The Rare and Special Place

Doesn't this sort of remind you of a witch's house?

Way back at the beginning of the summer (you can tell it's old by Lucy's lack of hair) Logan and I went to a rare and special place.  It's this beautiful wetland in west Layton where you can walk out on the board walk, and go up to the observation deck (pictured above). 

It really is beautiful, and we had a fun time walking and taking pictures of passing birds.  Although we did discover that our jogging stroller's alignment is WAY off. And by WAY off, I mean we were off the edge of the boardwalk in six steps!  As you can see, we ditched the stroller and ended up carrying Lucy on our shoulders for most of the way (which could also be due to the fact that Lucy would scream whenever we put her in the stroller).

Family self-portrait!

Also at the beginning of the summer (maybe I should blog more often...) we went up to Promentory Point to watch my Uncle Eric in a shooting competition.  Basically they shoot really old guns using bullets they made themselves and use only metal sights to aim.  It was pretty impressive.  The target was a metal buffalo that was over 1,000 yards away.  It took the bullet about 4 seconds to reach it.  It was insane.  I tried to draw an arrow on the picture above to point to the buffalo, but the arrow is kind of small.  Pretty much, you could barely see the buffalo without looking through a scope.  It was really cool.  Plus Lucy was an amazingly good sport -- she wasn't bothered at all by the loud noise of the guns. 

After, we drove over to the Spiral Jetty since we were so close.  If you have never been, it is definitely worth going.  Check it out!

Funny Faces

Lucy makes such cute little faces.  However, as shown in the previous post -- Lucy loves the camera.  This makes it hard to get candid pictures of her, because as soon as she sees the camera, she stops doing whatever she was doing and starts smiling and trying to grab the camera.  I was, however, able to capture a few gems:

Apparently, pine needles are gross

Still not loving peas (she was making this face with every bite!)

Here are some picture of my new favorite thing that Lucy does.  I don't know why she started making this face, but she does it all the time.  She also breathes through her nose very loudly when she makes this face.  It makes me laugh every time.

Happy scrunched face.

Angry scrunched face. 

I almost forgot I had a video of her making her scrunch face!  Enjoy!

Oh, how we love this little girl! 

Say Cheese!*

Lucy has started smiling at the camera.  It is the cutest thing ever!  Here is a great example (and my new favorite picture of Lucy and Logan):

Darling, right?  And after a while, she starts doing a fake smile:

Now, you probably don't believe me.  But here is proof.  Lucy was being pretty whiny today, and I took a video of her (mostly so I could show Logan how awesome my day was -- haha!), and as soon as she saw the camera she started to smile really big.  She is pretty cute.

 

*On a side note, I hate it when people try to get you to "say cheese" (or any other word, for that matter) for the camera.  Seriously people, we can all smile without saying something.

Lucy is Six Months Old!

Holy cow!  I can hardly believe that Lucy is half a year old!  She is getting so big, and gets cuter and cuter every day!

Weight: 14 pounds 5 ounces (17%)

Length: 25 inches (22%)

Favorite Song: "Here's A Ball for Baby" - Mostly I think she likes watching me do the actions, "I Feel My Savior's Love" 

Favorite Book: "Are You My Mother?" and "I Love You Daddy"

Likes: Sitting up, when I stick out my tongue at her, feeding herself, being outside or looking out the window, sitting on our shoulders.

Dislikes: Falling over when she was sitting up, peas (we just discovered that last night!), going to bed at night, when she's not the center of attention.

Mobility: Lucy is a pro at rolling from her back to her stomach.  She can roll from her stomach to her back, and is getting better and better at doing it intentionally.  

Logan thinks this looks like that one Einstein picture

Oh, how we love this little girl!  She is such a happy baby and smiles all the time!  She is still sleeping great!  She sleeps through the night (from 8PM to 7AM!!) and takes a couple of naps in the day.  Her naps are not very consistent though.  Sometimes she sleeps for 1/2 hour, sometimes she sleeps for 2 1/2 hours.  We are working on that.  We just started feeding her, which she enjoys for the most part.  She loves to grab the spoon and put it in her mouth herself -- she's very independent like that.

First time eating solids!

She is so cute!  To prove that, here are a bunch of pictures from the past month that I love.  And I'm not even going to apologize for the picture overload -- they are all so adorable, I know you will love them!  =)

She totally rocks tummy time now!

Self portrait!

I just love this one -- it makes me laugh

Easter outfit!

Track suit and k-swiss shoes -- she's so awesome!

Peas are gross!

Jackson Hole!

