Love these two so so much! Scary skeleton and beautiful bee right before trick or treating. Livi kept calling everyone that came trick or treating at our house cutsomers. Every time the doorbell would ring she would run to the door to help all the customers. We bought the bee costume early, but she kept seeing costumes in the stores that she wanted so I think now she's planned out costumes for the next five years.

Favorite Pics

I know its been like a million years since my last post and this one isn't a hearty post either, but I did want to post a few of my favorite pics.

Way too much lotion

Couldn't get a smile from Davis so Livi decided to force the issue

Loved the Layton Lights

First attempt at rice cereal

Summer please come soon so we can break out the hose and spend long days outside eating popsicles by the case!

Alive and Well (Albeit sleep deprived)

So Davis is now one month old and I'm just barely getting around to updating our blog again. He is a really good baby and really really cute. Livi really loves him and is always wanting to hold and feed him. She wanted to be a baby those first few weeks too, but she seems pretty happy to be the big girl now and is even potty trained!

I email back and forth with Davis' sweet birthmom pretty regularly and just like we did with Olivia we'll be sending a picture packet to her every month.

Life with two is kinda giving me a run for my money right now - I don't know how you moms with a lot of kids do it. Well, just wanted to update everyone really quickly - now I think I'll go hold my cute baby!

Killing Time in NC

Yesterday we decided to kill some time and hit the pool. We ended up staying out there for about three hours! The weather is so nice here that it made for a great afternoon.

So while Livi and I did this...

Davis and Dallas did this.

And this.

We had a great time, but I think Davis and Dallas got the better end of the deal. We are extremely antsy to come home, but luckily time is passing quickly. Can't wait to see everyone and introduce you to Davis.

Introducing Our Newest Family Member

The last few days have been a crazy whirlwind. Our birthmom was supposed to travel to Utah on Septemer 9th and deliver her baby on September 10th, but on Tuesday morning (Aug. 31st) we got the call that she had been admitted into the hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina and that would be delivering the baby soon. She delivered the baby shortly after 11pm on September 1st and we were on the 12:30pm flight the next day.

We were able to go see him at the hospital today, but were a little bummed to find that we wouldn't be able to take him home until tomorrow. We weren't expecting to meet his birth mother at all, but she changed her mind while we were there and decided to meet us. I don't know how she has the strength to give him up, but we are sure grateful that she trusts us enough to be his parents.

I think we'll name him Davis James Hamblin. He was only 5lbs. 11oz. at birth and 18 inches long. We can't wait to bring this little guy home to meet the rest of the family and all the friends waiting for him.

2 Year Old Photo Shoot

Livi turned two in March, but I always end up getting the photos done a few months late. Last year I had her photos done in June at JC Penny. There were a few cute shots, but I don't love the store studios so this year when my awesome aunt offered to take some pics of Livi to get some practice with her new camera I jumped at the opportunity. Livi was not very cooperative, but I think we got some great shots. Here are a few of my faves. Thanks Jen for taking on such an ambitious task! These definitely have more personality than the store studios.

This one is a little scary : )

4th of July (3rd, 4th and 5th actually)

Better late than never right? We had an awesome fourth of July weekend and the fourth is rapidly moving up the list of my favorite holidays. We started off on Friday by catching the Clearfield parade. Dallas' office is in Clearfield and right along the parade route so we were able to rope it off the night before so we had a great spot and parking for the parade and fireworks.

This was my first trip to the Clearfield parade. They were a little lacking in floats, but they more than made up for it with candy! Man, we are set for life - or Halloween at least ; ) Livi loved the parade. Life is just so much more fun with kids. They get so excited about the simplest things, it really is magic.

After the parade I ditched my 10 year high school reunion (who plans that on the 4th of July weekend?) and we headed up to Causey Dam with my family to picnic and do some kayaking and those more adventurous did some cliff diving. Livi had a blast throwing rocks into the little stream and also decided to throw my sunglasses into the dam when we were in the kayak. She thought it was really funny when we told her the fishes we now wearing mom's sunglasses.

That night we went back over to Dallas' office and watched the fireworks. The Clearfield fireworks totally rocked! We'll be sure to do that again next year.

After partying so hard on Saturday it was nice to take it easy on Sunday. We went to our neighbors house for a really awesome (and extremely illegal) fireworks display. Sorry, I don't have pictures, but maybe that's better to protect the guilty.

Monday we hit the Layton parade and then went to a BBQ with friends. We had a spot for the Layton fireworks that night, but after such a busy weekend we decided to call it quits early and spend some time at home.

We are loving summer and this was the best fourth ever!

Livi was a little crazy about fireworks this year. In the days leading up to the fourth people would light off fireworks at night and every time she heard one she would come flying out of her bed to tell us that there were fireworks. I finally bought some sparklers that we did every night that week so that we could get her to stay in her bed and just listen to the other ones.

My sister Halley and Livi getting ready to go out in the kayak.

Watching the Layton parade.

Nothing better than watching the parade with your best buddy in the whole world. This was at the Clearfield parade.

Yee Haw

Livi loves animals, so the horse rides at the birthday party the other day were right up her ally. I thought she might be scared to get on the horse, but other than looking a little nervous she did awesome. Thanks to Dale for taking the kids around on the horse in the heat.

Photo Update

Ok, I am a blog slacker, but this time its not entirely my fault. A month or so ago Livi decided to pour a full glass of water on our laptop so we were without a computer for a while. Luckily they were able to recover the stuff that was on there.

We haven't been up to too much lately, just eating mass amounts of popsicles and enjoying time outdoors. Here are a few recent pics that are my faves.

Grandma's Birthday Dinner at Taggarts. I'm a sucker for the big cheesy smile.

Playing Rockband: Livi always has to sing. She's quite the mic hog.

This is probably a little lame, but we decided to use the kiddie pool as a sandbox until its warm enough to use as a pool. Livi loves to play in the sand and also thinks its quite tasty (yuck). Getting sand out of her hair definitely isn't the easiest task.

Clearly Livi isn't the only fan of the sandbox.

Love these two.

Baking cookies with mom. No one should be allowed to scowl while eating cookie dough. She needs a little help with her baking skills - notice the flour everywhere.

Baby Animal Days

On the 10th of April we made the trek to Cache Valley for Baby Animal Days. Olivia is kinda like the little girl "Darla" in Finding Nemo in that she loves animals, but doesn't quite get why they run away in fear when she charges them while screaming or squeezes them too tightly. So I knew Olivia would love the baby animal days, but I was worried for the poor defenseless animals. Surprisingly enough the animals escaped unharmed and we had all had a blast. This will definitley become an annual tradition from now on. There were mostly farm animals, but they had brought in some bear cubs from Idaho that were so cute.

These baby goats had just been born the night before!

One of my favorite photos from the day!

You should have heard the tantrum when the pony ride ended and we took her off the horse! Actually, if you were anywhere within a 50 mile radius of Cache Valley you probably did!

She was literally hugging this goat right before I took the photo

So cute!

Feeding the donkey

*no animals were harmed in the creation of this blog post : )