Look Daddy!

Kennady has grown up a lot lately, which I am not happy about, but I guess is normal since she just turned 5 months. Following in her big brother's footsteps, she cut her first tooth here at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and now the second one is coming in, too. The funny thing is that I haven't ever been able to tell when either of my kids have been teething. All of the sudden we just see the teeth! Kennady is still such a sweet girl and has won over everyone here! She is also loving sitting in the Bumbo and can almost sit up by herself! (I haven't been pushing that much because I don't want Cam to miss out!)

First Tooth!

Can't wait to see you next week Daddy! Love, Kennady

Spoiled!

Well, we had a change of plans so me and the kids are still in Utah! My sister had to get her tonsils out unexpectedly and she was supposed to fly home with us, so I either had to stay, help out, and wait until she could fly or go home by myself. 9 hours flying time all alone? Not a hard decision! :) It has felt good to be needed here and I hope I've been helpful, but man I sure miss my Cam! We will have been apart for the whole month of August by the time we go back next week. (I guess that means we broke our 2 week rule that we had.) Cam sent me flowers yesterday and I was teasing him that I need to leave more often! Haha! Love you babe! While we're super excited to go home and see Daddy, we've been trying to make the most of our time here. My kids have gotten so spoiled, and so have I! Helpers galore, beautiful weather, and fun times with family and friends.....it doesn't get much better than this!

Maddi, Hudson, and Marlie playing in the pool that my dad bought for them.

Papa and the little girls.

My parents with all of their grandkids.

Swimming with Papa. Hudson loved it, even though he doesn't look that happy here.

Sharing Cheetos. These two are hilarious together!

So cute! Everyone loves Kennady!

Hudson loves watching his cousins play.

These two came down and said they were ready to go outside. Nice shoes!

Grandpa is so fun to play with!

Snuggled up watching a movie together.

Rach, Me, Jenn, and Morgan. We all went to USU together. They made school so much fun.

Me, Lacy, and Kayli. Good friends from high school and all of our kids!

Chelsey is such a good aunt!

Kyley and Kennady showing off their flowers.

American West Heritage Center

We decided to venture over to the Heritage Center in Logan with all of the kids. It was a really hot day, but we still had fun! The kids got to go on a train ride, pet animals, ride ponies, and learn some history.

I love the Wellsville mountains!

Grandma and Hudson petting horses

Grandma and Kennady trying to stay out of the sun

My sister's cute kids

My cute boy

Marlie and Hudson

Utah Summer Fun

It seems like the time goes so fast every time I come home. Cam and I made it out here with the kids, who did amazing on the flights! We spent the first few days with my family up at the cabin in Bear Lake and then the last part of Cam's week with his family. It was so nice to see everyone! It was so, so nice to spend a whole week with Cam! We got really spoiled and are now missing him a lot! Looking through my pictures I am greatly disappointed with myself, but at least I got some. I guess we were so busy having fun that I didn't think to pull my camera out as much as I should've. Here's some of what I did take:

The kids with Great Grandpa "Pappa Charlie" and "Grandma Shirley"

Hudson and Mason playing in the sand at Bear Lake

Hudson, Cam, and Mason swimming

Enjoying Bear Lake

Hudson at the tea party that Grandma Hoyt put on

Grandma Hoyt, Chelsey, Kennady

Marlie and Kennady

More swimming with daddy!

After we dropped Cam off at the airport, we stopped at a park and met up with Kim, her girls, Liana, and Jaxon! Liana and I met in Missouri. We moved shortly after Jaxon was born, and then they have since moved back to Utah. A thunderstorm made our visit shorter than I would've liked, but I'm so happy we got to catch up a bit after so long!

I couldn't get the boys to look at the camera, but here they are looking at the geese.

Jaxon, Liana, Me, Hudson

4 months!

Kennady turned 4 months old yesterday! Sadly, the time isn't going by any slower with baby #2. She won't have her Dr appointment until we get back from Utah, but the lactation specialist at the hospital does a baby weigh day every month that I took her to last week. She weighs 14 lbs, 12 oz! Such a big girl, but almost 3 pounds smaller than Hudson was at this age. Crazy! She is so, so fun and almost always happy. She started rolling over last week, which has also been very exciting. Hudson must hold her several times a day or he throws a big fit, and he still loves to give her hugs and kisses. We all sure do love you Kennady! I am so excited to go home so that all of our family and friends can finally meet our sweet girl!

