Crazy Month!

What a crazy crazy month it has been! Rachel, Jaki and I just got back from spending about four weeks in Arizona, three of them without Jeff. Here is a little of what we have done:

The Saturday before we went to Arizona I ran in the town's Turkey Trot. It was actually 6 weeks to the day after having had Jaki. I decided to go for the 5K after only having gone running one time in the past year. Needless to say I didn't do so well among the other 24-year-olds, but I think I kicked trash among all the other 6-week postpartumers. I know this isn't the most flattering picture of me and I don't know how to rotate it on here so that it is facing the right direction, but here is the picture of me after the race.

Next on our crazy list of things this month-we sold our pickup! For the time being we are a one-car family. It was a little sad saying goodbye to our old friend.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving Jaklyn Larson was blessed.

We had a fun trip to the badlands with uncles and cousins. Rachel loved the dirtbikes.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving Jeff went back to Utah for finals and work. Since I didn't have to work, and since we knew we wouldn't be seeing much of Jeff during finals week anyway, the girls and I stayed in Arizona. We only planned on staying a couple weeks and Jeff was going to come pick us up, but after a week we decided it would be a lot cheaper to wait and go back with Jeff's family when they went up to Utah for Christmas. So we ended up being in Arizona for almost a month, went back to Utah for 3 days, and now we are back in Arizona for Christmas. You might think we are a crazy family for driving so much, but we love being with family and hate missing a party!

While the girls and I stayed in Arizona here are a few fun things we did:

We went to Jason and Erika's house in Joe City for Family Home Evening.

Erika had a cute little lesson, the kids played bowling, and then made sugar cookies. They loved playing together.

The girls had fun playing with their Flake cousins in Snowflake.

It snowed while we were in Snowflake so Rachel and I went out that morning to play before the snow melted. Kinda funny that we live in Logan with snow for four months of the year, but the first time we played in snow this year was in Snowflake!

Rachel had fun helping decorate the Christmas tree...
...until she got her finger stuck in an ornament. Luckily the ornament was plastic, not glass, and Travis got her finger out.

Rachel and Jaki got to sit on Santa's lap with Matt.

Jaki had fun holding her Larson uncles.

We had a lot of fun in Arizona, but were missing Jeff and home too much, so we had to go back for three days and then come back. One of the days we were back home in Utah Jaki had her 2-month appointment. She has almost doubled her birth weight at 14 pounds, 2 ounces. I can't remember her height, but she is in the 90th percentile for height and above the 95th percentile for weight. She has some mighty big cheeks.

We all had such a fun time and are having a very Merry Christmas! We'll have to post later to tell all about our Christmas fun.

Fun Sunday Evening

Life is going well for us here. Rachel is growing and getting smarter by the second and she'll be the first to tell you shes a genius. Jaki is starting to sleep for longer periods of time. I had a wonderful surprise one night this week when I woke up after she had been asleep for 7 hours! Since then shes had a couple 5-in-a-rowers, but no more 7's yet. She is such a wonderful baby! Jeff is still quite busy with his homework, but still finds time to hold and play with Jaki and wrestle Rachel (her very favorite thing). I am just having fun with my girls!


First of all, here is Jaki's close-up for Celeste. Isn't she so dang cute?





Hanging out with Aunt Jeanae. She came over and brought ice cream Sunday night. We love it when she comes over!








Rachel lined up all of her "friends" and posed for this picture





Rachel wanted to get out my guitars. She had quite a bit of fun playing them
and especially learning how to say ukulele




Isn't she a natural? She really does know it is a violin, she just forgets and calls it a guitar every now and then. It would probably help her remember a little better if I would play it more often.

Halloween fun

It seems I have some more time, so here is a little of our Halloween.

Rachel loved carving pumpkins, but it actually took quite a bit of talking into to get her to put her hand inside and get the guts out.

