The rest of July 2012

Charleene is getting good enough with her head that I can now prop her up in Dani's lap. Dani LOVES IT! She asks all the time to "hold it." {We're still working on the fact that Charleene is a person} ; ) They are so cute together! Charleene just smiles and grins and tracks Dani all over the room. It is very sweet.
I don't know how we survived the month! Looking back we had A LOT going on! Travis took Dani out to New Castle for a Farm Bureau dinner. I really wasn't feeling well enough to go so I stayed home with Charleene. Travis said they had a great time on their little Daddy/Daughter date.
There were some complications with my delivery and so I had to have a D&C. Unfortunately I was led to believe that I would come home and feel fine. They cautioned me to not over do it and just take it easy for a day. Well here I am thinking I'm still going to be able to be "Mommy" when we get home and the discharge nurse walks in to tell me that I will most likely feel pukey and dizzy all day and may not even remember most of it.Ummm... kinda didn't prep for that. Sara and Grandma Laub traded off helping with Dani while I was at the hospital but Travis was going to go back to work when we got home and I was going to have both kids.
We were so blessed to have Whitney and D.J. basically give up their afternoon and help us by watching the girls while Travis got some things done. We were so so very grateful for their service seeing as how I basically slept the ENTIRE day! Lol Thanks guys!

Dani loves this hat! She has to wear it whenever I wear one {which basically breaks down to any day that I am too lazy to do my hair.} ; )

Charleene had her 2 mo appointment this month and passed with flying colors. She is definitely tiny but healthy and developing well. She wasn't super excited about the whole immunization thing but took it like a champ!

LOVE THAT SMILE! I'm pretty sure it was Dani she was looking at...

Travis has been such a great help to me this month with all the fun medical stuff I've had to deal with that Dani and I decided to make him some brownies. Dani loves to stir and helped me mix the batter. Although I would have to say that her favorite part was more likely to be the clean-up of the spoon! She was a little confused at first and thought that she had to eat it off like she would soup or cereal so she had it tipped in her mouth straight up letting it run off in her mouth. Once she had an "ol' pro" show her how it's done though she caught right on and licked that spoon CLEAN!

Travis and I went up to Ogden for Farm Bureau's Midyear Conference. Usually his parents attend this one but they were out in New York on vacation and so we were given the pleasure. : ) We left Dani with Kevin and Sara {seriously you guys are adding up the rights for a BIG favor FAST!} for a couple days and went up to Ogden with Charleene. It was a lot of fun. And we got to hear from some pretty interesting speakers. Dani did really well. She was so excited to see us when we got home, but Kevin and Sara said that other than a couple of mishaps she did really well. We were really proud of her. The thing that was really cute was that she gave Travis and I hugs and kisses and was really excited to see us - right up until we pulled sister out of the car seat. At that point it was ALL ABOUT CHARLEENE! So very cute, giving her hugs and kisses and talking to her. It took us forever to get through her bedtime stories and prayers because she would stop to jibber jabber to Charleene. : ) She must have missed her!

On our way home we made a few stops. My Grandpa Bates and Grandma Arletta hadn't met Charleene yet so we stopped and had lunch with them. It was really good to see them!

Next we stopped to see Travis' cousin Tom and his wife Natalie. They were in the hospital following Natalie's c-section. Dani and their oldest, Jaycee, are only a week and a half apart and now these two, Charleene and Jocelyn are 2 months apart {almost to the day!} Our girls are really blessed to have so many other little girls around to play with!

Next we stopped and saw my mom. We were really sad that we missed my dad, he had to leave for work before we got there. But my sister, Jessika, came over and it was good to see her too.

We finished off the month by completing second crop. Luckily without any rain! We've had hit and miss storms ever since we finished. It was so so tall!!! I wanted to get some pictures of Dani out in it but her and Charleene both had fevers for a few days at the end of the month. She was way to fussy to put up with much other than watching Monster's, Inc. So we didn't get any. I'm going to have to try before 3rd crop.

Apricots!!

