... that Jas was 5 months!

A few highlights from this month:

We took Jas to the BYU Football opening event: Reppin the Y. She loved it.



But Ellie and I loved this strawberries and cream treat more.

We also decided it was time to check out the pool in our complex, and it is not too shabby!

Jas discovered that she loves her toes

And also loves sleeping with her leg pushed through the slats in her crib. 

We find her like this almost every morning. And we would put up crib bumpers if we thought it would help, but a) Matt is even more scared of crib bumpers than he is of her getting her leg stuck in the crib, b) I'm pretty sure bumpers would not stop her from pushing her legs through anyway, and c) there is no c.

Oh and mom and dad came back to visit us again a few weeks after the reunion for my cousin Melanie's wedding and to wash their feet in my kitchen sink.



Have I mentioned that I'm glad they're home?

Love my Jas and my mom!!!

... that we had a Blick reunion!!!

Blanding is a magical place. It holds so so so many special memories for me! I was so excited to take Matt there for the first time and to introduce Jas to all the Blicks!

Uncle Mike rented out the old Blanding Motel (now called the Stone Lizard Lodge) for the whole Blickencrew and it was so fun to stay in the motel that my grandparents owned and ran when they were young! The current owners even opened up the house part of it and let us all walk through it while Dad, Mike, Kristy and Todd told us stories of growing up in the little motel.

But of course, the pinnacle of Blanding is always the hiking.

(Mom, always with her selfie stick)

Normally I hate hiking, but it's just what you do when you're in Blanding! And you get to see so many cool things! The arches! The Indian ruins! The petroglyphs! The dead animal carcasses! And the red rock country is really so beautiful, it's hard to be mad when you're exploring it. Matt is carrying Jas in all the pics because (let's be honest) he held her the whole time. I offered! But I really think he was worried I was going to fall or drop her or both. Or maybe he was just so amazed that I was actually hiking and having a good time that he was worried I was going to drop dead from too much physical exertion at any minute.

When we weren't hiking, we were taking selfies in the shade because it was SO HOT,

And getting auntie snuggles,

And asking Matt what happened to all of his hair,



And getting milk shakes at The Patio,

And eating dutch oven dinners at the park,



And playing in mud puddles,

Or protecting our shorts and light sabers from said mud puddles at any cost.

It was a short three days, but so great to see all of the Blickenstaffs and relive so many memories of my childhood! I love Blanding!!!

... that Mom and Dad came for a visit!!!

Mom and dad could not WAIT to come to Utah for the following reasons:

1. To see missionaries

2. To see Jas

3. To go to the Blick Reunion

4. To see my new house

5. To eat J Dawgs

They came up about two and a half weeks after we saw them in California to spend some time with us in Salt Lake before we all headed down to the great Blick Reunion in Blanding!!! I was so excited to show them our house, and we even bought a special sofa bed so that they could stay with us! Except mom said that our couch was more comfortable, so Dad slept on the sofa bed by himself. Technically he wasn't by himself since our sofa bed is actually in the snake room........ 

Anyway, we had a great time with them! Mom went into super-amazing-helper mode and made it her life's goal to unpack every single box and hang up every single picture that had been cluttering our house for the past five months. She followed me around the house for three days with all of our art work asking "Do you want to hang this here? What about here? What about here?" but when she was done, the house actually looked like a home and I was SO GRATEFUL. She also made sure we had plenty of food storage on hand by cooking us a gigantic vat of spaghetti sauce and homemade refried beans, and no substitute even comes CLOSE to those two dishes. She also managed to convince me that Jas was ready to move out of our closet and sleep in her big girl bed all by herself now

And we are ALL thanking her for that one! Jas loves her crib, and quickly got to the point where she didn't even really like being rocked to sleep anymore. Now she just squirms in my arms while I rock her until I lay her down in her bed and then she finally relaxes and closes her eyes. Little stinker.

Mom even visited me a couple of times at work

Mom wore this shirt to my office after I told her that one of the guys that I work with told me he didn't realize that my mom was full Chinese. No better way to set the record straight than with a graphic tee.

I posted this pic for a few reasons:

a) What is my face doing?
b) This Banana Cream French toast was just about the most amazing thing I have ever tasted and I was so grateful that mom brought me some and even more grateful that I wasn't there when I heard about the debacle that was ordering breakfast at Kneaders
c) There is no c. Ever.

I got to show mom my favorite part of West Valley:

#bobaislife

#truth

This place is right down the street from my house, and let's just say that they know me as "the Wintermelon girl." That's called winning, folks.

Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and head down to Blanding!!!

... that Jas was four months!

THE. CUTEST.

We celebrated by taking Jas to her first fireworks show for Pioneer Day! Deb invited us to come watch the fireworks with her and her family and it was a great night! We had an awesome spot, it wasn't too cold, and we had a great time!

