Our super busy April: part 2

Yes, there's more to our month... And some I'll have to post later when I get pictures from stuff that happened this week. There were just so many things we wanted to do with each other before we all move, and time slipped away so quickly! 

Every year, our friends the Mortensens host a Cinco De Mayo party. Since they moved this morning, :( it was held last weekend. There was super yummy food, including a dangerous Tres Leches Cake, and of course awesome company. Marci had the fun idea to do photos as family groups with sombreros and mustaches. So hilarious! Here are some of the families who were there...

The Larson family

The Redd family

The Karren family

The Reynders family

The Turner family

The Bruner family (by the way, this family might end up in Columbus for residency next year... we sure hope so!!)

The Stephenson family

The Dunlavy family

The Mortensen family

Grace is going to be so confused when she doesn't see all of her buddies all the time. :( It's going to be so sad for me to have to keep telling her "No, we can't play with so-and-so". Yesterday we had some little friends over (Chad and Paisley) and they all had a good time playing together. All four of these kids are blessed with beautifully tan skin! 

 Today was a little birthday celebration at the park for "Baby Grace" (Anderson's little sister). She is such a sweet girl and our Grace loves her. :) Every time we talk about Anderson doing something, Grace asks "And Baby Grace, too?" Below is a picture of Chad, Grace, Anderson and Grace who is now a big one-year-old!

 I feel like this is a terrible picture of me... but anyway, here is Melanie Redd and I. She is such a sweetheart and they're moving all the way to Hawaii for residency! Lucky, right?! Can you believe we'll be 6 hours apart in time zones? :( My goal is to make it out to see them sometime in the next couple years. I hope it happens!!

 Today was Ryan's very LAST day of medical school. He finished his 4-year experience in a general pediatrics rotation with our kids' pediatrician: Dr. James Mcghee. We really love this doctor and will miss him. Ryan especially loved learning from and spending time with him. To celebrate we went to get sushi for dinner tonight. I should say "I allowed us to go get sushi for dinner". haha. Ryan begs for sushi aaaallll the time, but I don't like it and it can be expensive. So he pretty much never gets to have any. But I think he deserved it tonight! :) Surprisingly, Grace loved eating the egg rolls, tempura shrimp, stir-fry noodles, and everything dipped in soy sauce right along with us. She's SO her daddy's girl. I can't believe she liked all those new things.

  I'm so proud of Ryan and all he has accomplished! It's so amazing to have gotten to this day. It's pretty unreal, to be honest. I don't think it will feel real until graduation day which is May 20th. That's when we can finally say he is officially "Dr. Ryan Turner". Crazy!!! He is so amazing and such a good example of perseverance and self-discipline. We sure love him.

Now it's on to packing for the next full week... spending a week in Salt Lake... coming back here for a few more days to finish packing... graduation, and then it's off to Columbus we go! Come June, we're going to need a break from the craziness. :)

Our super busy April: part 1

This month has been pretty much non-stop activities and parties. We're exhausted and this post is going to be pretty full. :) But we sure had a lot of fun!! 

We celebrated two of our little friends' birthdays: Addie turned 2 and Beckham turned 3. Their moms planned a double party with a different theme for each kid. As always, with these two ladies (who are "THE" party planners, I'd say) each theme was so neat and detailed. Addie's was a Sesame Street theme and Beckham's was a Dinosaur them. My cake-baking friend, Robyn, made the super cute cakes! 

 All the cute kiddos! I LOVE Grace and Logan in this photo. It makes me smile. Don't worry, I'm holding Logan next to Grace although it looks like it's all her.

 For lunch, we had a "build your own sack lunch" picnic with a neat spread of prepackaged foods to put inside a paper sack. Very clever and cute! We had a nice time with our picnics, relaxing on the grass.

 The next week was another fun birthday party for Brig (top middle, in green shirt) who turned 5. It was a fun How To Train Your Dragon theme. Here again are most of the cute kiddos at the party. :) By the way, the baby next to Logan is almost 3 months older and they're the same size!

 We realized recently that we NEVER once visited the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign while living here. So we just had to go, of course! What we should have done was taken a photo of just Ryan and I four years ago in the front, and then all 4 of us in front of the "Come Back Soon" sign on the back side. It would have been fun to see the growth in these 4 years, but you get the idea. :) We visited the sign last week with our good friends the Larsons.

 Abby and Grace being silly.

 GOODBYE, LAS VEGAS!!! I can't say we'll be back anytime in the near future... :)

 We've also had a ton of park days because the weather has been in the 80s mostly. Ryan was able to come to the ward playgroup at the local park last wednesday (he had the day off). The kids just LOVED having him there. They got him to play tag with them but only wanted him to be "it" the whole time, haha. I literally have 3 or 4 photos of a big group of our friends' kids following him around like puppy dogs. So cute!! If anyone wonders why he chose Pediatrics, you don't know him at all. haha

 Some of the ladies chillin' in the shade. I'm really, really going to miss these girls, their kids, and all the fun we've had together.

 Last week it reached the 90s and even got to 100 degrees last sunday. YUCK! I can hardly wait to escape the terrible summers here. Bring on the humidity. ;) On monday it was still super hot so a bunch of us met at our pool for our very first swim day of the year. It was so fun to be out there and enjoying the perfect temperature of the pool on such a warm day. These times together are definitely going to be missed as well!

