SO THANKFUL

Our little family always has a lot to be thankful for, but this Thanksgiving there's an extra special reason to be thankful.

Our little man, Jax J. Bradley was born on Tuesday November 24th at 5:03 am.

He weighed in at 6 lbs 4 oz and was 19 inches long.

He was two weeks early, but my body started going into labor on its own on Monday afternoon. We went to the hospital that evening and he was born Tuesday morning. Everything went well and we are so excited to have him here!

Here is Jax when we were leaving the hospital. I forgot how small little newborn babies are. I love it.

Bundled in the carseat.

We were a little worried about how Mollie would handle him coming home, but she did SO good. She just loves him and wants to hold him all the time! She says, "baby Jax, watch this!" and then she'll do a little trick for him or something. It's really cute and she is going to be a great big sister.


To me, this picture is PRICELESS.

Let's hope we get some sleep tonight! Boy am I tired.... :)

VETERAN'S DAY

About 5 1/2 years ago on April 9, 2004 Ladd and I were married in the Bountiful Temple. 9 days shy of our 1 year anniversary on April 1, 2005, Ladd left for a 16 month deployment to Ar-Ramadi Iraq with the Utah National Guard.

It was quite the experience having him gone, and it definitely wasn't the easiest thing we have ever gone through! We made it though, and we learned a lot from the experience. We look at things differently now, and we are grateful for our wonderful life and every day that we get to spend together.

With it being VETERAN'S DAY today, I just wanted to thank Ladd and all the other men and women out there who sacrifice to serve our great country.

We are so blessed to have the freedoms that we have!

This is the day Ladd left...it was all I could do to put that semi-smile on my face!

In the camo...

Iraq sunrise...


Ladd and his buddy along the Euphrates river....


THANK YOU VETERANS!

A Few Thoughts:

* So it's a gorgeous Saturday in November. I mean really, really gorgeous.
* We just bagged 12 bags of leaves in our yard. There are still many more to come, and we bagged about 10 last week. I love trees, but they sure are messy!
*Mollie's new movie obsession is the Disney cartoon Robin Hood. I love that Disney movie! It's so cute and innocent. I think those old Disney movies are classics.
* I have 4 more weeks to go till my due date and I am getting fatter than ever. :)
Case in point: I asked my mom what she thought I should be for Halloween and her response was, "How bout a big, fat, pregnant girl." oh, thanks mom.
* Ladd just painted the baby's room an olive green color. I love it! I will take a picture and post it on here when the crib is set up and the room looks like a baby's room.
* I am practically all done with Christmas shopping...am I nuts or what? Well I am having a baby the first week of December and I didn't want to worry about it after that. (I'm actually feeling on top of things at the moment but I'm afraid that will all go downhill once this baby is born....have I mentioned that I am a little nervous for two children???)
* Lately I have been obsessed with cold cereal. Maybe it's a pregnancy-craving type of thing, who knows, but I eat like 3 or 4 bowls a day. YUMMY. In fact, I might just go have one right now...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We had a really fun day on Saturday! Mollie loved Halloween and got a kick out of trick-or-treating. Once she realized that all she had to do is knock on a door and say "trick-or-treat!" and she got some candy, well there was no stopping her! She had a lot of fun and so did we, watching her have so much fun. As you can tell, she was a little pumpkin and she actually did wear the hat for quite a while!

I think this picture right here is my favorite one.

We learned a new trick to actually get her to smile in pictures. We now say, "show us your teeth!" and this is the result. Pretty darn cute.
She LOVES her daddy.

Mollie and mama.

Friday night we had a Halloween party at my cousin Spencer's house. We had a lot of fun! Here are a few of my cousins in our totally awesome Halloween costumes. Ladd and I dressed in ARMY stuff cause it was probably the only costume that my belly could fit into!

Josh, your Woopie Cushion costume was my favorite!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Kinda strange that it is over and that it is now November.

I have less than 5 weeks to go now in my pregnancy and I am excited to meet our little man and to not be pregnant anymore!

One of these pictures

Yes, here I am at 7 1/2 months pregnant. I keep getting threats from my friend Kim (hi Kim!) that I need to put one of these on here, so here I am in all my pregnant glory.

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago - I am now 26...yikes - and Ladd took this of me on my birthday so that our little son can know what I looked like when I turned 26 and was pregnant with him!

I had a really fun birthday. I went to lunch at Tasty's with my mom, grandma, sisters, and sisters-in-laws, which as really fun. The donut was - and always will be - the best part! I LOVE Tasty's donuts! Then we went shopping that afternoon. Then Ladd came home from work with flowers -which I loved! - and he took me to Olive Garden for dinner. Then we went to Tai Pan and he told me to pick out whatever I wanted. What a sweet husband he is! I got a really cute mirror that I want to hang in our bedroom.

