A couple days late

Piper turned 9 months old on the 9th. I decided I had better take some pictures of her so that everyone can enjoy the little girl that I am loving to death. Her personality is starting to come out and she is finally starting to sleep through the night. We are both so much happier! :) She is such a joy to our family and we love the smiles that she puts on our faces every day. She truly is a joy!

Morning coversation :)

So this morning I Ashtyn, Piper and I were up at 7am. I usually let Joe sleep in because he works and has school so I want him to be well rested. Anyways, around 8:45am we went upstairs to wake daddy up. I usually tell Ashtyn to rub daddy's back but this morning I though I would be mean. So I whispered in Ashtyns ear, before we went in the room, "suck on your finger and then put your finger in daddy's ear!" He was so excited that when we went into our room he announced "DADDY! Put my finger in daddy's ear." Naturally Joe knew exactly what was about to happen and covered his ears. Ashtyn tried his hardest, and after numerous failed attempts, he said "come on dad, it'll be fun!" We were laughing so hard, but what made it even better was after a few more attempts Ashtyn finally said "Okay, fine!" and stuck his not-so-wet-anymore finger in my ear.

Let's play catch up

We had so much fun in Idaho last month. We left PA on the 6th of March and came back on the 14th. There were so many pictures that I wanted to use, but I don't have enough space and time to put them all on here. Here is my brother Burke with his girlfriend Tiffany. She is so much fun... I do not know how Burke got ahold of her :) I was so excited to learn that while we were going to be in Idaho, that Barrett was going to be able to have his "Farewell." He is going to Balem, Brazil and he just reported to the MTC in Provo, Ut yesterday. He was supposed to go to the Brazil MTC, but his visa didn't come through so he has to wait.

Since we were planning to be in Idaho in March we waited to bless Piper so that family could be involved. She was so gorgeous and I was so happy that all of our family was able to participate.

Here she is with her dad!

Later that night, after the dinner that we had for Piper and Barrett, Burke and Tiffany came over and spent the evening with us. They brought their rats and I thought he was going to be scared of them, but Ashtyn absolutly LOVED them. As you can tell from the pictures, I could not get Ashtyn to look at me. He was way to busy with those rats.

I love this picture! He was having so much fun and you can just see it in his eyes.

Piper Lynn is here!!

So my original due date with Piper was the 4th of December. I knew from my previous pregnancies that there is no way I was going to deliver early. On the 7th my doctor gave me the option to be induced and I was game... I was ready to be done and he said that I was 40% effaced and 4cm dialated. This was on Tuesday and so we scheduled for my induction at 7:30am Thursday (the 9th). Joe's mom flew in Wednesday night and on the way to the airport to pick her up my contractions were about every 8 minutes apart. I didn't think to much of them because they were not very painful and I figured that I would be going into the hospital the next morning anyways.... so why get excited. They continued at about that rate the rest of the evening and at aroun11:30 Joe and I decided to go to bed. Right before we turned out the lights Joe made me laugh really hard, to the point of tears, and I had one really strong contraction. We got in bed and from there my contractions were every 3-5 minutes apart. I tried going to sleep and finally gave up at 1:00am when they were starting to hurt pretty bad. We headed into the hospital at 1:30am. I was 80% effaced and 5cm. The nurse asked if I wanted to go ahead and get my epidural and because I knew it took some time to get it all organized I told her yes. By 2:30 I was comfortable again and slept off and on until 6:00am when I had an urge to push. I called the nurse and told her. She checked me about 15 minutes later and said I was ready. We did a test push and she said that with that one push that she had crowned. They called the doctor in and 4 pushes later, at 6:23am Piper Lynn was born. She weighed 8Lbs 8Oz and measured 21 inches long. And of course my doctor gave me so much crap about not waiting until the following morning so that he could get some sleep :) Here she is....

We were so excited when we asked if we could go home early and the doctors said yes. We had only been there for about 30 hours. Here is Piper ready to go home, just waiting for dad to come pick us up.

Your watching him, right?

The other day I was having a "tune out" day. I had been clashing with Ashtyn all day and was ready to give up. So when Joe got home I kinda automatically tuned out and let him watch Ashtyn. Obviously, Joe thought I was watching him as well and all the sudden I heard him smacking his lips. I looked and saw the bathroom door was open.... he loves watching me put makeup on in the mornings and figured he would try himself. He just got my brown eye shadow instead of my bronzer and decided that it would be fun to try and eat it. Oh, it gets better, read on.

