Happy 1st Birthday Blair!

Blair turned one on the 8th. It would have been fun to go all out like I did for Easton's first birthday but #1 we really didn't know anyone to invite and #2 it would have been a little weird to invite people we didn't know, so instead we had a small family party. I think this was more fitting for Blair's personality though. I'm not sure how well she would have done with a big crowd. I did however have a cute theme picked out but I guess it will just have to wait until next year...

It would have been nice to say that Blair was really happy and excited on her birthday (she did have moments where she was happy though-see picture on the left and her cake picture) but most of the day was spent like this...

Does the song, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" pop into anyone's head. Well this was sung to her by her daddy a couple of times that evening and I think she was a lot more happy by the time he got home then she was the rest of the day. In her defense though I think it is safe to say that she was teething because she now has her second bottom tooth!

Here's Blair all dressed up in her cute little outfit. As you can see she wasn't very happy but at least she wasn't crying.

She really didn't know what to think of her tutu.

Birthday cake and smash cake for Blair.

I think she would have preferred the cake over the smash cake as you will see in a few pictures.

Singing to Blair. This time we actually sang "Happy Birthday" to her. Easton had to help blow out the candle.

She loved and I mean LOVED her cake! It definitely made me happy that she dug right in and ate it all up.

One happy baby!

I guess I now know that if she is ever in a bad mood that all I have to do is give her a cupcake and she'll be happy!

Opening presents. As you can see Easton had to help in this department as well. Blair wasn't opening her gifts fast enough for him.

Blair had more fun sitting on her gifts than opening them. Silly girl!

Happy Birthday baby girl! We sure loved having you in our family this past year.

Recap of Easton at 2 years

24 months

25 months

26 months

27 months

28 months

29 months

30 months

31 months

32 months

33 months

34 months

35 months

Boy does time fly. I can't believe my baby boy is three already. Even though Easton hates it when I call him baby boy he will forever be my baby boy. This last year has definitely been a roller coaster ride full of fun and exciting times but also very challenging and hard times as well.

Some fun things:

-Easton learning to speak in full sentences. It has been fun having someone to talk to all day long now. He is constantly saying the funniest things that just cracks me up.

-"I love you". This by far has to be my favorite thing he says. It is one of the few things he says with his sweet little voice. And the best thing is I know he means it when he says it. This coupled with one of his famous hugs just melts my heart and it makes being a mom the best thing in the world. If you haven't gotten a hug from Easton I would highly recommend it. It is seriously the best thing in the world. I love it!

-Easton praying. I love to hear Easton pray because again he says his prayers with his sweet little voice. I also love to hear all the cute things Easton is thankful for (i.e. toys, bed, etc.).

-Easton wanting to help. I admit sometimes it is not very helpful but I really do like the fact that he wants to hang out with me and help me.

-Easton learning new things like colors, letters, and numbers. Also singing songs like I am a child of God, teach me to walk in the light, ABC, Old MacDonald, BINGO, etc.

-Finally getting potty trained!

-Playing and sharing with Blair. I love the few minutes each day that he is so sweet and kind to her. I especially love it when the two of them are laughing together.

Some not so fun things:

-We all know that he is very stubborn. I'm told that this trait will get him far in life. I really hope his stubbornness will be a blessing in the long run. I would say about a quarter of the time though his stubbornness is quite amusing and entertaining so it's not all bad.

- Easton and time outs have gotten to know each other pretty well this last year.

-Easton got stitches again this year.

Although we have had some challenging moments this year we definitely love having our little Easton in our family. We love you baby boy!

Easton's birthday!

Happy 3rd Birthday Easton! Okay, so he has been three for a couple of weeks now but I'm still playing catch up (very slowly I might add). We moved in the day before Easton's birthday so things were pretty low key this year (which I felt horrible about). I really wanted to have a party for him with all his friends before we left Maryland but with everything going on (Nathan's graduation, family in town, moving) I just didn't have the time this year to do it. I was bummed out and complaining to Sue about how bad of a mom I felt (I have my brother to thank for this)and so she was kind enough to grab a cake for the family BBQ to celebrate. Thanks again. It was really nice to be able to celebrate with family. Easton got a really cute picnic table (his size) from Grandpa Layne and Gramma Sue (which was actually made by Grandpa). Easton loves it!

Signed by grandpa under the table.

All the cousins at the table.

Cousin pic (minus Blair/plus Aunt Kaity and Uncle Blake).

We got Easton a bike for his birthday but he is still trying to get the hang of it.

Grandpa Jerry and Grandma Gretch got Easton a rocket ship. I'm not sure if Easton or Blair likes the rocket ship more. They both have fun climbing in and out of it. I've even caught Easton sleeping in there a couple of times.

Easton opening his gift.