It was a great day and I didn't have to cook, which was extra nice :)

"Big Girl Bed"

Look at my little girl! She is getting so big! Yes, she now has a "big girl bed" as she likes to call it, and she LOVES it. She has to show it to anyone and everyone that comes to our house and when she shows it to them, she says, "look at my big girl bed!" and then jumps up and down on it like it's a trampoline.

She's very proud of it as you can tell from this picture.

This was taken the night we set it up, and she was really excited.

She's sleeping pretty good in her new bed. At least now she isn't getting up and roaming the house at all hours of the night. BUT, she has now decided that she wants to get up and start her day at about 5:15 every morning. Yes, you read that right = 5:15 am. She is up and giong and ready to start her day. I have tried to get to her go back to sleep, but she never does, and then I am wide awake and really annoyed by about 6:00 am. Whe she wakes up, she comes into our room and comes up to me and says, "Mom, I wanna watch Madagascar," which is her current movie obsession.

So instead of trying in vain to get her to go back to sleep, I put in a movie for her, grab her her sippy cup, get her some snacks (raisins and ritz crackers, which is her request) and then lay there trying to go back to sleep while "I like to move it, move it" is running through my brain. Mollie loves that song from that movie. She jumps around the house singing it at the top of her lungs. It's pretty darn cute when it's not 5:30 in the morning and still dark outside. She has always been such a good sleeper, that I guess it is payback time. Oh well. Hopefully this is just some strange phase she is going through, but I was hoping to get lots of good sleep before this baby comes and it's not happening lately.
It could be worse though, so I just try to remember that and enjoy my moments with her, because my little girl is growing up too fast right before my eyes!

I really truly believe that time is speeding up. We are already about a week and a half from the month of October and it feels like summer is just barely starting. I LOVE fall though. I love the colorful leaves, the smells, the chill in the air. I love pulling out my sweaters and jackets, even though a lot of them won't be worn this fall because of my pregnant state and the basketball sized lumped on my belly. This is a really fun time of year, it just came quicker than I expected. I'm not complaining in the slightest though because that means my pregnancy has been going by fast and that is a great, grand thing!

We have had a fun last couple of months and here some cute pictures we have taken:

We took Mollie to Barnes Park last weekend to feed the ducks.

She liked it but not as much as I thought she would. She would throw some bread at them, but then she would get mad because what she really wanted to do was climb the fence and get right in there with them. We took a little 4 day vacation and went up to my family's condo up at Powder Mountain ski resort. It was so fun and relaxing. Ladd has been really busy at work, so it was nice for him to get away from that for a few days and just go up in the mountains and relax. We hiked up the hill and were playing on one of the ski lifts.

Here's Ladd and Mollie chillin' on one of the chairs.

Here's a cute one of Mollie playing on this big rock. She loves being outside. LOVES IT. When we got back to our condo after the walk, all she said for the next hour was, "I wanna go for a walk in the mountains." It was cute.

This is her at the condo as well. I love this picture. This is typical Mollie for you. Clutching her green blanket and being a ham. That green blanket means more to her than any other thing he has and she drags it with her everywhere. She's getting better at looking at the camera when I take her picture too, which is nice.



I have been doing a lot of little projects around my house lately and here is a picture of her "helping" me with one. Ladd found me this old window, and she and I stripped the old paint off, painted it black, decorated it, and hung it on my wall. Here's mollie being -as she would put it- "such a big helper."

SOME THOUGHTS:

*I am now 29 weeks pregnant! Only 11 more to go and I am starting to get nervous. How am I going to do it with two kids? I know I will and it will all work out, but it still makes me nervous.
* The "boy" thing is all new to me as well. I am prepping for blue, green and red. Bring it on.
* I just finished the book The Hunger Games. Yesterday in fact, and I loved it. I recommend it to anyone. It also has the hint of a love story (which of course you all know, I love) and at the end of the book my heart was hurting for the poor guy. Book two just came out and I am excited to read it!
* Last night we had a "girls night" at my mom and dad's house. My sisters and sister-in-laws
all got together and ordered Olive Garden take-out (YUM!!), left the kids and husbands at home and hung out at my mom's until like 1:30 this morning. We had so much fun and ate lots of junk food. Junk food is ok to pig out on every once in a while, right?
* We just bought Mollie a "big girl bed." The baby needs the crib soon, so we figured we might as well get the bed for her before he comes along so she doesn't have too many things to adjust to at once. It's really cute. We got it at IKEA and I love it. I hope Mollie does too, and actually stays in it all night long. She climbs out of her crib like crazy, but a bed will be even easier for her to get out of at all hours of the night. She knows she's not supposed to climb out of her crib in the night because she will come down to our room at like 3:00 in the morning and come up to me and say, "Mollie girl climbed out of her crib, but that's a 'no-no'." So apparently she listens to what we are saying, but just doesn't obey orders! Oh well, hopefully this is just a phase.
*Hope all is going well for everyone, life is good.

SUMMER IS....

