Temple Day

We feel so loved. Last Saturday we were sealed to Olivia in the Bountiful Temple and on Sunday Dallas blessed her. It was such a fun and busy weekend. I was so exhausted from the weekend that I'm finally caught up on everything and have some time to blog.

It was so nice of everyone to come to support us on our big day, we are so lucky to have such wonderful friends and family and it was so special to be at the temple with everyone. The temple process was pretty similar to getting married, but without having to get ready to look so fancy and of course there was a baby there.

I wasn't too emotional, but I did tear up when they brought Olivia into the room and I saw how beautiful she looked. I loved the little dress I bought for her. It was so neat to be in the temple with her. She was a really good kid during the sealing, she made some happy squealing sounds, but overall was really good.

I felt kinda funny leaving the temple in our white clothes for some pictures, but it will be nice to have those pictures to show Olivia when she's older. Thanks to everyone who came to support us, we feel so very loved.

The blessing on Sunday went really well, I think Dallas was a little intimidated that the entire stake presidency was there attending our ward that day. He did a great job and I'm so glad he holds the priesthood and bring those blessings into our family. Olivia was silent during her blessing too! I couldn't believe we lucked out, both the sealing time and blessing were right during naptime so I was prepared for some crankiness. We are so lucky to have such a happy baby.

Dallas and I tried to count after everyone had left our house on Sunday and we figured we had about 42 people crammed in our house. Sorry we had you crammed in there everyone! I wish we had our basement finished and could spread out a little more.

We are so glad to have our family be made "official" and we thank everyone who has helped us become so. Hopefully we'll be going through this process again soon!

Things were so crazy on Sunday that I forgot to take pictures of Olivia in her blessing dress. This is a picture from after I had changed her into normal clothes and was trying to get her to take a nap with Ryan.

Halloween Costumes

Yesterday our friends the Thatcher's hosted a great Halloween party. I personally think my costume is the best, but Dallas wasn't a fan. Thanks for a fun night Thatcher Family!

Court Date

Yesterday Olivia officially became ours!! I wasn't sure what to expect, but everything seemed pretty standard and went pretty smoothly. Olivia was so loud during the whole thing. She wasn't sad, but she was squealing, and laughing and shouting. Our case was third on the docket and I was worried that the judge would stop the first two proceedings to ask me to try and keep her quiet.

Our hearing only lasted about 15 minutes. I was really surprised because the judge didn't ask us a single thing about Olivia and how we feel about her. He asked Dallas to describe his feelings for me and vice versa. There was an adoption before ours so I'd heard him ask this question of the other couple, so I thought I was prepared to answer it, but when it was my turn to talk about my feelings for Dallas I was nervous and choked up so I kinda just mumbled something sweet and short. The whole proceeding was recorded and they will give us a DVD of our hearing.

I'm so glad Olivia is officially ours. People kept asking us if we were excited for court, its nice that it is done and that everything is squared away, but she has been 100% part of our family since day one and nothing can ever change that. Thanks to everyone to came to court with us to support us and a special thank you to Bruce Richards for representing us pro bono, we couldn't have done this without you!

Pumpkins

On Thursday Olivia and I went to pick out some pumpkins for Halloween. I grabbed my camera at the last minute and I'm glad I did, I love how these pictures turned out. Halley might have to make a couple of Halloween scrapbook pages because we still need to take pictures of her in her costume. I couldn't get Olivia to stop trying to eat the straw, silly girl. She actually didn't care too much about the pumpkins, but did love the dirt in the wagon.

And speaking of pumpkins, Liv is working very hard on her Jack O' Lantern smile. I blogged about her first tooth about a week a half and ago and tonight I noticed that the one right next to it is coming in too! It's still too early to get a good picture of the toothy smile, but by Halloween she should have the cutest dang Jack O' Lantern smile around!

Livi makes us so happy!

Olivia's Saturday morning. We love her to pieces!

Livi's Dad

First Tooth and Other Firsts

I've been meaning to blog some updates on Olivia's recent developments, and now that I've put it off for a few weeks there are quite a few of them. Sorry, I don't really have any pics to accompany this post.

The newest update with Olivia is the arrival of her first tooth. I feel like a pretty neglectful mom because it wasn't until she grabbed my finger and put it in her mouth tonight and I felt the rough edges of a tooth poking through that I even knew she was teething. She really is such a good baby so I haven't even noticed any unusual fussiness and she hasn't yet had a fever so I guess there wasn't really a way to tell other than the excessive drooling that has been occurring for the past month. This tooth is one of the front bottom ones; it isn't out enough to capture a picture yet, but hopefully we'll get one soon. I was putting ice cubes in her mesh feeder thing tonight and letting her chew on that - she was totally loving it.

