our little baby...

is not so little anymore:( Recently she has hit some major monuments.

1. Fully Potty trained. well except for at night..how do you do that anyway!??
2. Sleeping in her own bed at night. I will blame this one on her daddy who couldn't bare not to be cuddling with her all night.
3. Has finally gained weight!!! She weighs 35lbs and is finally eating like a human rather than a bird!
4. She can count to 19:) and can count to 5 in spanish--thanks dora!

She is talking up a storm, in fact she hardly stops talking. She asks a million questions and has to know answers to everything in FULL detail.

We got these fam pics taken a couple months by jill thomas. I am so happy with them, but we will already need an update come november. Yup. after my crazy episode in march and after all of tests, one test came back conclusive: we've got a baby on the way! Yes, some of you already heard as it wasn't very easy to keep it under wraps! I had half of my concerned family in the er with me who heard the news before I did. Ashley had already called johnny, and andrew had already called my mom to let them know of the news. It was pretty weird to have all of that happen, and at the same time finding out that I was pregnant. I had taken a test the night before,and it was negetivo!It may seem like a long pregnancy considering everyone found out when I was 3 weeks along, but nonetheless we are sooooo excited!!

Ivy and the babe will be a little over 3 years apart. I am thinkin that the age gap will perfect for us. Ivy will be the perfect little helper, at least that is what she is training for in boot camp this summer.

We got our first ultra-sound last week, and thankfully, everything looked great! In 4 weeks we will find out what we are having... we cannot wait!

and here we go again...

Well... we are here and finally settled in. Ivy and I had a blast with our family and friends in az...but what's new.I also got to celebrate my birthday with my family, which I haven't been able to do for a while! We were sad to leave az but we really love it out here, it is GORGEOUS! I remember it being pretty but I must have forgotten how pretty. It feels like we live in a jungle..the trees are ginormous. The weather here has been pretty good so far except for it has rained for the past 4 days straight. No wonder it so green here! We haven't really gotten out too much bc I have had to help out in the office, but the oa just got here so we are ready to venture out! Last weekend went and walked around DC.. it has been a while since we have both been there, so it was really fun to see it again. Ivy has already made new best friends here, she is having a ball! Our apartments are really nice, but we are having major problems with fire alarms...again. Worst thing ever... Our 2nd day here the fire alarm (which is by far the loudest most piercing alarm you have EVER heard) went off at 5am! No joke. It was the rudest awakening I have ever had...and poor ivy was freaking out! When it went off johnny was like "oh aim they are just doing a drill"... uh huh, right running a drill at 5am, I don't think so! I told him he had better get dressed quick bc we are going outside! Ever since our little fire in milwaukee, I don't mess around with fire alarms. So we go out our door, and one by one all of the boys poke their heads out of the door to see if anyone else was going outside. So there we all were standing outside in our pj's at 5am. We waited for 30 min while the fireman went through all of the buildings, and of course it is a false alarm. So we go back in and finally got back to sleep and at 7:30 am it goes off again. I was livid! Oh and dont worry it went off at midnight 3 nights ago and then went off 18 times a couple mornings ago. I cannot tell you how much I HATE fire alarms.. well I shouldn't hate them bc they might save our life one day, but fr reals! Bad thing is, if there happens to be a real fire here, we are all going to burn bc we now ignore them. Then, yesterday we woke up to water pouring out of our bathroom ceiling! Not just water,soapy water. We were getting the shower water of the apt above us. Good thing my cousin lives above us.. i would have been so grossed out. Anyway, we finally got that problem under control. I really do love where we live but I am thinkin they just moved us in a little too early bc they definitely don't have their shiz together:) But you know what, I dont have mine completely together either. I do really stupid things...like everyday. Like today for example, I went to target and was walking up the stairs ( bc the elevator is broken:) and I was trying to carry a million groceries as well as help ivy up the stairs, and I dropped one of my bags, so I go down to pick it up and forgot about my icee that I had placed upright in my purse bc I didnt have a hand to hold it. When I bent down, it definitely fell out of my purse and landed on my head and went down my shirt. awesome. I never laughed so hard at myself. seriously it was hilarious. An pile of icee on my head, just picture it.

here are some pics from az and here!

these two cannot get enough of eachother!
My b-day!
I wasnt feeling like cake so me mama made ma a fruit pizza!
johnny stuffin his face at the greatest place EVER
Potbelly's!!! Oh how we have missed you! I cannot tell you how in love I am with this joint. When we went there I got a sandwhich, 2 giant pickes, their oatmeal cookie, and a strawberry shake!! Sure made up for lost time quick:) I am so in love with you potbelly's!!!!

