Bryan's Grad

This past Friday Bryan was able to receive his BSc. I am so proud of him, and i'm sure that if Jackson could understand what a great accomplishment his daddy has acheived then he would be proud too.
We are half way to our end goal now! It is so exciting! Here are a few pics from that day and also from a day after. It was rainy and cold outside on friday so we went and got some good grad pictures outside later. My two boys are so good looking! And Bryan was just plain hot in his grad gear- you'll see what i mean. I love Bryan soo much! I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband.

There were about 1200 grads in the life science  area

Yes, that tiny little grad shaking hands is my hubby

At the end of his walk across the stage with his temporary degree (the real one comes in the mail)

cute

a little taste of the future :)

Bryan with his parents. We were so lucky they were able to make it down.

Bryan's parents along with his sister Lorrina and her son Braxton.

brother and sister- aww

My side of the family. (please ignore me!! it was raining on our walk to the mariot and i look like a wet dog)

like I said, this is one hot grad!

I love these two more than anything!

My little family

I am such a lucky girl to have these two in my life!

Kisses

In the past few days Jackson has really started to give kisses and i am so excited about it! I realize some kids have been giving kisses forever by the time they're Jacksons age, but i never really thought to encourage him to kiss us back until recently. Anyway, i just wanted to share a quick, super cute story about Jacksons kissing adventures :)
Bryan and I made a deal a few months ago, because i was getting so exhausted from getting up with Jackson during the night, and then being up for the day between 6:30 and 7:15. So now it is bryans job to get up with our munchkin during the night and i get up with him in the morning and let bryan sleep a bit. (it is a wonderful way for us to both get more sleep)
Every morning around 8:30 i let Jackson into our bedroom to wake up daddy. Until then he is constantly trying to get into our bedroom. I think waking Bryan up is his favorite part of the day. Yesterday i put him up on the bed and he crawled right up to bryans face and gave him a big slobbery smooch right on the lips! No coaxing or puckering by dad required! It was awesome! Jackson is such a sweet boy. I wish i could wake up to baby kisses!... even if it really just amounts to a face full of slobber.

The Things I Love

In honor of Valentines Day i want to make a list of a few of the things that i love, and am very grateful for. At the top of my list, as you might guess, is my amazing husband. Bryan is the guy of my dreams. He is always making me laugh, and if you know me and how stressed out and worries i get over every little thing, having a guy like Bryan is such a blessing. To think that in just under 3 months we'll have been married for 4 years is crazy and absolutely awesome to me. I Love this guy with all my heart. XOXO I certainly can't say that Jackson is my second love, in terms of amount. But in terms of order, yes, Jackson is my second love. He came almost exactly 3 years after i married my first love, his daddy. I never realized how much love i could have for one little baby. The things he does, the way he changes and the way he makes me smile and laugh are priceless and just make me love him more and more, i think about every second i love this guy a bit more than the second before. I can now admit that i loved him the moment he arrived, but it took me a while to really bond with this little guy. I am now inseperable from him. I am so lucky that i get to stay home and spend every day with him.

I love my parents, and everything crazy about them. My mom is my best friend. She knows everything that has every happened or gone on in my life. She is so supportive and just a wonderful wonderful person. I am so blessed to have her as my mom. I don't think i could have had a better one. And my dad is a great man too! I have grown so much closer to him the past few years and i am so greatful for it. He is an amazing person who i am also so so so thankful for and lucky to have in my life!

My sister (and her husband) I love very very much! Kerri and i were not always close growing up, and truth be told, i wish we were a lot closer now. But she is still one of my best friends. I watch her and see what an amazing person she has become and i wish and wish i could take back being such a horrible big sister when we were younger. I love you kerr!

This picture is meant to represent me and my best friend Kaleigh. I only have one picture of us together on this computer, and i think she would drive down to utah the minute she saw it to hurt me, if i posted it on here. So here is my baby and her adorable little guy Brody. Kaleigh is so amazing! She is pretty much the one and only thing that kept me active in the church for about 5 years. So to be quite honest, and no i am not exaggerating this, I have her to thank for the way my life has worked out. If i hadnt been active in the church i wouldn't have met bryan or married him or had my baby Jackson, heck, i proabably wouldn't have gone into nursing if it weren't for her. So for all of those things and just being the best friend i could ask for, I love this lady.

