Category: Zoe

Checkup Time!

>Ruthie was supposed to have her 6 month check up about two weeks ago, but the Pediatrician had to go out of town so it got rescheduled to today.

She wouldn’t lie still on the scale, so I had to sit her up, which she liked. she weighed in at 16 pounds, 15.4 ounces. Then we laid her down on the examination table and she was measured at 27.67 inches long! Dr. A commented on how big she is; he said she’s about the size of a 9 month old! What a BIG GIRL! She’s sitting up on her own now -we have to put her into a sitting position since she can’t get herself sitting yet- and last week she started saying MAMA!! Of course, she usually says it when she’s mad, but sometimes she’ll randomly say it. And when I look at her she smiles and giggles. She’s not saying it all the time, but that’s still exciting. Anyway here’s some pictures of the girls.

This is Zoe at the park by Jeff’s parents’ house on Sunday, August 17th. She’s going up the playground equipment on her own; Jeff’s off camera though waiting at the top. I just love how she’s climbing with confidence.

Here’s Zoe on the swing. After a bad incident last fall before Ruthie was born, she seems to have forgotten about nearly falling out of the swing and having a blast.

Here’s Ruthie sitting up big on Jeff’s parents’ front lawn, she’s looking off camera at Wendy. I love when small babies look at the camera, but some of the better pictures are when they are looking off camera.

This is just adorable. I finally got Ruthie to look at the camera and she’s scowling at me.

And here’s Ruthie and Jeff having a moment! I’m glad I was able to capture a real moment, not a created one.

Extended Family Ruthie Zoe

June 17th- June 22nd

>Well, my Dad came and went. Jeff went and came. Overall it was a really filled week.

Tuesday the 17th, is when my Dad flew into town. We didn’t do anything that day because we didn’t realize all 5 of us would fit into the car. Then Wednesday morning, Jeff got picked up by his old supervisor -who was 15 minutes late- and he left to Chicago. And while he was up in the air and flying, my dad and I took the girls and went down south to Lehi to visit an outdoor sportstore called Cabela’s. If you have never been to Cabela’s, you’re seriously missing out. It’s an awesome store that sells EVERYTHING for enjoying the outdoors. Fishing rods, hiking boots, dog collars with radios attached to them, swimming stuff… they have it all. There’s also a little eatery place, and they’ve also got fish aquariums and even a museum type room as well… called the game room; its got stuffed game like deer and whatnot. I took some pictures while we were there.

Here’s a catfish. Yes it’s white, but it’s not albino. I wasn’t able to get a good picture, but the catfish has regular colored eyes. Instead it has a condition called Leucism, which is REDUCED pigmentation, not LACK OF pigmentation. It was fascinating.

Here is a spawning trout of some kind. You can’t tell very well since I didn’t have the flash on, and therefore the picture came out super dark, but it’s got brighter scaled and the mouth is a bit hooked, which is what happens when they spawn. Anyway, this one was a HUGE fish, had to be at least two feet long.

Here is a display thing that was in the middle of the store. It was HUGE and it’s only the center half of it. What’s crazy is that my Dad’s been to a few other Cabela’s, and he said we have the smallest store he’s been to. It’s nuts knowing that there’s stores bigger than ours.

Anyway, after going to Cabela’s we decided to head further south into Orem since I wanted to check out a scrapbooking store called Archivers. It’s the only one in the state and the next closest one is in Denver, Colorado. I was extremely surprised it was actually in University Mall. I went into the store, got some stuff and then we mosied around the rest of the mall, and got some smoothies from Orange Julius. At that point the girls were getting grumpy so we headed home. We had left around 11:30, and didn’t get home until after 6:00. I tell you they are NOT used to being out and about all day like that. I also got a really cute video of Ruthie trying out Butternut Squash for the first time! I don’t think she liked it very much, but we can try again later!

The next day on Thursday, we went to IKEA. We ate in the cafe -I had the meatballs and mashed potatoes with lingonberries and my dad had the salmon- and I bought a little highchair with the tray and an inflatable support for smaller babies, a package of paper for Zoe to color on, and some cardboard storage boxes. Ruthie is no longer in 0-3 month clothing, so we’re at the point now that we can start packing the smaller stuff away. Then afterward, we went to Old Navy since Zoe needed a new swimsuit, and I also had a “10 bucks back” coupon from using my store card and earning points. I also got Zoe a pair of shorts and two shirts, and Ruthie got a cute little spagetti top bubble shaped one piece suit, and she also got a pair of shorts and a top. It cost me around $30, but I saved about $65 between the $10 off coupon and the fact I got everything off the clearance rack.

