Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Anniversary!

As has already been mentioned, Jen is pretty much the coolest ever and treats me very well. To celebrate our two short years of bliss, we nabbed a babysitter for Zach for a couple of hours and went out on the town. (and by out on the town I mean picnic and a 5:30 movie- that's about as wild as Provo gets these days) Here's a love pic from our stop at Coldstone's at the end:

Anniversary!

2 years baby, it's been great.  I don't know if you've noticed this, but Jen is like the coolest ever.

Anyways, I'm at work right now so I can't write much.  Check back later for pics and more goodnes.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Timing

Because of my new church calling, I was in charge of our ward's "stuff swap" last Tuesday. After all the dropping off and picking up people did I got to pack up and figure out how to get all the left over stuff to DI. This was made more difficult by the fact that our car isn't working at the moment. That night Derrick helped me pack up the stuff to store. On Thursday I managed to find a guy from the ward who very nicely helped me move the stuff to his truck and then he drove the load to DI. On Friday a truck thing like this was parked in our parking lot.

*On a positive note I did get some cute shoes, jeans, and a shirt for Zach out of the deal :). Gotta love free clothes.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A Rough Week

Last week was pretty rough for Zach. He had the worst diaper rash. While we were letting him air out a bit we got this fun picture.


Sometimes though he was upset enough that he just wanted to cuddle and watch Baby Signing Time. The towel here was for my protection :).


Thankfully the worst of the rash is over and he's back to the occasional redness that comes with diaper wearing.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Straws Are Exciting Things

Derrick and I got Jamba Juice today and while we were drinking it thought it'd be fun to see if Zach could figure out how to use a straw. This was his first time with a straw and he was pretty funny about the cold smoothie inside.

Life in the Rabbit Hutch

For those of you who don't know, our apartment complex is sometimes called the rabbit hutch because so many people living here have babies. We joined the party and had Zach while living here. Well one result of all the pregnancy and babies is tons of baby showers. In just the last 4 weeks we've had 6 baby showers. The month before there were 2 other showers. With so many showers I ended up appliquéing lots of onesies. Also, with my sister being pregnant I made one for her too.

The first 2 are pictured in this previous post.

The rest are below. As you can see there are a few duplicates. The only ones I didn't create the template for are the elephants.




Side note: The golf onesie was designed for a baby whose dad LOVES golf. Apparently it's hard to find golf-related baby things.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Catch Up Post

I've gotten behind on blogging so this is a loooong catch up post. I need to get better at blogging about things as they happen.

Park City: At the end of March my parents and brother Garrett spent a few days in Provo and then a week at a condo in Park City for Garrett's spring break. We were able to join them for a few days and nights. Derrick commuted back and forth so he could keep going to class and work. We watched movies, played games, ate tons of snacks, and Zach got lots of attention from Grandma and Grandpa Jones. The downsides were that Zach had a hard time sleeping in his pack-n-play so nights were really long and my mom and Garrett got pretty sick for part of the time. Melissa, Nate, Jason, Cassie, and some of the extended Jones family also joined the fun.


___________________________________


Grand Junction: For the last weekend in March we drove down to visit Derrick's family in Grand Junction, CO. We went for the family birthday party for our nephew Ryan. He turned 2 on April 1st. Zach and Ryan are able to interact better each time we go. They played together a little bit and Zach was in heaven with all the trash from Ryan opening his presents.
Zach doesn't seem to sleep well away from his crib so we were up again for hours during the nights. Thankfully Mom/Grandma Bowen was kind enough to take the morning shift so could get some sleep. Zach loved having so much room to crawl around and explore. He had his first taste of stairs and kept climbing up them. We had to watch him very carefully since he doesn't know how to go safely back down.

