Phew!!

Well since I'm going to St. George on Friday (YAY!) I figured I should do a few posts of Canada and Rachael since the longer I put it off the harder it will be for me. I'm wanting to learn how to do a collage of pictures so it doesn't take 15 years to upload. Let me know if you can help!

One Yearsers

These first three pictures are from her first photo shoot with JC Penny. These are the only 3 shots I liked so I only got a few. Sorry, they're just pictures of the pictures taken with my phone... Look at the cute shirt my grandma got her for her birthday! The moment I saw it I knew I was going to use it for this shoot. Thanks Gramsicle!

Goofy grin...

This one actually turned out really cute with her legs doing crazy things, but you could see her diaper a little too well...

This is the third photo shoot with had with Rachael. We were trying for like an hour and a half to get her to smile (which we usually can't get her to stop doing), but we did end up with some pretty sweet little pictures. This is only a few of my favorites. I love this kid more than I can say!

Waterton

Waterton is the most beautiful place on earth. Sorry I don't have many pictures of the scenery, you'll just have to go check it out for yourself. But you have to take me with you.

This was a cool tree that fell over, its roots were like a big plate.

Naterbug posing for a picture. It took him like 5 minutes and lots of leg scratches to get up there. What a trooper!

Me too (minus the 5 minutes and leg scratches, this is a completely different tree)

Rachael face with her Auntie Lindsey. Awww...

The Calgary Zoo

This was also one of my favorite places as a kid. I've always loved going to the zoo and I think this one is the BEST! They even have dinosaurs (even though I don't have any pictures of them) (oh, and lets not talk about how they got rid of the polar bears, I'm ticked)

Rachael loved the fish

And the giraffes

And being a Joey. She's so cute :)

Pooped (no pun intended, she wasn't wearing pants by this point in the day) from a long day at the Zoo :)

Calaway Park

Here are some more pictures from Calaway, the happiest place on earth (or in Southern Alberta...).

Lindsey snapped this cute pic of Rachael on her first ride, she didn't NOT enjoy it :)


Nate and I were very sneaky about this. Long story short about the Log Ride: They closed it early, everyone in our party was LIVID, my dad made a big stink about how his kids grew up coming to Calaway and the Log Ride is our favorite and we came clear from Utah (or Idaho) to go on it, and someone better do something about it. They escorted us to the front of the line. Good call, Pops! When Nate and I were buying this picture we heard lots of comments, two of which being "Ew, look at that guy making out with his girlfriend!" and "Very cute, you two..." The latter one came from an older lady :)

The only roller coaster at Calaway, but worth a good ear piercing scream!

Ahhh the car ride. This must be where Rachael's love of driving started.

Camping in Canada

Here is a hodge podge of pictures from Canada. The majority of our time was spent camping on my parents property (the name of the property is to be determined). My parents had their trailer and my auntie Brenda left hers up there for us to stay in. It all worked out well until the last night when Rachael stayed up until 5 in the morning and a mouse broke in. No fun. Anyways... enjoy!

Here are my cute parents standing in front of Old Chief. It has been their life long dream to own property near where they grew up.

Rachael loved driving Grandpa's truck up to the campsite.

Sharing a plum on a chilly night

Nate, my mom, sister, and I played a LOT of cards. Canasta to be exact. Nate and I lost every time. Don't talk to me about it...

We took a side trip to Glacier National Park (the U.S. side of Waterton) with my dad

A beautiful morning with clouds around the Chief

Rachael just chillin' in a field

The river was cold but the day was hot so Rachael was a good sport

One of Rachael's (and our) favorite things to do was go quadding.

Not so sure about the river at first...

The view

Our first morning up there. Old Chief looks SO far away in this picture, in reality it is only like 5 miles away. Amazing view!
We did other stuff in Canada, posts to come. I love going to Canada and hope to let all my kids make tons of memories up there like I have. It will be easy with G&G's property. Stay tuned for more pictures!!

A job?