Another recent development is the constant "da da da da da da" she squeals out daily. I'm trying to get her to switch over to the "ma ma ma ma", but so far no such luck. I don't know if this counts as her first word because its more of a sound than a word and she doesn't associate "da da" with Dallas. Thoughts?

Liv's 6 month appointment was on the 17th and that kid really is growing like a weed (cliche, I know). She weighs in at 16 pounds 9 ounces and is 26 inches long. Both stats put her in the fiftieth percentile for length and weight. She's always been in the twentieth to twenty-fifth percentile so she's caught up quite a bit. Look out Dryden here she comes ; ) Olivia has been sleeping through the night since about three months, but for the past month or so she's been waking up around four in the morning for a bottle. I'm attributing this to a growth spurt that requires extra food and will be over with in the very near future, but its so annoying because it feels like regression into newborn territory which wasn't very enjoyable. Anyone else encounter this? Am I an idiot for hoping that this will end soon?

And lastly, an appropriate new nickname for Livi is "scooter". She can scoot backwards like a champ and she can go around in circles. As soon as she grasps the concept of putting one hand in front of the other to go forward, there will be no stopping her. We'll have to baby proof the house before you know it.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to two of my best gal pals. My old college roommate Jen Bullock welcomed a baby boy last week and one of my best girlfriends from high school Nicole Johnson had her little girl today! Congratulations ladies, I'm so lucky to have friends like you in my life.

Samuel David Bullock

8lbs. 12oz.

Congratulations Matt & Jen!

Emery Ann Johnson

7lbs. 5 oz.

Congratulations Mark, Nicole & Abbi!

Also, congratulations to the Hunter family and the arrival of Cormack. We haven't seen pictures of this little guy yet, but if he's anything like his sister and brother I'm sure he's a cutie. We are so happy he's out of the NICU and home with you guys!

Recent Adventures

What a busy month September has been. My handsome hubby celebrated his 28th birthday on the 11th - he has so much gray hair he could pass for 35 ; ) As part of the Hamblin family tradition we have to go to the State Fair sometime during the week of his birthday. I have to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of the State Fair, but I was looking forward to taking Olivia and I think it will only become more and more fun to go as she gets older and can enjoy it. And even though it sounds totally white trash I was going to try a bite of the fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but we never did see the booth that sold it. Grandpa Hamblin bought Livi a sword that lights up and she absolutely loves it, she might be the only six month old girl with a sword. Thanks Grandpa! As you can tell from the photos Livi wasn't a fan of the sheep, but she did seem to like the cows. I'm sure next year will be quite the adventure.

Last weekend we went to Snowbird and Oktober Fest with our good friends the Thatcher's. This is my absolute favorite time of year and Snowbird is the perfect place to go to enjoy the pretty fall colors and fresh cool air! We arrived on Saturday and ate at a fabulous Mexican join at the resort and then Sunday we hit the Oktober Fest party. Oktober Fest always has great booths, cool German music, great German food and a ton of things for little and big kids to do. Obviously we really got a kick out of putting our faces in the cutouts of the German people, but the kids didn't really seem to like it to much.


And finally, after Oktober Fest we headed to the Zermatt Resort in Midway for a work conference I had to attend. We are running a little short on pictures this month so we decided to do a little photo shoot while up at Zermatt so we'd have some pics to send to Latoya. Liv is such a great sport for always letting up set her in random places and poses to get cute pics. As you can tell she will be the youngest chess prodigy ever and I don't know what she was seeing that made her make that face in the last picture, but I think its hilarious.

Livi's Favortie Things

Well, we didn't end up doing very much over Labor Day weekend so I thought I'd take a moment and post a list of Olivia's favortie things (in no particular order).

Daisy (the dog)

Drooling

Sleeping in the corner of her crib with a blankie over her face

Playing with grandparents

Putting anything in her mouth

Mommy & Daddy

Watching sports (I'm not kidding)

Grabbing people's faces and hair

Daisy (she really really loves Daisy so its worth mentioning twice)

Singing

Laughing

Riding in the stroller

Drinking out of a cup

Watching mommy put on makeup

Watching the ducks at the park

We love our baby girl!

End of Summer

Seeing as the Labor Day Holiday is the universally accepted date as the end of summer I figured I'd update our blog with some of the pictures from the summer. Our sixth anniversary was on August 16th, the weekend prior to that we took a trip to Newport Beach California to celebrate. Most of the pictures are from our trip. And on our actual anniversary we went to dinner and a Bee's game. Olivia was such a great baby during the Bee's game.

I can't believe how quickly the summer has gone by. I'm not too sad to see it go, Fall is my absolute favorite season. Maybe its because I love politics and that always seems to heat up in the fall, but I do love the cooler weather, the changing colors and Halloween.







I hope all you fellow bloggers have a safe and happy Labor Day holiday. I'm not quite sure what our plans will include, but I'll probably blog about it next week - until then.

