First Week of School

Well, I have finished my first week back at school and so far it is going pretty well. I have five of the same students that I had last year, so that makes life a lot easier. Aaron is excited because I get to come home with some good stories again.

It is sooo nice to be part time this year. It is especially wonderful since Chloe is having a hard time with me being gone. She is getting better every day, but you can tell that she misses her mommy. She starts out everyday and Grandma and Grandpa's in a terrible mood, but I think by the afternoon she realizes that life's not so bad and she cheers up.

By the way, lately she has started to make a "ma ma" sound...it just melts my heart. Now I'm working on getting a "da da" sound out of her!

25!

Today was my 25th birthday (yep, I am finally a quarter of a century old). The day started off with Aaron surprising me with a delicious cake from the Provo Bakery and Chloe surprised me by sleeping in until 8:00 a.m.! We thought it would be fun to have cake for breakfast, boy were we wrong. We both felt sick afterwards, but it was good while we were eating it.

Then we went and had Chloe's six month pictures taken and got some really cute ones. I was surprised that we got so many cute ones because she was not in a smiley mood. We get them in a couple of weeks so keep your eyes out for them.

After the photo shoot, we drove up to spend the rest of the day in Salt Lake City. We walked around temple square, the church history museum and up to the state capitol. No matter how fancy of a restaurant Aaron offers to take me to, I just love the Olive Garden, so of course we went there for dinner and Chloe gave me another birthday present by sleeping almost through he entire meal...it was so pleasant! Speaking of pleasant, the weather was in the mid. 80's, which is insane for August but we weren't complaining.

The day ended with a little shopping and opening up Aaron's present to me (a Cricut electronic paper cutter...I have wanted one for a long time so I was really excited to get it. Don't I have such a great husband!). Overall it was a wonderful birthday.

Chloe's Tongue

For the past few weeks, Chloe has been working on discovering her tongue. She will stick it out and then pull it back in over and over again. It is pretty dang cute because her tongue is so teeny.

If I stick my tongue out at her she will either stick her tongue out at me and smile or try to grab it.

We were able to get a pretty good shot of her with her tongue out. Enjoy!

Nightly Check-ups

Every night before we go to bed, I always go into Chloe's room to check on her. You know...make sure she hasn't pulled the covers over her face and the like. Well, the other night I went in to check on her and this is what I found. She must have been playing with her doll and just got too tired and fell asleep with it on top of her head.

While we are on the topic of her nightly check-ups, this isn't the first time we have found something funny.

One night, I went in to check on her and as I was looking at her, I thought something looked off. Upon further investigation, I realized that her pacifier was in her mouth upside down...something she normally never ever tolerates. We can always hear her playing with her pacifier in her crib and that night, upside down was the way it stayed. Of course, I had to call Aaron in to show him because it looked so funny and we both just thought of how tired she must have been to be twisting it around in her mouth, and then just like that, fall asleep. We both started cracking up. Luckily we were able to contain our laughter until we were out of the room so we didn't wake her up.

Sitting!

Chloe has finally begun to sit on her own. At first she could only stay up for a second or two before face planting, but now she can sit for minutes at a time. She is still a little wobbly (who wouldn't be on those tiny little buns), but over all I would say that she has got it down.

Payson Lakes

Aaron's parents were camping at Payson Lakes this past weekend so we thought we would go spend Saturday evening with them. The weather was about 20 degrees cooler than in the valley so we enjoyed sitting outside and taking in the view. However, the mosquito's were out in full force so we had to bundle Chloe up pretty good.

Chloe loves to suck on cold things. If we have a water bottle or popsicle, she always tries her hardest to take it from us so she can suck all the condensation off of it. It's pretty cute when she gets the whole top of the water bottle in her mouth and the rest of it is just hanging out.

We had such a great time on Saturday that we decided to go back up on Sunday after church. When we got there, Chloe had fallen asleep so we thought we would go for a walk around the lake. There were some dark clouds in the sky that looked like rain, but the forecast didn't call for any rain so we weren't worried about getting wet. As we were leaving, Aaron said "I hope it doesn't start to pour on us, I have my cell phone in my pocket". Well, you can see what happened! By the time we got back to the campsite, we were soaked to the bone...but it was awfully fun; it made us feel like newlyweds again. However, we sure were glad that we didn't have Chloe with us; something tells me it just wouldn't have been quite so endearing with a screaming baby.

Dinosaur Museum

On Saturday, my cousin Melissa, her daughter Sequoia and my grandparents came into town from California. We thought it would be fun to go to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi. I thought it was interesting, but Aaron was less than impressed! He said more real bones would have been impressive, but the big replicas just didn't float his boat.

After the museum, we went out to dinner at Chuck-A-Rama--that place is my grandpa's favorite buffet and whenever he comes into town we have to go there. Being that it is a buffet, we all stuffed ourselves and I of course heard the following oh so familiar complaint come from Aaron: "I'm so full...I am never going to eat at a buffet again." Of course, in a few months when Grandpa comes back into town all I hear Aaron saying is "Chuck-A-Rama sounds good."

We finished off the evening with games and a wonderfrul fireworks show that was being put on at Thanksgiving Point. We didn't know that there was going to be a show that night, but you didn't hear us complaining. We had a great view from my parents deck and the weather couldn't have been more pleasant.

Family Pictures

While Aaron's family was all in town for the Fourth of July, we took the opportunity to have some family pictures taken. We had a professional photographer take some shots of the whole family, so we don't have any of those to share yet, but Devon and Aaron's sister Angela traded off taking some shots of the individual families. These were some of our favorites of us.

New School

Well, after working hard all year to figure out a way to stay at my current school, Cascade Elementary, while switching to part-time teaching, I just got a phone call saying that I am going to have to move schools since there are two schools with Autism Units within two miles of one another; my school and Foothill Elementary. Due to the amount of students between the two schools, the district can't keep four teachers at the two schools, so they are going to combine the units. There aren't enough classrooms at Cascade, so my co-teacher and I are going to have to move to Foothill.

I am very sad because I love my school and all of the teachers there. I am going to miss them so much, but I feel blessed to have worked with all of them for the past four years. Luckily, my new school is so close to my old one so I will be able to pop in and visit often. I guess I will have to just look on the bright side and think of all the new teachers I will get to meet. Oh, and also that I still have a job!

I am going to move all my stuff at the end of the month and start the fun process of organizing and decorating my new classroom. If anyone wants to help, I would love the extra hands.

More Fourth of July Pictures