Easton and Blair inside the rocket ship.

Grandpa and Grandma Stockton got Easton the movie Toy Story for his birthday. Luckily they gave it to him early so he was able to watch it several times on our trip. I'm not sure if Easton or mom liked this gift more. It was definitely a life saver.

Grandma Whiting got Easton a slip-n-slide but once we moved in I realized that it probably wouldn't work with the little grass we have in the front yard so we are hopefully going to get a kid pool instead. It has definitely been a nightmare trying to find the pool that I want (very long and annoying story) but I finally found it yesterday and of course my car is in the shop and the rental car I have is definitely not large enough for the pool. Hopefully the pool will still be there once I finally get my car back.

Grandpa and Grandma Whiting got Easton a savings bond which will definitely be helpful for college.


Thanks everyone for making Easton's birthday a special one!

We also went out to eat with Grandpa Layne and Gramma Sue to celebrate Easton's birthday and Grandpa and Gramma's anniversary. We went to a Mexican restaurant and of course we had them come out and sing to Easton. He got a free dessert and a sombrero and balloons to take home.

Easton getting sung to.

Taking a lick of his dessert.

Of course using his fingers to eat.

Happy Birthday Easton! We love you and we hope you had a special day.

Safe in Cali

Wow, I can't believe it has almost been a month since I last updated. I definitely would have liked to have updated sooner since I hate playing catch up but as you all know we have been rather busy. The week after Nathan graduated we packed up all our belongings into a moving truck and left Maryland. It took six LONG adventurous days to drive from Maryland to California but we made it! Then it took another week+ to unpack (still working on this) and get settled. Here's a day by day glimpse of our exciting adventure moving and driving across country:

Saturday 5/22: Members of our ward came and helped us pack up our stuff in the truck (this went very smoothly-Thanks to everyone that helped!) Later that afternoon I start to not feel well but we still have things to do (last minute things to pack, cleaning, and getting Nate's car on the trailer). By the time we bring the last minute stuff out to the truck and go to the church to put Nathan's car on the trailer it starts raining. To make things worse, while we are trying to get Nathan's car on the trailer the bottom of his car is scrapping and we realize there is no way to get his car all the way on without causing damage to it. Of course we don't want any damage done to our car so we had to come up with another idea. Eventually we realize that if we can get the tire ramp (with the car tires on it) to be parallel with the ground instead of at an incline then the car should go on with no problem. We pull out Nathan's jack to lift up the ramp but unfortunately his jack is very rusty and wouldn't open very well so we take mine out and in the process break it. Luckily, Bishop Abbott was leaving the church parking lot to go home and saw that we were having issues. He volunteered to go home and grab a ground jack (I think that is what it is called-a heavy duty jack anyways) and thankfully it did the job perfectly. That night we all slept on the floor and as I said earlier I wasn't feeling well. I had a fever (not sure how high but I could feel the heat radiating from my face). I woke up twice during the night and had to change my clothes twice because they were drenched with sweat (gross I know).

Easton the morning we left Maryland.

Sunday 5/23: What was supposed to be a little over 7 hours of driving to get to Ohio turned into easily 10 hours. With all the hills/mountains and the truck's check engine light coming on Nathan was lucky if he could go 40 mph and for some parts he could only go 15 mph (yes you read that right 15 mph) on the interstate. That made for a really long day.

Blair the morning we left Maryland.

We switched her to a forward facing carseat since she was only about two weeks from her first birthday and we figured she would enjoy the car ride a lot more this way.

Monday 5/24: Luckily this trip was only about 5 hours and mostly flat. I never thought that I would ever be grateful for flat land but boy was I after the adventure was had the day before. This day we got caught up in a crazy rain storm where I could hardly see anything in front of me. It definitely didn't help that the lights on the trailer didn't work so I really couldn't see Nathan very well and at times not at all in front of me. And it was really scary when a semi passed me and splashed even more water onto my windshield because I couldn't see anything. I had no idea if I was driving in my lane or straight for that matter.

Also on Monday we stayed at a really nice hotel and we got to go swimming and soak in the hot tub. This was Blair's first time swimming.

Tuesday 5/25: We are trying to find our way to base when Nathan's GPS tells him to take a quick exit (a very sharp corner) and he is probably going about 40 mph when he should have been going less than 20 mph. Nathan and I still have no idea how he didn't flip the truck. I felt really unsafe taking the corner after him in our freestyle. Also that same day Nathan's AC broke about an hour from our destination so he had to suffer in 90 degree weather for an hour (poor guy). Nathan tried for a couple of hours to fix the AC and trailer lights himself but with no luck he finally called Penske and luckily their shops are open until midnight. Nathan took it in around 10pm. They fixed the AC and trailer lights but didn't have the right part for the check engine light so they had to keep it over night. Thankfully they open at 5am and had the part when they opened. It took about three hours to fix it and test drive it but we were able to get back on the road by 8:30am.