I love my Jas!!!

... that we had a Harrison Reunion!

The Harrisons wanted to have a "small" reunion of just the twelve kids, and it was decided that we would all go camping in Yellowstone. Yaaaaay, camping! My favorite!  -_____-

The Harrisons have had this trip planned for months and months, so when Jas came along, naturally Matt wanted to just take her with us. After much pleading and begging on Matt's part (you can stay in a hotel room, you can sleep in an RV, Jas is the perfect baby and she'll be fine) and much complaining on my part (I was sick, we have a baby, I was still sick, I hate camping, I was still very very sick, I DON'T WANT TO GO CAMPING WITH A BABY AND I'M SICK), we packed our bags and drove up to Yellowstone to sleep in a tent.

My boss had given me a hard time about taking more time off since I had just spent 10 days in California, so I was stressed about leaving work early on Friday. Matt told me not to worry about it, just to work as long as I needed to, and we would leave for Yellowstone when we left. So I stopped stressing, got my work done, and was able to get on the road stress free! Until I realized half way through our drive that we were not going to get to the camp site until 1:00 in the morning. 1:00 IN THE MORNING. This will be the SECOND time that Matt has taken me on a camping trip and we have arrived at the site in the middle of the night. And I knew that this time it was completely my fault, but how could he not make that more clear to me?? Anyway, I immediately made Matt call and text Lance to see if we could get him or someone to PLEASE set up our tent for us (luckily dad had taken a tent up for us in his car), but of course they were already at the park, so there was no way to be sure that they would even get our messages. I was so tired and frustrated by this point that I just laid back in the passenger seat and went to sleep.

It was almost 1:00 when we got into the park, and it took almost another hour to drive through to our campsite. I was able to sleep most of the way, but every 20 minutes or so, Matt would slam on the brakes and gasp and I would shoot forward in my seat wide awake and shout "WHAT HAPPENED???" to which he would quickly reply, "A deer!" or "A mouse!" or "I think that was a wolverine!" or something else ridiculous until I finally just gave up and stayed awake. We finally made it to the campsite with amazingly minimal searching, and I got Jas ready for bed in the car while Matt went off into the woods to hopefully find our tent that was hopefully set up for us. Seriously. Apparently he just walked around the campsite, found the smallest tents, listened to see if he could hear anyone inside of them, and luckily found one that was empty. Then we dragged our necessities into the tent and finally fell asleep at about 2:30 in the morning.

Looking back, it was pretty funny. At the time, it was definitely not.

We were pretty tired the next morning, but once we woke up we had a great time!

I was SO worried about sleeping in a tent with Jas. She had already proved that she doesn't like to sleep anywhere outside of our closet, so I knew she would probably wake up in the night (which she did), and it was way colder than I expected it to be. But we bundled her up tight in about 15 blankets and she did pretty well!

She got cold one night, and I woke up in the morning to find this:

Out of her own bed, snuggled up next to dad on his sleeping pad, with his extra sleeping bag wrapped around her, sound asleep. All the heart eyes.

Yellowstone is pretty awesome! We went to Old Faithful and grabbed some lunch while we watched it go off

(Jas was extremely impressed)

Then we spent the rest of the day walking around all the amazingly gorgeous hot springs in the surrounding area. 

(Jas was even more impressed)

It was so beautiful! We also had lots of family activities each night, including a family spotlight and a family talent show,

And we saw a decent amount of wildlife, including a hawk that swooped over a flowing river and scooped a fish right out of the water and flew away with it. Also, a deer that walked right through our campsite one day. We were basically living a wildlife documentary.

We kept our eyes peeled the whole time for bears, but unfortunately never saw one. On our way out of the park, the traffic suddenly stopped, and Matt refused to go see what was happening, so after waiting for about 30 minutes, I marched myself up to the front of the line of cars to see what was wrong. Turns out there was some construction ahead of us, and oh also there was A BEAR IN THE CONSTRUCTION SITE SO THEY COULDN'T WORK. I guess they were waiting to see if the bear would leave, so they could let cars through? Or something like that. So I walked all the way back to our car, relaying the message to everyone else waiting in line on my way, because apparently they were also too stubborn to get out of their cars and just ask. Luckily, it didn't last that much longer and we got through pretty quickly after that. I was hoping we could spot the construction bear somewhere, but alas it was not meant to be.

Jas was great in the car on the way home like always, even when we had to stop at a gas station and change her diaper on the grass outside.

I am SOOOOOO grateful that she doesn't mind being in her car seat! And I am also grateful for a husband who doesn't mind driving for entire road trips because that's right I WAS STILL SICK. And I am also grateful that we didn't die while he was taking this great family portrait and driving.

We love family reunions!!!