Hello again! Its been a while! We had been really busy up until recently. We sort of moved out of our house but not really. Johnny's sis and my cousin (who are married) moved into our place in provo. It is an ideal situation bc they dont have any furniture so we were able to leave all of our stuff there. It just involved me packing up all our stuff that went to b-more and then moving all of our stuff that we didn't need for the summer into different places to make room for their stuff. I am sooooooooooo glad that we did not have to move, but for some reason it still took a long time. whatever. So 2 days ago, Johnny and his bro Jeremy took off to baltimore while Ivy, Ash and I jetted off to AZ! We will join him in a couple days, and I cannot wait! I am seriously sooooo excited. Johnny said that our place and the town we will live in is freakin awesome!! Anyway back to az... we are already having so much fun here soaking up the sun! Every time I come home, I hate Utah more and more... I really need to change my attitude, but I think that it may be the fact that we live there in the worst time of the year ever! We miss spring and summer, which is beautiful. Anyway, since I havent busted out my camera yet, here are a couple pics from a few weeks ago of the miss. She is at the most hilarious stage right now, she says the funniest things ever... seriously you would die if you could spend 5 minutes with her.

weirdest day of my life...

So last Saturday was prob the scariest/weirdest day of my life. About an hour after I woke up, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes, and getting ivy some breakfast, when all of the sudden my vision went super blurry. It got really bad within seconds, so I decided to go lay down on the couch and close my eyes, to see if it would go away. After about a minute of laying there, Ivy asked me to get her out of her highchair... I opened my mouth to try and tell her that I would get her out in a minute, because I totally couldn't see, and 100% gibberish came out of my mouth. It totally freaked me out, so I open my mouth to try and say the same thing, and the exact same gibberish came out. I continued to try and speak, but my brain and my mouth were totally disconnected, it was so so scary. After I realized that I was in trouble, I can see my phone enough press send to call my last call which was my dad, I tried to tell him what was happening, but of course he couldn't understand anything I was saying. I then began to scream, I had no idea what was happening to me, and part of my body began to go numb. I then start having a major panic attack. Within seconds he knew that I was in major trouble and calls 911 for me from az, and sends them to my house. Oh and johnny also happens to be out of town on this day! As soon as the paramedics got to my house, I pretty much checked out from there and didn't remember much until I became alert in the hospital. So while in the hospital they ran some tests to see if they could figure out what had happened, but no such luck. The explanation they gave me was it happened as a result of a BLADDER INFECTION! UM RIGHT. I did not just go from honestly feeling like I was going to die to being told that this happened as a result of a bladder infection. What a joke. First of all, I did not feel like I had the slightest bit of an infection. So as soon as the er finds that I tested positive for a uti, they stop their efforts there and they discharge me later that day. By that time my mom had flown in, and johnny had finally made it home. So the next day I go to my family doctor, and he about die's when I tell him the whole story, and what the ER told me. He told me that there is absolutely no relation between bladder infections, and what happened to me. I knew it. He then tells me that this could have been a little stroke, or some red flags for something more serious. I am now undergoing a lot of tests to see if they can find anything that would have caused this to happen. I am just so grateful that I feel almost completely normal, and that it didn't turn out worse than it did. I also have to give a big thanks to all of my family and cousins who rushed to my side, and took care of ivy and I. I Love you guys!

So the day after all of this happened, Johnny gets really sick, like I have NEVER seen him so sick since we have been married, well turns out he has mono. I wonder where he got that from! I feel so bad for him bc he is so busy right now, and doesn't really have time to be sick. My mom has been taking care of us both for the past couple of days, but now she is gone and our little family is a serious mess over here. Lets just hope we are all good to go in 3 weeks when we make the move to Baltimore:) We have some serious work to do... WHAAA WHAAA

"she thinks it's the greatest place in the world."

Would be what Johnny tells people how I feel about my hometown mesa, AZ. Ashley and I decided to make a surprise visit down to az last week, and it was amazing. As we stepped out of the car, we immediately feel the "perfect" air temperature along with its amazing smell of orange blossoms.... I knew this trip was going to be the bomb. It was so much fun to see everyone's reactions to our surprise... its a good feeling to be missed so much. We had such an awesome time but like always, the week flew by WAY to fast. I always joke that whenever I come home I automatically slip into this weird coma type thing, i cant explain it, but that is what it feels like. It flashed before my eyes! I didn't even get to see my friends:( sorry friends, next time. Anyway, here were some of the highlights...