Wednesday 5/26: We got caught up in a hail storm where the hail was at least golf ball sized. It was one of the scariest things I have ever driven through. Our cars definitely got a beating. They look so bad. Nathan says that they look like golf balls themselves with all the dents they have in them. I was just glad that our windshields didn't break. It was kind of funny though because Nathan's car alarm kept going off because it was getting attacked by the hail.

These pictures are really hard to see that anything is wrong with our cars. Too bad it doesn't look like that in person. Maybe I can get better pictures later.

Thursday 5/27: Easton got car sick and threw up all over himself and his carseat. I tried calling Nathan but because his truck was so loud he couldn't hear it to answer. This happened right as we were going into a construction zone where there was only one lane for about 10 miles so I couldn't pass Nathan to tell him to pull over. Once we got out of the construction there really wasn't a place to pull over for several miles after that. Thankfully that was the only time Easton got car sick on our trip.

Also on Thursday we stopped and stayed the night in Salt Lake with Nathan's Dad and Sue. All of Nathan's siblings were able to be there for a nice BBQ dinner. Layne and Sue also bought a cake to celebrate Easton's birthday. Thanks you guys!

Friday 5/28: As we were going over part of the Sierra's it started to snow. If you know me you know that I am terrified to drive in the snow. I was a little mad when I found out that Nathan and his Dad were ahead of Sue and I and #1 didn't warn me that it was snowing and #2 didn't pull over and offer to take my place driving. They of course didn't answer their phones because they couldn't hear it but later they said that it wasn't snowing when they went through that area. Plus, Nathan said that I couldn't get mad at him because who would have thought that it would be snowing in Nevada in May? I guess he is right but I still hate driving in snow!

Thanks Layne and Sue for helping us drive the last leg of our trip. We really appreciated it. It definitely helped out a ton.

Saturday 5/29: We decided we would take the car off the trailer before we went to our house to unload our stuff from the truck. Just as we needed to have the ramps parallel to the ground to get the car all the way on we needed them to be parallel to get it off in the beginning as well. Nathan's Dad drove up over the cement things in the parking lot which worked great but some how someone forgot to release the pin to the trailer and as we were driving the car off the ramp it caught on to the front bumper and pulled part of it off. I find it a little ironic that we were so worried back in Maryland not to cause any damage to our car when in the end it didn't matter. Nathan's car looks like someone beat the crap out of it. Saturday we will bring our cars in and get them appraised.

Random pictures and stories while packing up to move:

I was just looking through pictures and forgot to tell this story. A couple of days before we moved Blair was being really cranky but I just figured it was because she was teething. Since we were just packing boxes all week I didn't bother getting any of us ready and we just stayed in pjs most of the week. The Thursday before we left we had to get some stuff notarized to close on our house so I asked Nicole if she would watch the kids for a couple of hours. I had to change Blair's diaper before we left and I figured if I had to take her pjs off to change her I might as well put her in a cute outfit. I'm glad I did because when I took her pjs off one of her toes was purple and had a huge blister on it. She had a hair (probably one of mine) wrapped tightly around her toe (hair tourniquet) which was cutting off her circulation. It was pretty scary but we were able to get it off.

Also while we were packing Blair came across this box and kept putting her mouth on it and licking it. Nathan and I are pretty sure that she was trying to breast feed. Too funny!

We set the pack and play up so we could take Blair's crib down but of course Easton had to jump in it.

Blair loved climbing into all the empty cabinets.

Graduation

Presenting Doctor Nathan Kelsey!

Congratulations Handsome! We are so proud of you. You have worked so hard and I know that you will be an amazing Radiologist. We love you!

Family Picture

Layne, Sue, Nathan, Easton, Blair, me

Grandpa and Grandma Stockton and us.

Daddy with his two munchkins

Inside DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) Constitution Hall. This is where Nathan's graduation took place.

Nathan walking in.

Nathan's mom couldn't make it out so I took some video's so she could see part of his ceremony.

Video of Nathan walking and receiving his degree:

Video of Nathan in his Captain uniform showing me his diploma:

I forgot to get a video of the doctor's saying the Hippocratic oath.

Video of Air Force doctors getting promoted to Captains:
Charles B. Green Surgeon General of the United States Air Force.

I like it when General Green says, "welcome to team blue".

Captain Kelsey with his diploma.

I was hoping to get a better picture of him at home (not in a parking garage) but I forgot. I'm glad that I got at least this one.

Thank you Grandpa, Grandma, Layne, and Sue for coming out and supporting Nathan. I know it meant a lot to him to have you out here. We love you!