Only 2 weeks into the year and I already missed a "regular" Monday post. Oops. Sorry Grandma and Timmy! (Tim's my brother serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He can check emails and read my blog on Mondays).
I meant to post yesterday but it turned into a CRAZY day. I took a work project that I'm struggling to meet the deadline for, and Jack had the worst day ever. Basically he threw nonstop tantrums all day long and nothing I did could get him to chill. I'm hoping it was just teething pain and not a new phase, because I will lose my mind if this keeps up for long. Poor guy has two little toothbuds on bottom that haven't popped through yet so I'm thinking teething may have been it. I gave him some infant Tylenol just in case.
Ok so actually I have an editing project due in an hour so I have to make this a quick post. Here are 3 little recent updates.
1. Jared finished a long string of demanding rotations that went on for 4 months yesterday. I was so excited for him to start his 2-week radiology rotation because I figured he could see his son a little more often. It's only been one day so far. Pros: He really enjoys the work and will often be able to come home for lunch. Cons: He still didn't get home in the evening until after Jack went to bed. Thank goodness intern year is half over. The worst is when Jared has to work late nights all week, and then on top of that he has to spend his entire weekend working a 30-hr shift and then sleeping it off. It's hard not to see him, and it's really hard to never catch a break in the parenting department.
2. Jack is getting really close to walking! Occasionally I'll catch him standing up and not holding onto anything for support. It only lasts for a second or two, but I think within a few weeks he'll be taking some steps. Right now it's a race to see if he's going to start walking before he gets any teeth. It's going to be close.
3. I'm working on a large-scale weaving right now that I'm really excited about. I welded a copper frame loom for it by myself. Warping it up was really difficult because the string kept slipping on the metal, but now that it's starting to take shape it's looking great. I've dreamed of starting an online shop for my woven wall hangings for years now. Pregnancy and having a baby put a big fat pause on that, but hopefully this will be the year I'm able to make it happen. I'll post some pictures when I'm done with the piece I'm working on now.
The pictures in this post are outtakes from when we were trying to get a shot for our Christmas card. I love how me and Jack are looking at each other in the first one. We tried to take pictures in the prairie (see picture below), but the wind NEVER takes a break here in the winter, and it was just too cold to get a good one of everyone smiling. I'll try again in the summer.
Happy New Year! My Christmas gift to my grandma Roper was a promise to blog every week this year, aiming for a Monday morning post. I'm happy to start doing this, as I've been bad about posting for the past two years and really miss having those memories to look back on.
I know this is a weird place to start the new year, but I wanted to post about our Thanksgiving break. Other bloggers be like, "I'm so bad, posting Christmas 2 weeks late." And I'm just over here like, "Sweet, getting Thanksgiving posted earlier than usual."
Jared got a full week off for Thanksgiving, which is pretty much unheard of during residency. We split our time and spent a couple days in Orem with my family, and then the rest of the week in Bear Lake for Thanksgiving with Jared's family.
Jack was uncharacteristically content our entire time in Orem. Normally he's pretty fussy and high maintenance, so it was fun (*cough* suspicious) to see him playing happily for so long with various toys and relatives. He loved the swing my parents installed under their deck.
It's no secret that Jared loves Utah Valley. In fact, it's almost annoying how much he talks about his love for Utah Valley, and I'm FROM there. And I love it too! Yes that inversion's pretty gross, and yes it is getting a little crowded for our taste, but those particular mountains and trails are really special. Not to mention all the family we have in Utah, and Jared is oddly obsessed with Utah Lake. Also the food scene. Thumbs up. Apologies to Jared's family for Jared aggressively trying to sell everyone on moving to Utah with us someday. I do think the obsession is pretty funny considering that back in his college days Jared said he would N E V E R marry a Utah girl.
^^Check out those fabulous postpartum bangs. My mom and grandma will be happy to hear that I will be getting a new haircut very soon. I just have to scope out a good hairdresser in Casper first. Or maybe I'll wait until we visit Utah in March so I can go to my girl Sheree. Oh and also this is the spot where Jared and I got engaged!