Solid Foods

Yesterday Olivia turned 5 months old so we thought we'd try a first attempt at "solid" food. We started off with a bowl of rice cereal mixed with some formula. Despite the pictures I do think she actually swallowed some and I think she did like it.

New Orleans

The Swamp before the major rainstorm

They feed the aligators marshmallows to get them to come up to the boat

For some reason I haven't felt that motivated to update my blog lately. Maybe summer is really starting to sink in and I'm starting to feel very lazy, but hopefully my laziness will pass and I will dutifully fulfill my blogging obligations. Halley (my sis) usually busts my butt if more than a week goes by and I don't do an update. Like she has any room to talk!

Anyway, two weeks ago I was in New Orleans for work. New Orleans is a place I'd always thought might be a cool place to visit, but now having been there I'm not going to make it a priority to go back.

Before going I was dreading the humidity, Dallas was actually pretty sick of me whining about it. I had reason to dread it, that place is sticky. But as I discovered, there are other reasons to hate humidity rather than just feeling gross all the time - cockroaches! Our first night there we were at a very upscale restaurant and the maître d' expertly crushed and cleared a giant cockroach from the floor. He was such a pro that it was obvious that this scenario was a very common occurrence there. Maybe for some of you cockroaches aren't that big of deal, but we don't get cockroaches in northern Utah so I'm not used to having to deal with these disgusting creatures. New Orleans also has a lot of rats. I lost count of how many rats I saw running around the streets and courtyards of various properties.

We did quite a few things while in New Orleans, we went on an air boat tour of the swamp and saw alligators, we took a tour of the haunted locations in the French Quarter, we checked out Bourbon Street (as much as you can while retaining membership in the church), we took a tour of Oak Alley (a southern plantation where Gone With The Wind was filmed) and went to the House of Blues all while melting in the humid climate.

The swamp tour was my favorite activity, it was surprisingly beautiful and our guide was one of those kinda crazy backwoods Bayou guys so it was very authentic. There was a hurricane hitting the Houston area (six hours away from New Orleans) while we were on the swamp so our tour was cut short by the downpour that hit while we were out on the boat. Unfortunately everything was soaked, including my camera and it is currently not working. I did manage to get some pictures off the memory card and I will try to post those soon.

It was hard to leave Dallas and Olivia for the week, but it was nice to go for a week without spit up on my clothes. I was so happy to see them when I landed in Salt Lake.

We are headed to Newport Beach this weekend and I'm still trying to figure out how the whole traveling experience works with a baby so wish us luck.

This gator would have made a great purse : )

4 Months Old

Olivia went in for her 4 month check up yesterday and I thought I'd post her stats for the grandparents and anyone else who might be interested.

Weight: 13lbs. 4 oz. (29th percentile)

Height: 24 inches long (26th percentile)

Head Size: 15 3/4 inches (16th percentile)

Probably kind of boring for most readers of the blog, but its good for me to write it down so that when the social worker comes for our final post placement visit in a few weeks I can check the blog and rattle of the stats for her. Only two more months until we finalize the adoption!

Wearing Daddy's Hat!

Morning at the Park

For those of you who don't know, there are two other brown babies in our ward. Both are boys and just slightly older than Olivia. Last Friday we took our babies to the park and I couldn't help taking a bunch of pictures. Eli (in the green) is 9 months and Carter (in the overalls) is almost 7 months. Olivia can't sit up on her own yet so it was kind of difficult to pose them, not nearly as difficult as it will be once they are mobile I'm sure. They are too cute. I love that we have such great neighbors.

Carter was sealed and blessed this past weekend. His grandpa took a couple pictures of the kids after the blessing so hopefully his mom will email them to me so that I can share them with everyone.

I thought this one was cute because Eli has his hand on her tummy.

I'm sure a few years from now we will move away from this ward, but I hope that we can always stay close with these two families. They are great friends for us to have.

4th of July

What a fun holiday our little family had. We kicked off the long weekend by catching Wall E with my family at the drive in. I loved it and thought it was such a cute little movie and I think Dallas fell asleep. Friday morning we packed up and headed to the cabin at Bear Lake for the rest of the weekend. Bear Lake was crazy busy, but on Saturday we were able to claim a spot on the beach and hang out for the day. Olivia hated the cold water on her toes, but she was enthralled by the waves breaking on the shore. There are quite a few pictures of our little beach bum, but I couldn't help myself - just be thankful I didn't post the pictures of me in my swimming suit.

Sunday came too quickly and it was time to go home and back to work. Hopefully we can make it up there a few more times this summer!

This photo isn't from the 4th, but Grandma and Grandpa Hamblin gave Olivia her first pair of Converse and we just had to show everybody how cute she looks in them.