911... What is your emergency?

So we are in Denver in temporary housing now for the next month.  The movers came and packed up our stuff and will be delivering most of it to a storage unit tomorrow; some will come to this temporary apartment.  The movers and everyone organizing our move have for the most part done well and things have gone pretty smoothly.  I have had little to stress about, and I still seemed to screw it up.  The story goes as follows:
Everything was out of our home in Payson, except the dirt.  I borrowed my SIL Sam's vacuum since ours had been loaded for storage. I loaded Jordyn and the vacuum into my mother in law's car since mine was full of stuff, and went to Sam's house to return the vacuum and say my final goodbye.  Somehow, I lost my brain for about 7 seconds and locked the keys and Jordyn in the car!  I was horrified!  It was hot and the car was directly in the sun.  I spent about 15 minutes trying to find my mother in law and a spare key.  Then tried to find a policeman I had seen on the side of the road.  After about 20 minutes, I called 911.  They sent a cop to the house and it took him about 20 seconds to unlock the car.  Poor Sam and Dillon just stood by the car and listened to her cry the whole time, while I was back and forth between Payson and Salem.  When we finally got her out, she was so hot and sweaty and just clinging to me.  I felt so awful.  But Jordyn was easy to forgive. 

Now I can say I have dialed 911.  Luckily, my emergency was not anything extremely traumatizing.  But still,  I hope it never happens again! 

My Little Side-kick

Jordyn and I have been spending a lot of time together lately. A lot.  It has been great to stay with my parents, and they are so helpful.  These six weeks would have been horrific without both sides of my family helping me out.  I give the highest of fives to single parents. It will be great to have Chad back and share Jordyn with him again.

I feel like Jordyn is at my side at all times, and it is kind of great!  She is getting so much personality.  She is timid, and a bit reserved.  But when she giggles and squeels, my heart almost bursts.  At first I was nervous about leaving my job to spend all day with this munchkin.  But I love it!  She is curious, watchful, and an explorer.  She definately lets me know what she wants.  Usually it is just attention.  She loves to play on the bed and be thrown around.  This is when she giggles the most.  I love it when she is in her high chair and waiting for her food.  She rocks back and forth with her arms out and twisting her wrists.  She knows what ice cream is, and knows she wants it.  Every time the door opens, she is making a b-line.  I could go on and on!

My on-the-road sidekick.  We spent an average of 7 hours in the car for 4 straight days in Denver last month and she was a champ!

My movie sidekick.  I love watching movies, and I am hoping she will always.  This is how we watch baby einstein.  Far enough away she can't reach the laptop, but I can.

My photo sidekick.  I have taken probably 200+ pictures of her the past 6 weeks. 

My summer-lovin' sidekick.  We have had a lot of fun at the splash pad, swimming pool, playing in the mountains and all those great summer time activities.

I know just seeing picture after picture of my baby can get annoying.  But these days, she is kind of all I've got.  I am so glad I have had her around to be my sidekick.  When we found out we were having a baby girl, we were kind of at a loss of words.  For some reason, we wanted a boy.  We had imagined a boy.  Now, I cannot imagine wanting anything else.  I am go grateful for my baby girl.

Draggin On

So, the first half of the summer flew by. We crammed so much into the month of June, it is absolutely ridiculous! I think Jordyn had probably 2 naps the whole month. We were all over the place!

Just as school got out, we took a trip to San Diego and other southern California hot spots. We spent a whole week without Jordyn (Thanks Lisa for babysitting! What an awesome grandma!). It was weird. One night we needed to run to Target and get some things we forgot to pack. I started looking for a diaper bag and mentally making the normal preparations about what I was going to need just to run to the store. Then it snapped. No baby. No diaper bag. No bottles. Just go! We hit Sea World (neither of us had ever been,) Balboa Park (awesome, beautiful, educational), La Jolla Beach (relaxing), San Diego Temple (a good reasurring experience), Six Flags (barfalicious), and Knotts Berry (neither of us had ever been...the greatest day of the trip!) It took everything we had not to go to Disneyland. One night we sat in the hot tub at our hotel and watched the fireworks, almost heartbroken. After all the fun, we were anxious to come home to our little girl who seemed to have grown so much in one week. Grandpa and Tyler had gotten her to crawl on her hands and knees, and Grandma magically made that first tooth finally break through!