Watching the good ol' Kaysville 4th of July parade on Daddy's shoulders.

(and eating the candy she caught. she was mesmerized by the parade and kept trying to run right out into the middle of the road. it was kind of funny the first couple of times, but after like the 15th, it wasn't so fun :)

The Davis High marching band.

(mollie loves the marching band. We live right across the street from the high school and she listens to it - and dances to it - every morning. I love to hear the band too. It's a sound i grew up with and it's fun that mollie get's to grow up with it too. GO DAVIS!!! )

Putting the sprinkler under the tramp and swimming with cousins.
(a couple of days ago my sisters, sisters-in-laws and a few of my cousins came to my house with all their kids for a play day. we had so much fun. when everyone was here, there were a total of 28 children - all under the age of 12 - and 8 adults. they swam, played guitar hero and just had a total blast. mollie loved it too. by the time the day was over though, i was exhausted! when everyone left, i just crashed on the couch and cuddled with ladd while we watched a movie. i had fun with my family, but that was the best part of my day...)




(here's some of the kids. all the girls in this picture are some of my neices and the cute little boy is one of my nephews. the girls TOTALLY outnumber the boys in my family. that's mollie on the tramp in the background taking full advantage of actually having the tramp to herself. the older boys got the water in the little pool pretty muddy but the kids didn't seem to mind.)

aren't summer days just the best?


some thoughts:
* yesterday i decided that i was going to save the 5 bucks from taking my car to the car wash and wash it by hand out on the driveway. yeah, it was a total disaster. i washed the car in sections cause it was so hot it just kept drying, but when it was time to spray it all off and then dry it, it um didn't look so good. there were smudges all over it and i was laughing at myself. i finally got it looking pretty good, but i think the $5 is WELL worth it. you won't be seeing me doing that again anytime soon.
* my child can be a stinker. a cute, wonderful, lovable, adorable stinker. she is sure learning how to test her boundaries and likes to do the opposite of most things i tell her to do. she is already showing some signs of being pretty stubborn too. oh great. most of the day, she just melts my heart, but she can also be pretty stinker-ish too. (like my new word?) the thing about motherhood is that it is so, so much fun, but also can be pretty hard at the same time. i love it though, and wouldn't want to be doing anything else.
* i am now about 19 weeks pregnant. almost half way! wahoo!!
* i had an appt. yesterday with the doctor and our little man is looking good and healthy. i love it that my doctor does an ultrasound every time.
* i have been downloading music like a crazy lady lately. i love music. most songs i hear remind me of memory, a person, or something. i like the new Lady Antebellum album. it's a country group in case you are wondering.
* my card stash was basically depleted so i have been making cards a lot lately and it has been so much fun. i give my sisters and sisters-in-law a big stack of cards with envelopes as part of their birthday present when it's their birthday and they love it. i just made about 18 "thank you" cards, so if you need a thank you card just stop on by and you are welcome to one!
* i can never stay on top of the ironing. ladd has to dress up for work every day so it's a constant thing. he's good about ironing his own stuff, but i like to do it for him...when i remember.
* i CAN'T WAIT for New Moon to come out in november!!!
* i just ate a nutty bar. good combo...chocolate and peanut butter. YUM!!

We went to a Salt Lake Bees game a couple of weeks ago with Ladd's family and it was so fun! I like baseball. It can be really slow at times, but when it's not, it sure is fun to watch. Mollie loved it and even got to be the center of attention for a couple of minutes. I will explain below but first I had to put this picture on here. She is so funny! She is obsessed with shoes (hmmm....I think she got that from her mom) and she is always putting on different pairs of her shoes, my shoes, and Ladd's shoes. The other day I snapped this shot of her with a pair of my socks on and wearing a pair of Ladd's running shoes. She is wearing just the top of her pajamas and she had taken the bottoms off. She is constantly cracking us up!

Here are pictures from the Bees game. She got a ballon animal which she loved.
Here's the story: the announcer guy that does games and stuff between innings saw her sitting in the crowd and thought she was cute. So he came up and started talking to us. He asked if he could take her down to the stage on top of the Bees dugout and have her throw a beach ball into the crowd. So after that inning, Ladd took her down there and the announcer said something into his microphone like: "Hey everyone this is Mollie and this is her very first Bees game!" Everyone started cheering and clapping for her then they started some music and she started dancing (with no prodding at all) up there on that stage like a crazy girl! she was dancing and waving her arms and jumping up and down like "Tigger" as she likes to put it. It was pretty darn cute and she was TICKED off when the music got over and Ladd brought her down from the stage and back to our seats. She kept trying to run back up there.
This picture is her jumping up on the stage.

the cheerleaders for whatever they are (those girls in the shorts) couldn't get enough of her. The were holding her and dancing with her and stuff. Mollie was just loving it!

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!

Yep, it's a darling little man in there, and we are SUPER excited!!!!
Just wanted to let everyone know the good news....