Unfortunately our time in Utah wasn't all magical, inversiony hikes. I got insanely sick the night we arrived. Like, puking every half an hour all night long. I started sobbing because I was terrified I might be pregnant again (the pregnancy PTSD is very real for me). I was so relieved when the explosive diarrhea started up because I knew I must be sick with something that would be gone within a week instead of 9 months. Luckily I was only sick for a day, but then everyone else in my family caught my bug right before Thanksgiving and couldn't eat their Thanksgiving dinner. Oops!
Our Thanksgiving in Bear Lake was very picturesque. Well, up until everyone there started throwing up too and we ran for it back to Casper a day early. We succeeded in getting Jack home before he caught any bugs, but we hit some bad weather and had to stay a night in Rock Springs because the freeway closed.
Jack Jack's favorite holiday must be Thanksgiving, because homeboy can EAT. He was all about dem taters. And stuffing. And beans. And everything else on the table. We couldn't get it in him fast enough.
Jared's mom brought several Christmas presents for us to take home. Jack had just figured out how to walk around while pushing large objects, so we couldn't resist opening this really cool baby walker/bike and putting it together for him to play with. I'll put some better pics in my next post. He loves it.
This has to be one of my top 5 favorite pictures of Jack ever, in one of my top 5 favorite outfits of Jack's ever. Jared's mom got him this adorable Rudolph jumpsuit. It's completely fleece-lined and looks so classic and cozy. He wears it multiple times a week, even now that Christmas is over.
Other than literally every person in both of our families getting sick, we had some great times for Jack's first Thanksgiving. My only regret (besides all the sickness) was not making a film festival video to enter into the annual Welker Family Thanksgiving Film Fest. I had some really stellar ideas, too. Time just has a way from slipping away from me now that we have a baby. Here's to hoping we can spend Thanksgiving with family again next year!
I know this is a weird place to start the new year, but I wanted to post about our Thanksgiving break. Other bloggers be like, "I'm so bad, posting Christmas 2 weeks late." And I'm just over here like, "Sweet, getting Thanksgiving posted earlier than usual."
Jared's family's cabin in Bear Lake is seriously gorgeous. It is a thing of art. I loved the Haines cabin I went to growing up in little Mammoth Creek UT, but the floorplan of that little log cabin paled in comparison to this giant log lodge. It's perfect for large, extended family gatherings. Jack loved being up high in the loft area and looking down at everyone beneath. That kid loves heights.
^^Jared and Jack Jack enjoying the incredible view of Bear Lake out the cabin's front windows.
Other than literally every person in both of our families getting sick, we had some great times for Jack's first Thanksgiving. My only regret (besides all the sickness) was not making a film festival video to enter into the annual Welker Family Thanksgiving Film Fest. I had some really stellar ideas, too. Time just has a way from slipping away from me now that we have a baby. Here's to hoping we can spend Thanksgiving with family again next year!
For procrastinating until the last second to get Jack's costume put together, he sure had a lot of Halloween costumes this year (also let's pretend I'm not two months late getting this post up).
Unfortunately, he wouldn't keep his hat on for longer than .5 seconds. That's the last time I spend all day making a homemade costume for the lil' toad. Also the costume was basically just Jack in a diaper with a vest on, so it wasn't really cold-weather appropriate...
Bar Nunn is swarming with kids in costumes on Halloween, but we live on the far edge of our neighborhood, and really only the kids who live on our street stopped over. Next year we'll stick with just one bag of candy. It was still fun to spend Halloween in our first home. This current stage of life is hectic and exhausting, but we love feeling more settled.
^^I wanted to do coordinating outfits, but I'm not that on top of things at this point in my motherhood journey. Instead these were all thrown together 10 minutes before the party we went to. Jack's a muggle, I'm Wednesday Addams, and Jared came straight from work so he went as a doctor (like on Parks and Rec when all the doctors and nurses dress up as doctors and nurses for Ann's party). Oh, and we'll say that Savvy went as a baby since she's wearing a diaper.
