Birthday x 2

Happy Birthday to Lily and me! 4 and 24!

Lily's Birthday presents

Mom and Benny

Happy Birthday to me

We celebrated mine and Lily's birthday's last week. We were lucky enough to have my mom at our house for our birthdays. It was so great to see her again. We had so much fun. We went to the Roy aquatic center . Lily's quite the little fish. She loved being in the water. We also went and saw Toy Story 3. It was Lily's first movie. It was also the first movie I'd seen in a theater in 4 years. Lily sat through the entire movie, and Benny slept through the whole thing. It was great! Then we went to Friday's to celebrate. The next day we saw Jimmy and had pizza at Pier 49. Then on Sunday when my mom and Jimmy went home, we celebrated mine and Lily's birthdays with Brian's parents. It was quite the birthday extravaganza! I loved it.

Lily's first movie

We're so cute

Silly Brian

Grammy

Lily got a rainbow for her birthday

Grammy with her grandbabies

Time for cake

Roy days parade on my birthday

Lily and Jimmy pounding it like old times

So cute

Benny smiling at Jimmy
Me and my mama

Lily Aurora Bauer

To my daughter,
You've taught me more about love than I could ever imagine. You gave me a glimpse of how God loves His children. I never knew I could love another person so much. You taught me mercy. I wasn't married when I had you, and nothing more could've taught me to have mercy on myself, and to learn to not judge others like I had in the past.
I named you Lily because Christ is known as the Lily of the Valley, beauty of the world. Just like the David Ruis song
"Lily of the valley, bright and morning star
Fairest of ten thousand, you are
How can I perceive Your beauty, I long to see your face
Jesus"
I want you to know you are loved as Christ loves us.
I also named you Aurora. Aurora has many meanings to me. It means dawn, light in darkness. You were my light in a dark time in my life. You were also my light at the end of a difficult labor that could've claimed our lives.
I love you Lily. I'm so glad you changed my life. I'm so glad I have you in my life. You are a blessing. You are loved beyond imagination.

Happy Birthday Lily!

5 months old

Benny is sweeter than ever. I am just enjoying him as a baby as much as I can because the time flies by so fast. It's even more bittersweet when it's your last baby. I love my little boy. He's growing so fast. Here's what he's been up to the past month:

-Rolls over both directions
-Scoots on his back across the floor
-LOVES his jumper - stays in it for up to an hour
-Eats cereal, fruits and vegetables (bananas are his fave)
-He loves to stand up while holding onto my hands
-He has started interacting with Lily, laughs and smiles when she "plays" with him
-Loves to be outside in the shade or take walks with Mommy and Lily
-Grabs onto my hair constantly (ouch!)
-Chewing on them tasty toes
-Loves to just sit and "talk" - cute little cooing happy noises

Beauty in the backyard

One great thing about summer is flowers. Before having kids, I took a lot of pride in taking pictures of flowers. The last 4 years I haven't really been taking pictures of them anymore. So I'm excited that I've started taking pictures of them again.



I've been pretty blue about living in Utah ever since my family moved to Tennessee 6 months ago. Brian took all of us up to the mountains and it was a great reminder of the beauty that Utah really holds. It really helps me feel better about living here when I'm reminded of the good things that are here in Utah. We went up Ogden canyon. We stopped at a really pretty campsite that I'm dying to go camping at now. It was right along the Weber River. I'm a really big river fan, so I loved seeing the river. People were tubing down the river and it looked like so much fun. Hopefully in a year or two I can enjoy a little vacation just 40 minutes from our house.
Then we went up to Causey Dam. It was beautiful. Once again I hope to be able to go swimming or boating in the water when my babies are bigger.

On the 4th

Our family

The 4th of July was a lot of fun. It was a surprisingly cool 4th this year. The high was only in the 70s and fabulous. We had the in-laws over for a BBQ. Then we did sparklers with Lily. She has been begging ever since to do more sparklers. Sparklers are incredibly fun with a slow shutter speed on the camera. We really did end up having a really good time that day. The icing on the cake was the fact I found out that day that my mom and Jimmy were coming to visit on August 3rd. I'm so happy and excited to see them.

Patriotic Lily

Smiley boy

My 2 amazing kids

Super planeGetting so big
Brian lighting some fireworks

Sparkler time

Two at once

I thought this picture was fun cause Lily is a ghost.

What Fun!

Benny, 4 months old

Benny's first taste of cereal

Sitting up by himself in the boppy

Jumpin'

Benny is 4 months old now! He's growing so fast and getting even more handsome every day. At his 4 month checkup he was 15 pounds and 24 and 3/4 inches long. It puts him at just below the 50th percentile for both height and weight. He's growing perfectly!

This month has been a bunch of fun!

-He has sat up by himself in the boppy
-He had his first taste of solid food
-He kicks and waves his arms all them time, especially when he's excited
-He loves his little monkey toy
-He just started jumping in the jumper and LOVES it!
-He laughs when he's tickled
-He scoots around his crib
-He loves to suck on everything he can
-He's more and more smiley

Lily had the chance to go to Vacation Bible School at Our Saviors Lutheran Church right here in Roy. The theme was a High Sea's Adventure and the church did such a good job decorating the church to look like a ship. Since Lily isn't really used to being left anywhere, I decided that this would be a good opportunity for her to see what it would be like. But she didn't do very well so I ended up staying and tried to help out as much as possible with a baby in my arms. She did really well and met a few very nice friends. We'll definitely make it a regular thing for us, and may attend that church in the future.

Summer Beauty

Lovely clouds

Floral beauty

Thunderstorm cloud show

Weeeee

Green grassiness

I am in love with summer. My favorite summer things:
-the green in the trees and grass
-the amazing sunsets
-the earth-rumblin' thunderstorms
-grillin' outside
-playing in the water
-blowing bubbles
-sunshine, flowers
-flip flops
-summer festivals
-hiking
-playing at the park
-birds singing

I could go on and on.
Sigh....
Happy first day of summer!