- PLAYING OUTSIDE. The weather couldn't have been any more perfect. High 70's.
- Seeing kippy's belly + her 3d ultrasound with the cutest little fetus you've ever seen.
-oregano's...ever been to the scottsdale oregano's?? *story to follow
-witnessing possibly the funniest thing i have ever seen happen in a sacrament meeting. *story to follow
- talk taco's, bbq's.
-hanging out with my sil's..and bro's
-rosas.... something that i miss terribly when I am away.
- going to the zoo
- shopping extravaganza's+ taking FULL advantage of ashley's amazing discounts. i really do believe that az has the best shopping ever!!!
-going out to lunch pretty much everyday ( my mom's daily guilty little pleasure)
-Ivy getting to play with her "parker boy" as she calls him
-playing with little Ellie
-watching lost with the fam, and susan's little comments every 5 sec! hahahaha!
- crafting away with the kipster
- nate and kip camping out the whole week with us.
- kevin teasing old ladies at the nursing home.... man kev I really forget HOW freaking funny you are!!!
-seeing parker do his monkey run
- witnessing ashley and Ivy's girl fight. Should I be worried!?
Here is ashley's side: " I never did anything to her to make her act this way, mind you!
Quotes from Ivy as follows:
"Ash, you be quiet!!" (I wasn't even talking or looking at her at the time)
"I don't like Ash, she being mean to me today." What the heck??!!!!!
Kippy: "Do you like Ash, Ivy?" Ivy: "NO!"
"Ash is NOT my friend"
"Ash why you not married??" ouch. Where did this 2 year old come from!?? And how did she learn how to insult so well. Touche Ivy, touche! I hope you make boys cry when your older. Just a FYI, me and Ivy have made up. I apologized to her... even though I have no idea what I did to make her so hostile. We are totally BFF now.

Warning: I am the WORST at shortening story's, but I like to remember details neway:)

*So after a really long day of shopping, me kip and tara decide to hit up scottsdale oregano's to top off our great day. Well i have been to this location a number of times, and when we got there, there was probably 100 people standing in the "parking lot" drinking away while waiting for their table. I remember parking there in the past so I asked kip to jump out and ask the hostess if we could park in there. Well kip signals me to pull in (mind you i am driving my mom's big ol' suburban!!) and tara is like "no amy! no!!! dont do it! As I proceed to pull in Tara drops to the floor so embarrassed that we had to basically drive through this huge crowd. You could see kippy's embarrassment as she stood outside watching. So as I am pulling through with my lights on, everyone is just standing there staring. Well then I decided to honk my Horn to get these people out of my way ( mostly to embarrass the kip and tara. At this point, tara is crying laughing on the floor of the suburban ( probably nursing her baby at the same time!) and is telling me, that I am crazy for doing that and she is NOT getting out of the car! I cannot even tell you how funny this scene was to see me trying to plow through all of these people, and getting stared at like we were celeberties or somethin. As soon as we finally were able to park, I jump out like it was nothin, and tara takes a whole 5 minutes to get the courage to get out. Maybe you had to be there, but it was h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s!

* The next day me and the fam were all sitting in sacrament meeting. We had to small rows one behind the other. Lately Ivy has been totally obsessed with stickers...they keep her entertained like nothing I have ever seen. So i bring her princess stickers in my purse and give them to her once she started to act up. Well..somehow little brother Ammon gets a hold of them, and starts lightly pressing them on my dad's back. We were sitting in the front, so who know's how many people saw him doing this. So anyway ammon had put's about 8 stickers on my dad's back when all of the sudden my dad stands up to go play the organ! I guess he totally forgot about his role in sacrament meeting. So all of the sudden ammon starts trippin and tries to pull my dad back down, but he couldn't catch him. The stickers were so big and bright that we were pretty sure the whole entire ward saw as he was walking up. The stickers also had some little encouraging lines like "great job, your amazing, your beautiful... i cannot tell you how hard my family was laughing. We all had our head's down crying laughing, and family by family started to laugh around us. It was the biggest uproar that i have ever seen. Best part was that when he looked out into the crowd, he could see everyone laughing, so of course he starts to laugh but doesn't have a clue at what. Then he realized that everyone was looking and laughing at him!! He said that it was the strangest feeling to see everyone laughing at him and he had not a clue why. When the song was over it dawned on him that Ammon had to have something to do with it, and then proceeded to look at his coat. He looked at us and started crying laughing himself. Afterwards he had about every ward member come up and say something. I think the best comment was from a guy who came up to my family and said "hahaha that should go in the ensign" we all look at each other and die laughing even harder. The ensign? It was seriously the funniest thing ever and of course rex took it like a champ!

And for a million random pics...

good+bad news!