Shamu. Also, it was FREEZING all week in California. It was warmer in Utah than California the week we were there.

While on our trip, Chad accepted the Microsoft job, so we started to cram in all of our summer into the next few weeks so he would not miss out on Jordyn's first summer.

 We spent a day at the Provo Beach Resort. We love arcades! We played Wheel of Fortune and won big time! We solved the puzzle (Bryce Canyon National Park) and won 1600 tickets. I must have looked so ridiculous jumping up and down so excited. With our tickets we bought Jordyn all sorts of toys, including a silly rubber worm which she was terrified of! If I figure out how to upload video, you will die of laughter!





Jordyn playing in Toddler Town. She is one of those really smart genius babies.

We spent a weekend in Park City with Chad's family. We played at the Olympic Park, which was awesome. We took Jordyn swimming for the first time. Mistake. It was cold and windy, and she hated it. Keep reading to see how we continue to force water upon the baby throughout the following weeks.


 We were all excited before the swim!


 Not so excited during the swim.

Tired and miserable after the swim.




Chad rode the bobsled at the Olympic Park and was rendered speechless. I think it is something he will never forget!

We continued to force Jordyn in the water. We took her to the splash pad in Spanish Fork. That was not so fun for her, so we took no pictures. We took her to swimming pools. Again, unsuccessful. But finally, we went to Seven Peaks with some of my siblings and found ourselves victorious. We have a little water baby. A testament of trial and endurance.

We took many picnics to the park. On one such trip I took my camera to get some pictures and finally caught Jordyn's cheese smile. Love it!

And golfing. Oh so much golfing. I think Chad averaged like 3 times a week. Jordyn and I only went once!





I ran my first half marathon. I wish they would take the picture at the start of the race before you have died. Lovely.



We had a BBQ to say goodbye to friends. We have had the best friends here in Utah County. That is one thing that is going to be hard in Denver. No friends. Starting new as strangers.

The babies at the BBQ. Minus Deja and Tayen. I feel bad that Jordyn will not really get to know these friends growing up. They have been great!
Are you feeling like this post is dragging on? Well, there is so much more that I did not take pictures of. We went camping with my Dyreng cousins. Camping with babies blows. Enough said. We had a goodbye bonfire with Adam and Camarie. We tried to use up all our cold stone gift cards, but you can only eat so much ice cream. We ate at all the little restaurants we love in Utah, one last time. We spent evenings sitting on the lawn playing with the neighbor's kitty. We did another puzzle, only 1000 pieces this time. We played wii into the wee hours of the night. We watched documentaries. We played board games. We did everything we could not to waste our time together.

Chad flew out to Seattle on July 4th. June was over. Jordyn and I both cried most of the way home from the airport. It has only been two and a half weeks. We still have three and a half to go. Summer now seems to be dragging on. We miss Chad. So much in fact we drove to Denver to see him while he is there for a few days. He still had to work while we were there, so we didn't get to see him as much as we wanted. Jordyn was a trooper on the drive, and I am sure she will grow up learning to be a good traveler. We got a glimpse of what life is going to be like for us in Denver, and we are excited about it. We saw some cool things nearby, like Rocky Mountain National Park. Beautiful. I know most of the world wishes summer would slow down and stay longer. But we are wishing it would hurry and get over with so Chad can come home. Here's to a fast fall! 

Family Pictures

Jody took these for us at our little goodbye bbq last week.  She did great!  I tried to edit them the best I could but I am still learning, and still playing around with them.  All I can say is, I have one good lookin husband and one cutie pie baby :)

So sore :(

So, I ran my first half marathon Saturday morning.  I have always hated running.  The most I had ever run was a mile and a half for fit for life at Snow.  My family all asked me why I would do this insane thing.  They know me, and know of my physical laziness.  There were a lot of reasons I did this, but they all come down to the baby weight.  It is (a verb in the present tense, not past) hard for me to lose.  After weeks and weeks of mediocre (sp?) workouts, salads, and my wii fit making that 'wha-wha...your still a fatty' noise, I needed to set a different fitness goal that was not centered around weight.

