Sickies

This week was a long one! Emma and I had a fun intro to the fall season by getting our first gross cold since last winter. Urgh, I was so excited about the weather cooling down and the leaves changing that I forgot about all that getting sick all the time junk. Joy. So Emma, who finally started sleeping through the night 3 weeks ago, went back to waking up 4 times a night and not being able to take a nap without me nursing her while in bed. Poor little thing.  Hence, no sleep and Emma smothering me with snotty kisses gets me sick. And to top it off, Josh had to work almost every night this week, with homework on top of that.  I seriously don't know how you do it with more than one kid. ( Take them one at a time I know ). But we made it through triumphant! That cold is behind us...until the next one that is.  I was impressed that I still made dinner most of the week, but here's a picture of a casualty as a result.



I know what it looks like but it's not, thank heavens. I gave Emma a squeeze pouch while I was making dinner, and thought she could handle it, but...oh well, she had a great time so what can I say?:)  

Family Reunion Time

Our Family Reunion in Yellowstone was a blast...literally haha! Josh thought of that of course. ( You know, cause Yellowstone? Old Faithful? he he). We got back from an incredible week in Idaho on Saturday, Josh's only week off for the whole summer. That guy works so hard! He's amazing!  I'd say "heck no! I need my vacation!!!"  My family rented an awesome barn/huge house in Ashton, ID. It's called the Shootout Barn. We later found out the origins of its name and it creeped us out big time. It wasn't just a creative name.  There was literally a shootout between an escaped convict and a police officer. The convict shot himself in the barn after shooting the cop ( the cop lived ). You could make up some FREAKY bedtime ghost stories! Josh was going to make some up and tell the nieces and nephews but we wanted them to sleep:)

During the week in Idaho we went to Yellowstone, horseback riding, hiking, floating the river, and vegged. It was fantastic! Shoutout to my brother and sister-in-law for planning it all. 

Isn't that barn fantastic?! Such a cool idea to redo a barn and make it a house! It was a perfect size to fit our whole family, more than 30 people.

The Luker Crew!

In Front of Old Faithful after the big shootoff!

Yep, that's bison after crossing the road. Pretty awesome.

Emma and I on our horse "Shadow"

Love these two:)

Cave Falls. A Beautiful Hike!

The Grand Canyon in Yellowstone. Isn't it spectacular?

Emma is not a big fan of grass. 

She'd raise her legs like the every time we put her down haha!

Emma and her cousin bonding:)

Emma will be 10 months tomorrow so here's some adorable pics from the last little bit.

Being super aggressive with her toy box haha. 

She finally has her 1st tooth and loves talking. She waves and loves to clap and we swear she says "Hi Dada" whenever Josh comes home from School. Haha but that's probably just us:) We love her!

Update Overload

This summer has flown by crazy fast! I can't believe Josh will be starting his last year of college here in a few weeks. Can you say...YES!!! I'm kind of excited. And Emma is officially 9 months old. Where does she get the nerve to keep growing up and get so big! I mean really, I can't handle it.

We've tried to branch out and go on some fun hikes and stuff on the weekends around here instead of our classic routine of eating food and watching netflix. So here's an overload of pictures from the last month of our adventures. Enjoy! (if you make it through them all)

We love us some mini-golfing!

 Went to Bridal Veil Falls. Beautiful!

Bean Museum at BYU, enjoying the late President Packer's art work. He was so gifted and inspired!

Our one shot of us on Pioneer Day at the parade! We did tons of other stuff too, like watch fireworks and go to the Pioneer festival in Provo, but alas, no pictures:(

Josh's parents have been in town so we've loved hanging with them and family. Emma loved playing with her cousin Evelyn. It's a little blurry since Emma was moving the whole time and pulling that poor baby's ear, but those two will be best buds.

Emma's first watermelon experience...true love. Sadly she got a rash after so we might wait a bit to give it to her again.

Stewart Falls. Gorgeous!!! It was a perfect day to go, nice and overcast for the most part without raining. And we made it with a baby! Go us!

Adorable. I wish we could all hike like her...

Josh's mom made that headband and those little flower booties. Um, cute overload!! Thanks Grandma!

I feel creepy sometimes because I just love to watch Emma sleep...but look at that face! What mother wouldn't?

Emma is now a superstar crawler. 

Still no teeth yet, but we're holding our breath and waiting on that one (not with excitement). 

She's eating more finger food and is getting pretty good at getting it in her mouth and passing it between hands.  

She learned to clap this week and has been doing it non-stop! 

And she has her own little conversations and funny noises she does. 

We love her.

And to finish...a lovely walk around the temple. A great couple of weeks:)

Emma is 8 months!

Baby Emma is 8 months tomorrow and I need to give a little description of her cute little personality and accomplishments. She is so darling and the center of our world!

-She is now eating some solids. She still hasn't had any teeth break through, but these last few days have been extra drooly, so we shall see:)

-She loves loves bananas and bread (well just sucking on bread until its a soggy mess). So much fun to clean up!

-She loves crawling and getting in to trouble. When she grabs a cord or something she knows she shouldn't, she gets the biggest grin. Little stinker!

-She can finally go all night without nursing! Yay, we were kind of struggling back there with waking up every hour. Whew! Glad that's over...for now. I have heard horror stories if teething so we'll see.

-She is uber ticklish under her armpits and her thighs. Haha cracks me up!

- Whenever I sing to her, she sings right along with me...well in a monotone way:) But it's definitely singing! And she loves pounding on the piano when I play! So far fulfilling our dream of musical children:)

Pulling herself up on furniture is her favorite, until she gets hurt. Happens a couple times a day so I guess I should get used to it.

She likes to stand up in her crib during nap time and look around while jabbering. I peek through the door and watch her sometimes. It's so cute!!!

Her eyes are still a pretty blue, and her hair is coming in blonde. She's also really long and skinny so she might take after her daddy that way.

I'm amazed how this

 and this  

changed into this

   and this 

I feel so blessed to be the mom of this beautiful baby girl!

Here's a few of her milestones for records sake ( just so I don't forget;) :

Sitting up- April 1st

Rolling -May15th

Saying "Da-Da"- May 8th (that was mothers day weekend by the way)
"Ma-ma" came a few weeks later

Crawling- June 30th

4th of July Weekend!

Well it was a great 4th of July! I was so excited that Josh got work of on the 3rd too so we could have a 3-day-weekend. On Friday we had a yummy pancake breakfast and then went to see the candy bomber Gail Halverson make a drop in Orem. It was pretty cool! It was really hot and there were tons and tons of people there but it was fun to just be part of the experience. We couldn't see it very well, but I was able to see the little parachutes drop out of the plane. Josh, of course, wanted to get one and was in the middle of the mad dash towards the candy. He caught some good video of it but didn't get any candy.

On Saturday morning we went to the Provo Parade on University Ave. It was a decent parade but somehow we missed Cosmo in it! Josh and I were waiting for the cool trampoline but no such luck. Then we went to Josh's sister's house in Alpine and watched the fireworks from their backyard. It was fantastic!!! There were fireworks everywhere you looked! Who needs to go to a big firework show when you have a view like that?

I feel so blessed to live in this country and enjoy the freedoms that we have. God bless America!