After going home and resting for a while, we went back out to eat dinner at Tres Hombres. And unfortunately, the food wasn’t all that great on Thursday for some reason. I actually got really sick from it, which is a first. Then after Tres Hombres, we went to Robert’s Arts & Crafts, but they didn’t have what I was looking for, so we had to drive to Michael’s. I found what I was looking for there, and we went home.

On Friday, we attempted to take the girls to the Zoo. I say attempted because one or both of them were crying the whole time we were there. We did spend maybe an hour there, 1.5 hours tops. Zoe did like looking around at the animals, but she eventually got too hot and cranky so we left before seeing the whole Zoo. I don’t plan on ever taking them back again in the middle of the summer. And besides, it was packed to the gills, we were SO lucky to get a reasonably close parking space. I did however mange to take some pictures!

This elephant must have been really bored because she -all of the zoo’s elephants are females- was pulling the wood off of the enclosure and started tossing the wood around. It was making a lot of noise and Zoe started freaking out, so my dad said “We better leave before somebody gets killed.” Leave as in the elephant area, not the whole zoo.

So, this alligator is on loan until around September first. And again, it’s not albino, but leucistic. It was really boring and just laid there, but it gave a good photo opportunity. I was surprised at how small it was too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the whole head into the picture, Zoe wasn’t feeling like cooperating with me, since she was crabby from the heat.

After going home and resting, we went to Jeff’s parents house to visit and ate pizza for dinner. Wendy was watching my BIL Andy’s kids, and Melissa and Devin showed up with their son, so we had a full house with all 7 grandkids. It was nice, and my Dad and John had fun going back from the current War to Iraq and back in America’s warfare history. Thankfully, I was able to cut them off before they started talking about the Korean War.

Then on Saturday, we went to Fashion Place mall, and I went into Nordstrom’s to buy some BareMinerals makeup. We ate lunch, walked around and then went home for a while. Then we finally decided it was time to go swimming! So I strapped Zoe into her new bathing suit, and put Ruthie in Zoe’s old one and we went out. Zoe clung on me for dear life the whole time, mostly crying “Mama hold Zoe.” and “Want Dora Towel.” and “Zoe sit down.” while she was pointing to the chairs. My dad swam around with Ruthie who actually fell asleep! Unfortunately, we forgot to put sunscreen on the girls and Ruthie got sunburned a bit. But she’s fine now. Zoe did however warm up to the idea of the swimming pool which is good. We’ll have to take her out there more so she can get used to the idea of swimming. After drying off and whatnot, we went to Walmart, where my dad bought some stuff to Grill. We had chicken drumsticks and some Pork ribs, which came out great. Zoe finally got some large legos and she was having a blast with those; they even had them in pinks and pastel blue for little girls.

Sunday was when Jeff came home! It was so nice to have him back. Because we were so busy, I didn’t really miss him too much, but it did get lonely at night, not having him in the bed with me. My dad drove to the airport to pick him up of course, and I stayed home with the girls. Zoe was really surprised to see him; I can’t really say she was super excited to see him because she didn’t at once ask where he was or anything, but she did hug him and sit on his lap. Funnily enough, she didn’t show any interest in him until he said “Zoe, I got you something.” then that’s when she came running over. After that, we went to dinner at Jeff’s parents’ house for our customary Sunday dinner, and we played a bit of Wii and just sat around and talked some more. I got a super cute picture of Ruthie and my dad; seeing how she was the only one of the two that let him touch her. Zoe never really did warm up to my Dad, which I know bothered him.

There’s really strong family resemblance here!

There’s more to the week, but I’d rather get Jeff’s narration for Monday’s fishing adventure! It was exciting I can tell you that, but I’m really glad I didn’t go.

Living Ruthie Zoe

It’s JUNE!!

