Graduation

Casey graduated with his MBA on April 20th.   It was a bittersweet day for our family.  It was VERY hard for me to say goodbye to all of our friends who went through this experience with us.  We had a lot of get togethers with friends before everyone left.  Its so crazy how spread out over the US all of Casey’s good friends are.  We already have a trip planned to Maine and Indiana to visit some friends!

One of Casey’s favorite professors, Dr. Snow

Some pics from graduation parties:

Casey with some MBA BFFs, Zach Rogers and Royce Riddle.  Casey and Royce did a lot of stuff together.  Royce pretty much saw Casey more than I did for 2 years.

Me and Annika Riddle,  We will miss the Riddles so much!

I threw a graduation party for Casey at my parent’s house

The Paynes are moving to Cleveland to start Podiatry school this Summer too!  Nate and Casey grew up together and have been friends for a very long time.  We’re so excited that we’ll have them close by :)

Picture Update

We have been busy lately.  We have been looking for houses in Ohio and Casey has been studying for his last finals week EVER.  I can’t believe Casey will be done with his MBA in 2 weeks.  It’s bittersweet to say the least… We’re excited for the 6 weeks that he’s taking off before he starts work to spend as a family travelling!  Here are some recent pics:

“Push me now woman!”

Carly’s new tricycle.  I have a love/hate relationship with it.  I love that she loves it, but 100x a day she runs out the door to ride it!

Carly’s joy school group.  Brayden and Maddie are Carly’s best friends.  Maddie lives next door so she spends a lot of time with her and they love riding their twinner trikes together.

Our family Easter picture: take 1

  Take 2.  We gave up after this one (sadly is was our best one!)

Happy Easter everyone!

6-month stats

Holland will be 7 months old in a week but we just got in to the doctor today for her six month check up. Her pediatrician was booked straight until today and I even made the appointment a month ago! Something I definitely won’t miss about Utah when we move to Ohio is overcrowded doctor’s offices.  Whenever I go to a doctor there are like 20 people waiting, and I have to plan out at least 1.5 hours for a visit. 

Holland is still a big baby, and she’s getting even bigger and chubbier.  Her doctor and a med student who was observing kept saying “wow she is a huge 6-month old!”  I’m afraid she’s going to grow out of her car seat soon (length-wise), which isn’t a big deal except that I like that she falls asleep easily in her car seat.  Carrying that thing around has made me feel like Popeye though.  It’s 30.5 lbs carrying her in her car seat, and my arm is starting to hurt a lot more now!

Stats (Compared with Carly at 6 months)

Weight (Holland): 19 lbs 11 oz (91%) – Carly@ 6 months: 16 lbs 11 oz (75%)

Length (Holland): 28 inches (97%) – Carly @ 6 months: 26.5 inches (60%)

And some pics of the girls both at 6 months

                                              

Holland smiles a lot more than Carly ever did :)

6 months old!

    

                      

                    

I love her little hairs that stick up in the back.

Holland loves this play syringe,  I thought it was so cute how she fell asleep holding it.

It has been so fun to see the similarities and differences between Holland and Carly.  Holland has been sitting up on her own for about a month and Carly didn’t start sitting until she was about 6.5 months.  Here are some recent accomplishments :

Highs:

-Loves to eat baby food

-Loves playing with toys and especially empty plastic water bottles, she’s really good at entertaining herself now.

-Started waving hi (for reals!)

- Thinks Carly is sooo funny, she giggles whenever Carly laughs

-Is very smiley and happy almost all the time!

Lows:

-Started waking up every 2 hours at night time to eat (2 weeks ago),  she’s been CIO and has been slowly improving.  It’s been so frustrating because Carly started sleeping 12 straight hours through the night at 6 months, and it only took a few nights of CIO for her to get the hang of it, Holland has been completely different! I feel more tired than I did when she was a newborn.  She hasn’t been sick and she’s not teething so I have nothing to blame the bad sleeping on, but at least it is getting better and at least she is really happy and cute during the day.

- Won’t take a bottle.  This is my fault because I haven’t been good at giving her one regularly but she won’t even try to suck on it anymore!

Holland is such a sweetheart and she brings so much happiness into our home.  She is so cuddly and lets us kiss her all the time. We are excited to see what fun new accomplishments this next month brings! We love you Holland Estelle!

We’ve decided!

We finally decided on a job - We’ll be headed to American Greetings in Cleveland, OH in June!  I must admit that at first when Casey got the offer from them I was thinking they’d be the last place we’d end up.  It’s funny how things end up working out a totally different way than you think they will.  We both can’t believe that we turned down jobs in Phoenix, Salt Lake, So Cal, and Houston for  a job in Cleveland, but we know that we are supposed to go there and we are very excited, but so sad at the same time to be leaving our families.

In case you’re wondering why Casey is getting an MBA to write greeting cards, don’t worry,  he won’t actually be writing greeting cards (even though I know he’d be really good at it, he a good rhymer). He’ll be working in their supply chain department sending cards worldwide.  American Greetings also owns one of my most favorite stores, Papyrus, which Casey will be sending inventory to as well.  Here’s to making $$$ again!

Pictures

I took Carly and Holland to get their pictures taken in Draper last week, and I am in love with the pictures.  They turned out awesome!  I’m definitely going back to get family pictures done before we move.   The guy that took the pictures was awesome and was sweating after the photo session because he was putting on a show for the girls the entire time!  We got a ton taken and here are my favorites (I put some up on Facebook so sorry if you’ve already seen most of these).