Photo Packet #4

Today I mailed Photo Packet #4 to Olivia's birthmom and I thought I'd share some of our favorite photos from the past month with you. Happy 4th!

Father's Day Nap

On the train at Dairy Keen in Heber City

Thanks for the outfit Rory & Harmony

Primary Election Day

Sunday Nap

Playing with Carson Thatcher

Mmmmm...

I've been at my current job for almost five years now and each year I attend a national conference in Washington DC. I love DC, the energy and dynamic of the city is truly captivating and I would live there if I could (I just need to figure out that whole humidity thing.) Anyway, each time I am back there I have a list of places to swing by in my free time. This list includes a few historical things that I have not yet seen, but is mainly comprised of places that I love that don't exist in Utah - mainly Sephora (my absolute fave makeup store) and Five Guys Burgers.

Well, I am happy to announce that Five Guys Burgers now exists in Utah. I along with a select few of my cool co-workers (there are only a few that are cool) made the trek to Fort Union during lunch today to grab a taste of burger heaven. Now, no offense to you loyal Hires and Crown Burger fans, but Five Guys has them beat and I know I will take some crap for this, but I rank it higher than In n' Out Burger; maybe that's because in the East Coast vs. West Coast battle I side with the East Coast every time, but the two joints are pretty similar.

Anyway, everybody needs to check it out and let me know what they think. I know that for us Northern Utah folks anything past downtown Salt Lake might as well be Provo, but I promise that its worth the drive.

Girls Camp

Those of you who know me well know that I am not a camper. I'm all for spending time in the great outdoors, but I'm never excited to give up the comforts of home such as my comfy bed, flushing toilet and hot shower. So a few months ago when we were discussing the subject of Girls Camp at our YW leader meeting I was not the first to volunteer, but after realizing that two of our leaders would have newborns and our president would be hugely pregnant it was kind of looking like I needed to step up. And after hearing that camp would be at the new Heber Valley Girls Camp with flushing toilets and showers I figured I could make it happen. So last Monday at 7:00 am we met at the stake center and headed up for Heber Valley.

That morning I was kind of in freak out mode because I was really sad about leaving Olivia for the week; feeling like she would forget who I was by the time I came home on Friday. I knew she'd be fine with Dallas (she's a total Daddy's girl and loves him the best anyway) but I felt like I was putting too much of a burden on him by asking him to be a single parent for a week. And few days prior to leaving I had been battling a summer cold (I really hate those)

Well, the Heber Valley camp is gorgeous and the church has set up an incredible facility up there. Our Young Women are great girls and I really appreciate them for being nice girls. They are not all about drama and actually treat each other nicely. On Monday and Tuesday there were only two leaders up there - myself and the camp director with twenty girls so the two of us were spread pretty thin. I'm thinking that because of that my summer cold turned on me with a vengeance. By Wednesday morning had an earache in each ear, a sore throat and terrible congestion. The girls said I was the loudest snorer up there : ) Luckily two other leaders were coming up on Wednesday so I was able to pack up and go home. I went to the doc that afternoon and found out I had strep throat.

I'm very sad I had to leave camp I was really looking forward to some of the activities that were going on up there, but I was glad to be home with Dallas and Olivia with modern medicine working its magic on my system. Luckily neither of them got sick, I'm sure that was my blessing for serving at camp for those couple of days. I'm a whimpy sick person - I just want to go to bed for a week until I feel better and taking care of baby when sick is not fun, but taking care of a sick baby while sick would be absolute torture. Props to all you mom's out there who have had to do it.

Sorry, no pictures with this post. I wanted to take pictures of my girls on the challenge course at Heber Valley to post, but I had to go home before the challege course.

Father's Day

Dallas, Steve & Olivia Hamblin

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there. Olivia's gifts to her daddy included a blue ipod shuffle for him to use at the gym with the engraving "Happy Father's Day Daddy! Love, Olivia" on the back, some new gym shoes and the Tiger Woods 08 xbox game. Dallas is such a great father that I wish we could have done more for him. We are both very lucky to have him!

Our weekend started off by working on my Dad's Father's Day gift. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, but we took down the old basketball hoop at my folks house and got everything ready for the fancy new hoop that will go up once the cement dries (all eleven bags of it!) That project was fun, but did take up most of our Saturday. The neatest part was that we were all able to put our handprint in the wet cement, even Olivia. Thanks to Halley, Aaron and Ryan for working on this project with us, it would have been too hard for any of us to do it by ourselves.

Sunday was spent making the rounds to different family gatherings. Thanks for having us over Carlee and Jen, the food was great at both houses. We love your new basement Zaugg's - don't be surprised if Dallas moves in next week. I hope all of you were able to have fabulous weekends as well.

Father's Day 2008

Farmington Pond

This past Saturday we decided to get some sun and accompany Halley & Aaron (my sis & her hubby) to Farmington Pond. I had been stuck inside all day cleaning so when they called to see if we wanted to go it sounded like the perfect excuse to get outside and enjoy the sunshine.