The race was awesome.  We ran about 8 miles down American Fork canyon.  It was beautiful, downhill, cool and breezy.  Sam ran with me and we talked a laughed our way through the whole thing.  Once out of the canyon, the next 2 miles were around the golf course.  That part was ok.  The smiling an laughing were a little more forced at this point.  The last 3 miles were hard.  It was pretty much around neighborhoods leading us back to AF High School.  It was hot.  We were tired and my legs where heavy.  Thank goodness for Sam and her positive attitude and push!  We made it!  My time was about 15 minutes longer than I wanted it to be.  But I kind of knew in the weeks before the race that I had set my expectations in that area a little high.

My mom asked me a couple weeks ago if I liked running now.  I told her it was kind of like being pregnant.  Nothing I look forward to.  But once I am in the middle of it, it's not so bad.  The reward at the end makes it all worth it!  I say this is my first half marathon, cause there will be many more to come in many years to come!

Big things are comin...

We have been in a very confused state of mind the last couple months.  Chad has graduated.  He has interviewed with various places, and nothing seemed to work out or feel right for us.  He started to get tired of the whole scene and put most of his eggs in one basket, continuing his job at UVU, only full time.  He reserved one egg for a job with microsoft he had applied for and had done a phone interview. 
In the mean time, on my side of things I had decisions to make in my own career.  Should I continue teaching at East Meadows?  I had the opportunity to go to a new school.  Should I continue to teach full time, or try just teaching half day?  What grade will I be teaching?  What were we going to do about Jordyn and daycare? Things started to fall into place, I would be at East Meadows, back in 4th grade.

Then microsoft called and wanted a second interview. Chad left for North Carolina.  The job he had originally applied for turned out to be completely wrong for our family.  But he learned of another position, Techincal Account Manager or TAM, that would be perfect for him.  He came home feeling good about the interview.  We figured if he got the job, we would spend a year or two in North Caorlina and then ask to be transfered back west somewhere closer to home.  So suddenly, the things that had started to fall into place, were back in limbo again.

One long week later, microsoft called back and told Chad he had a TAM position.  To top it off, they were giving him options of what office he wanted to work in.  One option being Denver, Colorado!  We were so excited!  This is the kind of job Chad expected to have in 10 years!  Still, Denver is a big change, so we told them we needed a few days to sleep on it and make sure it was right.  And we decided the best place to do this was San Diego! (we actually had the trip planned previously, and I will blog about that another day). 

After sleeping on it... and throwing in a couple amusement parks and beachside play days and a gorgeous temple... we have decided Denver is the place!  The more we talk about it, the more excited we get.  It will be a big lifestyle change for us.  Chad will be working full time at the job he has dreamed of.  I will get to stay home with Jordyn for now and take care of my family (a little nervous about this, I might go stir crazy).  We are so excited!  The downfall, as there always is, Chad will be doing a training program from July 5th to about August 15th.  Six weeks bouncing back and forth, spending most of his time in Washington state, and a little in Denver.  I will probably stay in Utah til mid August.  It will be a long 6 weeks without him.   But in the whole sceme of things, it is not really a huge downfall.  More of a little declining slope.  We will get through it and LOVE DENVER!

ps.  Don't you think Denver will be a lovely place for you all to come visit!?

Alright.  I am really going to put myself out there right now.  I got this awesome new camera and want to learn to use it well.  I need advice and input from those of you who know how to take pictures better than I do, which is almost anyone on the planet.  I have created a little blog as a journal to help me see and remember what is good or bad about the pictures I have taken and edited.  If you think you can help me, scroll down the left hand side of this blog til you see the tiny little "my photos".  Leave suggestions if you have any, about what I can do to be better.
Side note:  I originally made the link as little and discreet as possible cause I am feeling really naive and insecure about all this.  I did not really want everyone to see my pictures, but I feel like I could really use some suggestions from those who are more experienced than myself.  So don't judge too harshly.  Thanks!