 Look at that chub!!

 Grace was having a BLAST in the pool. She got tired out pretty quickly though and ended up begging for a nap and skipping lunch completely.

 Two saturdays ago, a bunch of the other graduation families got together for a multi-family moving sale. Between the 7 families we had a ton of "junk" and were anxious to see it all sell or hauled off to the DI. That morning ended up being in the 50s and rainy (pretty much winter around here) so it was pretty miserable. Plus, we had so much to set out, and only a few areas to set things to keep them dry, so it felt very disorganized and crazy. People were showing up an hour before we had scheduled it to start, so it was a bit stressful right at the beginning. By 1:00pm we were all exhausted, cold, and ready to be done... but there was still a ton of stuff that could be sold. So we decided to do it again the next saturday. The funny thing was that the next week was in the 90s! Figures. It was so hot, but we still got lots of people stopping by.

 Melanie, me, Alisha, Robyn

Paige, Rachele, Emily

Overall Ryan and I made about $150. We even sold Ryan's infamous Buddha statue that I've hated all these years... should've priced it for more then $5 though. Ryan still pines for that thing but it started becoming a clothing rack and needed to go.

My good friend Robyn and I. She shivered through the entire morning on that first week! Good thing I hadn't packed my winter coats yet so I could lend her one.

Just to finish up this "part 1" of April's activities, here is a photo of Grace with her new baby doll: Baby Emma. We bribed her with it before our family photo shoot last week and it worked! She was so excited for her baby that has a diaper to take on and off and a binkie. We asked her what the baby's name was, and helped her out by throwing some name options around. As soon as we said "Emma" she was like "Yes! Baby Emma!" This photo makes me laugh because she was sad about something and wouldn't smile for the camera. 

 And... of course I can't leave out our chubby little man. He's so smiley these days and likes to talk to us all the time.

Family Photos 2012

 My good friend Casie was great enough to fit our family photo shoot into her BUSY schedule last week! She and her family are moving to Colorado for residency but are moving out of their home this weekend so they can spend time with family in Utah for a few weeks. :( We are so sad to see them go, as they are one of the first of our friends to head out. I'm glad we still get to see them in a couple weeks for graduation. She did such a wonderful job with our pictures, and I absolutely loved taking them at Lake Las Vegas!! I love so many of them that I have to post a whole bunch on here. There are more though, trust me. She took all the photos and I did the editing ... so if there are issues, it's on my end. ;)

Thank you again, Casie! 

Logan: Three Months

This little guy is growing and changing so quickly! We absolutely love having Logan around and if I go more than a couple hours without him I truly miss him.

Here are some photos from his 3 months shoot...

 So smiley these days!

He found his fingers and always has them in his mouth now. I also love this picture because you can see how perfect his little nails are.

-weighs at least 16 lbs (according to our home scale)
-wears size 3 diapers now
-wears size 6 month clothes
-Nurses anywhere from every 2.5 to 4.5 hours during the day.
-Doesn't love bottles, but when he does have to take one he seems to drink anywhere from 3.5 to 5 oz.
-At night, he usually sleeps one long stretch of 6 hours, and then another stretch of about 4 hours.
-I can usually get Logan to "dream feed" around 10pm which is why he sleeps that longer stretch in the first part of the night.
-Naps a lot during the day, but usually they're not for long periods of time. Between feedings he'll usually take a short 30-45 minute nap, then wake up for a little while, and then take another 1 hour ish nap until the next feeding. That is so off from what Grace used to do at this age, and what I want him to do (according to the Baby Wise book we like to refer to), but he seems to do well with that schedule. As long as he sleeps those longer stretches at night then I think we're on the right track. He'll figure it out sometime! :)
-Growing more dark hair!! I absolutely love it.
-Spends a whole lot of time on his back (in the bouncer chair, mostly, while I'm doing things around the house). Unfortunately it means he has quite the flat spot on the back of his head. Dr. Daddy has to point it out all the time... but hopefully it gets better once he starts sitting in the Bumbo chair more often.
-Logan is finally able to use his neck and stomach muscles better to keep himself forward and upright in the Bumbo chair! (as of this week)
-He learned to roll from front to back last night and has done it several times last night and today. :) Here is the video from this morning:
-Logan's eyes are blue like Grace's, but much darker.
-Logan likes to be swaddled for naps and sleeping at night, but no matter how tightly I wrap him he usually gets out of it by the time he's waking up to nurse again. Strong kid!
-When he whines and cries, he makes the "ng-ya, ng-ya" sound over and over. He also "talks" to us when he's happy by cooing. Here is a video of some cooing and smiling:
-Logan also shows us when he's happy and kicking his feet non-stop. It reminds me of a puppy wagging its' tail. :)
-He has a diaper blow-out pretty much daily and sometimes multiple times a day. It's either a HUGE mess, or just a little leak onto his onesie, but either way I'm constantly soaking his clothes. We finally finished our packs of size 2 diapers and the new size 3s seem to be helping to cut the amount of blow-outs in half.

In the car, looking at the world in the mirror.

Hangin' with his sister, watching a morning cartoon.

A little daddy time!