Mya's 1st Birthday

So I am over a month late on this posting, but better late than never. Mya is already 1....I cannot believe how fast time flies by. We had some of our closests friends come over and we had cake and ice cream. Mya just loved all the attention. Most of her little friends are boys, so she is just a lucky little girl. She is still not walking, but here she is standing on her own...she was very impressed with herself.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am not much of a cook, but I decided to get a little domestic and make a cute cake. It didn't turn out perfect but Mya liked it and it was fun to try!

Here's Mya trying to sneak her way to her presents, she just thought it was great to tear into everything!

Here's Mya and her best buddy...Daddy

IT’S BEEN TOO LONG….
My life has been so crazy lately, and I just realized that I haven’t updated my blog in 7 months! OOPS! Time passes way TOO fast. Mya is already 10 months old today. She is going to be 1 before we know it! It makes me so sad. Mya has always been really small, but she a determined little soul. She started crawling at nine months, and as of today, she already has 4 teeth. They change way too fast. I just love being a mom, and I am so lucky that I get to spend all my time with my girls. Maybe even a little TOO much time. LOL I keep thinking I need to have my own life outside of being a mom, but considering that Shawn works at least 6 days a week, that is pretty much impossible. The three of us girls all seem to find some excitement in our lives. We cannot wait for summer so we can spend our days at the pool and at the beach. Surprisingly is hasn’t been too warm yet. We keep getting a little taste of summer, and then it gets cold again. It has been stormy ALL week. I know it could be worse, last I heard, it snowed up north house.

Here are some pics of the girls on easter...aren’t they so cute! We decided to go casual this year. We had a wonderful Easter. Brynlee was so excited for the Easter bunny to come. She is extremely spoiled. Somehow she lucked out and got a scooter for Easter. We told ourselves we would limit it to candy this year, but the look on her face was worth it. We also had our own little Easter egg hunt in our backyard. We have like a 12 foot rock wall in the back, so we had some great places to hide eggs. The trick was keeping the dogs away so they wouldn’t eat the eggs. We just spent Easter with our own little family, but it was wonderful. We went rollerblading, flew kites, and roasted marshmallows in our fire pit. It couldn’t have been better!

As for Shawn, he pretty much has his dream job. He spends almost everyday taking tourists on ATV tours. His life isn’t too rough! LOL Our business had a pretty slow winter, but Spring has been a wonderful surprise for us. He is busier than ever. I guess that’s what you get when you are in a seasonal business. We are just so thankful that things have picked up. He just loves what he does, and I hope this could be a lifelong thing for Shawn. He gets to meet a lot of people from all over the world; he has found his true calling.
Shawn and I are celebrating our 5 year anniversary this month; I cannot believe it has already been 5 years! A lot has happened in the last 5 years. We are just so happy, and so lucky to have such gorgeous little girls, a happy healthy family, and wonderful friends. We wanted to do something for ourselves for our anniversary, so we decided it was time to buy another boat. We sold our other boat just before we had Mya, and we have missed it more than anything. Boating is our passion. It has brought our little family together more than anything. Our favorite memories are out on the lake. Not to mention, we live less than five minutes away from 2 lakes. So, we found a great little boat, but of course, it turns out we bought ourselves a project for our anniversary. We decided that in order to make it a little nicer, we would reupholster the whole thing. Shawn and I are do-it-yourselfers, so we thought for sure we could tackle the project on our own. Well, I am not much of a seamstress, and neither of us knew how to upholster, but somehow we pulled it off…and it actually looks great! (I included some pics!) It took us about 20+ hours, but it was well worth the time. We have taken our boat out about 5 times now, and have even gone wakeboarding. (I actually went in March...BRRRR!) It has already been the best thing for our family. Brynlee asks everyday if we can go boating, and Mya loves it too. Mya already knows how to make the motor sound. We bought Brynlee her own pink wakeboard when she was 3, and I think she’ll actually be able to use it this year. We’ll have to give it a try! Anyways, I know this is a long posting, but it takes a lot to update the last 7 months. Life is great, and things will be even better when it gets warmer outside.

Check out our own custom upholstry job! What a project...now it's time to enjoy!!!

Birthday Fun!

We just celebrated Brynlee’s 4th birthday on Saturday. I cannot believe she is already 4 years old! They grow up way too fast. Brynlee loves swimming, so we threw her a Luau and went swimming at my in-laws.. We had so much fun decorating and planning for her little party. I probably went a little overboard, but it was fun! We ended up having about 30 people come, and we all swam and ate dinner. Everyone had so much fun-it turned out to be a great success! I think I threw the party more for myself because I wanted an excuse to see all my friends! Bryn didn’t mind because she got loads of toys! Anyways, enjoy the pics…

Here is Bryn and her cute little friends! They are all such Divas! LOL

Here's cute little Mya! She was dressed up for the Luau, but she had a little of a blowout, so she finished the party out naked!

