Piper

I love newborns, but they don't do much. We have tried to take different pictures of Piper. She only has a couple of expressions so far: sleepy and awake. It's nice having a baby in the house again even though we don't get as much sleep.

Doesn't Heather look great?

I remember seeing a picture like this with my older brother

Sleeping away the day

This was taken at the hospital. She has great dark hair. I wonder where she got it.

Rylee Roo

Rylee and I were looking at some pictures this morning of her. We have had a lot of fun together lately. She is growing up and is such a good sister. I know people want to see more pictures of Piper (and I will add them later when I upload them), but this post is for Rylee.

We went outside and played in the leaves in our front yard. Rylee liked to roll around in them. I thought this picture was kind of cool.

Scott and Rylee outside. Buffalo is starting to get a little colder and most of the leaves are gone now. It still hasn't snowed yet though.

We had a really nice day on the weekend before Piper was born. We went to Beaver Island State Park on Grand Island and walked around. This picture is funny because we were playing hide-and-seek. Rylee is getting better at hiding by herself, but still didn't get fully behind the tree. She was having fun.

Finger painting. I'm not sure what she was trying to draw-- maybe a turtle.

This picture is from my date with Rylee at the Pumpkin Festival. She took me on a date for my birthday. We got to go on a hayride, see a pumpkin cannon, eat some good corn, pet some animals (even a camel), and Rylee got her face painted with a pink butterfly. She was so excited about it and pretends to paint things on Heather and me at home.

The Real Baby Picture

Welcome Piper Jane. Here are a couple of pictures from the day. Heather and the baby are doing great. She was born at 6 lbs 10 oz and 20 inches. We think she is pretty cute. I will have to get some more pictures of her dark hair tomorrow.

Still Alive

So this semester has definitely lived up to its hype. I haven't had much time to update this blog, but I will try to do better since we have a baby on the way soon. It's pretty crazy to think that Heather is due in about 3 weeks. I hope the baby comes at a good time in my schedule so I don't have to make up too much stuff.

Things have been fun the past couple months. We have tried to decorate our apartment, prepare for the baby, and watch BYU football. I also spend a lot of time in the basement of the dental school working on labwork. Fun. I don't have that many pictures loaded on my computer but I thought that I could add a couple from over the summer that I haven't put on here yet.

Rylee and her cousin Zoey

Rylee and her cousin Lily in Philly

Miss Curly

Rylee's hair has gone so curly lately. We guess it is because of the humid weather here and her hair is getting longer. We think it is pretty cute. She usually has this tight curl right at the top of her forehead that Heather tries to straighten out.


This next picture was funny to me. We recently moved to a new apartment in Amherst and have spent most of our time trying to get things situated, refinishing furniture, and other stuff like that. Anyway, Heather decided that she would put out her American Girl collection in Rylee's room and let her play with them and see how she treated them. She has been so good with them and thinks they are so cool. The neat thing about them is that they are almost the same size. Rylee is sitting in Samantha's desk in this picture having her own little tea party. I don't know how she fits in there. She is gradually growing out of clothes though so I don't know how many more months she will fit in there.

Crystal Beach

We went to Crystal Beach on Lake Erie a couple weeks ago. It is a nice beach in Ontario that is pretty close to Buffalo. Rylee liked playing in the sand and repeatedly wanted to go back into the water. The problem with that was that it was really windy and got cold when we got out of the water. Rylee turned slightly blue at times. We met up with some other friends from dental school while we were there and had a fun time.

Earlier Trip to Philly

Here are some pictures from our trip to Philly about a month ago. I went down there right after school ended and we had lots of fun. Heather and I even spent time in the city and saw some of the historical sites while Rylee stayed home with grandma. I will continue to try to keep up with what we are doing this summer. We are headed to Palmyra today to go to the Hill Cumorah Pageant and will make a stop at a cool museum in Rochester before that.

