All the comings and goings....

As I sit here in our apartment listening to gospel music and watching Levi play with his toys, I am overwhelmed with the spirit. I'm so grateful for my life and our lifestyle. Each day is a new challenge and adventure in parenthood and marriage. Rick and I were discussing the other day how little we knew each other when we got married. You can't fully comprehend that until you have been married for a couple years. We knew we had all the basic things aligned, and even a few oddities, but nothing so grand as we do now. I remember sitting in front of his stake president as we were interviewing for our marriage recommend. He said something very profound that we knew was true, but didn't fully comprehend. He said, "You think you love each other, but you don't. You just like each other. You may even like each other A LOT. You will understand love a few years down the road." I am sure that all of you reading this that have been married a couple years or more are nodding your heads. Isn't it so true? I can say with all my heart that I love Rick. He is my other half. My better half. He is my life line. My best friend. He is the one I turn to when I cry, laugh, and need a foot rub. Ha ha. I love you my sweetheart Rick!
Levi has been struggling with hitting and throwing temper tantrums these past couple weeks. It is hard to watch him struggle to express himself then get so mad when he can't do it. He is such a sweet boy and I know that as he learns to communicate this will get easier. For now I am trying to help him the best I can with a soft voice and gentle hands. It gets hard, as you know... but I know that it won't do any good yelling and getting aggressive. I just need to be the example of gentleness and calmness for him to follow.
He hasn't been sleeping or eating much lately. He used to sleep 12 hours at night, now I am lucky if he sleeps 8. He has major food preferences too! The only vegetables I have been able to get him to consistently eat is green beans and asparagus. Even then he will only eat a couple beans and only the tops of the asparagus. I hope he will get a little more brave with food as he gets older. I worried about him not eating enough but I was put at ease when I went to the doctor's this last week. He had his 15 month check up and shots. When I pulled off Levi's jeans so the doctor could examine him the first thing out of the doc's mouth was, "Wow! Look at those healthy thighs!" I just love Levi's thick little legs. He has the chubbiest thighs ever! Just like his daddy's thick thighs. The doctor wasn't worried in the least that Levi wasn't getting enough nourishment. He is in the 80% with his weight so I think we are good.
Ally (Alexandra) is doing well. The doctor said at my 20 week prenatal checkup that I have a low thyroid. He said he wants to wait another month to see if my body self corrects itself, but if not I will go on medication for the rest of the pregnancy to avoid a low birth weight baby. She is pretty active, but not as much as Levi was. I can already tell she is a gentle girl. I hope that Levi and she get along well and that Levi can still feel my love for him even as I begin to take care of another life in our home.
Speaking of home, we are buying a house!!! Right now it is 98% sure. We are doing the home inspection tomorrow morning and then the appraisal and loan process will get going. We are hoping to close and get the keys before June 30th! I am so excited for this home. Especially because it is big enough for our growing family and is in bountiful! We didn't want to leave Bountiful. We have grown to call this home and want our children to be able to do the same. I will keep you updated more on the house as we get further through the process!
One more thing, tomorrow is Memorial Day. We usually go the day before, Sunday, to visit my brother and sister's grave and my Grandmother Gray's grave. I remember as a child thinking often of my brother and sister, Jefferson and Elizabeth, that had never met. My mother always taught me that they were on the other side of the veil teaching others about Christ and His gospel. I was always in awe at them. They were my mother's 1st and 3rd born children, I am the last... that is why I never remember them. Although I am sure I spent time with them before I came to earth. As I think of them this Memorial Day I know they are valiant servants of Christ and amazing examples to me. I love you brother and sister!
I know this was a long post with no pictures, but I wanted to document these thoughts for my children especially.

Chalk Art on Main Street

We love where we live! The city is always doing something fun! Summer is especially eventful. They do an annual chalk art festival on main street. Artists and amateurs all gather and for three days they create master pieces on the sidewalks all over main street. There is a "free" section where we saw a bunch of kids and families contributing so we decided to add our little flavor to the street! Levi loved it!

Everyone thought Levi was so cute. This one lady even stopped as asked if she could take his picture and that it might end up on a poster or something. I couldn't agree more... look at that face... he is a total ham!
He very much LOVED eating the chalk. I had a hard time getting him to leave it alone.

We laid Levi on the ground and traced him then colored him in. All of the small chalk marks in these pictures are Levi's contributions! Here he is trying to help daddy with his.This was mine... lame I know.

It was so much fun! I can't wait for next year. We didn't get much of a chance to see other people's real art so that was the only down side. It all got rained away before we could make it back down after everyone had finished.