Our Trip up North

A few weeks ago we were finally able to make it up north again. We had so much fun! A lot of people in my family hadn’t even seen Mya, so she had a lot of people to meet. We played for a week straight, it was a great vacation. We also blessed Mya at my parents ward while we were up there. We wanted all of our family to be able to be there, and it is a lot easier for us to come up there than for everyone to come down here. We blessed her with Amber’s little girl Hazel, so it was extra special. We had both of our families over to my parent’s house after for a barbeque. Thank goodness their yard is so big because there were a lot of people there! Everything turned out perfect!

Here is my Grandma Ellie with Averie and Brynlee. We rode the tracks down to the gateway so the kids could plain in the fountains. Bryn LOVED the trax!

Here we are at the fountains. Bryn loves water, and she thought the fountains were a blast! She would run around and try to find the biggest fountain to run through. Mya wasn't sure what to think!

This is my favorite Picture! They are so funny when they are all together!

Here's Bryn and Tristan. Bryn just loves all of her cousins!

Here we are at the blessing. Mya wasn't too happy! Actually, she wasn't happy for most of the trip-she couldn't poop! :) Poor thing!

More Fun Photos!

More Babies in the Fam!

Shawn’s brother Eric had a baby on August 8th. They had a little girl who they named Aspen. Her and little Mya are about 8 weeks apart. Seeing a newborn reminded me how much Mya has already changed, but I must admit, she is more fun every day. Mya is still quite small, and surprisingly, she didn’t seem that big next to their baby. People still ask me if she is only a week or two old, and they are always surprised when I tell them that she is almost 2 months old. I think she seems a lot bigger now! She smiles all the time now and loves it when her big sis reads her books and talks to her. It is so fun to watch her grow and learn new things everyday. It is also nice to feel back to normal get back into the swing of things.

Mya went boating for the first time this week. We went with my good friend Rachel who has a little boy who is only 6 days older than Mya. He is SO stinking cute. They are already best friends. My friend Rachel delivered a week past her due date, so he is a big boy! I love his little rolls. Maybe someday Mya will fill in and catch up to him. They both loved the boat. It rocked them right to sleep, but every time we hit a bump, Mya would jump. I wasn’t quite ready to wakeboard yet, but maybe next year. I am finally feeling great, so I wasn’t in the mood to crash and possibly get hurt.

Anyways, I updated some more adorable pictures of the little ones. Being a mom is so great! It has been wonderful to just be home and enjoy the girls. I have decided that two is even more fun than one. I love watching them interact with each other. They are already best friends!

Our New House

Okay, so we have finally settled into our new house, so I figured it was time to post some pics. We moved in like a few days before I had Mya, therefore, it has taken me a while to get things put together. Now, anyone who has been around me within the last several months knows that this whole house thing has been the biggest stresser ever for me and Shawn. Due to the horrible market down here, it was very scary trying to sell our old house. For a while there, we thought we were going to have to come up with two house payments. I even almost went into labor over the stress. We had a couple put an offer in on the house, and after keeping us under contract for a month, they decided to back out. I thought I was going to lose it at that point because our new house was almost finished.
Shawn and I learned a lot through this experience. We spent a lot of time praying that's for sure. Somebody must have been watching out for us because a couple weeks after our other offer fell through, we got a call from a couple from Park City who were interested in purchasing our house as a second home. Within a few days after we talked to him, him and his wife drove down to take a look at our house. After about 1 hour of talking and showing the home, they gave us a full price offer. Now this wasn't just any old offer, not only did they purchase the home, they also purchased most of our furniture and our appliances. It was wonderful! Everything went so smooth working with them, and we have spoke many times since, and they absolutely love the house! We put so much work into our old house, and it feels great to know that we sold it to someone who really does appreciate all of our hard work. The husband, Scott is actually a Stake President in Park City, and they are some of the neatest people I have ever met. I know that Heavenly Father sent them our way, and words cannot explain how grateful I am for that.
This experience has really helped me and Shawn grow closer together and learn how to get through scary times. Due to the fact that I was also pregnant, all the stress was really hard to bear, but with Shawn and my friends family support, we made it through our tough situation.
I am so grateful to Shawn and all the hard work he put into our new home. He is the hardest worker I have ever met, and I am so proud of him. Due to the fact that I LOVE doing interior design, I do not make things easy on Shawn, but he knows how important it is to me, so he cooperates! Anyways, enjoy the pictures! BTW...If anyone comes down and needs a place to stay, give us a holler, we have a guest room, and we want to put it to use.

This is our dinning room. Even though we never use it, and we aren't really formal people, I love having somewhat of a formal dinning room.

This is our great room. We were able to get all new couches and everything to fit just perfect. The entertainment center was my own little fun design, and it turned out identical to my drawings, so I was happy!

Here's the kitchen. I went for a little more of a modern flare in the kitchen. It still needs a back splash, but we'll get it done someday.

This is Bryn's and Mya bathroom. It is also a guest bath, so it really isn't that kid friendly.

Here's our bedroom and Master bath. Shawn did all the tile work in the house! He is so amazing!

Here are the girls bedrooms. Shawn wasn't so thrilled about painting the stripes, but they turned out so cute!