Sedona

Happy faces after declining time share offers, but still receiving free vacations! Definitely worth the drive up!

Swim Time!

Ava stayed in until they started spraying her in the face. Still a little too young to play rough with the boys! It was a blast watching them all play.

Crawling!!!

Ava has been making progress for the last while and now we have some solid crawling!

Lessons I Learned as a Boy

Sweet-cheeks!

Today Ava woke up with a fever at 4am screaming her little brains out... It was one of those bittersweet moments because I loved that she depends on me, but at the same time I felt so helpless. When I was rocking her back to sleep after battling our tears, I felt the spirit so strong and I realized how very blessed I was. As terrible as I felt for her, it helped feel a small amount of what our Heavenly Father must feel when he watches His children suffer! So glad that I have the gospel and that knowledge to relate to!

Summer Time...

Ava has changed a lot this summer between jabbering and moving all over the place, I'm finding it tough to keep up with her... but enjoying moment, she is definitely the light in my every day!

More Pictures.

Sunday Dress.

Grandma Mortensen, Jacob and Ava.

Blessing Day!

Self eye-gouging

I thought I was a patient person up until recently. Lauren and I have figured out a system which has worked pretty well, and allows each individual to remain in the precious bed without having to stray from its warmth a couple nights a week. Lauren gets up during the night with the banshee screaming child Monday - Thursday, and I take Friday - Sunday. All of you who are like, "Hey, Jacob only has 3 days and Lauren has 4!"...I get up at 5:50 for work so back off demons!! Anyway, a my turn had come during the weekend and we had stayed up super late as usual because we are dumb and will never learn. It was probably around midnight when we finally got to bed, and Ava decided that she wanted a snack at 1am. So I got up and warmed her up a bottle and fed her. Right after I had finished and put her back down, she started fussing, which required me to stay up longer and console her. When she finally settled down and went to sleep, I got a good hour in before she decided that her nightly ritual of dropping a dump truck size poo (consistency of yellow snot) was due. At this point, my patience is wearing thin, and baby feces is not making it better. I got up to change her, but decided it would be better to make sure she was finished. 10 minutes after the sound of explosions had ceased, I figured it would be safe to address the problem. The sound of a crying baby filled my ears, and my left eye and ear started to twitch. Hair stood on end and teeth were grinding fiercely. I opened the poo soaked diaper and prepared to wipe. Scarcely had my hand gotten 1 inch from the barrel of the gun, when an explosion of grainy yellow nast was blown on my hand and all up my forearm. Unable to hold it back, a warrior yell of anguish and unbearable ticked-off-ness was bellowed through the night sky. This woke Lauren up in time to see red eyes and steaming ears in the darkness. "Step away from the child", she said. "You better let me finish." I backed off, eye-gouging myself from my unknown impatience. Apparently, I'm not a nice person at 3am.

The Duet

Ava and I had a little duet this last weekend. You will notice my overly beautiful falsetto voice, followed by her awesome harmonization. I would imagine we will probably be receiving invites to Motab after this.

Sunday Dress!