Sam's Graduation

Well, our days at BYU have finally come to an end. I can hardly believe it! Sam is finally finished with everything in his undergrad career. When all was said and done, he received his Bachelor's degree in Economics, Minor in Business, and completed all the prerequisites for medical school. It's not really considered any sort of degree but I think it should be one because there are so many credits for it! What I mean to say is, my husband pretty much rocks. Not only does he have mad math skills for Economics and business but he really found his niche in all his science classes. He loved them. That can only mean he is headed in the right direction. :) ANYways, here are some pics from the festivities over the graduation days. Sam's mom came into town for the event as did my mom (to also help pack and move). We were just missing Sam's dad and Trish who had to stay home for some medical reasons. :( Commencement was on Thursday April 19th, then Convocation was April 20th..

On our way to Commencement. Elder Oaks was the speaker. I spent most of the time in the hall chasing down the 11 month old with too much energy but I heard it was good. Haha:

Afterwards, gotta have the pictures with family.. Sam's cousin Jenny was graduating too:

Dad, get this thing off of me...

Convocation the next morning.. It was at 8 am and we decided to leave Ivy home with Mema so we didn't have to worry about getting her ready so early or having to chase her around once we were there. I'm glad we did. I ended up going at 7am with Sam to get a good parking spot and to save a seat for Mom R. Plus it made it much easier to get pictures. Thanks Mema!

I wasn't able to get a good pic of Sam getting his diploma because I took a video.. My camera wasn't fast enough to snap a pic after he walked off the stage but thank goodness for texting.. I had him turn around real quick for a shot. :)

Gotta have the photo shoot on campus...

Here is Sam with his very generous graduation gift from his parents. He is one happy guy! We were moving the next day so we just had the piano movers (from the company they bought it from) move it right onto our moving truck. You better believe Sam got in a few songs before we loaded the rest of the boxes:

Thank you Mom and Dad!! And to Dad- So sorry we couldn't have you here with us! Hope you are recovering well! We missed you but glad things are better now!

Graduation party with the cousins for Sam and Jenny... It was nice to be able to say goodbye to his cousins before leaving Utah indefinitely...

The lovely Jenny (good thing she is already married, hehe JK!), and Sam with my rice-krispie-treat-covered daughter. She was quite the sticky mess but so darn cute:

Easter 2012

I have to admit, before this year, we've never really done a whole lot for Easter. I think having a baby to share it with makes the holiday so much more fun! While I, I mean the Easter Bunny, was shopping for Ivy, he just couldn't forget about a basket for us too! How thoughtful, that Easter Bunny. Anywho, I am so grateful for my little family. I am grateful for my Lord and Savior for making it possible for me to spend eternity with them. He is the reason we celebrate and I feel so lucky to be able to spend that time with the ones I love.

Here is my baby girl playing with her first easter basket. I think she liked it:

Pretty necklaces and marshmallows! She was having a blast..

Good morning sunshine..

After church, Ivy with her daddy. I love her squishy faced smile hehe:

After church we headed up to Joe and Emily's for an awesome steak dinner and games. Thanks for having us, guys! Afterwards, we were able to stop by Kari's friend's house where her, Mark, and the kids were staying for the week. SO fun to see them! Ivy couldn't get enough of her cousin Lilly. Pics to come later of our fun week with them...

Not a fan of the grass, hahaa:

I just love my pretty girl. She is growing up too fast:

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend!

Quarter of a century

Man I'm getting old. haha! When I was younger, I remember 24 being the age that I thought sounded old. And 25 is beyond that. yikes. I won't bore you with any more ramblings of my thoughts on age.. I'll get to the fun stuff. :) This year, I decided I wanted to finally buckle down and learn to sew. *gasp* I knoow. I know. I always said I never really had a desire to learn to sew. Maybe I can thank having a baby for changing that. Or maybe all the ideas and tutorials on Pinterest. ha! (only half kidding).. Well whatever the reason, I'm already so glad I decided to learn. Sam found me the perfect sewing machine that I'm sure will last me a long time, at least until I decide to upgrade to a more complicated one in the distant future. Anywho, I had my first class and I learned a ton and am super excited for my next classes. Can't wait to do a some projects this summer! I haven't even sewn anything yet and I can already tell I might become addicted. hehee..

Ivy was so sweet to help her mama open her birthday gift...

Also, just wanted to include a picture of my new necklace that was sort of in between a Valentine's day and Birthday gift. I had lost my favorite silver necklace that I wore almost every day so I needed a replacement and felt like this would more than make up for it:

To celebrate, I told Sam I reeeally wanted to go to the Melting Pot in SLC, this awesome fondue restaurant. Some good friends of ours, Alainna and Stephen offered to watch Ivy for us so we could have dinner together. They live just near downtown so it was perfect! Dinner was super fun and so delicious!

Alainna also made me an awesome rainbow cake for us to come back and celebrate at their house afterwards. I just love the rainbow chip frosting. It's the best. Thanks guys for watching Ivy, the cake, and for hanging out with us afterwards! We don't get to see them very much since we live a little ways away but were soo glad we could hang out at least one more time before we move away forever! We had such a great time. I had a very, very happy birthday with people I love! It was perfect. Oh and thank you to family and friends for the cards, well wishes, etc. They were very appreciated. Love you all.

Sick Baby

(Sorry this is so long, feel free to skip. I just wanted to include it for record purposes) A few weeks ago Ivy came down with a little virus. Just a sore throat, so I thought.. no runny nose or anything, just a scratchy voice and a low-grade fever. We tried to take things easy for a couple days and by wednesday she seemed to be feeling better. However, Wednesday night her fever spiked to 102 degrees so I took her in just to be safe the next morning. Just as I thought, the dr said it was probably a virus of some sort and should go away within 48 hrs or so. But by Friday afternoon, her fever was up to 104 and she was not feeling well at all which made me pretty worried so I took her back in. She also had not been eating anything at all which was also worrisome. The dr was concerned as well and wanted to do some blood work to test for bacteria. Well the initial test came back positive so they wanted to run more tests to see where the infection might be. We ended up being there for 4 hours! And not to mention, Ivy was getting more and more dehydrated because she wouldn't eat very much or drink. She was pretty miserable. They finally gave her a shot of antibiotics and sent us home. The dr wanted us to come in the next morning to make sure her white count went down. Her white count was fine and the dr said that it actually might not be bacterial because occasionally stress can cause the test to look like bacteria... Or something. Haha. So long story short, Ivy got more antibiotics and by Monday morning was feeling much better. And the blood culture came back negative for bacterial infection. Soo strange. It just so happened that the virus cleared up the same time that they gave her an antibiotics. WHEW. That was all a little confusing. Sorry to write it all out but just wanted to document because we've never had to take her to the dr for anything that serious before or ever had tests done, etc. It was not fun. I'm just glad she is feeling better. And hope she doesn't get sick for a while bc it felt like forever! 8+ days is a long time to be sick for a baby... poor girl! 

Eating a sucker before getting her blood drawn.. Hoping to use it as a distraction while they had to poke her. Didn't really work, lol:

Poor girl was pooped. She fell asleep for like 40 mins while we waited for test results. She never sleeps on my lap. That's how lousy she was feeling:

What most of our days looked like:

It really is no fun being sick. She didn't want to do anything but sit and watch her movies with mama.. or her dollies, hehe.. Anyways, I'm just so glad she has been feeling better and that I have my happy girl back. :)