Cooper's 1!

One year ago I was in the hospital holding my brand new baby boy in my arms, just wondering how I could be so lucky to have two beautiful children.  It is hard for me to believe that you are now one year old Cooper.  You have brought so much joy into our family.  It has been so fun to watch you learn and grow this past year.  You are such a sweet little boy.  You love to give me, and everyone, kisses- both on the mouth and by blowing them.  I love those kisses.  I love that you will cuddle up with me when you are sleepy, or just wanting your mom.  I have loved watching you grow into an energetic little toddler.  At one year you absolutely love to climb.  You enjoy pushing things, like chairs, around.  You are pretty much walking, and have taken about 15 steps total, but prefer crawling because it gets you where you want faster.  You love to follow your sister around and play with her.  Sydney misses sharing her room with you since we moved last week, and you miss her too.  When she hears you wake up from your naps she can't wait to run into your room to get you!  You smile when your dad talks to you on the phone, and get excited when he comes home from work.  Words you say: mama, dada, you are working on saying ball, and you actually say "tickle" while you try to tickle us.  You love to eat, and your favorite foods are cut up bananas and avocados.  One of my favorite things to do with you is read.  You love to point at and turn the pages.  When we sit down in the rocking chair to read, you kick you legs and laugh because you are so excited to read with me.  I love your blue, blue eyes and your cute cubby cheeks.  Your smile lights up my day and makes me so happy.  I love being your mom more than anything.  This has been a great year!

Love,

Mommy

Just In Time, Again

We are here!  Yesterday we turned in the keys to our apartment and said goodbye to our home.  It was quite a hectic move for us this time, to say the least.  I think I am getting tired of moving... Our moving stats are as follows:


1.  Moved into Sterling Village Apartments when we got married- Nov. 2005
2.  Moved to Provo Wyview Married Student Housing- Nov. 2006
3.  Moved to The Springs of Country Woods Apartments- May 2007
4.  Moved to Courtney and Tyler's basement- April 2009
5.  Moved to Monarch Meadows Apartments- June 2009
6.  Moved into our current HOUSE!  September 2010


Just so you know... that is 6 different places we have lived and our 5 year anniversary is coming up this November!


Do you remember how we moved out of our last apartments just in time to miss the fatal shooting there?  Just in Time! May 5, 2009  Well, we did it again!  We moved almost all of our belongings to our new house on Saturday, September 18th.  Then on Sunday the 19th we saw smoke creeping up behind the mountain near our apartment...

Picture courtesy of KSL (Scott G Winterton, Deseret News)

I said to Matt, "I bet it's getting pretty smokey at our apartment..."

Later that evening I went over to the apartment to do some laundry (No washer and dryer at the new house at the time).  I was driving there just as the sun was setting, but the closer I got to the fire the darker the skies got.  All of a sudden it was pitch black and you would have thought it were 2:00 in the morning because the skies were so dark, even though down the street the skies were still blue.  That's when I spotted the flames coming up over the back side of the mountain.  Our apartment was very smokey.  I was there for  about an hour, and when I was leaving I took this picture.

It was so smokey and dark that it was really hard to get a decent picture with my crappy little camera, but this shows the view from our apartment.

Matt and Sydney were at my family's house, so I left the apartment to go pick them up.  When I got to Matt he said that they were evacuating near our apartments and that evacuation was voluntary at our place.  We decided that we wanted to go and get our pictures and computer out of our apartment, because we had no way of knowing if the mandatory evacuation would come to our apartment since we were not sleeping there.  ***Things left at our apartment:  piano, tv, computer, wedding dress, Sydney's blessing dress, and all pictures.  Basically anything of real monetary and sentimental value.***  

So we headed back to our apartment, but when we got to 13400 South, the road was closed to all westbound traffic.  For those of you who are not familiar with Herriman, 13400 South is basically the ONLY road going in and out of Herriman.  The traffic coming out of the town was insane.  We sat in a huge line of traffic, wondering what to do, looking at this but closer:

Photo courtesy of KSL

We decided to look up google maps on our phone and see if there were any smaller roads that led to our apartment.  Matt found a route that he thought could get us there safely.  So we twisted around a bunch of little roads and finally made it there.  Matt and I ran in and brought out our box of pictures and our computer.  Then we headed back into the traffic to our new house, just grateful that we didn't have to sleep in a smoke infested apartment all night.

