Halloween and more...

Well to say the least this week has been...not the greatest. First I got sick, which is never fun, but its really hard when Sophie isnt feel too well either, and Nick started a new rotation which I like to call "the rotation from H". Basically he leaves the house at 7:30 am and doesnt get home until about 5pm, which isnt too bad, but then they have been making him work on these stupid article things that he works on as soon as he gets home until about the time we go to bed. So I have hardly seen him all week. And with me and Sophie both sick, and nobody around that I know (that doesnt have a job or is not in Pharmacy school) to talk to or possibly help me out with Sophie, it just hasnt been great. Needless to say, I am getting very ready to head back to Pocatello. :) Which is now less than a month away!! YAY!!
Ok but that is enough of me being negative.... Actually besides this week, everything has been really good. We had a fun Halloween, that we actually celebrated the Friday and Saturday before halloween.
Friday we went with a few other people in pharmacy school, and their families to a pumpkin patch. We went on a little hayride and looked at the farm animals they had. That night we had pizza and watched "Ernest Scared Stupid" (which is becoming a tradition for Nick and me). Then on Saturday our ward had a trunk or treat/ carnival thing and we all dressed up for it.

Sophie was a very cute little kitten, Nick went as a Mad Scientist, and I went as the Progressive Lady (there is a story behind that, but I dont feel like telling it) Anyways it was fun. Sophie was actually supposed to be a witch, I had made the costume for her, but for some reason she refused to wear the witch hat I made, so last minute I made her some Cat ears and she became a cat... with a tutu.. haha. It still looked pretty cute! :) 
So like I said that was all on the weekend before Halloween. For the actually day of Halloween, we traveled, yet again back to Idaho. Nick had to go for a pharmacy fair and so thats why we went. We spent the first day and a half in Burley with Nick's parents, then Wednesday Thursday and Friday were in Pocatello, and we headed back to Burley on Saturday and left for Reno on Sunday afternoon. It is always fun to see our families and Sophie really enjoyed all the attention she got. :) We had a good trip. 

So guess what else... SOPHIE IS WALKING!!! WOOT WOOT!! Ok So I know she is kind of a late bloomer when it comes to things like rolling over and crawling and, now, walking, but she finally got it!! YEAH!! She took her first steps on October 30 and, ya she still is a little wobbly and she still prefers to crawl since she gets around much faster that way, for now, but she is getting better. And its about time because she is officially 15 months old TODAY! So lets hope she starts picking it up quickly. :) ( by the way we do have a video of it but i cant figure out how to post videos on here that actually play, so you will all just have to come see her in person and watch how awesome she is! haha)

Our life

Ok Ok... I guess its about time for me to update this thing. I should really do it more often than I do because I feel like everytime I update, there is so much time that has past that I just dont have the time to put everything in here that I want. So I think im going to just generalize here and then put pictures, because they seem to tell more of a story than I can write.
Basically we are really enjoying our time here in Reno, and I can't believe that it is almost time for me to start packing up the house to head back to Idaho. (I am a little OCD when it comes to packing so I usually start like a month in advance, we move Dec. 9th) We have done so many fun things and had a good time just being somewhere new. Lake Tahoe has been one of our favorite places to go, and since the weather here is STILL really nice, we have been able to go more than I thought we would. Its so beautiful, I definitely recommend it to everyone! We have also had fun going on hikes near our house, going to different parks around the city (there are SO many), playing golf and tennis, going to the temple (its only about 10 min from our house), and SO many other things.
Sophie is getting so big! Ok well big for her. She still isnt walking but she figured out yesterday how to use her little car thing she got from Grandma Sue and Grandpa Scott for her birthday, to walk around with it. But she deosnt know how to turn so she runs into the walls and then just waits for me to turn it for her. Its pretty funny. She also is talking quite a bit, mostly its not words we can understand but she says "uh oh" all the time, usually when she drops something, and she says "dada" all the time too. She also says "hi" now when she waves to people but she will only do it when she wants to, if we try and tell her to say it she never does. Im afraid she picked up Nick and my stubborn-ness. haha Its inevitable, we are bound to have stubborn children! She is just so fun to have around though, she is my little buddy. Its so fun to watch her grow and learn new things. I swear she learns something new everyday. She is a very good little girl though. She has had quite the string of sicknesses the last few months but she stays mostly happy the whole time.
Nick is doing really well in his rotations and he has recently decided that he would really like to work in a hospital as the "infectious disease specialist" He just got done with his infectious disease rotation and he loved it. His preceptor (which i think is a fancy word for the guy in charge) Was really impressed with Nick and said he is willing to help him out on figuring out what he needs to do to get a job in a hospital. He also told Nick that he would give him great recommendations to wherever Nick wants to find the job. So hopefully that will help. We really want to live somewhere in Idaho close to family, so thats where we are going to be looking. But I know that Nick will just do great with whatever he does. He does so well in school and Im just glad that he likes it! :)
Anyways... so that is our life right now. Isn't it just so great! haha
  Here are pictures to show what I forgot to blog about:

This is Lake Tahoe... and you cant really tell from this picture how pretty it really is. By the way they are sitting on a paddle board, which is a board you are supposed to stand on and paddle around... its actually is very fun!

This is me on my birthday, Nick got me a Kindle and I LOVE IT!!!

My birthday cake

This is at my cousin Benji's wedding (I unfortunately never got a picture of him and his cute wife Kayla) But this is me and my two cousins Tina, and Missy

My brother Brandon with Sophie and Nick

Sophie with Grandpa Scott in his office chair at his work place

We visited Pocatello (during Benji's wedding) and went to the Blackfoot fair! Sophie was loving the animals!

Grandma Sherri and Sophie

more Tahoe

This little boy looks nice here but dont let him fool you haha... he loved to hit and push and scream at Sophie and yet she still loved having him to play with. This is the little thing she pushes around by herself now.

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and this is where we go hit golf balls. Its a driving rang where you try and hit onto these little islands. Nick loves coming here... in fact I think we are going tonight.


Also while we were in Pocatello, I had my parents next door neighbor take some pictures of Sophie for me. They turned out super cute!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOPHIE!!

Sophie is now 1!!! Her Birthday was August 11!! I cant believe how time has flown!! I know people always say it goes by so fast, and I believed them, but it still is crazy. :) Anyways... for Sophie's birthday Nick's parents came here to Reno.It was so fun to have them here. They got here on her birthday, so we had a little party that night for Sophie. It wasn't anything too special, but I made her a cake and we opened presents. She loved the cake! I made a little lady bug cake for her, and the "head" of the ladybug was a mini cake for Sophie to have all to herself.

 We let her eat it all by herself and she really dug in! It was hilarious!! She went from using her hands to just stuffing her whole face into the cake. It got all over her, and the walls, and everything, but it was definitely worth it!!

I realized in the middle of her eating the cake that the color of frosting I used probably wasnt the best choice. It looked really gross haha (but it tasted good)

After cake (and a bath) we had her open presents.She was very excited to be opening them. It was so fnny because She would scream ( a happy scream) everytime she opened a new present. It was very cute, and she definitely got spoiled, especially by Grandma Sue and Grandpa Scott. :)

Anyways... in celebration of her birthday I wanted to tell about some of the things she has learned and likes to do in this first year of her life. so here it goes:

1. She has learned how to crawl (ya it took her a long time, but she definitely has it down really well now, I think she will be walking any day now, but you never know with her)
2. She can feed herself (and she now doesn't choke on things as much, which I am very glad for)
3. She can wave.... at everything, its her favorite thing.
4. She can give mommy and daddy kisses... SO CUTE!
5. She can sleep through the night (YAY!!)
6. She can clap her hands
7. She can draw (kind of)
8. She loves to look at books
9. She loves her pink blanky
10. She loves to play catch with daddy (but she wont throw the ball for some reason, she hands it to him nicely haha)
11. She can brush her own hair... this is so cute!
12. She loves mommy to hold her.... ALL The time!
13. She loves to watch baby Einstein movies ( best invention EVER)
14. She loves to go on walks in her stroller
15. She loves animals, especially dogs and birds
16. She loves to go swimming
17. She can dance, and she loves music... its very cute
18. She loves little kids and babies
19. She loves to look at pictures of Jesus (and wave to him, cutest thing ever)
20. She loves her mommy and daddy, and we love her very much!!

We are very blessed to have such a sweet little girl. It definitely is such a learning experience but I am very grateful for it. I love (almost) every minute of it. I love watching her learn and grow and sometimes I still cant believe she is ours, and that we actually have a little girl! Being a parent is the best thing in the whole world! Happy Birthday Sophie!!!!