We have a lady in our ward with an apricot tree and she allowed us to come get some. Sara and I headed down, her kids helped for a minute but then had a karate class in Parowan so it was just Sara, me, Dani and Charleene. Dani was actually a huge help at first. She would let me hand her all the ones that I was gleaning off the ground {most were still pretty good} and she would walk them over to the basket and set them in so gently. Well, she's 2 and she doesn't watch where she steps so on her back and forth treks she squished her fair amount of apricots. She didn't mind at first {probably because she didn't notice} but man as soon as she realized they were there - She LOST HER MIND! This kid does not like to be dirty!

Sara had a great idea to give her some wipes and let her clean up the apricots herself. She thought that was a GREAT idea! It was so cute!

We ended up with a good amount of apricots and were really grateful that we were able to share in the surplus!

Charleene mostly just slept... ; )

 And she was DONE! Once she realized she couldn't get all the apricots off {She even sat in them so there were some on her skirt and she was freaking out!} She's so cute when she does though!

When we got home we got her all cleaned up and she helped me get them all arranged on the trays so that we could dehydrate them. SO YUMMY!

Beaver Mountain

Travis' family has him mom's family's family reunion up on Beaver Mountain every year. This year they came across a great opportunity to have everyone came out in Panguitch and see a lot of things that their ancestors were responsible for in that area and so they moved the reunion to August out there. {More to come on that when it happens.} But that meant no Beaver Mountain camp out this year. : ( Since we live so close some of us decided to go up anyway and just camp. Travis and I only went up for a day because last year we couldn't keep Dani warm enough at night and she wouldn't sleep with us and it was basically just a disaster. We didn't want to deal with that again till the kids were a little older so we didn't camp. We did enjoy the time we were there though.

Basically all of these pictures are of Dani. I probably wouldn't have gotten a single shot taken if I hadn't given my camera to Samantha. She can get Dani to make all kinds of fun faces that she won't make for me anymore.

It was a good day. We played some games, the kids watched a movie when it started to rain, 4 wheeler rides, ice cream - not really a bad situation if you know what I mean! ; )

Sam and Dani. I love Sam's face! : )

Derrick and Scott were giving some of the younger kids rides in Roni's jogging stroller. I don't know who was in there in this picture but everyone loved it - except for Dani. Haha

It was a fun day. I'm glad we decided to go even if the reunion wasn't there this year.

4th of July 2012

The 4th was a fun day for us. We were just starting to get the hang of going out and having fun with both our girls so we got to enjoy a lot of the day's activities. Parowan does a parade and throws candy so that was our first stop. Luckily Kevin and Sara were nice enough to save us a spot cause we kinda didn't leave on time {Thanks guys!} D.J. and Whitney came out for it too. It was fun! This is a shot of the whole group.

Dani was having a great time!

Charleene got all dressed up for the day too.

Dani's FAVORITE candy of late are Dum Dum suckers and she was so excited to have one thrown in her direction. She didn't really catch on to the fact that she could go get whatever candy she wanted. She kind of just watched the other kids do it. But when some got close enough that Daddy pointed them out she was all over it!

 After the parade we went back over to Paragonah where they have a town picnic at the Church's pavilion and the surrounding lawns. It was a lot of fun. There is a park close by that the kids played at for a while and then we had a bar-b-que. They have races for all different ages of children starting at 1 all the way up to some adult races. It is a lot of fun! This is Dani running in hers.

This is Dani's new favorite thing to do with Daddy. She holds on until her little finger tips can't take it anymore.
Later that night Milt and Roni invited us over to their house to watch the fireworks. They have an AWESOME view from their back porch. There was a good group of us there. Grandma, Grandpa, Kevin, Sara and their kids, and then us. Roni made some popcorn and we enjoyed a really good show! I wish I had taken some pictures while we were there.

Dani had her first experience helping me make a cake. We made a "red, white and blue" bundt cake for the town picnic and Dani helped me mix in all the food coloring. She loves to stir!

Happy Independence Day 2012!!!