I'm not okay with my baby being ONE already. It is too crazy and makes me a little sad.

I say it every month but Miss Gracelynn is perfect. She is happy, sweet, funny and such a joy. She makes my heart so happy every minute. I can not get enough of her.

She loves food but is still quite skinny. She went to the doctor on her birthday and received 3 shots. Poor thing. She weighed in at 19.29lbs = 22%, Length @ 29.92" = 78% and Head @ 17.9" = 64%

Gracie is still just crawling and she loves cruising around furniture. No standing alone yet and it isn't looking like she'll be walking any time soon.

She wants to play with the other kids and be in on the action. She loves her siblings and cousins. Daddy is still her favorite unless she is tired or sad, then she wants me. She LOVES both of her grandmas so much too. She also really loves her uncle Eric. All of the babies love him!

Her favorite toy is her Princess Baby Aurora and she LOVES her blankie. She tries to say blankie, Alexa and Gav-y and tries to mimic anything else we say. She is great at saying mama, dada, baby, BOB, Hi, bye-bye, happy and she is getting good at saying No! ;)

Happy First Birthday My Sweet Girl!

My sweet Grandma Beverly Dean is sick. She started getting sick about 8 weeks ago. It started with tremmors and is ending with a rare and fatal diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

I pretty much hate it! I have been an emotional wreck for a few weeks because of it. I hate that I'm not in Minnesota. I was able to visit her two weeks ago once we knew that she wasn't going to be around much longer. I took Gracie so they could meet once and Alexa because I thought she might have the best chance of remembering her.

She isn't awake much these days and not really eating. She doesn't have much longer.

My mom sent home some pictures for me to scan and make a video for her memorial luncheon.

And now I'm in tears again.

Here is the sample video.

I just realized I didn't post a 9 month picture of Gracie! This was taken on her 9 month birthday! :)
And Yes! She has worn this red dress in MANY pictures. I was attempting to get the perfect shot for a large photo on my wall!

Today was just plain crazy!
Alexa had her Halloween parade at 9:30.
Gavin and I ran home, got him ready for school and then I dropped him for his party.
I went back to his school an hour later for his parade.
Then I left the two little kids with Greg's mom so I could help with Alexa's class party.
Then back to Grandma's for dinner and trick-or-treating.
We were ALL exhausted! WHEW!

Miss Grace is 10 months old!

Gracie is getting cuter by the day and is still so pleasant. She loves to eat and just over the past 4 weeks is completely weaned. She is a formula girl - Similac Soy to be exact. She loves PASTA. Mac & Cheese, Spaghetti, Pasta Salad, you name it, she loves it!

She still loves her siblings and cracks up at them constantly. She is still smitten with her daddy and will choose him over anyone. She is getting much better with going to her aunts and uncles but still loves her grandma's and grandpa's the most of any of the extended families.

Gracie is STILL not crawling but can get what she wants by a weird army crawl. She can sit up from laying and is often found in the morning standing in her crib.

She loves to play peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake. She loves to clap and blow kisses and she will even bark. I'm pretty sure she says kitty. I know she says, Hi, Bye, dada, mama, and shouts Baby when she sees her favorite baby. She is also loving her blankie these days. It is a hot one though so I'm hoping to get her to love a different one soon so she can have it year round.

Happy 10 months Gracelynn!

I am really loving this girl lately.....

Today this baby is 8 months old!
She has been obsessed with her cousins dolls for a while now so I finally got her one. She LOVES her new baby! It is so fun to see her interact with this doll. She gives her kisses and hugs and claps her hands. It is adorable.
Gracie has 2 teeth, claps, waves, says da-da, bye bye, smacks her lips to kiss, laughs really hard at her siblings AND she is head over heels for her daddy. He is by miles #1 to her, even over me... sniff!
She isn't interested in crawling yet but she loves to stand and will stand for quite a while holding onto something on her own. Walking won't be coming any time soon though, she doesn't understand the foot movement yet.
She is STILL a great sleeper 8pm-6:30am and she LOVES her bed. She likes to rock for a few minutes but then she arches for her bed and wants in. She'll roll right over to her belly and not make a sound. I love this!

In general I do not design my own cards. My preferred vendor for card designs is Birdesign. You can purchase directly from Birdesign (click below) or I can purchase them for you. If you purchase directly from them you'll notice a slite discount on the product and I can still customize the template to your specifications. Chat with me more about this awesome offer!

