The Last Week of Summer

With September starting tomorrow, I realized that this was our last week of summer! On Monday morning as I watched all the kids in my neighborhood leaving for their first day of school I was so glad that my kids are still little and I don't have to send them off just yet! Instead of lamenting the end of summer, we are just looking forward to all the fun fall has in store!

I think one of my favorite memories of this summer will be from the pool. It was so exciting to watch Chase learn to swim! This kid has absolutely no fear of the water and loves having his whole head under! I tried to teach him to float on his back, but he really resisted it telling me the whole time, "I just need my face in the water!" By the end of the summer he could jump off the side and then swim over to the steps all by himself! It really was incredible! The past few weeks Chase has fought me really hard about even getting in the pool, and then once I coaxed him in he had a blast! Crazy kid. 

This last Saturday my dad called to see if Chase could "come play." Meaning he wanted to take Chase with him on all his Saturday morning errands, which included Sams Club and Home Depot which are two of Chase's favorite errands ever. Chase was thrilled and I loved having a whole morning of just me and Hudson! Huds has been such a sweet baby, and it makes me sad that we don't get the same amount of one-on-one time I got with Chase as a baby. I had a blast just reading to him, cuddling him and focusing all my attention on him for the morning. My favorite memories of Hudson from this summer will be of all the things he's learned- sitting, crawling, sucking his thumb and sleeping through the night! He just turned 7 months old and now has a serious mommy-preference, meaning he usually cries when I leave the room. If anyone else tries to hold him he looks at me all concerned and leans towards me, kind of subtly. I think he's saying, "So I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I'd really rather be held by my mom, so I'll just lean that way and hope you get that idea on your own."

Also this summer Chase has really developed a love for technology- while not my favorite thing in the world, it is super convenient at times. His favorite things are the ipad and Ben's phone. Both have games that put together puzzles on them and Chase has really blown us away with how well he can do them. Here he is Sunday morning, all curled up in our bed with Ben's phone.

Here are some pictures I snapped of the boys on Monday morning and I kind of love the way they turned out. My boys will rarely just sit and smile (genuinely) and sweetly for me, but the photos we get in the process are so telling of their little personalities and lives!

Good-bye Summer 2013- you've been good to us!

Provo Friends

Fitting right in with our theme from August of "friends coming to visit"

we had several fun visits with our Provo friends!

Our time at BYU will always hold a special place in my heart. We loved that apartment

complex we lived in. We absolutely loved the wonderful people we got to know there.

It kind of broke my heart when we all moved away and went our separate ways-

it's a lot harder to maintain friendships like that long distance.

But luckily, and thankfully, in this age of technology it isn't too bad,

and although we'd love to see these people all the time like the good old days,

facebook, blogs, phones and emails have kept us in touch with those amazing friends!

My sweet friend Heidi Goodyear came into town to visit with her two beautifully kiddos. 

We met at City Creek and let the little guys play in the fountains there.

Besides the grumpy security man who was constantly telling us we were doing something

wrong and against the rules, it was a wonderful time!

Chase loved playing with Jack and Lily

and I loved catching up with Heidi.

Next we had our fun friends the Bennetts over. It ended up being the day we moved into our new house, but they were gracious about all the mess and we had a blast with them! Here's Chase and their sweet Ryder! Ryder is almost exactly in between our two in age, and while Chase loved running around with him, he also definitely took advantage of being the bigger kid and was a little awful about taking his toys away. Ryder got him back later that evening when he threw up on Chase's head :)

Our last visit came from my friend Ashley are her beautiful little girls. Chase had been talking for days about wanting to play with Brooklynn and Kynlee. Even though we see them pretty often, I always get caught up in talking to Ashley and can never remember to take a picture. So I tried this time and this was the best I got! My intention was to line them up on the bed and have them smile at me. I love how much Chase enjoys playing with these sweet kids, and sitting and talking to Ashley is one of my favorite things ever! 

I loved that we got to see so many of our wonderful Provo friends during August! All we really need was to see the Alders and it would have been complete! 

Grandma's visit and a new neice

Ben's mom flew out this past month due to the birth of our new little niece/cousin!

Ben's sister Jessi had her second baby, sweet little Cally.

Cally was only 5 lbs 3 oz at birth, and here a week later is only a few ounces above that-

basically she's the tiniest thing you've ever seen!

We drove up to Logan to see the new babe on a Sunday morning before church.

Ben and I loved holding that sweet tiny girl, and Chase (as usual) showed absolutely

no interest in his new cousin, but was very excited about playing with Wayne Michael's toys.

And Hudson, as usual, was just happy to be there!

Grandma with all her Utah grandbabies-

Cally, Wayne Michael, Chase and Huds

Diane was able to come down to Kaysville to visit with us a for a little bit too-

Chase (who is the friendliest kid you'll ever meet) warmed right up to her

and loved having her undivided attention playing with him.

This was also the first time she met Hudson, who is currently going through a

"I-only-want-my-mommy" stage and didn't warm up quite as well.

Ben and I took advantage of her keeping Chase occupied and got 

all moved into our new home, so everyone was happy!

Out of the Mouth of Chase Part VI

Mommy, we need to go to the store to get green beans for Hudson, but first I need to ride on a train.

Mommy! We don't play with plugs! Go to time out! Go to time out Mommy!
(Can you guess what conversation we'd had earlier that day? This happened after I unplugged the vacuum.)

As we were leaving to go to dinner one night while in St. George my mom grabbed Chase's hand and started taking him to the car. He turned back to us with a face of feigned terror and said "She's taking me away!"