We had no tv and no internet at the house, so basically we had no idea what was going on with the fire.  Even though we knew that it would be pretty rare for the fire to reach our apartment, it was affecting our community, our stake, and our ward.  It definitely hit "too close to home."  The next day, I had a sore throat and allergies from breathing smoke while at the apartment and driving the night before.  I still smelled like smoke, and our car smelled like smoke for probably 2 days.  It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen in my life.  KSL has all the news stories covering the fire here.  

Status report as of 4 p.m. Wednesday when all residents were let back into their homes:

• 4,351 acres burned
• 3 homes destroyed
• 50 percent contained

Photo courtesy of KSL (Kelly Dumont)

"Sydneyrella"

Sydney loves Cinderella- so the nickname "Sydneyrella" has become one of our favorites for her.  A few weeks ago we went to dinner in Provo at the Brick Oven.  They have a balloon man there and he makes very elaborate balloons.  Matt's brother Jeff bought a Cinderella one for Sydney.  She loved it!

Watching Cinderella in her Cinderella dress-ups (complete with glass slippers, earrings, and a fairy wand), with the balloon Cinderella and her little Cinderella sitting on her lap...

Mason's Birthday Party

Sydney has been praying, as well as the rest of us, that "Baby Mason will get bigger to go home" for a few weeks now.  Yesterday was the big day!  Mason was released from the hospital.  Wednesday is Matt's day off, so we ventured down to Springville to visit with Chris and Lisa and let the kids meet their cousin for the first time.  Sydney has been patiently waiting to have a "birthday party" for Mason.  So of course we brought a party along with us!

Sydney bringing Mason's "happy birthday" balloon into the house, she was excited to see him!

I think he was excited to see us too... look at that sweet smile!

Sydney and I were both in heaven getting to hold him for the first time!

Kisses...

The birthday cupcakes... we sang Happy Birthday and Sydney blew out his "0" candle for him!

Today, Sydney has been walking around all day, carrying her baby doll all wrapped up like a burrito, taking care of it, and calling it Mason.  I think she's in love...

Our Missionaries

For a short time, we will have 8 missionaries serving from our family!  Elder Michael Schone gets home this week, and Elder Jackson Wood leaves this week.  We are so proud to have two brothers, four cousins, and two grandparents faithfully serving.  We are so grateful for their examples to us and our children!  Sydney already has a love for missionaries and missionary work because of these great men.  She loves to sing "I Hope They Call Me On a Mission"  and knows that missionaries teach people about Jesus.  For as long as I can remember, starting with my Grandpa Holmes as a mission president in Independence Missouri, we have had at least one missionary serving from our family.  (Years of faithful missionary service with maybe only a few months of breaks!) I have such a strong testimony about missions.  I know that the Lord blesses our family because of these missionaries' service.  Here's a shout out to our missionaries.  We love you, you are in our prayers daily, and keep up the good work!

Elder Timothy Holmes- Ghana, Cape Coast Mission

Elder Alexander Page- Argentina, Salta Mission

Elder Michael Schone- Virginia, Richmond Mission

Elder Brian Page- Russia, Moscow Mission

Elder Richie Edwards- Peru, Lima East Mission

Elder Jackson Wood- Texas, Dallas Spanish Speaking Mission

*Along with these 6 great men, my grandparents, Michael and Marian Holmes are serving as mission presidents at Temple Square!

So Long Sweet Summer

For me, Labor Day is kind of the official end of summer.  We had such a great summer!  Yesterday we had a BBQ for Sunday Dinner, complete with steak, summer fruit/dip, and bowtie salad.  It was delicious.  I think we just wanted to make sure to get a good BBQ in before it was too late.  I am looking forward to a fun fall, full of colorful leaves, pumpkins, crisp days, etc.  I really do love fall... it's just that darn winter that I'm not a fan of.  Every September I wish I could go out and buy a bunch of back to school supplies.  For some reason, I just love the binders, crayons, paper, pens, rulers, etc.  Maybe that's why I became a teacher.  I guess I really do only have a few more years that I won't be buying those things- and believe me, I am holding on to those years as much as I can.  I sure love having my kids the ages they are!  We wanted to fit in one last swimming day before the pools close... but today is pretty cold, so I'm a little bummed about that.  To me, there is nothing better than a day at the pool!  I think we might head up to the mountains and enjoy some time up there.

For those of you who love pictures of my kids, you'll like this post, because there are a lot of them!  Here's a recap of some more of our summer activities (those I haven't already blogged about)  We sure kept busy!

Brett's Baseball Games

Swimming!

Shopping & Baths

Splash Park

Out to Lunch & Sunglasses

Boondocks

Parks!

We are going to miss you summer!  Thanks for always being so reliably fun!