Thursday, July 30, 2015

Wyoming rodeo

Whew! We made it to a Wyoming rodeo and it was so much dang fun! I am oh so glad we went! It was a little tricky getting a baby-sitter since we decided last minute we were for sure going and I for sure didn't want to bring the babies. My wonderful mother in law who is also the YW Pres has wonderful connections to lots of girls in the ward (shocking, I know, right?) and one finally said yes at the last minute, wahoo! Of course Bryson acted all awful and screamed when I put him down to go to sleep like he KNEW something was happening! ugh, had to feed that kid an extra 4 oz of formula than normal, so strange, naughty child. But we had a great time with the family. It was Karlee and Maxson's first rodeo! Both were in awe and I was yet again shocked at how savage and wild rodeos are. Seriously, I think it's akin to that of the Rome Colloseum. I am always so impressed by the patriotism by the blue collared folk in this country. Being at a rodeo just felt so American, I was so proud of our country and where we came from, for the men and women serving or have served, and for the great security and freedoms in this country. Although rodeos attract quite a different crowd than I am used to, they are great people with great common beliefs of respect, honor, and tradition.


 This is the first time I've attended a small rodeo and it was fun to see the animals and riders all getting ready in the back, you could see it all, pretty neat.

 Why do I love funnel cake? Oil and pancake batter, I know. But special occasion, right?
 Casey always gets the cheese pretzels, except this is no special occasion for Csey, ha.


 They let all the kids out at one point and let them chase little calves around the arena area to snatch off red ribbons. It was so hilarious watching the kids run after these kettle cows that were so much faster than them. Max and Casey were out there too and Ma was just aimlessly running after everyone else and Casey trying to not lose him, so funny.
 At one point they brought out a huge 6 horse team pulling a big huge wagon full of people to throw out shirts to the audience. Unexpectedly a wheel broke off during its run and the whole carriage fell over with all the people, it was pretty crazy! You can see the video of it here. They took a very long time attending all the people who fell out to take care of any injuries,
 Loved watching the bull riding (not shown here) and the bare back riding, seriously so crazy and hilarious.
 Referred to this paper a ton!
 So glad we got to go!


And in unrelated thoughts, my great father in law in the pictures above told me you can listen and download a bunch of awesome church songs from EFY, mutual themes, and such here. Such great songs!!!!!

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

this and that

Right before we ventured into Lagoon we stopped by our bff's house for a quick visit since they lived literally next door to that place. Jocelyn is like my soul friend that I only got to live by for one year sadly. BUT we've done a great job at visiting each other frequently. Her almost 4 year old and my 2 1/2 year are creepily similar in behavior at times and so we console one each other and laugh instead of cry at it all. If we actually got to be around each other more our boys would probably be the best and  worst friends at the same time if you get what I mean. Her little girl Desi is adorable little one!
Look at all our children! When she and I first met she only had her little Henry and I none.
Learning to crawl up things. Q
Glorious cinnamon rolls
How to take babies to get cleaned off after eating whilst not getting your clothes dirty.
Wyoming workouts
Thankful for the long jump pit where Max ended up just playing in the sad while I went round and round!

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

the twinsies: 9 months old

People are probably so annoyed when they're around me and my babies because I say about 15 times in a 10 minute period "I just want to eat you, you're so cute!" while I bite on my lips and refrain from literally wanting to eat them. Gosh darn I really do love love love this baby stage. They're a little mobile and figuring out how to move and they laugh and giggle sooooooooooo much and are squishy and adorable and have figured out the whole sleeping thing, I just love them so much I want to squeeze them and eat them, ugh.

Quinny is my mover. He's got the crawling on hands and knees thing down. He's climbing up on objects to a standing position and walking along them. Just last night he figured out how to sit down after standing along something without falling to get down, his smile was so big when he realized he could do it over and over. He's not patient when it comes to being in the car for long periods of time. Thus far, he's showing us all that he's a lefty! There's no left handed people in either of our families so we've worried with one another if we should force him to eat with his right hand (you can eye roll now all you left handed people). He's my yeller when they're eating and having to heaven forbid WAIT for more food, he's more vocal of the two when impatient.