___________________________________


Conference Weekend: We had a lot of fun conference weekend with my mom and Derrick's parents in town. We surprised my mom in on Thursday night when she arrived at my grandparents' house in Sandy. Zach learned how to cruise along the side of the fireplace. Ever since he's been cruising along our furniture and even standing alone for several seconds at a time. Couches are no longer safe territory from baby.
We had a crepe party with my mom, Melissa, and Nate during the Saturday morning session. Between sessions the girls all went to Plato's closet where I got to pick out some birthday clothes. It was amazing to find 3 pairs of pants (that actually fit me) for a total of $47! Mostly it's places like Gap and the Buckle that actually sell pants long enough. After picking up some Wendy's we all met back up at our apartment. Zach really enjoyed the parts of conference when the choir sang. He'd stop what he was doing and come watch. He especially loved the choir and congregation songs and would get really excited and laugh.
Saturday night and Sunday afternoon were spent with Derrick parents at his grandparents house. Zach and I hung out with Mom/Grandma Bowen while Derrick went to the Priesthood session with the men in his family. After the guys got back we had a mini birthday party for me. Sunday night we went up to Sandy to be with my mom and some of my dad's side of the family.
I really love General Conference. The talks were amazing and full of so much faith and hope in these crazy times. During President Monson's talk I was explaining to Zach that President Monson is God's prophet on the earth today. While doing this I felt the Holy Ghost strongly confirming that what I was telling Zach was true.

___________________________________


23: I turned 23 last Thursday. Derrick did a lot to make it a good day. He work off so he could spend more time with Zach and me. He had 2 dozen roses delivered to our apartment and made me dinner. Later that night Melissa, Nate, Jason (my twin), and Cassie all came over to hang out and eat strawberry shortcake. After they left we watched "Bolt". Most of my clothes no longer fit because I lost a lot of weight from nursing and getting sick so most of my presents were ... clothes! It was a pretty low-key birthday but I enjoyed it.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Yay for Spring!

I love this time of the year. We've had several warm days and it's been so nice to finally get out of the apartment. Zach loves crawling around on the grass and has been on some of the equipment at the mini playground by our apartment. Despite all my efforts to keep him from eating the things he finds on the grass, Zach has managed to eat at least one leaf.

I've been really happy tonight thinking about all the fun things to look forward to in the near future:

- Derrick has made my birthday a really good day for me
- Easter is almost here
- Derrick finishes up classes in about 2 weeks and will have more free time for Zach and me
- We get to fly to Houston and hang out with Jamon and Jean (Derrick's brother and his wife) in a few weeks
- We move to Colorado for several weeks in the summer for Derrick's summer internship which should be really fun for him. I'm so excited to show Zach all the places I loved going when I was little and it'll be a blast to see my parents, Garrett, and a bunch of other people in the area

In honor of fun in the sun, here a couple of pictures from one of the times Zach and I walked my sister Melissa to class:



Thankfully Grandma Bowen gave Zach a new hat for Easter and it actually fits his head.



On a side note: Thank you so much to all of you who have shown love and concern for Zach (with his allergies) and offered really good advice in regards to making foods he can eat. We really appreciate it!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Food Allergies

Zach has some news he'd like to tell you all about.


Zach and I had to take a trip to see an allergist because of the really bad allergic reaction he had a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully Zach was in an extremely good mood. While I was filling out the paper work his love of exploring earned several laughs and cute comments. I had to keep stopping what I writing so I could drag him back to be somewhat close to me.

After speaking to the doctor, he decided Zach should receive a skin test (I can't remember if it has a specific name) to determine if he's allergic to any of the 8 common allergens.

Zach seemed very confused when the nurse started poking him with a Sharpee and then pricked him with the liquids containing wheat, soy, dairy, peanuts, eggs, corn, and two other things I can't remember. The nurse warned me that he would probably try to rub the stuff off his back but to keep him from touching it or his hand would itch to. Zach didn't seem to notice the stuff on his back and for the 15 minute wait time he crawled over and climbed up anything he could reach in the room; babbling and squealing the whole time.


Here's a close up of his poor back. It doesn't look very comfortable.


The dot on the top left is the control dot that will always show an allergic reaction. The 3 red spots in a vertical line show that Zach is allergic to wheat, eggs, and peanuts. The red dot on the bottom left showed a minor reaction to dairy. So for now we need to keep him off these items. We can get him retested a year from now and hopefully by then he'll have grown out of at least the wheat allergen. Wheat is in pretty much everything that tastes good.