What a great summer....

Man!! I was just looking back at pictures that we have taken in the past 2 months and wow we have done so many things. I actually have been wanting to blog about each one seperately, but as you can see, Im not the best at blogging! :) But I have wanted to share some of the fun things we have done.

1. We went to San Francisco about a week and a half ago. It is about 3 hours away from Reno, so we figured since we are this close we had to go at least once. It was great! We went with Jeff and Hetti Gower. Jeff is in the pharamacy program with Nick, and his wife Hetti is what I would consider pretty much my only friend here in Reno. She's great! Anyways... it was a fun trip! 

Me and Sophie with the Ex con... apparently being an ex-inmate in alcatraz makes you some kind of a celebrity.



She was so tired!

In the Alcatraz Prison

Sea Lions at Pier 39

Golden Gate Bridge

Lumbard Street

Those hills in San Francisco are brutal!

2. Nick just finished up his 2nd rotation here. It was a Walgreens rotation and the lady who was in charge of him was going to be gone for Nick's last week. She was very very nice and decided to let Nick have off Wed.- Fri. So Nick surprised me and let us go on a little trip back to Pocatello (which for us isnt such a little trip, its 9 hours from Reno). We actually surprised my parents too and just showed up at the door. Well technically we set Sophie on the door step in her carseat, covered the car seat with a blanket, and rang and ran, My dad answered and actually thought some random person was trying to leave their child with my parents. You know, like in the movies kind of. Anyways... he totally blew past Sophie (who was crying) and came running out after whoever dropped the baby off. It was actually really funny! Im laughing just thinking about it, and he was way suprised when he saw it was us. I couldnt believe he didnt even look at the crying baby. Who does that?!
We were actually in Burley first, before we went to Pocatello, to visit Nick's parents and it was so fun seeing them too. Nick was way excited to be able to go water skiing, and golfing. And it turned out to be perfect weather for both of those. The river in Burley was as smooth as I have ever seen it. And Nick and I and Nick's dad all went golfing and Nick shot the best round he has ever shot,and he beat me by one stroke, which is quite the accomplishment for him, and a bummer for me because until now, golf was the only thing I had up on him. oh well! : )
It turned out be be a perfect week to visit Nick's family because Chad (nicks brother) blessed their new little baby Quincy, so the whole family was in town for that. We were very excited to be able to go to that and see everyone.
It also turned out to be like the worst weekend to visit my family. My parents had their 30yr highschool reunion that weekend and they both were involved with planning it. And Mandy and Bryson had a big tennis tournament that weekend also. It was still fun to see them, but we just didnt get as much time with them as I would have liked. Mandy and Bryson dominated at tennis though, and we watched their matches so that was pretty cool.

She loves the water!

Nick doin his thing on the water ski

Cool sunglasses huh! :)

Me... attempting to wakeboard. Ever since my fall on the motorcycle Im terrified of wrecking on anything. I was really scared to go wakeboarding, but Nick talked me into it, and it was pretty fun. Even though I suck! :)

You cant really tell from this picture but Sophie is waving too. She waves at everything... its so cute!

Grandma Sue, Sophie, and Mary on the boat

The Barker family!

3. With all of this time on my hands here in Reno ( ya right) I have worked on a few projects. I guess one of the advantages of being poor is that I never want to spend money, or rather I dont have the money to spend, so, I teach myself how to make things, and I think I prefer it now to buying stuff. I feel like I appreciate it a lot more, and its fun! I would definitely recomend it. And seriously if I can do it anyone can! I dont even know what im doing really, I just kind of start and hope for the best.
The first project is a new carseat cover. I made it because the original one on the carseat started falling apart, and to buy a new one costs a lot more than I was willing to pay, so... here it is...... before...

notice the duct tape?

And the rips?

And After.... what do ya think? Dont look too close. ;)




 I have also been working on a Quiet Book for Sophie for her birthday ( which is tomorrow, YAY!!!!) I dont have any pictures of it yet, but its pretty cute! It was really fun to make.


My most recent project is a curtain covering thing for our entertainment center. Sophie loves to pull out all the movies and fling them all over the room, so I am covering it so she cant do that anymore. That project is actually not finished yet. Hopefully soon. :)

 SO............ Like I said, this has been a great summer so far. We have really enjoyed our time here, and the summer isn't over yet! We still have more fun things ahead!  :)