Bryson has got the fast army crawl down pat. It's adorable to watch him try is hardest to keep up with Quinny. He usually ends up whining quite a bit when he's far behind Quinn and can't reach me as fast but he makes a great effort. He is my clean(er) eater of the two; I'd say he's better at actually getting the food in his mouth and not dropping it in his bib or the floor. He's begun mimicking the head shake of no this week and it's sooooo funny. He has a little smirk on his face like he knows this is funny for mom. I would say he's my slapstick humor kind of guy and is the easier one to make giggle these days, don't confuse that with smiling. Quinn is the more social easy to smile guy but Bryson will laugh and laugh over the littlest things. Bryson also loves mimicking, he does a head shake no back and forth with you as well as the motor boat blubbering noise back and forth with you, it's adorable.


Both boys blubber "mamamamama" when they're desperate and sad and it make my heart sing.

Both boys take 3 naps a day still ranging from 45 min-2 hours though the past week they've gone back and forth between 2 and 3 naps, so I think they're transitioning to 2 naps a day now, YAY! They're doing SO well sleeping totally through the night now that they are out of our room while we stay in Wyoming! Most the time they still wake up between 6 & 7 depending what time we put them down for bed, usually that being between 7-8 while we're here visiting family, they sleep something like 11-12 hours a night.

Both boys eat an insane amount of food. Seriously 4 meals a day of a lot of food, definitely WAY more than Max eats during the day. It's tiring, and they always feed themselves, but it's tiring coming up with a variety of food everyday that's easy for them to eat that isn't insanely repetitive. They eat all normal food without any teeth. I spend so much time in the kitchen making food, feeding people food, and then cleaning up the food.

Speaking of food, if they are extremely enjoying their food for some reason (probably if they're starved or it's legitimately yummy) they are SO loud when eating. Smacking those lips, moaning, and just tons of other sounds, it's so cute.

They seem to be not super interested in their bottles anymore, not totally sure why. It's almost like we have to force them to drink their bottles, it's weird. When it comes to nursing I'd say Bryson likes nursing more and Quinn just wants to get done really fast and keep going. When Bryson is done nursing he'll often lay back and just blow a bunch of air out of his barely opened lips while he smiles, so cute.

They are constantly climbing all over one another, really cute. And both of them are ALWAYS crawling/climbing/crying to me. It's exhausting to be the favorite one at times.

We've had some MAJOR diaper rash battles the past month I'd say. After 2 1/2 weeks their really bad rash went away after a few different methods. After the rashes went away I asked on Facebook for some advice and WOW, the outpouring of advice was so beyond awesome. Mommas know that diaper rashes are no joke and can be frustrating to deal with and sad too looking at their red little tushies. I was so grateful for everyone's advice!!!!!!! We've now kept it at bay for a good 2 weeks from some of the advice given.

Most the pictures we took of them together were like this and blurry and wiggling to get on their tummy and crawl away/off the couch. Ooy, wiggly babies!!!!

{Stats- taken when 8 months and 1 week essentially}

Bryson
29 inches - 84%ile
21# 2 oz - 87%ile
18 in head - 75%ile

Quinn
29 inches- 84%ile
20 # 13 oz - 76%ile
17 5/8 in head - 50%ile

Monday, July 27, 2015

Park play

Have you realized we're in Wyoming? We are, if you didn't quite know. Casey has a 3 week externship for school that he was able to do in Green River, WY! So we're here hanging out with his family for 3 weeks! It's been mighty nice having so many extra hands to help with kids, babies in a separate room than us, more indoor space to play, and a fenced in backyard! The weather has been really great too, almost never hot (which to me is both good and bad if you get what I mean). Casey has had a really relaxed schedule at the dentist's office, and with less than a 5 minute drive to the office, he's comes home for lunch, hour breaks, patient cancellations, it's been pretty great. The kids have loved all the extra attention, seriously, everyone is so great with our kids and luckily they have no sense of stranger danger, glory. We've been making efforts to get out and about in this town each day, lots of new parks to play at, walking to the high school to run on the track (4 corner workouts from cross country days, holla!), going to the train station to watch the trains, splash pad, and library. We've really been trying to have a good time here and keep ourselves busy. The babies have been AMAZING sleepers here and are officially completely sleeping through the night, YAHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Max has the time of his life playing outside so much since it's fenced in, and we've all just been pretty happy I'd say.

So onto one of our mornings at the park!













