2 month old Joanna

Dear Joanna,

Hi my dear girl! You are 2 months old and we are headed home from your first ever camping trip! We had a wonderful time with Pappy, Mawmaw, Uncle Wayne, Aunt Lelia, and cousin Vienna in Lake City! You spent a lot of time swinging in the hammock with your daddy - which you loved -, being held around town and at the campground, and you actually took some naps in the camper and once in your bassinet outside! :) You had some rough moments of lots of crying and one long night of waking up quite frequently for you... Mommy has decided you are a lover of our home and you are so ready to be home! But all the other nights you slept really great once you went down and mommy and daddy were actually able to get you down for bed by 9 pm last night to enjoy an evening around the campfire with everyone else! :)

You are growing and growing! I'm really excited for you have your 2 month wellness appt this week to see how much you've grown! You are still smiling up a storm and absolutely love your daddy!!! It amazes me how your face lights up when you see him! :) You are liking car rides a little bit more than you had been but you are still quite a fussy rider! :( I wish I could do more to make you happy in the car, like right now, but you just seem to greatly dislike them... :( So sorry little girl!

You rolled over for the first time this week in Lake City in Pappy and Mawmaw's camper!! Just once from tummy to back but you were quite proud of yourself and then not so happy when I put you on your tummy to try again! ;) I hope we can give you more chances to have tummy time because you definitely seem to be liking it more lately!

You have been sleeping great and fairly consistently sleep from around 9 to 4 or 5 in the morning! My goal in the next few weeks while we are home is to work on putting you down for naps more consistently than we have been because I'm thinking that would make you a much happier baby! :)

You love to be outside! We went fishing yesterday and it was cloudy so Mawmaw was able to hold you for awhile without covering you up and you loved just looking at God's beautiful creation! The bright sun is not your favorite...

You have also loved spending time lying on your back and just watching your sister and brother or others play or work. You are very observant and definitely enjoy being around people more than being alone! Maybe you'll be my social butterfly!

Sometimes mommy gets extremely tired and overwhelmed from taking care of all three of you kiddos but I absolutely love when I get to feed you even at night in the quiet times... I love those sweet moments of bonding with my sweet Joanna Beth!  :) You have added so much joy to our lives and I'm so thankful for every moment we have with you!

Love you sweet girl!
~Mommy

On the Way to Lake City...

I wrote this in the car a few days ago...

We are driving to Lake City, CO right now so I figured I had some extra time to be able to write another blog post! We are meeting my parents there and should hopefully be there in three hours at least! So far the kids have been great! Joanna took a wonderful morning nap IN HER BASSINET - that is BIG news!!! :) - for over two hours this morning so that was perfect for Scott and I to get everything loaded up.

Joanna is definitely getting out of her little newborn stage more and more especially with her sleeping lately. Just in the last week or two she has been sleeping better and finally likes her car seat much better than before. (Ever since Memorial Day she absolutely hated her car seat and screamed almost the entire time she was in it until Scott put extra cushion in the form of a folded up receiving blanket under her hips! She just wanted some extra cushion. Lol.) And she is finally taking more naps not on us... Either in her swing (which just broke so we are ordering a new one - Daniel swung in it all the time as a baby and must have worn it out), in the front pack, or sometimes in her bassinet or on our bed!!! Yay! :)

Anyway, I'll share more of Joanna soon since she turns 2 months old on Friday... :)

The other night I went back and read through so many of my blog posts after Daniel was born. So much fun remembering those days and made me want to keep up with blogging mainly for myself to be able to read back on in future years. :)

I'm looking so forward to the next four days in lake city! Mom said it's crazy windy there right now so fishing isn't the greatest and she said there aren't too many people there right now, but I'm still so excited to be back and enjoy the time as a family. I have loved building memories as a family and I love how much Daniel and Lydia enjoy looking back on pictures from Disney world and other trips and watching random videos I've taken... Definitely one of my favorite things to do with our family - travel, family "dates", and building other fun memories!

