In Provo

Zach and I (Jen) are in Provo with my mom and brother from today, Friday, until Tuesday night. One of my best friends is going through the temple (Mt. Timpanogos) for the first time on Saturday. I'm so excited for her! Anyways, hopefully I can see a good amount of you who are in the area.

Zach in Action

A lot of people around here have had colds lately so there's been a lot of coughing. Zach's been hearing it so much that he started fake coughing. It was pretty funny to hear my mom cough and then have Zach copy her with a few fake coughs. Here's what they sound like.

Zach loves stealing things from cupboards. He had a ton of fun with these cutting mat things.

We've been trying to teach Zach how to "give people five". He's made a bit of progress and for some reason thought it was so funny the night we took this video.

Two days ago Zach thought it was the funniest thing to carrying around blocks or balls and clap them together. His laugh is so contagious! I love that the simplest things can set him off. He'd been doing this for awhile before I got out the camera so it's toned down a bit from earlier.

Rainy Days

It's been raining like crazy for the last week or so. My brother Garrett and I decided to make the most of one of these downpours and play in it while Zach was sleeping. In later ones Garrett got much wetter. Zach even joined us outside for a little bit of one. I was surprised he didn't mind the cold water at all and just walked right out into it.

Dirt Cups

Derrick made these dirt cups tonight. They tasted really good. Since we didn't have any gummy worms Derrick used Sour Patch Kids. They ended up looking funny, though a bit morbid, with their heads sticking up out of the "dirt".

Random Zach Pics

Zach is looking more and more like a little boy. I blame it on the increasing amount of hair...and the walking.


I love how grouchy Zach looks in this picture. Don't worry, we ended up putting the little chicken thing away since it looked like it could be a choking hazard.


Here's Zach in his happy little toy corner. It's a combination of his toys, toys I grew up playing with, and even a few my dad played with (the trashed box full of wooden blocks in the corner). What a lucky kid.


Zach thinks my brother Garrett is so cool. He gets really excited when he sees him and sometimes follows him around. Garrett had a friend over the other day and I found Zach just standing at the office doors just watching them. He stood there for at least 10 minutes.


Zach barely ever crawls anymore. With walking all the time Zach has his hands free to get into more trouble. He loves grabbing things from one room and carrying them to other rooms. We find the weirdest things in the kitchen and living room. Here's Zach with the kitchen towel he stole.


Side notes for journaling purposes:

Zach managed to sneak past the barrier and up the stairs without any of us realizing. Luckily we found him before he caused too much damage to the rooms upstairs or fell down the stairs. We're still working on teaching him how to safely climb down.

Zach has gotten so much better at letting us know what he wants. One example is that when he wants to get down, he'll drop whatever he's holding and stare at it. He's thrown stuff over the gate and down the stairs, put stuff on my lap, and thrown stuff through my legs. It depends on where he wants to go.

Journey to the Center of the Earth vs Temple of Doom

Last night we watched the relatively recent "Journey to the Center of the Earth" movie (spoiler: it was kinda crappy) and the scene where they are in the mine carts reminded me so much of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that we decided to watch that movie tonight.

We had a revelation: Brendan Fraser wants to be Indiana Jones.

I guess we should have guessed this from how much the main character in the Mummy resembles Indie, but for some reason we hadn't put it together until now. The Indiana Jones homages (dare I say rip-offs) are so blatant that I had to make a list. (I know how much bloggers like lists)

• Mine cart roller coaster scene (including broken track jump)
• Archaeologist -> Geologist
• University professor/adventurer type
• Main characters are: a man, a lady, and a kid
• Ridiculously big diamonds
• Rafts/Boats save them while falling from tremendous heights
• Eating of arthropods

There are probably more, but I should go to bed now.

P.S. After a little googling I found that Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford are starring together in a medical drama (I'm scared)

Less than a month!

So it kinda blows my mind that Zach is now 11 months old. He'll be a year old in less than a month! Yikes!

One failed attempt at baby proofing. Zach likes to pull the mossy stuff up and try to eat it. He managed to get past these pillows without knocking any over. He looks pretty pleased.

Some other pictures just for fun:

Zach's first time riding in a baby swing. He liked it for a few seconds but it mostly scared him.

Already getting into the scriptures...

Colorado Updates

It's been awhile since we've posted anything on here so I thought I'd give a quick summary of the last month.

- Lots of cleaning and packing.
- Playing with Melissa and Nate as much as possible before we left.
- Move to my parents house in CO to start Derrick's internship with Dish Network. Derrick's brother Tyson helped a ton by driving another car so we could get all our stuff over.
- My brother Garrett's graduation from high school and seminary.
- My twin brother Jason and his wife Cassie's 2nd wedding reception.
- Getting Zach used to a new place. He had to sleep in a pack-n-play the first couple of nights and got so excited when he saw his bed set up in his room that he actually wanted to play in there for 20 minutes. (Usually he does his bed to avoid the crib unless he's exhausted). He's finally getting back to his normal sleep schedule.
- Baby proofing. We've had to get pretty creative with so many stairs.
- Game playing, movie watching, shopping, and taking Zach for walks and to parks.
- Derrick figuring out the best routes for making it to and from Denver in the best time.
- Zach walking. I talked more about this in an earlier post. It's crazy to see him walk across a room before falling over. I love how he raises his hands to keep his balance.

I think that's about it. Things aren't all that exciting around here but we're having fun :).

Glass Etching

For our Mothers' Day presents Derrick and I had fun doing some glass etching. We each did the serving dish for our mom. Here's how they turned out.



For instructions on how to do it we used this tutorial which we found on my cousin Jess's blog.

He's Walking!

Since we've moved to CO, Zach's been walking up a storm. He walks and crawls about evenly now. His favorite is holding onto something with one hand and walking around it. I got this video of him about a week ago.