My Favorite Place!

There are a lot of places that I like to go visit, but there is one place in particular that is my absolute favorite to visit:
The ranch!! Since I was young, I have loved to visit my grandparent's ranch. There are so many childhood memories held there. Plus, it is tucked back into a canyon, so it nice and quiet. You have to take a dirt road to get to it, and it is part of a small ranching community.
This is the corral that is just outside of the house.
Here we have the old house that is out in the orchard. My grandparents used to live in this house when my mom was younger.

There is even a creek that runs through the property. It is usually good for fishing, and when we were younger we used to go out and play in the creek all the time.
I took Andrew up to the ranch before we got married. He loved it! It was such a great weekend!
This is a picture from that trip up to the ranch. I think one of my favorite things about the ranch is the feeling you get when you are there. You feel at peace, and you feel loved.
The ranch has had even greater meaning to me for the last couple years.My Grandpa loved the ranch! He worked tirelessly day in and day out to take care of it. It was his legacy. He passed away in 2008. My grandpa was one of the greatest men that I have ever met. He loved his family, and always put them first. Everyone that knew him, loved him. He did his best in everything he did. I love my grandpa, and I am so grateful for the plan of salvation and that I will get to be with him again someday!
Until then I like to go up to the ranch. When I am there, I don't feel like he is so far away. It feels like he is right there with me. I love it!
Our last trip to the ranch was great! It was the first time that Dylan was up there, and Andrew got to feed a calf!
Dylan is named after my grandpa. We took the letters of my grandpa's name merLiN wArD ottleY (I upper cased the letters we used) and we made Dylan. I wanted Dylan to be named after someone that they could look to as an example. Even though my grandpa is no longer here, his reputation for being a wonderful person is still very strong. And of course, Dylan's middle name, Andrew, came from his dad! Another great man!
I love my grandpa, and I love going up and visiting the ranch! My Uncle Thane now takes care of the ranch, and my grandma helps out sometimes.
It is also nice to get to visit with them when we go up to the ranch to visit.
This is Dylan with Great Uncle Thane.
And here he is with beautiful Great Grandma Ottley!

The Mini Roadtrip Adventures or Dylan and Mommy!

Some days, when we have an open schedule, Dylan and I go on little mini road trips. We go visit people that we don't get to see very often. I like it because I get to see people, Dylan likes it because he gets to take a nap! (Mom likes this part too.)On Monday, we decided to take a mini road trip adventure up to Logan to visit my dear fwiend Michelle! I love Michelle! Michelle and I go way back to when we both worked at the group home together. We had some good times, and I was so happy when she stayed to go to Weber State for a year! YAY! Miss West Point pageant people for giving her a scholarship to Weber State! I appreciate it!

I loved getting to visit my fwiend! As you can tell, we are two peas in a crazy pod! I miss getting to see her all the time.
We even took college classes together! Thank you Human Sexuality class! These were our prizes for answering questions right during a game. ha ha
We were basically just too cool... Anyways! It was a very fun trip, even though Dylan got a little grumpy a couple times. Too much excitement in one day for him.
Thanks for the grilled cheese fwiend! I loff you!

On a Roll!!

Dylan is getting to be so big! And he is doing so much cool stuff! I know some people may have already seen these pictures, but shoot! I am so proud of my little guy! He has finally gotten the hang of rolling himself from his belly to his back!
This picture I think is just cute of him! He is just so wide eyed and happy!

And he made it over to the right side with ease! He has to really put his head into it! I guess having a larger head is working to his advantage.

And then he made the attempt to the left! Way to go Bubba!!

He is such a ham for the camera!! He will just sit and smile, and totally ham it up!

Well, that's all folks!! Bye!

Zoo Fun!!

There are three things I love, probably more than anything in the world. 1. My family 2. My friends and 3. THE ZOO!! It is probably one of my favorite places to go! I was so excited when my in-laws invited us to join them at the zoo for Memorial Day fun!
This is how Dylan spent the first part of our fun filled zoo day..
He woke up long enough for us to take this pictures by the monkey statue and then went right back to sleep. We saw many monkeys while we were at the zoo! Monkeys are way cool and it is crazy how many different kinds there are.There are spider monkeys, chimps, gorillas, orangatangs, and then this one....haha ok.. so it's not a monkey, but animals weren't the only fascinating thing at the zoo! I mean seriously! Check out that mullet! It is a thing of beauty!Here are the boys by the elephants.. One really cool thing that we got to see was Zuri.
She is the baby elephant that is at the zoo! :-) Cute, right??At this point Dylan finally woke up to enjoy all of the fun the zoo had to offer him!! He looks thrilled, doesn't he??
I love penguins! I was so excited to get to see them!The giraffs were great too! I was really glad we had in-laws around so that we could get a lot of family pictures at the zoo!Dylan was content to just hang out with dad. He loves his dad!! And dad thinks that he is pretty spiffy too.This is probably one of my favorite pictures of the day! The Asian Highlands are so awesome! And being the cheesy person that I am, insisted on taking a picture with all of the statues that we found! Dylan also looks just completely thrilled! hahaLike I said, I wanted pictures with every statue.. This one was the rhino! This was the last stop we made, and as you can see Dylan was ready to be done, and also ready for a nap!
Memorial Day was so great! I was so glad that I got to spend time with my family! At the same time I know that Memorial Day is about more than just a day off of work, and I would like to say "Thank You" to the brave men and women that have sacrificed so much in the service of our country!