Savannah

This week flew by, which I am grateful for mostly because it's one more week closer to us leaving for home! I think it was because it was a pretty crazy week in that Cam was with us a lot, but gone a lot, too. For example, he worked 22 hours on Monday and 15 yesterday, but then took Thurs and Fri off. To make sure I don't get in trouble with my family and friends up in ATL, I want to make sure it's known that we didn't decide to go up to Savannah until about 8 hours before we left. Cam and I are pretty sporadic I guess, and I have always wanted to go there. Plus we feel like we need to go and do something when he is off work, especially if it's two days in a row! So we woke up early Thursday morning, packed up the car, and took off. It was about a 7 hour drive, and the kids did awesome! We found a hotel when we got there, dropped our stuff off, and started out to explore. Hudson was being pretty naughty at this point from lack of sleep, so we just took a quick stroll down to the river and walked around. When we couldn't stand Hudson's whining or the heat anymore, we decided to go back to the hotel and let he and Cam cool off in the pool. We had a good dinner at a local place, but it took forever! The kids were better than I expected, but we were all done by the time we got back to our hotel. We learned the hard way that Hudson does not sleep well outside of his crib, so we all had a pretty sleepless night. This changed our plans a bit for the next day, since we were headed back and knew we were all exhausted. We drove out to see Tybee Island where we toured the lighthouse and put our feet in the water for a minute so we could say we've been to the Atlantic Ocean. We then got back in the car, picked up some lunch, and drove home. Whew! Fast trip, but so worth it!

Cam and Hudson in front of the river.

HUGE barge going through the river. This was pretty cool to watch so close!

I loved all of the character and old charm of Savannah. It's such a quaint town. Cam and I could have walked down the beautiful tree lined streets looking at the different houses all day. Here are just some random pics so you can kinda see what it looks like.

One of the many historical squares.

This is a pic of the ground. There were streets and sidewalks everywhere still made from the original brick/cobblestone. My stroller will probably never be the same! :)

Here's the lighthouse in Tybee. We climbed up almost 400 stairs to see the view from the top. Cam had to carry Hudson, and I carried the baby. We definitely got a workout!

The view was worth the climb!

Cam and Hudson at the top

Tybee was fun, but man our beaches here in FL are so much prettier! We didn't realize how spoiled we've gotten. Another ocean marked off on the places we've been.

A fun Fourth

We had some really great times this week. I am so happy to report that we got to spend some time together as a family! On a holiday! And Cam got to go to church with us! All of these things are a BIG deal to us. Most holidays are super busy, meaning Cam has to be at work, and Sundays are the busiest day of the week. However, with most people getting today off of work, it made for a slow week last week and we tried to take complete advantage. We were so in need of it and hopefully it will get us through until we can do it again.

On Friday we took Hudson to see Toy Story 3. It was a really cute movie. He did great for the most part, and Kennady hardly made a peep! We probably won't do a movie again for another year or so (especially at 7 bucks a person!) but it was fun to do something different and one of the only possibilities with all of the rain from hurricane Alex.

On Saturday Cam got off work at a decent hour, which is another thing that doesn't happen very much in the summer! We were kinda disappointed that we weren't invited to do anything with anyone and were feeling a little sorry for ourselves and missing our family, so we just thought we'd stay at home and BBQ. Then I had an idea to go and have a picnic on the beach. Very simple, but I feel like I'm always at home when we live so close to these beautiful beaches! I am so glad we went, because it was another beautiful night! It was seriously like therapy for us with the super soft sand on our feet(which you can't even understand unless you feel it yourself), a beautiful sunset, and just relaxing watching our kids smile and have fun.

Then last night we went down to the beach again, hoping to see some fireworks. It was so neat! We weren't close to any of the big shows, but you could look either way down the beach and see them going off. Plus, tons of families had smaller ones that they were lighting themselves. We didn't stay very long because of the tired kiddos, but it was a great way to end our few fun days. (P.S. I know I never have my hair done anymore, but it's impossible! You should see what happens to it after being outside for just a few minutes. This humidity is crazy!!!)

I'm not always very good about having a good attitude about our situation, but I am glad we were able to make the most of our time this week. Yes, we would rather have been at home with our families and friends, spending time together and having fun, but we are sometimes so focused on what we don't have that we forget the amazing blessings that are staring us right in the face. I know everyone has their own struggles and problems and life is just plain hard sometimes, but don't give up! Ok, I'm done now. :)