home sweet home

We have 90% of our stuff moved down to our new 2nd floor home! We will miss the 6th floor. It was a great placee! But I can see us enjoying this little place a lot. Stuff is everywhere and I don't know where anything is, but it's comfortable! I wish I had pictures to show our cozy vine and tree view. We might actually open the curtains in William's room now! There are a couple of weird things that we'll have to figure out as we go, but isn't that how it goes everywhere? We also have the somewhat annoying presence of two giant fans, but nothing we can do about that. They'll be gone Monday. Unfortunately last Sunday some people were moving and hit one of the fire alarm sprinkler heads in the ceiling. It broke off and turned on, flooding a nice section of the second floor, because the office is closed Sunday and no one was here to turn it off. Luckily it happened BEFORE we moved in, and luckily it didn't get our apartment that bad. I can't even tell where the water damage was.
Anyway, we are SO lucky to have such awesome family and friends! We couldn't have moved as fast as we did and as much as we did in two days without them. Seriously. My brothers and Danny's brother just left after moving all our heavy stuff. My mom was here all afternoon. Our neighbors helped us push shopping carts back and forth, loading and unloading. Another neighbor watched William both mornings so I could get stuff ready to go! Danny's dad came over yesterday to play with William. We can't thank them all enough!
William has been a champ through it all. It has been a rough couple of days for him with all the craziness, and it's not over yet. But he surprised me, as he always does, and was such a good sport through it all. We're so lucky to have him! Oh, and did I mention that for the most part of the last week and a half or so he has been sleeping in? Yeah. Until anywhere between 8:30 and 9:40. HEAVENLY. It's been nice to be able to get up and shower or get stuff done before he wakes up. And let's be honest... I've slept in a couple of days, too.

18 months old and moving day

Our little goof ball is getting so big! He had his check up yesterday, and even though he never likes the doctor's office, it's nice to see how he's growing! His stats are:

Weight: 24 pounds (23rd percentile)

Height: 34 inches (89th percentile)

He's still my tall skinny boy! He is still in love with cars, but is loving books and music more and more. We usually read Sheep in a Jeep and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom at least 3 times a day. He has been amazing is lately with both his climbing skills (yikes) and his talking. He's been picking up a good hand full of words. He even tells funny jokes. Next time you see him ask him to tell you one.

He also had his first day of nursery on Sunday. This is a bittersweet topic for us because we had to leave our old ward behind because they didn't have a primary. We will never be in a chapel like the one at the JSMB again! We love the ward and the people! Luckily a lot of them are our neighbors so we see them regularly. We are excited to get into this new ward though. William was so excited when we got to nursery, he ran in and didn't look back. We were told he was so sweet the whole time and even sat for the lesson. Hopefully it's a weekly thing!

Here are a couple of pictures of our little man at the Kingfisher Ranch at the Tyler family trip, and a few at Lagoon.

Beep Beep!

And here is our big guy getting ready for his first day of nursery. We had to take a break to drive cars out on the balcony.

Oh, and did I mention we are moving? Staying in our building, just going down a few floors. The view will be a HUGE improvement (no more naked lady!) but the kitchen will be a major down grade. I'll miss our counter space, but we'll have a lot more closet space! Hooray for storage space. We went down to measure the rooms to make sure we could fit in there okay. William had been playing out on the balcony, and saw us with the measuring tape and got jealous. We handed it to him to hold for a minute and the first thing he did was run out to the balcony and throw it off in to the inaccessible gardens. Little stinker. First thing we are doing down there is putting the lattice up!

Watch out Wyoming!

Danny is at work, William is asleep, and I am enjoying a moment of calm and quiet instead of packing for our trip tomorrow! We are heading to an awesome ranch in Wyoming with all of the Tyler gang. Every single one. My older brother and his family are in town from Florida, no one is on a mission, and everyone has work off! It'll be the first time in years that we will all be on a trip together! I seriously think that the last time was when we went to Disneyland, right after my brother's mission ten or eleven years ago. We've been together for family dinners, but nothing like this! It'll be so fun to have everyone there. William will get to play with his cute cousin Max. We don't get to see them enough! There will be canoeing, kayaking, fishing, horseback riding, marshmallow roasting, games, and lots of food! William of course will be in heaven, exploring the wide open space, getting as dirty as he can. We are so excited!

