Gracie!!

We have a new niece! She was born on Friday the 14th. 8 lbs, 20.5 in. I was in the delivery room when Skyler was born, and I was sad that I couldn't be there for Gracie. I had my mom call me once Steph started pushing so that I could hear what was going on so that was fun. It took only seconds and I was SO excited to hear the sound of my new little niece crying. It has been a long road for Steph and Mitch since they started trying for a second baby and we are so grateful that she is finally here and that everything went well and she is healthy! I can't WAIT to see these girls. We leave for MI in 18 days!!

Kyle

Although we're not ready for it quite yet, I have to say I'm very excited to start a family, and for Kyle to become a daddy. One of the first things that attracted me to him was his love for children. On our first date he showed me pictures on his phone of his nieces and nephews. Some may say this was just a way to impress me, but I know he was being sincere. I can tell he really misses his nieces and nephews. He's so great with children, and I thought I would post some cute pictures of him I've taken lately. (Not gonna lie-some were taken just for this purpose) Kyle's nephews and nieces adore him, as well as any other child he comes in contact with. All of our friends we've made here have children, and anytime we're with them, Kyle spends half the time playing with their kids. Our friends Ashley and Taylor have a little girl, Callie, who adores him. Every Sunday at church I notice her looking around and when I see her grinning from ear to ear I know she's found what she's looking for. Kyle's best little buddy here is our 7 year old neighbor, Blake. Blake's mom/friend of ours, Kendra, lives in the apartment behind us and has Blake every other week. On those weeks, we can expect a visit from Blake a few times each day. Judging by the 7:00 or 8:00 am knocks at the door, Kyle must be the first thing on his mind when he wakes up. They like to play basketball and baseball outside. If Blake ever stops by when Kyle's not here, he's always sure to check back within an hour or two. Kyle is a busy guy-when he's not working he's doing school work or something productive. He's always multi-tasking. When there's a BYU or Jazz game on, he'll be doing school work while he watches it. He's always willing to stop and spend time with Blake, however, even when he's busy. I've even noticed him missing part of a game to go outside and play, and that, my friends, is big! Blake doesn't really have friends around here, so he's thrilled to have met Kyle. It melts my heart to see him with children and how they light up around him. I can't wait to see him with our own children. They are going to be so lucky to have such a great daddy.



And in case I didn't make it clear in the beginning, I'm not pregnant. :)



Our nephew Peyton. We spent lots of time with them the last time we were in Utah-they were staying with Grandma and Grandpa while Amber and Andy were on a cruise.

Our niece Abby


Our niece Alydia


Our niece Skyler-the first and only time he has met her. She loved him of course. It didn't hurt that he showed her princess pictures on his computer.

This is Max, Cody and Laura's little boy. I love how he's resting his arm on Kyle.

This is the famous Callie. She's always so happy when Kyle is around.

Update

Nothing too exciting has been going on here lately, but since this is the closest I've been to journal writing lately, I thought I should post an update.

The soonest thing we have to look forward to is a visit from Kyle's brother, Andy and his family! They are arriving on May 28th and are staying a week. We get them for the first few days and then they're are staying near Disneyland. We're so excited to be able to spend so much time with them. It has been fun planning things to do while they're here. Kyle and I decided we need to invest in some toys for our apartment, which we should do before they come. We've had a few friends visit with us and their poor children are bored to death here. My latest trick is Yatzee (it's the closest thing we have to a toy) and feeding them dry cereal, however, I may not get away with doing that the whole time Amber and Andy are here.

We bought our tickets to MI for June so we're excited about that! My sister is due May 18th which is in just a few weeks, and as much as I would have loved to try and make it for the birth, it was easier to just plan for a few weeks after. I'm a little selfish because part of the reason I wanted to go later was so that I would have more one on one time with my new niece. It's actually working out really well, because Kyle's nephew Stockton is getting baptized on June 5th, and Kyle's best friend Benny is getting married the 12th, so we're driving to Utah the 4th so we can be there for Stockton's baptism, then flying to MI from SL that evening, and coming back the day before Benny's wedding. It will be the perfect 2 weeks, being able to see all of our friends and family.

Hollywood

Kyle has Fridays off and I didn't have any appointments Friday afternoon so we decided to go to Hollywood. It was our first time and I was pretty excited. Instead of finding the normal "tourist" place to view the Hollywood sign, we just followed our GPS and ended up right next to it. I don't do so well driving on super narrow, windy roads so when I almost crashed head on into a fancy BMW, we paused for a little chinese fire drill. The road was super crowded with houses along the way, even some right up near the sign. I should have taken a picture of some of them, it was nuts.




This picture goes out to my fellow MJ fans. When I was little, my sister, cousins, and one of my mom's daycare kids and I had a Michael Jackson fan club. Obviously, we were really cool.
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We didn't want to pay the money for a tour to see movie stars' homes, so we just went for a drive and pretended we were on a tour. We looked for huge houses in Beverly Hills and pretended they belonged to someone famous. We even followed a couple tour buses for a while but we couldn't hear what they were saying so it was kind of pointless. Someday we want to go back and do it. I got to thinking later that we should go on one and write everything down so that when people come to visit us we can just take them on a tour ourselves. Anyway, the last two pictures are of Rodeo Drive, where Pretty Woman is filmed.