When he wants a drink of water he says, "I need to fill up the tank!"

I've gotten in the habit the last couple of years of calling Chase "baby" "babe" or "baby boy" and ever single time I slip and call him that, he corrects me. "I'm a big boy." Sometimes when I ask him if he's hungry, he answers with, "No, I'm a big boy."

A few days after Heidi came home Chase was talking to her on the phone and this was the side of the conversation that I could hear,
"Hi Heidi! You in Boston? You flying on an airplane to see me? You sleeping on the airplane? You flying on a blue airplane? Bu-bye Heidi! See you soon."

While I was getting ready the other day:
Mommy? You make your hair pretty? You make my hair handsome?
Then while stroke his face and looking a little confused-
I don't have a beard. Unky Will has a beard. Unky Nate has a beard. I don't have a beard. Daddy doesn't have a beard...

While watching a movie the other day:
Will: Chase what are you watching?
Chase: I don't know!
Will: This is UP!
Chase: No, it's down.
(Such a good example of Chase- he's kind of contrary a lot of the time)

Island Friends

As I wrote earlier- August is out-of-town-friends-visiting-month!

Our next visit came from our dear friends from the island!

Our dear friends the Dunns (Jessica, Streator and Savanna)

and the Warners (Ann, Jane, Alise and Jack)

came to spend the morning with us last week!

Seeing these sweet ladies is a wonderful breath of fresh air for me,

and the kids had a blast running around together.

I love the chaos of these pictures-

this is just what life is like with seven littles running around!

Chase, Savanna, Streator, Hudson, Jane, Jack and Alise

The next week we got a visit from the Durrants!

My sweet friend Crystal brought her cute little kiddos over-

Chase loved Crew and Jack when we were on the island, and had

such a blast running around with them still a year later!

And we got to meet their precious new baby, Madyn!

Although not the best of Hudson, this was our best picture of all the kiddos together-

I love Jack's hands!

 And one of Crystal and me with our new babes.

I'm so glad we got a chance to visit with all these sweet friends-

we met some of the best people in the world down there in the Caribbean!

Big News at the Hugo Home!

Life's been a whirlwind lately, but here are the highlights:

• We're moving! We found an opportunity to rent a cute little home for an amazing price so we snatched it up! We are staying in the same ward, which we are excited about- we love the ward, love our callings, and love the Bishop :) We can't technically live there until Thursday, but we've been moving stuff over this past week and it's so exciting to see it come together. We feel blessed that this opportunity worked out.
• Chase is potty trained! He announced he was ready two weeks ago so we went and bought him underwear that day and started potty training. He's picked it up super fast. I knew it would be a matter of him deciding he wanted to do it, when this kid sets his mind to something there is no stopping him. Yay for only having to buy for diapers for one child!
• Hudson's starting to crawl! And he's still adorable, sleeping 12 hours a night, and is a complete delight all day long. 

BFSC

 August has been the month of friends visiting us in Utah! Get ready for a few posts with similar themes. To start chronologically, my dear sweet BFSC (best friend/sister/cousin- which is a seriously lame and juvenile term for what we are. I wish that much like "The Hot Babes Quartet" self-imposed title that my cousins and I can blame on being 11 at the time of it's conception. This one I was a tad shy of 22, so no really excuses there. In the interest of complete honesty, we are technically just really good friends, but we love each other enough to be sisters.)

 Jana has three darling little boys- Clyde, Will and Jack. Chase was in heaven running around with these boys with the biggest smile on his face! He kept telling them "I'm two. I'm two." and cute Clyde sweetly added "That means I'm four years older than Chase."

I loved how the boys ended up in the living room all playing the piano at once (which is cuter in the picture than it is in real life- which is LOUD).

It reminded me of this same scene, almost exactly one year ago...

 I love Chase's little smile in this picture, which shows the pure delight he felt at having these little boys around! Oh how I wish the Izatt's lived closer!

We had a wonderful afternoon! 

Hope to see you soon Izatts!

2 1/2 years and 1/2 a year

I thought it was about time to do an update on the boys:

CHASE

• Talks all day long. Literally never ever stops talking. And I LOVE it. 
• Is doing so much better with eating these days. This past month has been a champ at trying new things and he'll eat whatever we are eating for dinner, including fruits and some vegetables. We are so pleased.
• After we put him to bed at night he hauls about 10 books into his bed with him and sits there are reads to himself until he falls asleep. It's darling.
• Loves Little Einsteins, Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
• Can swim (short distances) totally on his own! He (weirdly) loves having his face under the water.

HUDSON

• At his 6 month well check weighed in at 17.5 pounds (58th percentile) and 27 inches (80th percentile). He's slowed down in weight gain, but compared to Chase who was on the 2nd percentile at this point, he still seems big.
• So far has tried butternut squash, oatmeal, green beans, bananas, applesauce, peas and peaches. He has liked everything but the green beans, which for some reason Chase is fascinated with.
• We did what I said I would never do and had him cry-it-out (which his doctor recommended) and after the first night he's been an awesome sleeper and slept through the night!
• Still can't quite sit up, but he's really close! He is squirming all over the place and is starting to show the beginnings of starting to crawl.
• Is still just a delight all the time and brings so much sunshine and happiness to our home.

Christmas jammies in the middle of the summer- why not?

Chase has actually just been wearing his ever since Christmas,

and Hudson's were Chase's and are only one of two pairs of jammies

that fit Huds right now.

Or they are just really excited for Christmas this year. It's one of the two.