Foster Parents!

James and I have spent the last five months taking classes and working to get our license for foster parenting. It has been a tedious process, but definitely worth it. On June 16th Jordan came to live with us. She is a beautiful 7 1/2 month old girl with big brown eyes and a bright smile! She is doing so well in our home; she acclimated so quickly it was almost as if she had always been with us. She is such a happy, smiley baby. Jordan will smile and laugh at anyone and rarely fusses. She has definitely kept us busy and James is learning all about taking care of an infant, though he hasn't changed a poopy diaper yet...

The dogs LOVE Jordan. I think they think she is their baby too. Lilly has always had the nickname "Third Wheel" because she follows me around the house and constantly has to be where I am, and is always scooting in the middle of James and I. Now Lilly is the third wheel with me and Jordan. Lilly sits by the tub for bath time, sits by the changing table for changing time, and sits under the high chair at feeding time. Not to mention hovers over her while she plays on the floor. Lilly and Toby are also a little jealous of all Jordan's cool toys. They are always trying to chew her toys, and today pushed her toy box about five feet trying to get the zoo animals out of the bottom of the box! They are very good to put the toys down when I say no, but then they lay next to the toy and stare longingly at it with their puppy dog eyes. It's very pathetic, so we are going to get them some exciting new toys next week and hopefully that will distract them from her toys.

For the last week and a half we have been working on some areas where she was a little lacking, but she has come completely up to speed developmentally in that time! When she arrived she didn't know how to eat off of a spoon, she hated her car seat, and had a rough time sleeping in a crib. But now she is an old pro at the spoon and I can't feed her fast enough (she yikes food)! She is doing so much better in her car seat, and I am HAPPY to report she slept through the night in her crib last night for the first time!

Jordan went to the doctor on Tuesday, and we learned she is a moose! She weighs 20 lbs. and is 27 inches long which puts her in the 95 percentile for weight and the 90th for height. She got her six month vaccines, and her toe poked for blood work :( She was not a huge fan of the nurse! All in all she is healthy, and now that she is jabbering more (saying "ba, ba" and "da,da") as of yesterday, she is right on target where she should be developmentally.

Jordan's first tooth is poking through today! It is her bottom right tooth. She is a little more sensitive today, and generally doesn't want me out of her sight. Her other bottom tooth and both of her top teeth look like they will be following shortly, so we may have a few more sensitive days.

We are pretty busy with different meetings and visits for Jordan. In the first two weeks we will have her we will have had nine different meetings about her and her future. So it has been a little crazy adjusting her and the dogs while balancing meetings all while being sleep deprived. But we wouldn't change it for anything! We love having Jordan in our home and feel so blessed to have her here! She is such a beautiful, happy baby and she lights up our home!

Christmas

Christmas time! We had a great, quiet Christmas. Since we don't have children we slept in, opened gifts and went to the movies that afternoon. My family had a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve, usually pajamas, and then we would wear them to bed that night. James and I decided to start this tradition with our own family- so we got these awesome Christmas boxer pants and candy cane pajamas for the dogs (I couldn't help myself- I have no kids to dress up!).

Thanksgiving

James and I went to a restaurant called the Claim Jumper for Thanksgiving. We would normally have gone to the White Mountains with the Browns to their cabin, but I had to work the day before and after, so a four hour drive for a dinner didn't really seem worth it.

Halloween

James and I at the trunk-or-treat. We had a lot of fun with the kids, and since we are both in primary we know a lot of the kids well. We were surprised when another ward from our stake was there, and there were way more kids than we were expecting. Needless to say we ran out of candy and had to turn some tunk-or-treaters away, but they were appeased by cupcakes and a costume parade.

Sabino Canyon

These are some pictures of Sabino Canyon, a beautiful national park just down the road from us. It is a great place to hike and amazing to see at sunset.

2010 Recap

So with the big adjustment to moving to Arizona, I haven't even thought about posting anything on my blog, plus I don't think I even got around to telling my family I had one- so no harm no foul. But, as I have been pretty bad about keeping in touch I wanted to give a little recap of 2010 and make a New Year's resolution to be better about keeping my family updated on our life in Arizona.

Moving to Tucson

We moved James down to Tucson this weekend. I would be moving with him now, but I have things to finish with drill until the end of March, so I am flying back to Utah on Wednesday. It was a 14 hour drive in a car STUFFED full of our things plus our two dogs Toby and Lilly. The dogs were soooo good on the drive- they just slept while we were driving which was so nice, but we did have to stop more than normal for potty breaks. The only downside of the dogs sleeping the whole time was that when we finally got to Tucson and they were able to run around they were WIRED!! We got in at midnight and didn't get to bed until after 2:30am because the dogs were so hyper. Luckily Ed and Mary Brown (the people we are staying with for a few months) were out of town so they didn't have to be kept awake by our crazy dogs.

Things are going really well though, we are getting all of our stuff unpacked and getting the dogs adjusted to a new home. The Brown's have 3 labs of their own so now there are 5 dogs in the house! All of the dogs get along very well though (thank the stars!) but it can be a little crazy at times. The biggest hurdle for my dogs is they have to get used to being treated more like dogs and less like children. The Brown's have a gated-off area for the dogs since there are so many of them, and my dogs HATE that! They are used to following me around all day, and being spoiled rotten...... so they have been crying at me a lot! They have also found about 5 different ways to worm themselves out of the gated area- so we have to keep adding and fixing things to keep them in. But other than that we are all doing great- plus the weather is in the mid sixties and sunny!!