Yesterday was Miss Alexa's first day of school. She is my BIG first grader and is gone ALL DAY LONG. It is crazy that she is gone so long but I'm pretty sure I'm a bad mom. I was the only one around not in tears. It is so funny. I think that I'm just as excited as her. She is loving is so far. Her teacher Ms. Frostl is super cute and she has some great friends in her class!

Miss Gracie is 7 months old.
She is very fun and funny. She is great at mimicking sounds and sometimes words. She says Bye Bye a lot although I'm quite sure she doesn't know what it "means". She GROWLS on command and cracks everyone up with that. She just yesterday started to clap and says "CLAP" while she does it. She sure is fun!
7/26/12 - Claps & says clap
7/30/12 - First tooth
8/5/12 - 2nd tooth

Love these three!

I'm a little behind in my monthly baby post, sorry. 

Can I just start this by saying... Don't ever have two birthdays in less than one week. UHGGGG. I'm needing some major sleep.

My Alexa is 6... SIX. CRAZY! I can not believe that I have a six year old. A six year old who is, by the way, my BFF. I adore her.

My 6 favorite things about Alexa (in no particular order).
1. Her smile & eyes - She is gorgeous. ;)
2. Her disgusting blanket - I secretly hope we have it forever. So many memories... and germs.
3. Her stubbornness - Ei Yi Yi - I have NEVER met such a stubborn girl. EVER. She'll like anything you don't (she likes BYU just because we are UTE fans..ugh), she says NO about a million times a day and she immediately wants to do the opposite of what she knows we want her to do. But, she is confident in many ways because of this stubbornness.
4. Her cuddles - I hear it is hard to get six year olds to still cuddle, not Alexa. We could cuddle all day long.
5. Her love notes - I get them multiple times a day and they always say I love you.
6. Her energy and happiness - This girl is seriously the happiest person from sun up to sun down. It is so fun.

Sweet Gracelynn is 4 months old! She is still SUCH a good baby and always pleasant and happy. She loves her tongue these days and is always sucking on her fingers. On her 4 month birthday she nearly rolled over from her back and she does short giggles. We are waiting for some major laughs though. She is generally sleeping from 8:30pm-6:00am, wakes for a short snack and then is back down until about 7:40-8am. She has a bad night here and there but for the most part, she has been a great sleeper from the beginning. She LOVES her grandma's and leans towards them to be held... even out of my arms. The Little Turkey! Her hair in back is still pretty dark and it seems like she'll have the same beautiful blue eyes like her brother and sister!

Today in Alexa's kindergarten class, it was "TOOL" day. They asked for parents to come and talk about the "TOOLS" that they use in their jobs. I was talking to my brother Chris about this and he said that he would come and talk about his job as a flight attendant.
We came up with some ideas and made some fun stuff for the kids. Chris is so creative and was adorable with the kids. They loved his presentation. I made each kid a passport, boarding pass and water bottle labels. He brought life vests, oxygen masks, pretzels, seat belt, foreign currency, pin on wings, flight attendant aprons for Alexa and her friend Avery (who passed out the food together) and he even came in uniform. The kids loved it! He is awesome and is always so nice to help and do fun things for the kids. We sure love him!!!

Alexa has had 2 competitions so far this season and one performance for dance.
Here is a video of her hilarious dance TIKI ROOM!

This cute gal has been talking through her nose (nasally) for several months now. Just recently she started snoring like a grown man. I've thought that it was maybe just allergies or something in her nose for a while but on Saturday night I decided to look at her throat. It was SO red and swollen. Greg checked it out and about had a heart attack at how large her tonsils were. I took her to the pediatrician first thing on Monday morning. With out even using a compressor his jaw dropped when he peeked at her throat. He said that her tonsils were nearly touching from being so inflamed.
He decided to start her on antibiotics to see if it would go down with them. He said if the swelling isn't gone by the end of the week or if we notice her snoring with gasps for air here and there that she would need to see an ENT quickly and most likely get her adenoids and tonsils removed. GOOD TIMES! We'll see what happens in a few days... To Be Continued!

Gracie was blessed at our church on March 4th. As always, Greg did an wonderful job blessing our sweet daughter. He is amazing and Gracie was as calm as she could have possibly been.
Gracelynn wore the blessing dress that my mom made for me 33 years ago. It is still so pretty (and huge). Alexa wore the dress as well!
Afterwards the entire Jepson & Chazen families gathered at Greg's moms for some delicious food. I love that our families can get together for special occasions. Luckily Greg's parents house is big enough to entertain 50+ people.