It seems I've let myself go since having two kids-haha, just kidding. Just before our trunk-or-treat party I realized I didn't have any halloween candy, so I ran to the store and found these teeth and scars so that I wouldn't have to go to the halloween party naked.

Rachel was a beaver for Halloween. Jaki was a banana, but didn't go trick-or-treating so I never got a picture of her in the costume. I'll have to put her back in the costume and take a picture just to show how cute she was.

So this one isn't Halloween, but here is a picture of Jaki with Grandpa Charlie. He and Grandpa Ron came up for the week/weeks and it has been fun to have them with us.

Again, not Halloween, but Jaki just had such a cute pose last night and it shows off her cute cheeks so well that I had to take a picture of it.

One month old!

So Jaki is sleeping and Rachel is watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (her very favorite show) so I thought I might try to post some more pictures to let you see how the Larson household is doing.

As you can see from my title, Jaki is now one month old! I can't believe how fast the time has flown by. She has grown so much! Here is a little of what we have been up to...

Poor Jeff was so busy the week we brought Jaki home. He had 6 tests within a week's period of time, and his tests involve major study sessions. He works so dang hard at school. This semester is supposed to be the busiest one of the program. We sure hope that is true, because I don't know if he, I, or the girls would be able to take anything harder. Between being treasurer of our HOA, school, working on a Mini-Baja team at school (designing and building a car-of-sorts), school, work, and school - oh yeah, and homework, he has very little free time. This picture is probably one of the 5 hours of sleep he got during that first week with Jaki home.

I love this picture! Rachel has reacted a lot better to Jaki invading her space than I thought she would. She loves to give her kisses and snuggle her and anytime I lay Jaki on the couch to sleep Rachel wants to lay by her. It often wakes Jaki up, making me a little frustrated, but I hope I'm not keeping her from loving her sister too much. It seems that since Jaki has been home Rachel has grown so much. She talks so much more now! I was afraid her potty-training would take a step backwards, but she actually has been doing quite well. In fact, now she will tell me she needs to go pee, I tell her to go get on the toilet, and then a minute or two later she just tells me "Momma, I'm ready for wipe." It has been quite nice. Rachel has missed the attention she used to get from me, but so far we are doing well and the more practice we get the better we do.

The week after my mom left Ron, Matt and Debbie came up and stayed with us for a few days. It was sure fun to have them here and Rachel loved the attention they gave to her.

Grandma Debbie and the girls. I thought I had gotten pictures of Matt with his nieces, but I guess I didn't. We'll have to get those pictures at Thanksgiving time.

If Jaki keeps sleeping I'll do another post about Halloween, but we'll just have to see if that happens or not.

Jaklyn Larson

We've finally decided on a name!

Jaklyn Larson

Here are a few more pictures


Little Jaki and her proud papa

Grandma and the girls

Grandma with Jaki

Welcome Baby Larson!

Our new baby girl.

Born: 10/11/08, 1:44 pm.

Weight: 7 lb. 4 oz.

Length: 19 in.

Pictures:

Help!

Does somebody want to let me know how to add links to other people's blogs on here?

Here we go!

So I decided to start a blog. So far I am having a little trouble navigating through this thing, but we'll give it a try.
Anyway, here are a few pictures of going to the BYU/Aggie football game. We lost, but it actually ended up being quite an exciting game. The first half was a little one-sided, but it got a lot more exciting during the second half. Anyway, it was a fun family outing.
I've also got a few pictures of Rachel's birthday on here. She is two now! I was hoping this baby would wait until after her birthday and it did. Now I'm trying to be a lot more active so that I go into labor, but no luck yet
















Going to the Aggie vs. BYU football game. Yes, she has a leash. It is from her aunt Jeanae and it actually works quite swell!













Rachel's birthday morning. If I can figure it out, I will try to put a video of her opening her presents on here.













For her birthday party we had the neighbors come over. She loves their boy Tanner and was so excited for him to come eat dinner with her.

As I get more time and more experience hopefully these posts will look better, but here we go for now.