So, after we got him cleaned up I was sitting on the couch and he would run to me and I would hold him over my head and tickle him. Well, I guess the makeup didn't agree with his stomach and about ten minutes into us playing Ashtyn threw up on my face and all down the front of me. It was sick! I wasn't about to wait for Joe to take a picture of that :) And, needless to say, Joe thought it was very funny because right before I lifted Ashtyn up the last time, I had told him to go run to his Dad. Joe loves that fact that I got thrown up on and not him. We don't play that game anymore..... :)

My Little Monkey

Joe and I always call Ashtyn our little monkey, so it only seemed appropriate for us to dress Ashtyn up as a monkey this year. He loved his costume!! We found it at Goodwill for 10 dollars and when I got it home found out the zipper didn't work. I took it back and told them that if they refunded me 5 buck then I would still take it and figure out how to jimmy-rig it some how. They refunded me the 5 and when I got it home and took it appart, Joe was able to get the zipper back on! Needless to say, now I have to hide the costume from Ashtyn or he drags it around the house all day talking to it. He knows the word monkey to, so he asks for it all the time. Here are some pictures of the ward Trunk-or-Treat. Joe wasn't able to go cuz he had to work, so here Ashtyn is with our good friends Rachel and Kenny!

My favorite is his little banana hooked to his sleeve

I thought for sure that he would not keep the hood on, but he did.

How could you not love this little monkey!?

Fall is here!

I am so excited for the fall weather here in PA! It is so beautiful with all the trees. Tonight Ashtyn and I went to Brady Run park and took pictures. It was so much fun and brought to my attention again, #1, how much I love being a mother and a wife, and #2, how greatful I am for the beauty all around me. I have been blessed with so much and even though we have very little right now (college students :)) and no money to do anything, I wouldn't change it at this point for anything. We are so happy and find great joy in the little things that life brings.

Joe is doing very well in school and has only a couple more flights left before he is finished and has his private pilots license. He is working as much as he can to support us and gets along really well with all of the people he works with. He is a teacher over the young men in our church and from what I can tell enjoys his calling. He is working very hard and I love him very much for the sacrafice that he is putting into our little family.

I am getting more and more busy. Just this last week I had 4 people call and schedule photo shoots. It is nice to have a little extra money, so Joe and I are going on a date this week:) YAY! I am also staying busy practicing the piano as much as I can. The primary music gal asked me about a month ago if I would play the piano for the primary program. I have a huge phobia (?) of playing the piano in front of people, and I figured this would be a good way to hopefully get over that. As of this weekend I have 7 weeks until this little girl is supposed to arrive.... we are so excited! I can't believe how fast time has gone buy. So needless to say, I am getting tired easier and try to take a nap each day so that I can keep up with my two busy boys:). I have also taken up crocheting and making girls hair bows, just for fun, and that keeps me busy too.

Ashtyn is so full of energy! He is becoming much easier to understand and learns a new word almost every other day now. His new thing is telling me he has pooped his pants buy holding his rear end and saying "mommy, bubble!" At least he is telling me, right? I think it is so funny! He also loves Veggietales. He brings me one at least 10 times a day swaying side to side and trying to sing so that I will hopefully give in and let him watch it. We try to stick to one time a day. He is now opening doors as well and gets so mad when he can't shut them. But the thing that I would say that he loves the most is his cars. He drives them everywhere and loves to crash them into eachother. He is so much fun and I am glad that he will have a little sister soon. I think he will love it. I'm sure he (and I) will have a lot of adjusting to do, but I know that we will love it.

Here are some of the pictures of the park and Ashtyn.

This is my absolute favorite! This is his personality... just like his dad.

The hat... Grandma Anderson made for him.... and he won't put it down:)

Wrapped around their finger

Well, needless to say, but this little girl has me wrapped around her finger and she is not even here yet! I thought that was supposed to happen to dad, not me :) Anyways, I found a killer deal on ribbon and have wanted to make some bows to match the outfits that we have for her. I got all of this ribbon for $6. Yeah, I know, I'm awesome :) So this is the latest and greatest project that I have been working on. I will post again when I have some of them complete.

I'm so excited!

I'm not the only one wrapped up though.... Ashtyn loves to ride around on daddy's back and get bounced around. What a typical little boy! He has so much fun with his dad and follows him around a lot just saying "daddy, daddy, daddy!"

Ashtyn also has me wrapped around his finger. He loves his blanket and always want me to wrap it around him so that he has a cape. He runs around the house until it falls off and then brings it back to me to put it on him again and again. He is my little super hero!

Our Trip to Idaho!