ALSO I am itching to do photography sessions for people these days! I've done a handful of newborn shoots this year but am so eager to do a bunch more sessions this year with end of summer/fall coming up. PLUS a certain wonderful husband of mine upgraded my camera equipment and I am so beyond stoked to use it a bunch! It's so fun for me to get behind the camera and capture cute moments of families, for real, even if that sounds cheesy. SO readers, if you are interested in any type of photo session don't be hesitant to ask me at all, just shoot me an email (kimberwo at gmail dot com). Usually my pricing is $50-$100 depending on details. To make sure you get your absolute favorite pictures, I send you all the pictures I take through dropbox you then pick your favorites for me to edit.

ARIZONA: I will be available the middle 2 weeks of August. Indoor family lifestyle shoots will help us all not melt from the heat (I've been itching to do these but no one jumps on the chance, so if anyone is interested in this it will be largely discounted. Think me following you and your family around for the morning capturing the sweet moments in your everyday life.)

NEBRASKA: I will be back and offering sessions the beginning of September for the rest of fall. Schedule your sessions now!

Friday, July 24, 2015

Pioneer Day!

Happy Pioneer Day! Today we celebrate the anniversary of the early members of our church entering the Salt Lake Valley for the first time. What a joyous day it is. So much those Saints sacrificed to walk in handcarts all the way across the country after being pushed out from various states. All they went through I can just NEVER imagine. Especially these days as a young mother I'm constantly thinking "I could never be a pioneer. How did they do this or that. Those poor babies bums when they had rashes. The amount of hard work it took for meal prep constantly. Their lack of medicine with sick children." And my thoughts just go on, I admire those families so much.

Today we celebrate the heritage of our families. Their faithfulness and obedience to find a land to raise their families in the church without being persecuted. Establishing a new city, a new everything. Oh how I love the pioneers!

You can see my post here when we visited Nauvoo and here when we visited Kirkland and Palmayra, both huge church history sites in the heritage of our church!

Come, Come, Ye Saints - Mormon Tabernacle ChoirLDS Videos
Posted by LDS Videos on Tuesday, July 23, 2013
(I don't think this video is embedding, but you can click on the first link to take you to the video on Facebook. It's clips of Legacy with a beautiful song by the Mormon Tabernackle Choir)


Tonight we just might be having green jello and funeral potatoes in honor of our "Mormon holiday"

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Christensen Family Reunion part 2

Alright! So the next day fr the reunion we all trekked our way up to Lagoon! We stayed in kiddie land the whole day because, for me, it was just so fun to watch Max have a blast on all the rides. His joy and excitement was contagious. He loved every second and was an absolute thrill seeker. 








All the cousins waiting for bumper cars was too cute.




Our special treats for the day! Man love me funnel cake at amusements parks.

The one game Casey played to win Max an inflatable hammer, way too perfect of a toy for a 2 year old boy.
What my view looked like much of the day pushing the babies and following the crowd.
The babies were absolute troopers the entire day. Acouple of the families with older kids were crazy nice and took the twins for a couple hours while they slept and then woke up so we could enjoy the park with Max, so nice of them!

a. Max never once complained or slowed down the entire day, he was a TROOPER. We weren't in the car more than 5 minutes when he went immediately asleep, such a great kid.
b. Life with babies at the hotel, you are their toys.
The final day we gathered at Casey's grandpa's house in Springville to all participate in the traditional fun run/walk optional 1 mile/2 miler (yes I meant for that to be a long sentence). The gang was happy and cooperative and optimistic, no matter the age, I just loved it.




Stroller gang
The serious contenders (read teenage boys) up in the front ready to go as soon as Grandpa said the word
Max then high tailed after them for a solid 2-3 blocks, that kid, I swear...
Taking my jolly good time with the babies while Casey ran after to Max to make sure he didn't get run over by a car (or stroller or other serious competitor).
And a finish! Withe the beautiful mountain behind.
We rounded out the afternoon with a traditional piñata the family always does filled with candy and toys!
Karissa finally broke it!
We sat around chatting for hours with each other until one by one the families needed to leave in order to reach their next destination that night.






Our little Cutler family, only missing Tayli who's on her mission.



Grandchildren
Great grandchildren, only 1 girl in this group! (She ran away for the picture, ha)
The grandparents
(Somehow I missed Lance and Malinda's family in this!)
The siblings


So grateful to be apart of such a wonderful family. Man, my children are lucky to have such a wonderful family history!