Holy Blow-out Batman!!!

Today was anything BUT a relaxing Sabbath day.... well, at least church itself was a circus. About 15 minutes into sacrament meeting I took Dylan to the bathroom and changed his diaper and made him a bottle. I brought him back into the meeting and Andrew proceeded to feed him. It takes Dylan at least 25 minutes to eat, usually more.
He was approaching the end of his bottle and he just started letting it go. He was farting up a storm and Andrew's lap, and Andrew couldn't help but laugh. The joke was on him, however, because they weren't just farts. When Andrew went to burp him, he discovered a very wet, very stinky surprise that had spread about half way up Dylan's back.
With a look of terror he told me that Dylan needed to be changed. I grabbed a diaper and wipies out of the diaper bag and motion for him to hand me the baby so that i can go change him. He then tells me, "No no no, he needs to be changed" and lifts him up just enough so that the mom in the row ahead of us and myself can see the big pea green poop spot all up his back.
The mom on the row ahead of us had an 18 month old boy and you could see her mouth "Oh my gosh!"
Andrew spent the last 20-25 minutes of sacrament in the bathroom attempting to clean up our very poopy child. After sacrament I searched all over to try and find Andrew because I was supposed to take Dylan to nursery with me for the first hour so that he could teach the youth class.
After exhausting my search I decided to just go up to the nursery and that Andrew would know where I was and bring the baby to me once he was finished.
A few minutes after I actually get to the nursery Andrew finally made his way up to the nursery, with a naked baby. That's right, he came walking in, baby in hand, wearing nothing but a diaper. When questioned why the baby wasn't wearing his extra onesie that was in the diaper bag the only reply that I got was "it's dirty."
Apparently, when Andrew got Dylan into the bathroom to clean him up, there was so much poop that it got all over everything. Andrew tried his hardest to get the onesie off of Dylan without getting it up his back, but it was to no avail. The poop was everywhere. It even got on Andrew's tie! Even when Andrew brought him to me in the nursery there was still some poop smeared on him.
Since there was only 4 kids in our nursery that day (bless it!!), and two other nursery workers, they were ok with me leaving to help my flustered husband with our little poop monster.
Since Dylan still had poop on him, and we didn't want to have to clean up the car seat, we had to wrap paper towels around the back of him before we put him in the car seat.
This whole time Dylan was just as happy as could be! He was so happy to be naked!
As Andrew was loading Dylan into the car seat that was on the ground, he squatted down and his pants split up the front. We now had another motive to go home.
We got home, and in 6 minutes got Andrew's pants changed, and got him a new tie. I started the poopy laundry and got out little stinky man into the bath to get all of the poop off of him. I was not about to run the risk of just wiping him down with wipies and leaving something on him. We got him dressed again and were once again on our way to church.
We made it back to church in time for Andrew to teach an 8 minute lesson.
All and all I would count this as a mini victory all thing considered. Awesome team work and we made it back to church in about 15 minutes!

It's amazing how fast 12 weeks go... DANG!

Well... My maternity leave is finally up! I went back for my first shift yesterday. It was weird being back because I am no longer the supervisor and I am no longer full-time. I made it back just in time for staff meeting, which is always a good time!
I knew that leaving my baby for the first time to go back to work would be tough, but man! I sure missed that little guy!
Wouldn't you??
My mom watched him until Andrew got off of work, and then it was all Andrew for the rest of the night. I knew that he was in good hands, but man! I just love that little guy so much!!
As long as I kept busy at work I was totally fine. All I can say is that I am so grateful that I only have to work two days a week now!! Otherwise, it would be way too hard!
Who knew that 12 weeks would go by so fast! It seems like only yesterday that I was ginormous and swollen, now my little baby it 2 months old and I am back to work!
Time sure does fly!!!

Nursery Adventures!

As most of you know, I am in the nursery in my ward. I spend my Sundays with children between the ages of 18 months and 3 years old.. Needless to say, I see and hear a lot of crazy stuff. This Sunday was a particularly eventful one. The kids were even more out of control than normal, I am talking climbing on tables out of control here! And by the end, it was nearly hopeless. I was so tired by that point I didn't even care anymore.
I decided that it might be a good idea to pull out our boom-box and play some primary songs... It usually helps the kids mellow out. Well, as I was pulling out the boom-box the Primary President's son came over to see what I was doing. This was the conversation that followed:
Owen: "Can we listen to Poker Face?"
(short pause for me to recover form the shock that a 3 year old would know that song)
Me: "No Owen, we can not listen to Poker Face."
Owen: "Why can't we listen to Poker Face?"
Me: "Because I am pretty sure that Lady Gaga is not appropriate for church, and I don't think everyone's parents would be ok with us playing that song."
At this point he walked away very upset at my unwillingness to play Lady Gaga in nursery. I know, I am basically the meanest teacher ever.
Possibly the best part of this whole thing is that one of the counselors in the primary was in the nursery classroom at the time and told the primary president about it. After church she came in to explain the whole thing and to reassure us that her son does not just sit at home all day listening to Lady Gaga.
Oh well......