Aaron wanted to do some fishing and it was "Free Fish Day" where you didn't need a license to fish. Fortunately for the fish Aaron didn't catch anything - something my brother Ryan would have told him before going out : ) We only ended up staying about and hour because we didn't get there until late in the afternoon and once the sun started to go down it started to get cold.

Halley & Aaron

Olivia was a great baby during our fishing outing. She just sat in the stroller and watched the trees the whole time. She got to stay up way past her bedtime that night, but it didn't seem to throw off her schedule too much.

Camp Chairs - What a great invention!

Thanks Halley and Aaron for getting us out of the house!

Hooray!

I have just enjoyed two nights in a row of uninterrupted sleep!! Olivia has slept from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am each of the past two nights. That makes three nights this week (she did the same on Monday night).

It hasn't been too bad, she has never really been the type of baby to wake up every two hours, but it is nice to skip that 3:00 am feeding that has been part of our routine for a month or so. Granted it would be great if she slept in until 9:00 am, but beggars can't be choosers right : )

Shortly After Waking Up This Morning

I'm attributing this extra sleep to the new formula I have put her on. As some of you know this girl has spitting up down to a science, I swear it might actually be a hobby for her and we usually go through multiple outfits each day. So I saw the Emfamil A.R. in the store with the statement "is clinically proven to reduce frequent spit up by over 40%" so after reading that I had to try it. This stuff is like a baby milkshake, it is thickened with rice starch to make it settle in the baby's tummy rather than coming back up. Well, it does little or nothing for her spit up, but it does keep her fuller longer. Her feedings have gone from every two hours to every three and I'm pretty sure this formula is what holds her over during the night. So to me, its worth sticking to. The only problem with the A.R. formula is that it is so thick it clogs even the fast flow nipples, but as anyone doing serious research would do I googled the problem and read that warming the water first is the best way to fix that problem and so far it seems to be working better. So, since its the same price as the old formula and she's spits up just as frequently on either I guess we can stick with the one that helps her sleep through the night.

I'm sure she won't be sleeping through the night every night from here on out, but at least we are making progress.

Bon Voyage

Have Fun in NYC Grandma & Grandpa. Don't let uncle Ryan text the whole time. We wish we were going with you! I hope you don't get rained out.

Our Weekend

Riding The Train

Riding The Train

Ok, I wrote this post on Monday, but its taken me until now to get the pictures uploaded. Hopefully I can be faster at this from now on, but I'm not making any promises.

What a fun and busy weekend. I always look forward to the weekends as a chance to take it easy and relax, but it seems like we never get the chance. On Saturday we decided to ride the new commuter train Frontrunner from Layton to Salt Lake. We packed Olivia up and jumped on the train; she did very well on her first train ride. When we got to Salt Lake we transferred to Trax and went over to the Gateway to bum around for a while. After stopping in at a few of our favorite stores we ended up burning off some steam in the Skybox. We played the football and basketball games and as usual Dallas kicked my butt at both. Saturday was so beautiful that it was great to get out of the house and enjoy the nice day. We cannot take Olivia anywhere without people stopping to tell us what a beautiful baby she is. We sat by the fountain for a while so that we could give her a bottle and we had so many people stop to ooh and ahh over her. Everyone on the train loved her as well at least until she started to be fussy : ) I'm really not writing this to brag about her (even though that's my job now) I really am just astounded by how many people stop me and comment about her. We are just so lucky to have her.

Hanging out at the Gateway

Football Toss at the Skybox

Our Darling Daughter

So when we adopted Olivia the adoption agency asked us to send 36 pictures each month to Olivia's birth mom along with a letter that has updates about Olivia. I just finished putting together photo packet #3 and I thought I'd post some of our favorite photos from the past month. 36 pictures seems kind of excessive to us, its more than one each day and since she so young she doesn't do much yet so most of the pictures are of her just sitting or lying somewhere and the only difference from picture to picture is the outfit, but she looks dang cute! When we first started sending these packets we were scared to send these adorable photos and tell the birth mom what a great baby she is because we were worried it would make her feel bad, but we've just kept sending all the great photos and hopefully she appreciates the kind of life Olivia will now get to live.

We don't know very much about Olivia's birth mom and we know nothing about her biological father. Our social worker Morgan was there for Olivia's birth and got to know Latoya (Olivia's birth mom) very well. Morgan said that Latoya had a great sense of humor and was a very strong woman. She said that Latoya held the baby for a minute after the delivery and then sent her to the nursery and never saw her again, Morgan said she didn't even cry when she signed the papers. I cannot imagine how hard it would have been to give up this georgeous baby and to not even shed a tear must have taken a very strong and determined woman. We never met Latoya so I feel kind of weird writing letters to her and in each one I fail miserably to describe how much we love Olivia and how thankful we are to Latoya for giving her to us.

New To Blogging

Ok so I'm finally jumping on the blog bandwagon. I really enjoy reading the blogs of friends and family so I figured I'd start one up for us. I'm not really sure how to make it all "cutesy" like so many of you have done, so if anyone has any tips please let me know. This seems like a good alternative to keeping a journal because I'm terrible at doing that. Anyway, I'm not sure how often I'll be updating this, but please enjoy!