 As mentioned in my previous post, Logan and I (and Lucy) went up to Jackson Hole for our third anniversary!  Although cold, windy, and rainy, we had a blast!

First of all, on the drive up, we stopped in Logan and had dinner with our good friends the Latimers!  They are moving to Olympia in a few weeks, and we wanted to see them before they moved!  Plus we got to meet their darling baby boy!  While in Logan, we also went to Charlie's and got the shake of the month. This month's flavor was Oreo!  Woohoo!  It was delicious!

Me lovin' my Oreo shake!

In Jackson, we talked to the rangers to see if there were any hikes that weren't too snowy.  Apparently, we should have brought our cross-country skis!  Jackson had record snow pack, and all the trails were completely covered in snow.  Jenny Lake was still frozen solid!  We did go on a short little hike on the packed down snow -- we lasted about 30 minutes before deciding it was too icy and cold for Lucy.  

That night we went out on the town -- we window shopped and ate dinner at Bubba's BBQ.  DELICIOUS!
 

This may be the best family self portrait ever!

 The next day it was pouring rain and cold, so we took Lucy swimming for her very first time!  She was very tolerant of the pool -- just like she is in the bath (see her bath pictures here).  I think given time, she will learn to love swimming!

We planned on driving around the Tetons since it was too cold to hike, but because of the low clouds no Tetons could be seen.  Luckily, literally across the road from this sign:

We saw:

MOOSE!  Four of them, in fact!  It was awesome! Plus, then we went and checked out the visitor center. We were especially entertained because of this:

This, my friends, is why the engineering code has such crazy snow loads! Strange things happen with snow, and you don't want your building to fall down.  Never fear, the building I designed in Jackson (across the street from the visitor center) was still standing under all the snow!  Whew!

Lucy loves hair!  She had fun touching all of the animal fur at the visitor center!

Our anniversary trip was a blast!  And it was fun having Lucy with us.  Although, next year when Lucy is18 months old, we may have to leave her at her grandparents' house.  =)

Enginerd Romance

 As of yesterday, Logan and I have been married for three years!  Our anniversary was a little different this year than it has been previously.  First of all, although we did our traditional Jackson Hole trip, this year we took our six month old baby Lucy with us.  I will post more pictures of our Jackson trip later. Second, our actual anniversary was on Mother's day, so it kind of got lost in the celebration of Mothers.  Neither of these are necessarily bad things, I just didn't get to focus on the importance of our anniversary like I normally do.

So, here is the story of our enginerd romance:

Looking at the surface, Logan and my romance was pretty normal.  We met in college, started dating, fell in love, and got married.  However, if you look deeper, you can find the true nerdiness of our relationship. 

Logan first noticed me when I was giving a presentation about the Logan landfill and recycling in our Environmental Management class.  We first started talking to each other when we were in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) presidency together.  Then, we started doing our homework together, and started talking to each other in our Transportation class.  We worked on the steel bridge together.  Sparks started flying at the ASCE steel bridge and concrete canoe competition.  Almost all of our engineering friends at the conference noticed that someone was up, and when engineers notice stuff like that, you know it's getting serious.

One of our first pictures together -- taken at the ASCE conference.

We went to homecoming dressed in duct tape.  And then, we even started reading the steel manual together by the hearth.  It was destined to be a serious relationship. 

One of our duct tape outfits (and yes, that does imply that we have multiple duct tape outfits)

On May 8th, 2008 the week after we both finished our bachelors degrees in Civil Engineering, we were married in the Bountiful Temple.  As you can tell from the picture below, we were pretty excited about it. 

The past three years have been fantastic.  Logan is such a great husband, and I love that we can be nerdy together.  We have visited buildings that I designed, gone to bridge launches for bridges he has designed, and look at the structural components of all large buildings we enter.  Logan is the best dad!  He is so good with Lucy and does whatever he can to help me when I need a break .  Pretty soon Lucy is going to know the difference between a beam and a column, and between a beam and a girder. 

 This picture looks like a normal self-portrait -- really we were trying to show the crazy snow loads on the building behind us! Nerds!

I'm so glad I married Logan!  I love you babe!

Bath time revisited

This was Lucy when she was two months old taking a bath. She was unsure and wary of what was happening. (See the full post here)

Here is Lucy when she was 5 months old taking a bath.  She is still unsure and wary.  She is getting better though  -- she now only furrows her eyebrows half the time instead of the entire time. 

The other half of the time she chews on the washcloth.

I hope she starts loving it soon -- it's almost summer and I'm planning on taking her swimming!