they actually have pictures to go with them so they will have to wait for next time.  Blog to ya soon!

Special B-Day

This year I turned 26 on the 26th!  My special birthday :)  Funny thing is it was also Aspen's special birthday this year and Hunter's last birthday was his special one.  Crazy that they were all right there by each other!  Well about a month ago I got trip hungry and started planning on going to Hawaii or a cruise or something, anything!  Well then I finally calmed down and picked something in our price range :)  We decided to do the trip for my birthday, just me and Ben.  It was so nice to get away!  We got season passes to Six Flags in California, they had a deal that you bought a season pass for the same price as a day pass, and if you bought 4 season passes you got to get into Hurricane Harbor (the water park next door to Six Flags) for free.  We have talked for years about going back to both of those, we went shortly after we got married with another couple.  They ended up getting Season Passes too so when we go back with them this summer we will go to both parks!  I also found an awesome price on a hotel, and ended up finding flight tickets that made it cheaper for us to fly!

Ben actually ended up getting sick after the second ride.  We had brought Dramamine with us since he had gotten sick the last time too.  After waiting around for it to work we tried a third ride and it did not do so well for him.  He was white as a ghost and sweating like crazy.  I felt so bad for him!  After the 3rd ride Ben laid on my lap for a while but still just couldn't shake the nauseous feeling.  It was kind of a bummer since most of the rides waits were only about 5 min.  Oh well.  We are going back soon anyways, and will be trying a different kind of medicine next time.  His sickness didn't go away until like 9:30 that night, we just ended up going back to our hotel and taking naps.  Because of the sickness and our getting into town so late the night before we didn't even end up eating anywhere nice.  We had fast food and soup from the grocery store, haha.

The next day we got up and went down to the pool, which was closed so we sat in the jacuzzi for a little bit then packed up and headed to a movie before our flight.  We saw The Lucky One.  I loved it!  And I'm way surprised that Ben came to it with me.  He actually didn't mind it, and if you know Ben for him to say that about a chick flick is HUGE!!  After the movie we dropped off our rental car and shortly after flew home.  It was way nice to get away for a couple days.  We haven't gone on a trip just the 2 of us in a long time.  Hopefully we can do it more often.  And I am so thankful for my mom and sister who took such good care of our kids while we were away.  I was pretty nervous about Aspen since she had only been done nursing for like a week and a half, maybe 2 weeks, but still not very long.  They said they both did really good though so I'm so glad!

With a season pass at Six Flags they let you buy a zip drive that they will download all your pictures from the rides for free, and the best part is you can use it every time you go and not have to buy another.  We always like to buy at least one picture just for the memories so this was awesome to get to get all of them for a way better deal!  So here are our pics from the 3 rides:

This one cracks me up, I look so funny.  And Ben looks like he's advertising the X2 name :)

This was the ride that affected Ben the most, I think you can tell by his face.

I'm ready to go back!  I love rides!

Easter Camping Trip

Just so you know I hate camping pictures, I think I look dead without make up on but there is no way I'm going to take the time to put it on when I'm camping :)  Our trip was way fun, it was pretty cold though.  I had asked Ben what the weather would be like and he thought it would only be cold at nights, luckily I packed enough long sleeves and pants for every day cuz it was freezing! 

Hanging out in the tent trailer to stay out of the cold.  Since Aspen still doesn't walk I brought only clothes that I didn't really care about since I knew she would be scooting around and probably ruining her pants and shirts, so you might notice that her clothes don't really match, good thing we were camping!

Hunter and Grandma :)



Ben borrowed his coworkers sons bow and taught Hunter how to shoot!  He loved it!  If you look closely at the picture above you can see the arrow in the air, it's in between the target and the tree you can see its green fletching.

Hehe.  I loved this one!  He didn't pull back hard enough so it didn't go anywhere but you can tell from his hand he had just realized it :)

Then Ben taught Brylee too.



Dyeing Easter eggs with the cousins.

The crew ready for our first Easter Egg Hunt.  We ended up having 2, Brylee only stayed for 1 day and we wanted her to be able to have an egg hunt with us.  You can kind of see Hunter behind Logan, his hat is red so it blends with Grandma's sweatshirt.

 

Aspen was taking a nap while they did the first egg hunt.  After the hunt we were sitting around and thought we heard her awake, I went to check on her and she was outside of the tent playing in the dirt, the bottom of the tent doesn't zip so she had squeezed through the little gap at the bottom to get out, what a goof.

Beyblade battles.  Jaron and Caitlin are now officially engaged, he proposed on the 15th, so the week after Easter.



The second Easter egg hunt we set up a little area for Aspen, this one Lucas was asleep for, we just couldn't get them coordinated :)

At first she just thought we were crazy then when I showed her there was candy in them she loved it!

 

Hunter running for an egg.

I just thought this picture was so cute, it's way blurry, but I still thought it was way cute.

I think Ben helped him find this one, perfect picture opportunity.

What did you get?

I love Hunter's face in this, he's totally biting his lip as he was making 4 wheeler noises!  Hunter and Logan wandered off at one point, we were all searching for them.  I found their foot prints headed down the road and as I was following their tracks Caitlin and Jaron pulled up on the 4 wheeler with Hunter and Logan.  They had already been gone when we lost Hunter and Logan so they didn't know anyone was looking for them, but I guess the boys knew they were going to be in trouble cuz Jaron said they were trying to hide behind a bush when they saw the 4 wheeler coming.  I was totally panicked!

On Sunday we went on a little hike.

Once we got to the top of the mountain we all took turns doing a short devotional to remind us all about the true meaning of Easter.  It was an awesome weekend!