Our little family

Heather and Scott at Christ Church in Philly sitting in George Washington's pew

Rylee swimming with Uncle Brian using her cool flotable swimsuit (or "swimsoop"). Rylee got pretty brave and wanted to go by herself around the pool. Her problem is that she thinks that she can swim now. I have to dunk her every so often in the city pool we go to now just so that she remembers that she can't do it alone yet.

Another Girl

So things have been a little hectic this summer but I am finally putting some more stuff on the blog. I guess the first thing to do is to officially announce the coming of another baby girl in October. We were going to post that news when we found out that it was a girl, over a month ago, but that didn't happen. We are really excited for another baby. She has been very active in Heather's tummy and we hope that she can keep up with Rylee from the start. We are still working on a name. I think we are getting closer but we don't want to finalize anything because we still have a few months.

Memorial Day

We are enjoying having a day off for Memorial Day today. This summer term of school has not been too bad, but it is always nice having a little extra time off. We went to the park this morning and we are going to try to make it to a parade in Williamsville this afternoon. Rylee is supposed to be taking a nap right now, but she is talking to herself in her crib like usual.

Rylee is preparing to go down the slide. She loves parks and playing with kids. She is still working on her shyness though. She could play forever.

This is a picture of the pie that I made Heather for Mother's Day. I thought it looked good. It tasted good too. I hope she had a good day.

We finally ventured over to Niagara Falls with Rylee last weekend. We were waiting for the weather to get warmer, but we ended going between rainstorms and it wasn't warm. It was windy next to the falls. We will go back another time and go over to the Canada side.

We have gone to few more garage sales over the past few weeks looking for several bigger things that we need. We get Rylee a few things when we find a good deal. Heather got her some Barbie dolls last weekend and she thinks that they are so cool. She likes sleeping with one of them, along with her regular dolls. We thought this picture was funny with her and the boy doll.

Here is a family picture taken from a bench earlier today. This was taken at a park that is close to where we live. We like going there to see the waterfall and look at the ducks. Rylee was looking for a playground the whole time we were there though so we had to go somewhere else.

Recap

We misplaced our camera for a while and I was busy with school so we didn't post any pictures. I am going to put a bunch of them up here now. They are a little mixed up, but hopefully they are good.

Rylee in her pretty dress from her birthday

Overlooking the top of Hill Cumorah

Blowing out candles from her birthday cake (except there isn't a candle)

Finding her Easter basket

Heather posing in front of some flowers at the Botanical Gardens

Rylee is a little unsure of this pig

On a hike in the tropics (at the Botanical Gardens)

Garage Sale

We had some fun at garage sales today and found this dresser for $20 from an old couple that is moving. We found some other random good things too.

Happy Day Rylee!

Rylee turns 2 today. We already celebrated her birthday last week when we were all together, but I wanted to post some of Rylee's favorite things on the blog for her to look at. I hope you have a wonderful birthday Rylee.

15 States

Rylee managed to make it to fifteen states before her second birthday over last week when we made a little trip to New Jersey. Heather's parents live about twenty minutes to the border and we have driven to the western bank of the Delaware River several times before because we really like this "restaurant" over there. We finally went over the bridge so Rylee can put it on her list (not that she even knows what a state is). New Jersey is actually a beautiful place, contrary to what I thought of it from growing up in the West. We will hopefully go over to the beach again this summer and bring Rylee along. I would have put more pictures on but I don't have the camera and I am up in Buffalo by myself for the next week while Heather and Rylee spend more time with Grandma Olson.

Busy with School

I thought about naming this post "March" to go with the "February" post last month. I am going to try to do better than that though. I just finished up a brutal midterm portion of the semester. I think everything went well. I had lots of help from Rylee as seen from the picture below. She likes to pound the keys when she is on my lap. So I finally have a little time to work on other things.