>Lots of things are happening this month for our family! First and biggest thing is that Jeff will be traveling away from us for a few days to Chicago to eBay Live! In case you don’t know what that is, it’s a huge convention that eBay does every year for their users. We’re sad that we’re going to be away from each other for a few days, but I’m so pleased at the same time beacuse this shows that Jeff is highly respected for what he does at work, to be asked to represent your department is no small honor! Of course, he’s the only one qualified -in terms of knowledge- in his department to go, but still. And my buying sprees on eBay helped since you have to have a minimum of 25 positive feedback, and we’re around 30 right now. Heehee. However the good news that’s coming from all of this is that my Dad is coming out to visit while Jeff’s gone! I’m so excited to be able to see my dad again, he was able to come last Thanksgiving and be here for Zoe’s birthday, which was great! This will be his first time seeing his other grand-baby Ruthie so we’re all pretty excited about that too. Ruthie’s at the perfect age now where she’s not just a lump on a log anymore, she smiles and babbles and blows raspberries at people.

With that said, here are some new pictures!

Here’s Ruthie eating cereal. You can’t tell but she LOVES eating rice cereal. If I don’t feed her fast enough and she knows there’s more, she starts screeching and grabs at the spoon. She’ll even growl at it a bit too! So cute!

Here’s a better view of Zoe’s haircut. The expression on her face is a bit funny looking since she’s not looking right at the camera but it’s still a good view. I think she looks so grown up and pretty with her hair like this.

This probably one of my favorite pictures of Ruthie to date. She chews and sucks on her fingers and is quite partial to her right index finger. She fell asleep with her finger in her mouth and I JUST had to take a picture of it!

This is a focal picture on her foot sticking out from her blanket. I the color by first applying grey tone to the picture and then I did a slight purple tint on it and then blurred the edges. I love how this came out and I think I did a good job on the angle, and really capturing her foot as the focal.

I think this really captures Zoe’s resourcefulness and ingenuity. She wanted to ‘play outside’ and since we have a very large balcony we often let her play on it so she can get her outside wiggles out. We do take her to the park and stuff, but as you can tell it was getting dark so we just opened up the patio door so she could play outside. It was a bit chilly; as a result you can see Zoe’s solution to the problem. A pair of shoes -she even managed to get them on the right feet this time- a hat and two mis-matched mittens. It totally cracks me up that she forgot the most important piece of clothing; that is to say PANTS.

Zoe

Zoe’s new ‘do.

>Zoe’s hair had been getting long, and because of her weird hair growth pattern, It hasn’t been growing evenly.. like a middle layer will grow slower than the other layers, that sort of thing. Anyway, her bangs have been getting long as well so I decided after giving her a shower on Monday to go ahead and trim her hair. It was going along fine until she jerked and I accidentally cut off way more than I wanted to, so she now has a bob. I was planning to only take off 1 inch but wound up taking two off. Either way it looks cute!
Here’s Zoe’s haircut BEFORE. This was taken about three or so weeks ago, I’m not sure of the exact date. You can tell how the layers are all uneven and whatnot. nothing I could really do about this, it’s how her hair grew in and how it sits on her head. Her bangs are also really long as well.

Here’s her hair AFTER. She’s facing the other way but you can get the idea. Her hair isn’t laying flat down properly, but the cut is much neater on her and I personally think it’s cute and spunky! I wish I had more pictures, but these are the only ones I have.

Zoe

Odgen Dinosaur Park!

This past Saturday, we went up to the Ogden Dinosaur Park to celebrate Zoe’s friend Rafe’s 3rd birthday! We had alot of fun as a family. Silly me didn’t get any pictures of the four of us there, but we got plenty of Zoe having a blast! They’ve got sculptures of the dinosaurs and whatnot, but they’ve also got a huge playground area which was filled with other little kids and their families. Here’s some of the pictures!

zoe121 — Here's Zoe peeking through a nostril of a large horned dinosaur skull!

Zoe — Here she is coming down a slide! She loves slides, they are her favorite things at parks!

The park also holds a reptile rescue center and here’s Zoe petting a snake. The whole time she was petting it she was doing her little happy dance and saying stuff like “CUTE!” and “So soft!” and she also got a bit sad when she was told she couldn’t hold it. I wish we had gotten a picture of her face while petting the snake, but oh well. The guy holding the snake was really impressed with how calm and sweet she was with the snake. Not many little kids will pet snakes, and especially not little girls!

Here’s an animatronic Adolescent Tyrannosaurus Rex. I didn’t get a picture of the whole scene, but it’s supposed to be attacking a Triceratops Mother with small young. I did an old picture affect just because.

Afterwards we headed back to Rafe’s house to have hotdogs and stuff for dinner. We were the only non-family members there since none of our other friends could make it but we still had fun. The family is full of such great people!