I'll start with the good news...

We Just found out where we are living in Baltimore and i am so excitied I can hardly breathe! why? Because our apartments happen to be right across the street from a really fun mall and it just so happns that they have a nordstrom cafe. sigh:) and best of all we will have a TRADER JOE'S (one of my obsessions) right across the street! 2 years ago when we lived in Milwaukee, we lived directly above a mall, and had a trader joes in our parking lot. It was amazing... well until my neighbor commited suicide in his apartment, and I swear the smell seeped out into our apartment. Not really...but I sure did play mind games with myself over it... it was awful. The summers are always adventurous, but sometimes they can be long..so having entertainment at the tip of our fingertips this year will be awesome.

Speaking of Milwaukee summer, I just remembered another funny story....Since I wasn't the best blogger two years ago, I wanted to write about it, bc I am already finding that I love to go back and read our blog from 2 years ago.


Before I ramble here is the bad news: MY PHONE= almost completely worthless:( Not sure what happened but I can no longer send/recieve text messages ( I haven't been ignoring you!.) So... if need to reach me, you will now have to use your social skills and call! I also cannot see any missed calls, so a voicemail would be awesome. Hopefully I will get a new phone or get mine fixed soon!

So we had only been out in Milwaukee for 2 weeks, and since we arrived our fire alarms would go off just about every other day, bc they were testing all of the stores underneath us since everything was new. Well one day I was in my apartment nursing ivy, and the fire alarm went off. Typical right? Well Normally it would go off after a minuter or less, but this time it would not go off. After about 5 minutes I became a little concerned, so I called the some of the girls that were in our office, but none of them answered. So then I decide to look out our window. I open the blinds and the first thing I see is a group of people standing below (we were 5 stories up) and what were they doing!? Oh dont worry, just pointing directly up at our apartment with their mouths open wide! So of course I FREAK out, at this point I totally started to smell smoke. So I grab Ivy and head for the door, but before I opened it, smoke started to seep into our apartment. At this point I am pretty sure that I started to cry, I was afraid that if I opened the door that I would be greeted with flames. I wasnt sure if I should stay in our room and wait for the fireman, or if we should just try to make it down the flights of stairs and hope all goes well. Well I just decided to open the door... it was so smokey but we could still see. Right then a fireman showed up and lead us down the stairs to saftey. FEW! When we got down there was all of the other girls and their baby's...we were all so shooken up but so glad that everyone made it out alive. So we ened up finding out that a guy was welding at the bottom of the trash chute (which was right next to our apartment), and someone threw a big peice of cardboard down and it of course caught on fire. Awesome.

little "p"

I was in Az for a couple days last week, and got to meet up with my dear friend who just had this sweet little babe. He is so so cute and soooo sweet, but he had to be one of the hardest newborn shoots i have ever done. We could not get the little guy to sleep for the life of us.... and he loves to put his hands in front of his face:) Here are a few of my favorites...hope you like them rache:)

the stories she tells....

Every night Johnny and I tell Ivy stories about a princess named "Ella." I don't know where that came from...but it is her name. She loves loves loves to hear princess Ella stories, and looks forward to them every night. Recently when we go to bed (yes, we usually all go to bed at the same time) she wants to tell the stories. It is hilarious to lay there and listen to what she comes up with. I think she takes little excerpts of all of the stories we tell her, and combines them into one story. The conflict of her stories always include going to the doctor...which has been the story of Ivy's life lately.

oh the places you'll go...

A couple day's ago we had our draft to see where we are headed for the summer, this year we had a really high pick and ended up getting the city that we wanted the most! We are going to.....................................




and will be 30 min to here:and only a 1.5 hour train ride to here:



We are really excited to go out to this area...we feel so lucky to be able to experience new places, that we normally would not. I have been to all 3 and loved them! Maryland has to be one of the prettiest places ever. Anyway, I cannot wait! I love change....maybe a little too much:) The only downfall is I will miss the birth of kippy and nate's baby GIRL! Yes.... she is now having a girl instead of a boy like they told her!

pics from the past 2 weeks...

my friend tara and I took our little girlies to see playhouse disney live! The girls had so much fun... Ivy was trippin.





Last week while ash and I were busy surfin the web, we looked over and saw THIS:

possibly the most uncomfortable position to take a nap in.


We had allisa take some last minute family pics for us... a session that lasted all but 10 minutes thanks to missy...jk. more pics to come soon...


And last but not least.... we celebrated ashie's big 20! We had a little mexican fiesta for her at our house. I made fajjitas and they were amazing if I do say so myself. Happy b-day ash! we love you!!