One of the great things about being a dental student is that I have access to lots of cheap or free dental supplies. We bought a whole case of floss a few months ago. It's tough to go through floss very quickly so we let Rylee play with them because she thought they were fun. Well, she learned that she can pull the floss out a long ways and play with it that way. So I decided that I needed to teach her how to use it correctly. I think I managed to place it between a few teeth, but Rylee's favorite part was the taste. She just started putting it in her mouth and extracting the mint flavor from it. I guess I never thought of using floss as a treat before.


I also wanted to give props to my sister, Amy, for working hard in dance and receiving recognition from the Deseret News.

February

I really should be studying for my occlusion class that I have an exam in tomorrow, but I thought I would just post a few things since I haven't in a while. I am amazed at some people that they can put together these long orchestrated posts together (i.e. Tad's blog). I usually just give the update on how Rylee is doing and call it good. We have had a busy month but I don't have as many pictures this time. I think we just got busy and I get tired of taking pictures inside of our apartment at night because everything has a yellow glare to it. Anyway, we got a car a couple of weeks ago to replace the car that I had before. Heather and I are still getting used to the fact that we can go to different places at the same time. My friend that I carpooled with over the first semester moved and we figured that we needed to do something different. We ended up getting a good deal on a Honda Accord and hope that it will last us forever.

Before I move on to the pictures, you have to check this video out of a baseball prank. I thought it was funny.

Another big thing that happened was that I officially joined the US Air Force and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. I will serve for three years after I finish dental school. We are excited about the opportunity.

The commissioning part...

...and pinning on my gold bars. Rylee thinks they are cool.

Now for Rylee. She is showing her personality more and more now. It's tough for others to understand because she gets shy around people. She likes playing with her friends and likes to watch her select movies. Currently they are Clifford ("Red Dog"), Shrek ("Shrek"), and High School Musical 2 ("Kids"). In a way, she reminds me of my sister Amy because I can remember a little bit of how she acted at this age. Rylee also looks a little like Amy did with her brown eyes. I took this video of her today that I hope you like. She is just acting like Rylee.

Pretty Girl

I thought I would add a few more pictures of Rylee getting dressed up. We think she is pretty cute. She likes being the center of attention, but I still have to run around in circles trying to get a somewhat decent picture of her.

Hanging out in her dress after church.

She is playing with Little Mermaid dress up kit.

And talking on one of her many dead cellphones.

Crayola Factory

During our time in Pennsylvania over the break, we stopped off at the Crayola Factory/National Canal Museum in Easton, PA. The Crayola Factory had tons of different activities for kids to do. Just imagine a giant room with all of the crayons and markers that you can think of. Rylee only wanted to draw for a bit though, as expected. I enjoyed the canal museum more though because it explained how canals worked and had hands-on activities built into it. So if you are ever in Easton you should check it out.

Rylee liked getting into the water with her canal boat.

I'm pretty sure that this was Rylee's favorite part of the trip. We stopped off at the gift shop to look around and Rylee spotted this shopping cart and loaded it with stuffed crayons. She kept going around the store loading and unloading more items in her cart seemingly knowing exactly what she was up to. It was funny to watch.

Merry Christmas...finally

So it has been a while since Christmas, but I have been slacking on the blog posts. We had a lot of fun down in Pennsylvania at Heather's parents' house. Rylee enjoyed seeing her relatives and still believes that Brian, Dalene, and Josh are in their cars coming to visit her. Rylee also had a fun time opening her presents. She would stand by her presents with such anticipation and wanting to play with each one before the next present was unwrapped. We brought presents down from Buffalo with us and managed to fit everything Santa and other family members gave her in our Corolla on the way back.

Rylee loves her big lion and her Radio Flyer car. The one downside is that she has to have keys in her hand before she will sit down at the wheel.

She started to understand the concept of tearing wrapping paper, but she got tired by the end.

Rylee loved spending time with her Uncle Brian.

We dressed Rylee up in one of the outfits her Grandma Davis (and Amy) picked out for her. She actually keeps her cupcake hat on her head. She also enjoys carrying around purses so this one was great. We routinely find surprises hiding out inside.