This is more for my benefit than those of you reading it. We had the opportunity to fly back to Idaho on the 12th of September so that I could be there to photograph my niece's wedding. To start out, our flight was supposed to leave Pittsburgh at 7:15 the night of the 12th. My dad and sister, Kylee had left that afternoon so that they could be at the SLC airport to pick us up when we landed around 11:30. Well when we got to the airport we were informed that our flight was delayed by 2 hours and so we would miss our connecting flight from Minniapolis to SLC. Because I needed to be there to take pictures, when they told me that the earliest flight to SLC would arrive at 2pm, I was not happy. We would then have to drive 6 hours to Boise where the wedding was taking place. So I asked them if they had any flights to Boise. They did, so therefore we flew to Minniapolis, stayed the night there, and then flew from there straight to Boise. That was nice, but I felt bad for my dad who drove down there to get us. When we arrived in Boise, Neff, my sister-in-law was nice enough to come and get us and drop us of at our friends house. They were out of town for the week and had left a key for us to stay in their appt and use there rig. We were very greatful. We got ready for the wedding and WOW! It was so beautiful.
The following day we slept in, went to IHOP for breakfast then went to Kathring Albertson park to get some more still shots of the the bride and groom. We then went to lunch with Kim and Kyle's family (my brother and sister-in-law) and some of their good friends. Kim was headed home to Twin Falls that day so we caught a ride with her and my parents came and picked us up.
On Sunday, the 15th, we went to church with my parents. I think at that point Ashtyn had had enough and half way through church Joe left with Ashtyn and put him down for a nap. After Ashtyn woke up we had lunch with my family and then headed up to Joe's parents house where we got to see Baroo again! We miss our puppy so so much and are so glad that Joe's parents are taking care of her for us. She was so excited to see us as well. She about flattened me :) The rest of the family came up and met us there and then we all went up to the cabin in the basin and had a dutch oven dinner. It was so much fun!
Over the next week here are some of the the fun things that we did.
Monday - Relaxed and went Jet skiing that night
Tuesday - Went to the fair and checked things out. Went to Boise and stayed with Tom and Neff and the girls.
Wednesday - Saw the girls at Petersons, saw Kelsey from Gold's Gym, Saw some of Joe's friends from Coke, I got a message from Neff, then headed back to Burley for some more jet skiing down at Hobson's boat docks.
Thursday - Jet skiing again and went to Steve and De's and hung out with them.
Friday - Went to the fair where Joe and his brother Steve tried to get hypnotized, but that didn't work so well. Joe snapped out of it about 5 minutes in. Darn! I would liked to see him do some crazy things.
Saturday - Joe's dad came down to my parents and visited that morning. Then we left for Utah for a day of fun at Lagoon. Ashtyn, Mom and I didn't go, so we went and spent the day at Temple square and with Beau and Melissa and family. After a long day at Lagoon, we took Joe to the SLC airport so that he could come home and start the new semester on monday.
Sunday - Ashtyn and I made it through chruch then crashed. We then had dinner with mom and dad and the Potters that were in town.
The next week I was able to just spend a lot of time with my family, especially my sister. On Wednesday I went back up to Boise to spend the day with Racheal. We had so much fun and oh boy do I miss her. On Friday and Saturday I was able to go to Twin Falls and hang out with Kim and her family again. I miss them so much too. We also took Senior pictures of Barrett that night. Sunday Ashtyn and I made it through about half of relief society and then had to come home a crash again. Tuesday I was able to visit my favorite hair dresser (YAY) and get my hair done. We also took a bunch more pictures of Barrett and Kylee as well. That night Ashtyn and I got a total of about 30 minutes of sleep and then left for the SLC Airport to fly home. Our flight left at 8:45 and then we had to make an emergency landing in Witchita, Kansas to let an elderly lady off that was foaming at the mouth, throwing up, and passing out. After we landed in TN, Ashtyn and I had to run to our connecting flight that was boarding as our flight landed. We made it thought and arrived safely at home at about 5pm. We were so glad to see Joe again and missed him so much.

I love being a mom!

I am extremely happy at the opportunity I get to be a mom. There are those days when I wonder what I ever got myself in to, but most days are like these.... when nothing in the world could ever explain how much I love and cherish Joe and Ashtyn. They make me so happy!

Fun at the Pittsburgh Zoo

Joe, Ashtyn, and I went to the Pittsburgh Zoo last thursday the 29th. It was so much fun and Ashtyn was mezmorized (?) the whole time. He pointed at everything and tried his best to make each animal sound. He wanted to climb in the pin with all of them too. Here are some of the many animals we were able to see.

The Sea Lions were the only thing that scared Ashtyn.

He didn't like how they would swim right at the glass

when he was so close.

This is my favorite picture of the day