There are a lot of other things i love, and just don't have pictures or don't have time to download all of them, but here's a quick list of a few other things i love:

-my grandparents (even though they're no longer here). They were all an inspiration to me

- my nursing friends. Without your support and good humor, and being the only people i could talk to (while eating) about all of the gross things i saw that day, school would have been a lot harder. thanks. Love you guys.

- I love being able to say i'm a mom.

-I love my camara!!! And i hope to develop my skill with it a lot in the coming years

-I love that i get to move to Indiana next year, even though it also terrifies me.

-I love the temple. We were going a lot last semester and it has gotten hectic this one, but i am so thankful that it it close enough that on a nice day i can walk there with Jackson and just sit for a while

- I love that Jackson also loves the temple. He is always all smiles when we go there

There are many things i love and am grateful for. And if i get a a chance i will list them. I hope i didn't embarass anyone too much with this post. I need to show and tell people i love them a lot more often, it shouldn't be just a valentines thing. So that is going to be a new goal for me. wish me luck! Love you all!

Christmas Catch up

This year we went home to Canada for Christmas. We stayed with Amber's parents but were able to visit Bryan's often. It's so nice to have both families close.

Family Picture, not the best, but it will do. I just love Jackson's smile here:)

We stayed with Dave and Shirley (bryan's mom and dad) our first night home. We left at about 7:30 am and didn't get home until about 10 pm. Normally a 12 hour drive, it wasn't extended by Jackson being a crank, but by our tire blowing out in Idaho. Talk about crummy luck! We had to stop in a little town called Hamer for 2.5 hours to get 4 new tired put on our car. Good thing Bryan and i hadn't gotten anything for one another for christmas... because that was it.

Here's Jackson playing with Grandma Burrows

He loved trying to open the presents grandma and grandpa burrows gave him. Though we soon discovered he liked the paper the most.
Christmas eve was also spent with my side of the family. Here's my mom with Jackson and his second cousin, Austin. They're about 4 months apart.

Christmas morning with Grandpa Schaalje

My mom bought Jackson a little Santa hat- so cute!!

opening presents with mom

Playing with uncle mo and all of his new toys

Jackson's spiffy new outfit from grandma and hat from aunt Kerri and uncle Bryn

Riding on his new walk'n'ride. He sits really well on it- not tipsy at all. But when we turn it into a walker, it moved to fast for him still and he does a nice little face plant.

Every morning Jackson would wake up have a bottle and his breakfast and then grandpa would get up and feed him yogurt while he ate breakfast. Jackson really looked forward to it.

Jackson had his first experience with stairs our first night in Canada at grandma and grandpa burrows'. But he really mastered the art of going up them while we were at grandma and grandpa schaalje's. No luck with the going down the stairs yet though.

Jackson also figured out how to crawl on his hands and knees while we were in Canada, whereas he was only rocking on them down here. He also figured out how to pull himself up to furniture that is higher than he can reach on his stomach. He is now doing kissed in the air too- grandpa schaalje taught him that one. It is so cute!He can even sit from laying down now!He's waving more, but it's still inconsistent. And he started feeding himself for the first time! All of that in just under 2 weeks. I'd say that's progress, and a good reason to have gone back to Canada.

Opening presents with grandpa on his Birthday. The two Jacks together :)
We are back home in Provo now. Our drive back home took much loner than expected too. We got stopped at the border for just over an hour. Then we stopped in greatfalls to get some shoes for bryan that were on sale and when we came out somebody had smashed our driver's side door with their door. Our handle is no longer on the car and there is a big dent in the door. We get that assessed tomorrow. In addition to the hit-and-run adn tire blowing out, we also hit a dead deer on a drive from cardston to lethbridge and damaged the plastic under our car so that needs to be fixed too. We also all have colds- i'm the worst right now, Jackson is about over his, but still a bit stuffy. He also has the worst diaper rash ever!!! His little bum has raw spots on it! It happened when he first got sick. I went to change him one morning and his entire bottom was red and puffy. Poor little guy wouldn't even let us hold him cuz you have to touch his bum to do it. He's getting better though.

P.S. If anyone wants to co-sign for Bryan's student loan for dental school we could really use a hand :) We just found out that to get a student loan for a school not in Canada we need a co-signer and we don't have anyone eligible yet. Isn't that a stinky deal? But we figure with the bad luck we've had in the past couple of weeks we're in for a blessing soon and we hope this is it.

