June

June was a busy month. It started out with Dave's brother graduating from High School and the celebrations surrounding that. We love him--he is a really good kid.


The next morning we drove to Washington to visit my brother and his family. We were a little nervous about the 13 hour drive with Aliyah, but she did a FANTASTIC job. She only had a little crying session once! While in the Washington we...

went to a podunk logging festival....


Seattle...

We went to the Music Project museum (something like that)
Dave as an Avatar

and the boys in a band...you can see my nephew behind the drums--he was LOVING it, as were the grown men!


the coast...






had family pictures taken...



visited Mount St. Helens...


and saw Big Foot (Dave really wanted to get a picture taken with him because growing up at his house they had watched Harry and the Hendersons. When I told Dave I had never seen that movie we made sure to put it on our netflix queue. It was pretty good.)

and of course got sick (Dave and I have a tendency to get sick while we are on vacation; lame!)

We had birthdays...this is Dave's favorite dessert (and mine): nutella bars (thank you sister!)


And this is how we would try to keep Aliyah in her swaddle...fortunately she grew out of needing a swaddle on her own pretty quickly.

May

As in the month of...

Apparently we didn't do too many interesting things during April...well we did we just didn't take any pictures, so on to MAY!

I had my first official Mother's Day...I was expecting last year, but it's not the same. I LOVE my job. I never thought that being a mom could be SO wonderful. Definitely a gift from heaven...pure joy!


(do you like the drool on the front of her dress...hers not mine)

Someone in our neighborhood started a treat service...kind of like the Halloween Ghost that leaves a treat on your doorstep...


except this wasn't a ghost...

pretty impressive, huh? And one of the funniest things to open your door to!

Aliyah was 5 months in May. I posted pictures that my sister Annie and I had taken earlier but here are two more because Aliyah is so darn cute:




And this had to be documented...Aliyah had some good hair when she was born, and it never fell out. So she had the bald spot (like most babies get), but Aliyah had a comb-over and that comb-over would often get big ol' knots in it. Then to top it off look a little lower and you can see Aliyah's "rats tail." It's not a perfect one, but it is clearly there. (I'm just jealous because I always wanted a rats tail for the pure sake of humor--I almost got one cut after my mission, but my parents called the hairstylist and told her not to let me! I would have had it only for a week...Could you imagine!?)


Next up, summer...and we were busy!!!

Baby Blessing

Yes this wonderful event took place 6 months ago, yes my baby is almost 9 months old now, and yes I am now just blogging about it.

It was an incredible day that started with Aliyah sleeping 7 hours straight! We almost weren't ready on time because we had forgotten that it was daylight savings, but the preparations from the dress to the food and most importantly spiritually came together. It was wonderful to have our family together to help celebrate Aliyah.

My mom and I teamed up on the dress...and by teamed up I mean she made it all and I added the flower embellishments




Us with Dave's parents


with my parents


The men who were a part of blessing Aliyah...how we love each of them!


It was an incredible day.


(slowly but surely)