Pictures of the prettiest girl in the world!

Haddy!!! Say hello to our blog readers (aka your Aunt Jenna)

She was in charge of folding the laundry, but ended up just drooling all over it.

This is a really cute sad face. Aww.

This is her "I'm going to look really cute so you give me whatever I want" look.

She is really good at sitting up now!

At the mall in King of Prussia, every girl's dream!

I don't know why, but I just think this picture is funny. And it shows off her cute Boo jams.

This is a picture of Haddy pretending to be a wreath I made. She's not very good at it as you can see....

New headband flowers! They were leftover from the wreath.

My new contraption, the Extend-a-Diaper!!! Haddy has been having a lot of blowouts lately for some reason, and I was getting sick of cleaning them up, so I put on a diaper, then cut another one in half and put it higher up on her back to avoid the poop overflowing, then taped it in place.

Isn't that just the cutest face you've ever seen? Oh I love her so much!!

A bone to pick...

That's right, I've got a bone to pick with the makers of the high chair I bought. What idiotic doesn't-know-anything-about kids kind of a person came up with this thing? Kids are messy, right? Very messy? Even incredibly disgustingly messy sometimes? Yes, you'd think we'd all know that, but apparently not.
So my lovely baby girl has had some major blowout diapers the past couple of days, and her one today happened to take place in none other than her high chair. But guess what!!! I can't take off the cover to wash it!!!! Poop everywhere is not exactly something you can just spot clean and hope for the best....especially when your child likes to suck on the straps. UGH!!!
The end.

Mom Visit

My mom came to visit here in Philly about a week and a half ago, we had so much fun! She left on Wednesday, and I am sad....but what do ya do? Anyways, it was definitely a trip full of "firsts." First earthquake, hurricane, tornado, DC trip, and much much more.....
Well, while my mom was here we did some fun things! First thing we did was went to Lancaster County, that's where the Amish are. There's this place called Kitchen Kettle that is a bunch of really cute shops, I LOVE that place! And they have Amish ice cream and kettle korn (soooo good) and we definitely indulged.

 They also have a HUGE outlet thing there so we of course had to go there as well. All we made it to was Carter's...Haddy pretty much got a new wardrobe (they were having an AWESOME sale AND I had a coupon!). Awwww shopping.

The next day was Thursday and we went to Arlington, VA to visit my mom's aunt and uncle. On our way we stopped in Baltimore for lunch, this place was so cool but FREEZING inside!!! Colder than most freezing places I'm sure. But delicious and fun :)

As we continued our road trip saw the DC temple! It just comes out of all these trees while you're on the freeway (this picture doesn't do it justice)

You can barely see it here, it looked so amazing in real life, but that's the Temple back there in the mist!

 We had so much fun in VA! They have a beautiful home that made us feel like we were in a cabin in the woods because it was surrounded by trees! And it was supposed to rain so it was really really misty, like fake-looking misty, like the misty you see in movies...I loved it it was so so beautiful! I just stood in their backyard enjoying it. Anyways, we slept there that night and went to DC the next day.
I love love LOVE LOVE Washington DC! We only had 5 hours and you can't even make a dent of a dent in that time.

The beginning of our DC journey, our nation's Capital!

The front had a really pretty garden area.

This was the view from the capital, you can see all the way down to the Washington monument (which we couldn't go up because of the damage the earthquake did to it)

Naked baby! It was so dang humid Haddy was sweating, so we just took off her clothes! We were all jealous and wished we could just take off our clothes to cool off....

Pretty fountain....we really wanted to jump in.

Um, creepy headless statues. We didn't know anything about them, but I took a picture because of their creepiness.

Another creepy statue, a very large spider.

Justin with the Washington Monument in the back

Unfortunately our DC trip was cut short do to an uninvited guest named Irene....we had to leave early so we weren't driving in the midst of he wrath. So we said our goodbyes to my mom's wonderful aunt and uncle!

Then we headed back to Philly to prepare for the hurricane! Word to the unwise (because the wise already know this): don't wait until the last minute to prepare for a natural disaster, because EVERYTHING you need to buy is unavailable because everyone else waited until the last minute also. Well, we were unwise. The mayor said to expect power outages that could last up to two weeks (which has come to fruition, some people are still without power), so of course the stores are out of D batteries, flashlights, candles, water, and everything else useful. We literally went to at least five different places. We ended up with a little dinky headlight, and two tiny candles. Thankfully our area wasn't affected as bad and our power didn't even go out. But, thanks to the tornado warnings, it was a nerve-racking night.
The next day was Sunday and we just hung out all day. We weren't supposed to be out driving because of trees and power lines being down, and flooding.
Monday Justin had to go back to work unfortunately, but my mom and Haddy and I did some more hanging out.
Tuesday, Justin had to work again, so the girls went downtown to Independence Hall. We started off at the Liberty Bell then did a tour of Independence Hall. It made me realize how lucky we are to live in such a historic location!