P.S. if you go to http://thatsitmommy.com/2010/01/11/baby-eggi-review-giveaway/ there is a kid's clothing give away contest. There are some super cute clothes so it's worth a look!

Indiana, Here we come!!!

For those of you who haven't heard our awesome news yet, Bryan has been accepted to Indiana School of Dentistry, in Indianapolis. School starts July 8th so we'll be heading out there at the end of June. So far the plan is to pack all of our stuff into a POD and ship it out there, and the family will go back to Canada for 2 months after Bryan graduates in April. That way Jackson will only have to suffer through the car ride once. We could not be any happier about this news! It was bryans top choice and we are sooo proud of him and the amazing man he is!

The official acceptance letter!!!

We knew that if Bryan was going to be accepted to IUPUI it would happen the morning of December 1st. Neither of us could sleep that night! Bryan was up for a few hours and kept checking his e-mail to see if he was accepted (the official letter came later). They start sending out acceptance at midnight, so by 5 am he had decided he wasn't getting in. I didn't know this, as i had finally fallen asleep. I got up with Jackson at 7, as usual that morning, took a shower and was just starting to do my hair when bryan came into the washroom and told me he was accepted. Emotions were running very high, to say the least. So what had happened was that the university had messed up Bryan's e-mail address. He should have had his acceptance at midnight, but because it was the wrong addy they didn't find out it wasn't sent until school opened in the morning. They found the right one and called bryan too, just to make sure he got the awesome news.

Christmas is in the Air

It's finally feeling like Christmas in our home! On sunday we put up our Christmas tree. We debated putting it up this year, not because of Jackson ( who really isn't very interested in it anyway), but because we'll be heading home to Canada in about 2 weeks and wont be able to enjoy it for very long, but I'm very glad it is up now.

Here is a picture of our finished product. If you haven't heard about our "long john" tradition I will explain the 2 you can see on the wall. Bryan's aunt made them for his family when he was young and now they go right along with the stockings. Every year the Candy goes in the long johns and any other stocking stuffers go in the stockings. It's just a fun little thing to do. I made these ones for us a couple of years ago. Now i need to find some socks (yes, they are made out of socks) to make one for Jackson. Good thing he can't eat candy yet.
Me and my little boy putting the pickle ornament in the tree. Thanks Aunt Barb! We looked for one for years and couldn't find one! The pickle ornament is another tradition that my aunt introduced to our family. On Christmas eve the pickle ornament is hid in the tree and all of the kids get to search for it. Whoever find it first gets an extra christmas gift.

what's this? Can I eat it?

Bryan and Jackson putting the first ornament on the tree

This is our christmas ornament from this year. A BYU football ornament- how fitting!

And on goes the sparkly tree topper than gets glitter everywhere! One year we'll get a nicer one that doesn't cover our apartment in shimmer dust

I tried putting Jackson in his exersaucer to keep him entertained while we put up the tree but it didn't work very well. He doesn't like to leave the Santa hat on either

Jackson really was not impressed with having a big fake tree take up some of his play room, when there isn't a lot of that room to begin with.

A few days before we put up the tree i had Jackson wearing a Harley Davidson shirt and was trying to take a picture of him it it, and wearing the santa hat, to send to my parents. But he wouldn't keep the hat on! We just bought him a toque and he pulls it off instantly too, unless his hands are busy doing something else.

We can't wait for Christmas, and most of all to go back to Canada to see family! It will be exciting for grandmas and grandpas too see how much our little man has grown and developed. Just a couple of days ago he started clapping his hands for himself. It is so adorable! Bryan was feeding him Kix last night and every time he got one put in his mouth he would clap and smile. He just melts my heart! I know Jackson wishes he could figure out how to crawl over to furniture and then stand up because he will get there and reach and try so hard and then he gets so mad! He just cries and cries until you stand him up. Once we stand him up with the couch though, he can make his way from one end to the other. Once he figure out the standing up thing i think he'll be awesome at furniture walking. We bought him a walk-n-ride for christmas, so who knows, maybe he will be walking before he's one.

Bryan is thinking he may be getting a post-december interview for a dental school at USC ( in California) so we're excited about that. We're still praying things will work out for us to be in dental school next year!

Music to my ears

Jackson loves music, just like his daddy. I just love these pictures and had to post them.
The battling banjo's! ( about 4.5 months old)
Here's my Mozart baby! (just over 6 months old)