Improvements

Being pregnant and having a new little one inhibited my ability to really exercise. It has been a couple months now since I have improved my exercise routine. I mostly run on the treadmill in the clubhouse right behind us while Troy sleeps in his carseat. I am way out of shape, but I get 2-3 miles in each time. Last week I swam rather than ran and even put Troy in his cute little swimsuit from my friend Grace. However I did not have a swim diaper for him so I could only get his legs wet. He seemed to enjoy it and didn't think it was too cold.

Ben was the inspiration for my running as he has been running on his lunch break for about 50 minutes. For Ben that is like 7 or 8 or more miles. He was stoked to run the 4th of July race and compete with his own highschool times. But then Ben sprained his ankle playing churchball a couple weeks ago. He was told he would be on crutches for a week or two and he only used them that day. Pretty tough guy but the swelling did not go down completely until two days ago after he followed the advice of Sterling to wrap it. He even ran on it a little when we went to the park last night for our family night activity. He won't get to run the 4th of July Race he had been working out for but we will make sure he races soon.

Troy is now sleeping 6-8 hours at night. I usually only wake up once and sometimes not at all. I could not be more grateful.

Our friends, the Kitchens, had their baby boy, Cohen Kitchen, on the 20th. He was 5 lbs. 11 oz. and 18 inches long. He has lots of beautiful straight brown hair. He was a month early, just like Troy and they moved out of their apartment on Saturday. They found the apartment they wanted to move into Friday night! Again, similar to our situation. Melissa came over with Cohen while the boys, Ashley, and family moved all of their stuff. I got to hold Cohen while Melissa got ready to go to her OWN baby shower that day. It reminded me of how crazy the first couple weeks were with Troy. Pumping, feeding Troy forever, being so tired, worrying about sickness being spread, jaundice, moving. Liss, you are amazing. They are now settled into their new place and jaundice is not a worry anymore. A definite improvement.

Brock is just as cute with Cohen as Ben was with Troy. I love seeing new Dads being so proud to have a new son or daughter. I will upload pictures of cute Cohen tomorrow.

Creative Moment

I spend quite a bit of time in Troy's room feeding him. I usually read or study and every time I take a break to look around the room or out the window I see this massive blank wall to the right of me. We are renting so we can't paint it but I thought of a simple solution that did not cost us ANYthing. Troy pictures decorated onto baby bags I got at the baby showers. It is not the most glamours idea but it allowed me to create something and look at many pictures of Troy while feeding him.

Here are three of them. I took some decorations off of the cards as well to add gems, fun shapes, and words to the display. I cut the fronts of the bags off so they are not too bulky and hung them by the string. If there was no string I just used strong tape.

I did the pictures in order of his week age and it is fun to look at how much he has grown.

Ben's First Father's Day

Ben's family has a tradition of decorating the front room or kitchen when celebrating one person's birthday. I have always tried to sneakily decorate early in the morning before he gets up but it never works because Ben is 1. a light sleeper, and 2. an early riser. However, since Troy usually needs feeding at least once during the night, I was able to decorate the downstairs early in the morning without Ben suspecting anything. I put up lots of ribbon very symmetrically and a sign that said Happy Birthday. Only I covered the word birth with a paper that said Father's on it, but the paper couldn't cover the entire word so I had to put ribbon over the letter H. It looked pretty tacky but Ben thought it was pretty funny. It's the thought that counts right?

After church we started getting ready to head up to my family's house for dinner. Ben was cleaning up the house super fast while I was doing something with Troy (I can't remember). Troy had one sock on but was missing the other and I asked Ben to find the other sock even though he had already been running around for a while cleaning. He is such a sweetheart and didn't even complain. Off he went to find the sock upstairs when he found the sock sitting on a present in Troy's room! I am so sneaky huh? I got him a watch that he has been wanting for a while now. Plus it was from Fossil which is a favorite brand of his. It's pretty easy to please someone when you know almost exactly what they want.

Anyway, I want to say how much I love Ben and how wonderful he is as a husband and father. He is always willing to help without complaint and thinks of things all the time that can strengthen our family. This last week he decided he was not going to watch TV besides movies occasionally and BYU football of course. What a HUGE difference it has made in our home. I would highly recommend it. I love you Ben, more than the day I married you.

Ben loves: his family, the gospel, America, the American Flag, eggs, salsa, Costco, water skiing, snow skiing, warm weather, being an engineer, school, running, having people over, the outdoors, rediculous amounts of food, BYU, football, and life. Every day is his new favorite day.

Troy Update

Sweet Troy is growing so quickly. We had to get larger socks for him and he is starting to fit some of his 3-month clothes. He grabbed his toy keys by himself for the first time today! He can follow the fishes on his swing as they circle above him. He makes more noises and different kind of noises, higher pitched and more sigh-like. He loves to smile, especially when: I pick him up from his nap in his crib, when you put him on the changing table, during or following his bath, and at the halfway point in his meal.