Haddy loves George.

Let freedom ring.

Outside waiting for our tour to begin.

This is the courtroom.

George Washington himself sat at that very chair at that very desk. Wow, so amazing to be there.

This is kinda blurry cuz my camera sucks.

Again, blurry.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end. The next day we took my mom to the airport so she could fly back to Utah. We had so much fun with her and were so glad she could come! I love my mom and I miss my family so it was good to see her.

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I thought I would take this time to catch family and friends up on our little squirmy bundle of joy. Haddy is about 6 1/2 months old right now and I just love this stage!!  She is so much fun  for me to hang out with all day. Her permanent hair is starting to grow, it's quite a big lighter than it was when she was born, we think it will be a light brown. And her eyes are the exact same color! They are a really dark gray with a hint of blue. It's weird because I had read they would change from that color by the time they are 6 months, but I love the color of her eyes! I think they are beautiful and I will be very happy if they stay this way! But I know she'll be beautiful no matter what color eyes she has.
She can't sit up totally on her own quite yet. She has the strength, just not the balance. And just recently she has started putting weight on her legs! She won't always do this, but we can get her to stand up sometimes (while still holding her up obviously....). And she is a professional turner-arounder! She has mastered the art of turning from her back to her tummy, but not the other way around. I've had to save her a few times in the middle of the night, she squirms herself into weird positions sometimes. One of which is the following picture:

Poor thing....she didn't enjoy this one.
But we have just really loved being her parents. She is an angel baby, and I am so so thankful for her! It is my privilege to spend my days with my baby girl.
Little Haddy has begun to teethe I suspect....she drools up gallons of saliva a day, really I didn't know a baby could produce so much saliva! And she chews on EVERYTHING!!! Including her poor doll....

Everything she can get her hands on goes straight into her mouth. And she's great at using her hands now, I make obstacle courses for her...I lay her down on a blanket and surround her in toys just out of reach, she decides which one she wants and always figures out a way to get to it! And then put it in her mouth of course. It's funny because since we feed her she knows that all she has to do is open her mouth and we put food into it, so she applies this same principle to other things she thinks belong in her mouth. She'll see something I'm holding, then stare back and forth from me to the object with mouth open wide as if to say "please place here." Ha ha oh she makes me laugh!
Although she is 6 1/2 months old she is still wearing her 3 month sized clothes. She hasn't grown out much but she has gotten taller, so even though the 3 month sizes fit, the pants are too short, but this is ok since it is a hot summer!!
Oh we love our little girl! We never could've imagined the joy she brings into our lives. I took this last picture of Justin reading to Haddy a couple Sundays ago before Church, I just thought it was so cute.

Justin is such a wonderful dad and husband, I am so so grateful for him! I couldn't even think up a better husband. Even though I'm far away from my family I feel so thankful that he is the one I'm here with. What a great guy.

Independence Day

You would think being in Philadelphia we would've wanted to spend our 4th of July going to Independence Hall...but we figured it would just be way too crowded. But it would have been really cool being in the place the Declaration of Independence was signed July 4th 1776!!! We found out they had this free concert the night before and fireworks. We were bummed we didn't know about it sooner, but maybe next year right?
What we did spend our 4th doing was really fun though! We got up early and drove out to Gettysburg. It's about 3 hours from where we live. It was pretty different than what I expected! I was expecting just a big open field, but Gettysburg is huge and has tons of forest area! And a few different fields where different battles took place. They have these CDs you can buy in the visitor's center that are like a self-guiding tour. You just listen to it in your car and go at your own pace. We really liked this option! Especially with Haddy. If she was ever asleep we didn't worry about having to get her out and waking her up at a certain part in the tour, we could just stay in the car and listen to the CD, or the parts that were really cool we could get out at those and stay for as long as we wanted! And when we wanted lunch we just paused and headed to town. Gettysburg is a really cute old town, we ate lunch at the cutest place! Not only was it cute from the outside but the decorations inside were really cool too, they had stained glass windows all over and it was really cool.
On our way home we stopped at the Amish country. There is this town called Intercourse (um, yes...it is actually called that) where they had this really great area called Kitchen Kettle. It had a bunch of really cool little shops, I think most of them were Amish. Sad news though...the whole thing closed right after we got there...those Amish must go to bed early. I was bummed that we didn't get to go inside any of the shops, but I have something to look forward to in the future!
When we got home we crashed from a long but fun day! Justin had his first day of school the next day so I was making him go to bed early.....that was until I forced him to watch So You Think You Can Dance with me...but oh well it was worth it! I love that show.
Well here are some pictures now.

