Christmas 2015

I have been absolutely horrible at taking pictures lately! I'm lucky I got any of Christmas and even then they are pretty much all of Daxton. We have been traveling a lot. For Thanksgiving we went to South Carolina to visit Sam's brother and his wife. Unfortuatly we didnt take very many pictures of that trip either. 

After Sam finished his semester we went to Colorado Springs and then to Utah. We got to spend time with both of our families and the time went way too fast. We loved seeing Daxton open his presents. His favorite by far being the sofa from Grandma and Grandpa and he knew just what to do with it. We took advantage of the snow and went snowboarding and sledding. I added a short clip of us sledding. This is the BEST way to go sledding in my opinion.

Oh, and my family has this little deer that is very friendly and goes around to everyone's house begging for food! It's the funniest thing. Daxton is afraid of dogs but he loved petting the deer!

St. Louis Zoo

The weekend before Dax's birthday we went to St. Louis and took him to the zoo. We realized beforehand that he probably wasn't going to be that into it. But, I still wanted to do something memorable for it. St. Louis zoo is free so it wasn't that big of a deal and Sam and I had fun checking out the animals. The only animals that got reactions from Dax were the penguins and camels! Man he cracks me up! We can't wait to bring him back in a couple years.

Daxton Turns 1!

My sweet baby is one and I am in denial! I can't believe we have had a whole year with Dax and at the same time I can't imagine what life would be like without him! Since going back and reading his birth story again all day I have been thinking about what I was doing at this moment a year ago. I'm just so grateful to be his mother. I've had so much fun being this little explorers mom and can think of nothing I'd rather do. I'm so excited to watch him continue to grow and establish his own personality. As for now he rules our house, hes learned how to get his way and most of the time we think he's too cute to say no to :). 

Weight: Not sure because we haven't had a check up yet but I would guess low 20's.

Height: Same with his weight. When he was born and for quite a while he was tall for his age but that has slowed down a bit.

Clothes: Anything from 9-12 to 12-18, clothing sizes seem to range more at this age. But he is in a size 4 shoe.

Diapers: Size 3 but the next box we buy will be size 4. It feels like we have been in size 3 for forever!

Food: DUDE, this kid EATS!  Everything and all the time! He'll eat pretty much anything but, we have noticed he likes to be eating what we are. So if you give him something different he will usually sneak his hand off his high chair and drop it on the floor(why!!!??). He loves fruit, especially bananas and anything dessert(uh oh!)

Movement: Crawling and cruising(walking while holding on the things). He has been standing up by himself so maybe walking soon? He also can go up and down the stairs and it's his favorite thing to do :/.  Oh, and he has started climbing things.

Sleeping: Pretty good, he puts himself to sleep and sleeps through the night. He usually wakes up very early and when he does we usually complain but then I realize that I'm at least lucky he's not waking me up in the middle of the night.
Teeth: He's got 8 teeth! 4 on top and 4 on bottom.

We  have had two parts to his birthday. The first was our trip to the St. Louis Zoo which I will post about later. The second was his actual birthday which was today. Sam had to work at two so we celebrated this morning. He woke up around 6:30 and usually we eat right away but Sam wanted him to open his presents and he was so entertained by it he could have gone hours without eating! His favorite thing was from my parents, a little motorcycle that makes noise and lights up. He had been sitting on it all day and honking his horn:). After awhile we had him eat his cake. We thought he would immediately tear into it but he just stared at it for about a minute. Finally he tried it and then destroyed it as shown above!

The rest of the day has been spent playing:). Happy birthday to my best little buddy! 

GRAD SCHOOL!

Sam graduated UVU last December. Since then he has been applying for graduate schools to become an Occupational Therapist. It has been a very long wait. I think he started the whole process last summer. We didn't think we would hear until the beginning of May so when Sam got the phone call early we were so so happy! It has been hard not knowing where we will be living the next year and not knowing where our life is going. Finally being able to know and plan is really exciting. 

We will be moving 1,250 miles away to Springfield, Missouri. The school starts August 17th (which just happens to be Sams 26th birthday). We will be moving there sometime the end of July beginning of August and be there for at least 2 1/2 years.

I'm really excited and nervous at the same time! There are a lot of cool things to see back there and we will love exploring. Being so far from family will definitely be hard though. I am very close to my family and love spending as much time with them as possible so I just have to trust that Heavenly Father knows best. But we will be making as many trips as financially possible!

We did a lot of researching over the weekend but did get out to enjoy the wonderful spring weather. It was really funny because for a while Dax was totally freaked out by the plants and flowers. If he got too close to them or even looked at them he would freak out!

Babes First Easter

Daxton had his first Easter and was completely spoiled! Grandma made his cute little Easter basket! And my little cowboy his own pair of boots. I can't wait for him to grow into them! 

My mom always does an awesome Easter egg hunt for us and we always love it! We have been in chocolate heaven for the past week!

Easter weekend Daxton started solids! I love how much he loves food :) He didn't really know what to do with it but was really liking it! 

He loved playing with the Easter eggs but really wanted the candy :) I can tell he is gonna have a sweet tooth!

We loved being out of the city and Dax being able to explore different things. It was nice to recharge! We were extremely lucky to be able to celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior and hear from our wonderful leaders! There were a lot of things that I needed to hear and am very grateful that I get the chance to start over and be better.

DIY Baby Moccasins

I have been loving the baby moccasins and finally found a couple patterns on Pinterest that I really liked. Thank goodness for Pinterest right, it has everything you'll ever want! I've made my own tutorial for those interested. It was a fun little project but it wasn't without some headaches. :)

What you'll need:

-Some kind of leather like material(you'll want it to be durable, this is on the outside)

-Cotton material for the inside lining

-Thread

-1/4" elastic 

-Tissue or wax paper(I used tissue paper)

Note: Some people used special needles and feet but I wanted to complete this project at the lowest cost possible.

I started out by choosing my fabric. I went to Joann's and they had a couple options. Not as many for boys. I'm sure that if I went online I could find a lot better selection but since I didn't want to wait I just went with a basic brown color. I'm not sure what the correct name of the fabric is, I just call it pleather. The liner fabric can be any kind of cotton.

I got my pattern here and went to work.

I pinned and cut out each piece. Then I cut the fringe.

 You start by sewing the fringe and toe piece together I used a 1/2" seam allowance. Then sew the heel piece in half using a 3/8" seam allowance. Thread the elastic through and then secure it on the ends by sewing it.

 Then sew the heel piece to the fringe in a U shape as shone above. This part was confusing to me until I played around with the pieces and figured it out. I suggest doing the same. After that add the toe liner piece so that it will sit on the inside.

After you've folded the liner piece inside you are ready to add the sole. Using a 1/4" seam allowance sew the liner and the outside to the rest of the moccasin with the liner facing out. It's best if you can do this step using a serger. It will give you a better finish. If you are like me however and don't have one a regular sewing machine works fine.

I would suggest reading a couple different tutorials before you start because each is going to give you different ideas which will help. Also use the tissue paper on top whenever you are sewing the pleather on the outside. I didn't start this way and it was a mess. It wouldn't go through my machine and then the threads would knot. Once your done sewing you just tear the tissue paper off.

Dax now has cute little moccasins and wears them most of the time even though he is still getting used to wearing shoes.