Easter

We were hoping to spend Easter/conference weekend in Easter with family, but my work schedule didn't really allow it. We spent most of the weekend at home, but we spent Easter with some good friends of ours, Cody and Laura Shirley. Cody works for Old American, and he is the one that suggested we move to Yucaipa. He even came and looked at our apartment for us when Kyle found it online. They have two kids, Max, 3, and Layla, 6 months. We love them. We usually get together with them every Sunday to play games. It was a nice, relaxing day, complete with the excitement of an earthquake. We felt the big one in Baja, Mexico. I felt another one just a few days later. We've been working on our food storage and 72 hour kits. It's interesting because when we first moved here earthquakes never phased people around here, but lately there has been a lot more talk of emergency preparedness. I've even seen "earthquake survival kits" displayed in stores. Sorry if I'm freaking our moms out....


The two of us colored Easter eggs just for fun


My masterpiece


Kyle's masterpiece. Can you guess his next move?

Ezra

Kyle works for Old American along with two of his brothers, Tyler and Justin and also Justin's wife Leslie. Lucky for us, they come to Cali once in a while to sell for a few days. Justin and Leslie have been here a couple times since we've moved here, and Tyler and Ashlee came a few weeks ago with their baby Ezra. It has been so fun to have one on one time with them while they're here, and it was really fun to have the extra time with Ezra. He is such a sweet baby. Kyle and I were bummed when they left. The apartment seemed quiet and boring. I didn't take any pictures of the adult while they were here, or of anything we did. (We went to Newport and to California Adventure with them as well.) I'll have to get some pictures from Ashlee to post. But for now, I have lots of pictures of Ezra. He was an angel during the little photo shoot but his Uncle Kyle was completely uncooperative. Every time I would stomp my foot and beg for him to smile, he would make another ridiculous face.

Our first Michigan visitors

My parents and brother came from MI a couple weeks ago and stayed for a week. They were looking forward to the warm weather that I promised them, and the day they came we spent huddled together on our couch with blankets. It was so cold! We don't have many places to sit in our house besides the couch and kitchen table, so Kyle brought our new patio chairs into the living room, which we bought especially for their visit. And that is where we spent every evening. But it was nice and cozy and we had fun playing games and visiting. We were lucky to have a few nice days at the end of the week. We went to Disneyland and California Adventure which they had never done, and we also went to the San Diego Zoo which was really cool. You name an animal, they have it, along with 1 out of 5 bus stops that takes you near that animal. We went to Old Town San Diego that night and ate at a REALLY good Mexican restaurant my mom had heard about. They have Mariachi players that walk around but we didn't really experience that because we chose to eat inside where it was warmer. At the beginning of the week we went to Arizona to visit my dad's brother's family in Tempe. It was a 4 and half hour drive but well worth it. We don't see them very often so it was fun to visit. I have a cousin close to my age that lives there, and she came to Cali a week later to visit her boyfriend who is here for an internship, so we were able to see her twice in one week. Kyle and I met them at a restaurant in Newport. I haven't figured out how to caption my pictures yet, so I have to explain everything in my posts. One day while Kyle was working I took my family to Newport Beach, which was fun, but we didn't pick the best day. It was chilly and really windy so the beach wasn't too enjoyable. Another day Kyle took my dad on a chartered fishing trip while my mom, Jeremy, and I went to CA Adventure. My dad was in heaven. He would have been happy fishing in a pond all day. I guess it was early in the fishing season so they didn't catch much. In fact, Kyle caught one and my dad caught none. But they had a blast. They saw dolphin and sea lions. The fish Kyle caught is some kind of scorpion fish and it's really cool. We're lucky he captured it on film because that was the ONLY picture the whole day. No dolphin pictures or anything. Boys!! All in all, however, it was a fun week and we were so glad my family was able to come. Jeremy was glad to have a break from school. He goes to Central Michigan University for accounting and he works really hard. He had a 4.0 GPA this semester and was on the honor roll. He just found out he has a paid internship this summer which is really exciting. Those aren't easy to come by these days, especially in Michigan. He's worked there the last 2 summers and this summer he was hoping for the internship but not expecting compensation. They hired him on the spot and told him they would be paying him. We get to see them again in a couple months when we go to Michigan. My sister is due in 37 days (not that I'm counting) so we're going to go see our new niece!! Can't wait!! The last two pictures are with my cousin and her boyfriend and of Kyle entertaining himself that night on the way home. What should have been an hour drive turned into 3.5. We left at 9pm and were stuck in traffic almost right away because of a bad accident. We got home at almost 1am. We've heard horror stories of the traffic here, but we hadn't experienced anything too bad until then. It was ironic that the worst we've seen was so late at night and not at rush hour.