This is Haddy, Abe and I. You can't really see it but Haddy and I both have our special patriotic-wear on!

Here is Justin and Abe.

Here's a canon with one of the rock walls the armies used for cover.

Here is the Pennsylvania Monument. The park has a monument for each state represented in the war, Pennsylvania's is the biggest because Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania and a third of the Union members were Pennsylvanians. This monument is way cool, you can walk up to the top of it in a cool spiral staircase that's in one of the columns.

This is on the top of the Monument.

The place across the street with the blue shutters is where we ate for lunch! Cute huh?

Another monument. This one was built for a couple of springs that ran right through here where the soldiers got their water. The springs aren't there anymore.

Well that's it! I just want to say we should all give me a big round of applause for FINALLY figuring out how to add pictures one at a time! I'm so proud of myself.

Our new home in a place that is really far away from our other home we just moved from.

Well, here we are. Philadelphia!! We haven't been here very long but we've already had some pretty interesting adventures. Hmm, where to begin? Maybe from the beginning...
As we were arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport, as soon as passengers were allowed to turn on their phones, we knew right then we needed to become Phillies fans in order to fit in. There was a Phillies game going on during our flight and I think maybe Justin and I were the only ones on the plane not checking the game status as soon as possible. They won, by the way, and some guy who plays for them did something cool with some other guy that played for one of the teams...anyway, people were talking about it all around us.
As we came out of the airport in the middle of the night, I was a little afraid...but eventually we were able to make it to our hotel where my wonderful dad was waiting for us (he flew out to help us get settled in). We all slept at the hotel then rented a car the next morning and headed to our new apartment!! We didn't have to drive very far...we are only about 5 minutes away from the airport...but we made it here! I was so happy to find our apartment was not a dump, because seeing some of the places we could have so easily ended up in was very eye-opening. We live in a decent little area. There are a ton of apartments around, and I'm about a block away from the grocery store which is really nice. Anyway, our stuff didn't arrive til the next day so we bought some air mattresses and slept on the floor of our empty apartment that night and spent that whole day looking for a car to buy. Turns out buying a car in Philadelphia is a lot different than buying one in Utah...First of all there is NO KSL!!!!! Oh how I miss KSL. Such an easy-to-use website!!! We had to find everything on autotrader or craigslist (which I've come to despise). Another thing is it took us all freaking day long (the entire day) to see a grand total of 3 cars. It takes forever to get from one place to another here. Needless to say our car search was not going very well....it took us about a week to find a car to buy, and the one we found was a last-minute kind of a thing because the guy was taking it to auction the next day, so we got lucky.
Anyways, onto other things...our stuff got here, we got it all loaded into our apartment, then had to go buy a lot of furniture which was really fun for me!! (Justin hated every second of it, for multiple reasons).
Well, sadly on Sunday it was time for my dad to say goodbye and go back to Utah. We went to Church that day and it was the most interesting experience we've had yet....our ward is, what we like to call, like a Little Liberia. I don't know how, or why, but about half our ward is straight out of Africa! And my goodness, Sunday school was the most entertaining thing I've been to in a long time! I'm not going to go into it too much, but just know that we had fun.

Justin finally took his GRE on Monday of this week, and he doesn't start school until Tuesday of next week, so we are taking advantage of this little break. On Wednesday we went to Atlantic City!!! I almost felt at home there, because I felt like I was in a mini-Vegas. It was a lot of fun! They have a ton of shopping, and the boardwalk is really cool, it's got stuff all up and down it. And the beach was fun too! Except Haddy really really hated the beach....I think she was crying practically the entire time. But we still had fun!! We went Wednesday because it was supposed to be cloudy that day (me + sun = not fun), turns out the weather forecast was wrong...it was clear skies, so I was under the umbrella most of the time, but we still enjoyed ourselves! (btw I'm not sure how those pictures ended up where they did...)
We are very excited for more adventures! We are going to the art museum and zoo this weekend, and if everything goes according to plan for the 4th we are going to the Amish country and Gettysburg!! I am very excited! If anyone ever visits us we will be good tour guides!
Peace out.