Lots of fun part II

Here I am just a couple weeks ago. I am now almost 22 weeks along. We are having a girl! We have decided on naming her Alexandra and calling her Ally. Unless we change our mind before she is born that is what we are sticking with. She is active and kicks a lot, but is more gentle than Levi was. She doesn't flip around as much and kick as hard. I love talking to her and can't wait to see her!!! (I'll inclue a couple ultrasounds in the next post) Mother's Day was nice. I woke up to breakfast. The waffles were so delicious. They are my favorite kind with apples, cinnamon, and pecans. Rick is allergic to nuts so he NEVER puts nuts in anything, but he made me my own special waffles with nuts. I LOVE NUTS!! YUM! He also changed every diaper that day and did everything for me! It was sooo nice to just relax. I also got a new ring to wear on my wedding finger. Not to replace my old one, but a more casual one to wear everyday that I am not worried about getting wet or ruining, etc. Thanks Rick for a sweet Mother's Day.
Levi is so cute at bath time. I had to snap a picture of these two! My favorite two men in the world right now!

Levi played at my sister's house the other day and her kids taught him how to dig holes while they planted flowers. It was so cute and he loved it!!

Lots of fun

My cousin Cami and her husband, Derrick, are some of our closest friends. We love getting together often and just hanging out. Our two kids are two months apart and play really well together and Derrick and Rick are so much alike. They love playing guitar together and often sing some fun songs that we all can do a little jig to. I had to make sure I documented it here: Levi is in that stage where he gets obsessed with the funniest things. Like the BROOM! lol. He was so tired he wouldn't put it down. This is us trying to get him to let go and go to bed.
I took Levi out in the rain the other day to run around. He loved it and I thought he looked so cute!

We have a neighbor that is a bus mechanic and he drove by our apartments and gave a couple of us a ride in a bus he was working on. A brand new bus... never been ridden. It was so fun, but Levi was so tired he was really scared the whole time. Can you tell he had been crying?

I don't think Levi is quite ready for a slide that big all by himself. Look how scared he looks. lol

We had a birthday party at the zoo the other week. Levi loved looking at all the animals... he was so cute.

Another thing he gets obsessed with his is old johnny jump up. He drags it around the house and won't put it down.

He loves to do all these funny things now to get us to laugh... this is just one of them! His sippy cup balancing act! He can climb up on the couch by himself now and will randomly come sit by me and just lounge out and watch whatever I am watching. It is so cute!

He likes to sit on the counter when I cook so he is closer to me... well I turn around for one second and this is what I found.... "who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?"

Moab with the Thaynes

A couple weekends ago we went down to Moab to get away and get some sun. We invited Devin and Stephanie Thayne, our friends. It was a blast. We got down LATE LATE Thursday night and couldn't find a camping place that was open so we got a motel room. It was fun to have a sleepover and hang out. I was grateful for the shower in the morning too! We went into Arches and spent the day running around and hiking. It was so much fun. Here is delicate arch. So gorgeous. Rick had never been there before and he was skeptical, but when we actually got to it he was in awe and loved the surroundings.
It was cool to see the steps they carve in the rocks there to help hikers... I thought it would make a good picture.

Such beautiful landscapes!

I was pretty proud of myself for how much I climbed around and hiked while being pregnant. Although I saw a lady that was 8 months pregnant hiking a lot faster than me. I was so impressed!

Stephanie and I enjoyed flying in the wind! Rick and I got pretty tired and stopped for some water and grazing.

Rick can jump really high so I was daring him to jump over all these cairns along the way. Look how much clearance he got on that jump. I should have picked something bigger for him to jump over.

I gave it a shot too, but my jump is pretty pathetic.

The sign doesn't lie. We were hiking through straight sand for a while... that can get really tiring.

We had a lot of fun and enjoyed the company. We ate a milkshake and dinner in Moab and saw some of the town. We decided to leave late Friday night and come home and we hit a snow storm in Price and got stuck in the canyon coming into Spanish Fork for almost 4 hours! We all made it home safely though. Good times.

Easter

We started our Easter off with egg decorating with my cousin, Jessie, and her husband, Joe. We love spending time with them. I got a cheesy egg dying kit from Smith's and I think I was the only one SUPER excited to decorate. I don't know why more people don't enjoy it. We had a couple really cute ones, but our dye went all weird and a lot of our eggs turned out weird.

Levi even had fun participating, although all he really wanted was to put everything in his mouth. I wonder if he will ever grow out of that. Here are some of our finished eggs

Easter morning with finding our Easter baskets. Rick found his okay... after I gave him tons of "hot or cold" hints. Mint Oreos, Rootbeer, and mini chocolate eggs. I also got him a new kind of razor he has been wanting to try.

I found mine easy. Rick got me some treats and Tangled, the movie! YAY! I love that movie!

With a little help from daddy, Levi found his little basket.

He wouldn't put it down the rest of the morning. Twix and little Nutter Butter treats. Yum!We then had Easter dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Brunson's and they had a fun egg hunt for Levi. I wasn't sure how much he would even like it, but he did really good and was running from egg to egg carrying his bucket full of goodies.

He found them all!!

I want to make sure it is clear to my children in the future that Easter is fun when we have baskets and eggs and treats, but the real reason for celebrating is our Savior and His resurrection. He lives and made it possible for the Plan of Salvation to be fulfilled. We are now fully able to return to our Father in Heaven because of all that Jesus Christ did for us. I know he lives and knows each of us individually. Don't forget how amazing and awe inspiring the real reason of Easter is. THE RESURRECTION!