A Sunday Stroll

We love going for Sunday afternoon walks. This week we strolled down to the Millcreek Park on State and 2nd Avenue. William and I don't venture there too often on our own because of the select group of people we often find there, so it was fun to go with Danny.
One of my favorite dresses recently had to be retired...it was blue corduroy from DownEast. I couldn't bring myself to just throw it away, and the zipper was ripped so I couldn't DI it, so I did the next best thing. I made William some new church pants. I love corduroy!William recently started learning how fun it is to roll down hills. Now he gets down and tries it everywhere we go!We especially love it when the fountain is turned on! Now if only someone would would move those darn power lines...

Welcome back computer... we missed you!

The cord to our laptop stopped working (the wires were starting to pull out. It was a fire hazard to say the least!) and unfortunately our battery didn't last long. The guy at PC laptops told us they didn't have them, but they ranged from 80 to 120 to replace. That's a little more than we'd want to have to spend, especially considering that this laptop is as old as it is. We know we'll have to replace it sooner or later (probably sooner) and didn't want to have to put that much into a cord we won't use long. So we put it off for most of the month of July and were internet free. It was pretty nice for a while, but it's equally nice to have it back. We ended up getting one on Amazon, something we should've done from the beginning, for a fraction of the price. Different brand, but it works! Can I just say that I love Amazon? I really do. The cord came in the mail today and I've spent William's nap catching up on emails and blogs. I hope he takes a long nap because I have other things to catch up on as well! July was a super busy month for us, but definitely one of the funnest we've had for a while! Here are some highlights:
-staying at our family cabin in Oakley and going to the Oakley Rodeo
-going to the Young's cabin to see Danny's cousin and her family. It was fun to meet her for the first time!
-Spending time in Park City with the Youngs. William LOVED all the time with his cousins. Thomas turned two and had a fun party. My sister Sarah is AMAZING and drove up to watch William and Thomas one night so the adults could all go see Harry Potter 7 part 2!! It was awesome. I got pretty teary eyed in that one! I can't believe they are over...
-Also in Park City the kids got to ride rides by the Alpine Slide. Pictures to come. William gets themost serious play face, so he looks like he's not enjoying it, but really he loves it and bawls when he has to get off.
-Biking to see the parade on the 24th and then watching the fireworks at Aunt Anita's house
-I got to go to a Theta Reunion and see all my old sorority pals and advisors.
-July ended with an awesome Christmas in July Party! My Grandma Tyler always threw these parties every year when we were little. We'dplay games like dropping clothespins into jars from your nose and eating donuts on a string. We'd eat all our favorite Christmas foods as well. We haven't had one in years, so my parents got all my Dad's side of the family together and we brought the tradition back to life! We had all of our favorite Grandma Tyler foods like Frog-eye salad, shrimp dip, jello salad, German potatoe salad, ham, and my mom added home made rootbeer and ice cream. Even if the party hadn't have been that fun it would have been worth it for the food.
So July was busy but super fun and we got to see lot's of friends and family. More pictures to come (probably). We have another couple weeks of busy fun (cabin trips and a Tyler family trip to a ranch) and then maybe things will calm down for a bit. I doubt it, but it's nice to think about. Right?
And since this post isn't long enough, I'll throw in a bunch of pictures from our 4th of July Weekend in Oakley. The pictures are in somewhat reverse order.

William had tons of fun at the Rodeo... he was on a goofy sugar-high for the first half, and then the late hour hit him for the second half and he sat quietly the rest of the time. He loved watching the animals and especially loved the fireworks! For the rest of the night he kept pointing to the sky and signing more.All the cousins got decked out...You could tell exactly who the city people were and who the REAL cowboys were...William and GrandpaHe had fun running around like a cowboy. Am I surprised that he took the rifle and started pushing it around?I saw this vest on Made and couldn't resist making him one! He was in heaven walking around exploring the huge property Jumping in the freezing canal has kind of lost it's charm for me, but it was fun to watch my brothers and cousins do it. If you look closely you can see that they are all looking at my youngest brother in his blue swimming suit about to come out of the water from swimming under the bridge!William LOVED going for horse rides! Here he is with Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Sharp! It was Grandpa Sharp and his twin brother that built this cabin years ago! We love being able to go up there.