He can stand for a long time when you hold his back, especially when he is mad. He holds his head up pretty well but still bobbles it a little. He doesn't cry a lot but lets out consistent moans if he is unhappy. He follows Ben or me around with his eyes. You can hear him go #2 from across the room. He loves church music and when I play the harp or piano. He has spit bubbles on his mouth 70% of the day. He has played pingpong, gone to St. George twice, and swung on a swingset outside. He has slept through the night in his bassinet 3 times and many times > 5 hours. Troy kicks his legs in the air 60% of the day. Lastly, he loves the color red... which we discovered at the Mathews home in St. George.

Yes those are jeans, not a skirt. I got a little excited about his three month old clothes. He is still a little too small for them. This picture was taken yesterday.

Here he is following the fishes.

Bath time.

Favorite picture. He looks like he is crying or going to, but he never did. He likes to fake me out.

Family News

Last Friday Ben and I had a double date with Ben’s sister Brittany and a wonderful guy named Sterling. We made pizza from scratch. Dough and everything. We felt so proud until my piece of pizza was mostly dough that was not cooked well enough. On the positive side, it looked really good and Ben thought it tasted great. Troy was pretty fussy after dinner so I went upstairs with him and accidently fell asleep with Troy in my arms. Sorry Sterling and Brittany, but I’m sure Ben was entertaining enough.

The next day I woke up to Ben’s dad and his wife Beverly being in the house. I guess they got in pretty late. They came for Troy’s blessing and they helped so much with it. They surprised us with a couch that folds into a bed for our room which has nothing in it but our laptop on a dresser that is at least 30 years old. Ben and I are SO grateful. Now our guests have somewhere to sleep. Later we all went up to Sundance.

I look like I'm carrying an imaginary carseat. But I like the background.

Sunday June 7th was Troy's baby blessing. We were planning on having the family over after at our townhouse, but it rained and there is not enough room in our home to fit our immediate and extended family without using the grass area behind us. So, luckily Ben's grandparents live close by and they allowed us to hold the gathering there. It was very successful thanks to all of the help from family.

Friday night we went to our ward campout, or at least the dinner portion. I loved talking to some of the girls and Ben was introduced to other men including the Bishop who are really into waterskiing. Saturday we went to Park City with two of my brothers, Alan and Jason, to get some shoes and needed clothes at the outlets. Ben checked the weather before we left (as he always does) and reported to us that it should be sunny from 1-4 pm with a 5% chance of rain. Lo and behold it was pouring rain most of the time. We did not spend as much time as we wanted, but on the bright side Troy slept the entire time! I guess he likes the rain.

After Park City the boys started a game of Risk. I honestly think this game was invented to make the World Record for longest board game. However, Ben loves the game and has wanted to play it forever. The boys had to stop playing eventually and write down where the pieces were so they could continue the game later. The boys also went to Ben’s grandparents (The Allsops) where Alan, who is a computer genius, helped them setup their new computer and laptop.

Sunday morning Ben and I gave talks in our new ward. The talks went pretty well, but I was nervous that Troy would start screaming in the back with Alan and Jason watching him. Luckily the spirit comforted me to know he would be fine. He slept the entire meeting which has never happened before. I was so grateful.

After church we took Alan and Jason back home to Holladay and visited Grandma and Grandpa Westbrook (of Troy) for an hour before we went to Ben’s house to celebrate Brayden’s 12 birthday which is actually today. A bunch of family came over for cake and everyone took turns holding Troy. He is such a crowd pleaser.

Our Little Backyard

One exciting thing about our townhouse is that there is a little backyard with an area for a garden! I was so excited to be able to plant a garden, but there was one thing in the way, millions of weeds. Ok, maybe only hundreds, but there were a ton. Notice I said were, as in past tense, because the weeds are gone!! I wanted to get the yard ready for Troy's blessing (which ended up not even being at our house... other story). It took me a total of 9 hours broken up into 3 days. There were so many roots that I had to filter the dirt after weeding to get them all out. Thank goodness Troy takes long naps.

BEFORE

I forgot to take a picture before I weeded the inside of the garden bed.

This section was a home to many spiders, potato bugs, ants, creepy crawlers, and even wasps. I was practically shaking the whole time as I could hear the buzzing around me and spiders would start to crawl up my arm or leg. Plus there were branches above me where ants would crawl onto me. AUH, it still makes me shiver.

I killed the spiders and ants, but I let Ben take care of the wasps and their nest when he got home. Thank goodness Ben is much more brave than I.

AFTER

I want to plant flowers here. I will show updates once they're in.

The leaves on the right are part of a tree. It took me 20 minutes of weeding before I realized I was starting to pull up its' roots and not some huge weed I thought I was conquering. I won't make that mistake again.