Our little Cougar!

We took Ethan to the season opening BYU football game a few weeks ago. We were a little worried that he might freak out with the band and the crowd being so loud but did that bother him??? Of course not! Our little buddy slept through the whole thing! At the very end of the game he woke up and so we took a quick picture. Justin and I are so grateful that he doesn't mind going to volleyball games, football games, etc. because we love going to them!!


He was all smiles for Justin and I before going to church last Sunday! He is starting to smile, giggle, coo and blow raspberries.. so fun!

Ethan's First Flight!

Sorry for so many post today, but I have nothing else to do at work and a lot of catching up to do on here. This last week Justin, Ethan and I flew down to AZ to visit the Smith side of the family. We had heard horror stories of newborns crying the whole flight because of the pressure taking off and landing has on their ears, so we were well prepared with a pacifier in hand for whenever he got fussy. Taking off time came and the kid slept through the whole thing! That was the easy part!
Going into Phoenix, he became outrageously hungry and got pretty fussy. As soon as we got off the plane I headed to the least populated area of the airport I could to feed Ethan and to try to stop him from screaming. Turns out there is no unpopulated place in the Phoenix airport and everyone by now was staring at me holding a screaming baby trying desperately to find the nearest bathroom or something! I finally found a bathroom and just had to drop everything and feed him right there. So many people came in there and gave me the awkward quick glance and scurried around me. By that point, I just didnt care. While I was feeding him, he conveniently dropped a bomb in his diaper so I had to change him on the very unsanitary table in front of everyone in line. He was still fussy after i changed him, so then I proceeded to burp him. Somehow he missed the burp rag and threw up all over the floor multiple times. After I finished trying to clean up that mess, I had to wash my hands (GermX would not have done the job in this case). Do you know how difficult it is to wash your hands while trying to hold a still crying baby?!?! I finally made it out of the bathroom and had a wonderful rest of the trip spending time with family, but I definitly didn't leave without getting many looks of pity from the women in the bathroom!

New Swing

Our neighbors upstairs let us borrow their swing to try to calm him down one day, and Ethan loved it so much that we decided to look around and find a swing for him. Of course we never buy anything for full price so we searched around on KSL, Craigslist, etc, and found this swing. There was a rich lady up in Draper selling it for $50 in great condition! I think these type swings are usually priced at about $100-$130 brand new, so we got a great deal. It swings not only front to back but from side to side. Ethan loves it and so therefore, so do we!



It puts him to sleep pretty well. Maybe that's why we like it so much!

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

So a little while back we decided to give Ethan his first real bath (as opposed to the sponge baths we had been giving him). We filled up his little bathtub that Grandma and Grandpa Sims had given him and put him in. He was such a little trooper through it all, even when I accidently poured cold water on him! I'll try to figure out how to post the video we have of it but for now here are some after shots of him in his cute Hippopotamus towel.

Great News!

Shortly after I posted my last blog entry, I recieved a phone call from our next door neighbor saying that she read what i had written on my blog and that her husband could actually recover the lost files!! I took my camera over to their house and sure enough he was able to recover all of them! I have no idea how he did it but I was estatic and so grateful that he could. Whew! That sure was a close one! So here are a few favorites of ours...

I came home from church and couldn't resist taking a picture of these two! Ethan loves to sleep on his daddy's tummy!

Sometimes he gets this funny "Im just going to be mad at the world" look on his face.

So i try to give Ethan a little bit of tummy time everyday and the poor kid hates it! This picture was taken within the first minute of his tummy time yesterday. Shortly after this picture, however, he was not nearly as happy and was flailing his arms and legs around everywhere! What's a mom to do!? Anywho, he is starting to lift his head up off of the ground despite the lack of tummy time though, so i guess that's comforting:-)

A love-hate relationship

Technology- for me, it's a love-hate relationship. Let me explain. For the majority of the time, i love technology. For example: how easy it is to find info, do research, write papers, keep updated on peoples lives through email or blogs, basically there are many advantages to living in such a computer age world. There are those times, however, that you just want to chuck your computer off a flight of stairs. Times like these can occur after your computer decides that it's time for it to take a break and shuts down, losing your 14 page research paper (and yes, i am speaking from experience). Or it decides that it is going to freakishly delete all of the pictures on your camera before you can download them or save them to the computer- which is exactly what happened to me today... Here is my sad story...
So i have been working at work for the past couple of days trying to update my blog with pictures of Ethan for my family in Texas to see, since they dont get to see him very often at all. We had a full memory card in our camera full of pics of Ethan, from newborn pics at the hospital, to his first bath, his first airplane flight, first smiles, and adorable pics of him sleeping. Basically it was full of all the pics of Ethan's first 2 months of life and all that falls in between. As i was trying to open the folder that contained all the pictures the computer decided that it wanted to delete all of them and so...it did just that. It deleted them from not only the computer but also from the memory stick. I called Justin in a panick and by the time he got to my work to see what he could recover i was in tears, bawling. Unfortunately he couldnt recover any files and so, our precious pictures of Ethan are forever lost. So, to all of our family and friends, im sorry that i have no recent pictures to post up of our little boy. I'll try to recreate as many as i can, but it's just not the same ya know. We do have a couple from Justin's dads camera, so ill post what i can.
In conslusion, for today im leaning toward more of the hate side of this technology relationship, but at least i have learned a hard lesson to constantly save pictures to some other saving device and to not rely soely on my computer.

Another Random Family Vacay

So Justin's family was leaving right after Ethan's blessing to head up to Nebraska and South Dakota for his dad to take care of some business there. The night before they left they asked us if we wanted to go. Without second guessing, we said sure and left the next morning with them for the 8 hour drive there. This was Ethan's first road trip and he actually did suprisingly well, despite a major blowout of his diaper in the car! ( see picures below) Ethan was a popular item on the trip, and loved being held by eveyone! He is such a great baby! So here are a few of our pics of our fun trip!


We stopped by some famous pioneer sites such as Martin's Cove (above) and Chimney Rock.

Beautiful Nebraska sunset
It was so fun to hang out with Justin's family and play in the pool with his siblings. Of course Justin and Barrett found that throwing poor little Jordan in the pool was some great entertainment...boys will always be boys i suppose!
The family at a really cool Hard Rock Cafe type restaurant to celebrate Barrett's birthday

The fam at a pretty lookout point that we hiked to
So this place is called "Carhenge." We found it out in the middle of nowhere and it is suppose to replicate the famous "Stonehenge" in England. Im thinkin these farm boys have a little too much time on their hands!

Some pictures of the beautiful Black Hills drive that we took. It took a long time to drive through, but it was well worth the time!
We finally made it to Mount Rushmore, quite the impressive site! It was so crowded there (and everywhere else we went) because of the millions of bikers that were making their annual trip across America to Sturgis, South Dakota.