I'm so excited to be able to go more consistently to small groups from our church in Denver... We have only been able to try one one time so far, but I'm excited to go there a few more times at least and hopefully try another one, too. Praying that God shows us clearly which group he wants us to be a part of and praying that we can build some great friendships with other families at church. Deep, wonderful friendships that go further than just seeing them at church or small group! It would bd so nice to have friends we could hang out with at other times over dinner, play dates, etc. Miss having friends like that so much like we had on grand junction.

Ok I think that's all I'll write for now. Will try to share about our time in lake city maybe on the way back! :)

Busy Life as a Mother of Three!

Wow! Life has been busy, busy! I can hardly believe that our sweet Joanna is already 8 weeks old and on Friday she will be two months old. Life is flying by so fast. I feel extremely exhausted and I'm pretty sure that I could sleep for an entire day straight, but I'm still very thankful that we have our sweet little one to take care of and a house that we are making into a home... :) It is all totally worth the exhaustion! A few weeks ago I was able to have my first 45 minutes to myself without anything to do, so I went to our favorite coffee shop in Old Towne Arvada near us and had a wonderful time journaling, drinking a Lavender Freeze, and eating a slice of amazing homemade apple pie! It was an amazing time! I wanted to share some of what I had written while journaling, but my journal is in our room which happens to be where Joanna is sleeping right now so I don't even want to chance waking her up! So I will be my random self and share whatever else right now even thought it's almost 10 p.m. and I feel like sleeping! 

I am absolutely loving our new home. I'm in the process of going through paint samples trying to decide what to paint all of the rooms upstairs. Right now there is white paint on all the walls which is okay since it makes everything very bright, but I love more color even if it's just a cream or tan. We leave to go camping on Wednesday in Lake City with my parents and Lelia, Wayne, and niece, Vienna. But when we get back we have a few weeks to focus on painting and decorating our home, finally! I really can hardly believe I haven't put any pictures on the walls, yet! This is coming from the girl who always had pictures up on most of the walls by the first or second week at our last few homes! I am definitely enjoying looking at Pinterest for ideas of paint colors and decorations, and I'm very excited that we actually have lots of walls in this house and so many great areas to put cool decorations or crafts that I can make! 

We just got back from Steamboat Springs a few days ago where we spent three days with Jesse and Rhonda's family at the missionary housing up there. It was SO much fun fishing, playing miniature golf, going to the candy store in town, and spending time visiting! Our kids had a wonderful time fishing. Scott was amazing and held Joanna in her front pack almost each time we fished. While he fished with her I was able to watch the older kids fish. I am amazed again and again by how fast Lydia picks up on things! (The other week while Scott and I cleaned out his garage with Joanna in the front pack again, Daniel and Lydia rode their tricycles around and around Scott's truck in the driveway. At the beginning Lydia was just scooting the tricycle along with her feet and by the end of the morning of riding 2 to 3 hours, she was pedaling crazy fast around the turns and everything!) The first morning we went out to fish, Lydia was trying to cast like Daniel but she definitely couldn't get it to cast out far... By that afternoon after naps, she was casting just as far as Daniel (and further than I could even cast their fishing poles most of the time)! Daniel was fishing with a hook and lure this time but never caught a fish which was sad... :( He was a good sport with it, though, and even though he was disappointed, he was also really excited for the other guys who all ended up catching at least one that week. He was so dedicated, though, and seriously kept fishing for hours at a time even though all the other kids would stop quite often and play around for awhile.

Wednesday we will be headed over to Lake City, CO for our yearly camping trip with my parents! So excited to go to Lake City. Still one of our favorite places to go camping and it feels like home in a lot of ways after going there so many times in the past 5 years since our honeymoon there and all growing up for me. The kids are beyond excited to go camping and I'm excited to take Joanna on her first camping trip! At least we have our pop-up camper because that will help us stay nice and warm and I'm praying that Joanna sleeps really well at night there like she has been lately!

There are so many other things I would love to share, but I seriously need to get to sleep now. Little by little I'll try to share more on here in the midst of life's craziness!