So I'm needing to make a major decision this weekend... whether or not to take a job. Here is the low down. Nate is heading into his last semester (yay!) which includes 15 credits of hard core accounting classes plus another one to get his Thai minor done. This means a lot of long nights filled with lots of homework. I feel like it would be best for Nate to just quit his job at Lone Pine Nursery and focus on school. I know it stresses him out to think about doing that, but I truly believe it will be for the best. However, we would be minus an income. We would be fine with just our Pel Grant, but we would like to have something to back us up. So, I figured I would look for a job. I found one! It is at a girl's apartment complex on campus, La Jolla. They have a licensed salon on site and each girl gets a manicure/pedicure/haircut once a month. I would get paid 10 dollars a service, which is sweet because a mani/haircut only take like 30 minutes, and a pedi takes an hour. I can handle that. The sweet thing for me is that I can have my own clients there. Negative: I have to work 20 hours a week. To most people that sounds AMAZING! But I would have to find a babysitter. My stomach aches thinking about not being with Rachael every second. What will I miss? Will she miss me? I know mothers work outside the home all of the time, but I've been a full time mom for over a year, how will I handle it? But of course, on the other hand, it would be nice to get a break. I would prefer for Nate to watch her for a few hours after classes and then he could go back to campus and do homework. But then I wouldn't ever see him. And I wouldn't be able to go to St. George as much as I would like, maybe only once this semester. The real question is... Can I make these sacrifices for 3.5 months? Is it worth it? PLEASE let me know what you think, even though I know the decision is inevitably mine and Nates...

Highlighting Helper

So, now that I'm looking at these pictures, my highlights aren't that noticable. They are in real life though. I think... I have recently been having some SERIOUS issues with my hair. As I've gotten older my hair has gotten darker. Not dark, obviously, but not light blonde like it used to be. Lame! So I decided to highlight it. Don't laugh too hard at me with the cap on, I look hideous, I know. Nate was reluctant to help, but did in the end. I think it was easier than he thought it would be, and I was grateful (even though I ended up with a few puncture wounds on my scalp). It was fun doing it at home, and all in all it only cost me about 6 bucks, plus we made some memories! Thanks Naterbug! Before

During (sick!)

After, following some a few snips of the scissors and rolls of the curling iron. I like my hair SO much more now.

Big girl!

I thought some of you might like to know Rachael's current stats. We went to the doctor last wednesday for her immunizations (poor baby...) but also my favorite part of knowing her height and weight. I'll compare them to her stats from exactly a year earlier

August 5, 2008

Age: 5 Days

Weight: 6.4 lbs 11th percentile

Height: 20 inches 62nd percentile

Head Circ.: 13 inches 17th percentile

August 5, 2009

Age: 1 year

Weight: 22 lbs 68th percentile

Height: 31 inches 95th percentile

Head Circ.: 19 inches 99th percentile

As you can see, she is nice and healthy, and has the big Russell head (I'm not the one who said that, everyone in the family did, they were even competing to see which one of the kids has the BIGGEST head, haha!) She is tall and skinny, who woulda thunk.

As of right now, she is refusing to walk, but will stand up in the middle of the room. She just lacks the confidence to acutally move her feet. I've decided to stop fighting it, she'll do it when she wants. She currently knows "puppy" and "kitty" in sign language, holds up one finger when asked how old she is, and gives kisses. We're working on "drink" and "food" in sign language. She knows what she wants and gets into EVERYTHING. She loves and always has loved reading books. She likes her dad more than her mom, even though he'll dispute that. She eats tons of yogurt as well as the occasional helping of whole grain pasta or zuccini. Her sippy cup is her favorite thing to throw on the floor. She falls asleep by herself and will stay asleep all night. All in all, she is adorable in every way. Always has been, always will be.

Photo Shoot with Lacey Cakes

One of my best friends, Lacey Dustin, was sweet enough to come for Rachael's birthday party and for another friend from Beauty School's baby shower. Before she left on Saturday, we went to the BYU-I gardens (where else...) and had a mini photo shoot. Sad to say, we weren't very good, but we did get a few cute shots.

(We did take Rachael to JCP for some professional 1 year photos, but Rachael wasn't in the smiling mood, which was really weird. I only ended up getting three poses from that which was not enough, so I'm going to have a friend of a friend take some more, hopefully this week.)

Third First Birthday

Well we've had a busy couple of weeks. You'll notice that the title of this post is "Third First Birthday Party." That is because this was Rachael's third first birthday party. We had two while in Canada with a whole lot of my family and one last friday with Nate's. And let me tell you, I am partied out. I never knew how exhausting it was, and these parties were pretty low key! Thankfully, at the last party, Rachael's cousin Abigail was there to help with the presents :)

She enjoyed digging into her cakes, but I'm not gonna lie... it was a little anti climactic for me. I thought she would be an animal when a big pile of sugar was placed in front of her.

Awwww...

Her party theme was butterflies and this was the easiest cake in the WORLD to make. It was just a 9 inch round, cut in half with two notches cut out. Don't be too impressed. I got the idea online. It was fun and cute though!

Talk about elaborate decorations! Or not...

You may have noticed that there aren't any pictures from parties one or two. That is because we didn't have a camera in Canada (which we now have) so my dad just needs to burn me a CD of his camera's memory card. I will post though!!

Thanks to everyone who helped with the parties! Love you!