After Halloween I dressed Jack up as his Uncle Tim who's on a mission, since he said we should dress Jack up like him. He's wearing one of Tim's iconic sloth shirts and a straw hat, and he's holding a packet of ramen noodles. Classic Timmy. So stoked for them to meet each other next year.
And finally, I had to include some pictures of Jack in the cutest little Halloween/Jack-o-Lantern outfit ever. Jared's mom sent it for him and he wore it all through October (and into November a bit too, shh). The little ghosties were even glow in the dark! Love my little Jack-o-Lambert so much!
The costume he was meant to wear was this Toad costume. He's always running around in his walker like a Mario Kart racer, so I figured I'd attach some balloons to the back and I made him this toadstool hat.
...so we threw him in his "Snuggle this Muggle" onesie and he went as a muggle to the soup potluck party in a ward family's garage. That's what we did for Halloween dinner. Then we rushed back home to pass out the bags and bags of candy we bought for the trick-or-treaters. We were so excited for our first Halloween in a home and neighborhood where we'd actually have trick-or-treaters over.
This past weekend Jared's residency program paid for Jared and the other 7 family medicine interns and their families to get away on a little 2-day retreat. When Jared told me this was going to happen, I started to laugh. We both thought it was some sort of initiation prank where they tell you they're giving you a free vacation and then when the weekend comes, they actually make you work back-to-back 24-hour shifts. Clearly we have some trust issues when it comes to medical life haha. Jared's residency schedule is INSANE and stressful, but holy cow it feels so good to be done with the stressors of medical school and to have a little job security and peace of mind about our future. It feels even better to be on the receiving ends of perks like this once in a while instead of just trying to claw our way through the competitive world of medical training.
Anyway, the deal was that the program would pay up to $100 per resident per night for lodging, and we'd plan and pay for everything else. Wyoming has a lot of beautiful stuff going on, but Casper is about 4 hours away from all of it. It's a bit of a pain to have to spend 8-10 hours of a regular 2-day weekend driving, but that's pretty much the only option for "getting away" here, so as a group we decided we wanted to go see Jackson Hole.
Normally Jackson Hole is crazy expensive and impossible to book, but since we went in the off season we were able to book some nice stuff for pretty cheap in Teton Village. It's about 10 minutes outside Jackson Hole and right in the middle of a huge ski resort. We could walk to several lifts from our townhome. Teton Village is buzzing in the winter, but it was nice and quiet and still had a bit of color on the trees in late October. If we were to go back again I think we'd shoot for early October to catch even more fall foliage.
When I go to family functions I get a lot of "why is your hair so long and when are you going to cut it?" type questions. So I'm going to take this moment to say, "Daaaaaang, my long hair be lookin' fine in the Tetons." I'm sure I'll cut my hair short in the coming year, but I'm like 100% positive that I'll never have it this long again so I'm just trying to appreciate it while it's here! It took me alllll of medical school to grow these luscious locks, and now that we're finally living somewhere that's not crazy humid, I can finally curl it and expect the curls to look good for several days.
Another group shot! This time we went with the self-timer method. I was barely able to sprint my way into the frame before this shot was taken. I do have a "just-made-it" look to my face, but I'm pretty proud of myself for making it work.
After a day of exploring with the group, we all had a delicious lasagna dinner and played some games at the townhomes. Jared loves board games a lot. He was in his element.
One of the things I love most about our new town is that it's literally called "Bar Nunn." How awesome is that? If I get the right angle I can capture the entire "city" in one picture. We don't even have a grocery store. The neighborhood we live in is small, pretty new, and quiet. We're close enough to Casper that the furthest we'd have to drive to get anywhere in town is 15 minutes, but "far" enough away that I get to say things like, "I'm going into town today, need me to pick anything up?" Also we just really love how underrated and quiet it is out here on our edge of the prairie. Jared's coworkers always make fun of Bar Nunn, but we're just like, "Sweet, the more people make fun of Bar Nunn, the less people will come crowd it up." I would make a seriously awesome hermit/crotchety old person. (For real though.)
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