Well, THAT'S embarrassing...

Turns out I haven't posted anything since JULY. Oops.

But that's only because a TON has been happening! 

I love watching this man be a daddy :o)

We blessed our Eliza Kay at the end of July and celebrated my graduation in the same weekend. A ton of family was present, including Nathan & Eliza's 4 grandparents and 4 of their great-grandparents! We are so blessed to have family that could travel for our little family's celebrations!

Eliza Kay was named after both her grandmothers, who both have the middle name Kay.

 We went on a long, five-week vacation/trip like we do every year, and spent about 2 weeks with each of our families. Our car hit 200,000 miles, Mitch worked with my dad for 2 weeks and brought home a good paycheck, we drove 45+ hours total with two little kids, and our car hit 200,000 miles. 

Eliza is roughly the size of my old American Girl Doll!

I went on an amazing photoshoot of downtown Kansas City with a good friend during our visit. Part of my heart will always be in that city!

Tummy time at grandma & grandpa's house

Rocking with great grandpa Rothlisberger :o)

Chilling at grandma & grandpa's house

 Then in Gillette our license plate got stolen! We had a front and rear set of plates from Wyoming (in the same county that we were visiting, so it was "local" to the guy who took them), and they stole the back ones. The weird thing is that this happened in front of my in-laws' house. They live in a nice neighborhood that is also the residence of, like, FIVE police officers. Our car has been vandalized FOUR times in the last four years. No one else's gets anything done to it, just ours. Weird. The cool thing is that the Gillette Police Dept. caught the 2 guys who stole our plate! We have paperwork to fill out, sitting on my desk right now, that's supposed to suggest a reasonable punishment...yikes. At least they are paying for the new plates and title we had to pay for to get Idaho plates. It was sure nerve-wracking driving down the highway with no plates to get back home! (We still had the other plate but the officer we worked with told us to take it off, because if we got stopped for some reason, the cop would run our plate and find it'd been stolen before we ever got to explain our side, and that WE were the victims there.)

We also celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary in Gillette! We didn't do a ton this year, just a nice dinner out without children. Woo hoo! 

On a boat trip with GG & Papa Dooley

Someone (me) left his swim trunks in the car, and it was too far to go back for them...so commando he went!

I didn't touch this photo at all; the light was just THIS perfect. In fact, all the hot tub pictures are unedited.

We came back home (from out of town) to our new apartment for the first time ever, which was weird. It made us a little sad that we weren't going home to our cute white duplex with Ryan and Juanee, our neighbors, to greet us from the window as we pulled into our garage. However, we are very grateful to be living in subsidized housing, even if it isn't ideal. This is college life; it's not like all our housing hopes and dreams should come true NOW! At this point, it was a wise financial decision, but it still wasn't the easiest to make. Yesterday (October 1st) marks five months since we moved in, but it still feels like we just got here.

Then, on September 3rd I started my internship at Burton Elementary (part of the Madison County School District in Rexburg, ID), working as a para for kids with IEPs and language challenges (the ELL program) in the district preschool. I absolutely LOOOVE it! The first day I walked in I was offered a job on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The hours will still count toward the 160 hours I need for my unpaid internship; the only differences are I will be getting paid on those days, and it will last until May (MWF hours will end once I hit that magic 160). I love the teachers I work with, and the three of us have quickly become comfortable with each other. The kids are so precious and sweet, and I'm amazed at how smart they are! I love hearing what they say and seeing how they act around each other in one of their first ever social settings. I miss my babies at home, but Mitch being off-track is very helpful, and he stays home with them during the day. I only work 3 hours/day, which works out well for nursing Eliza.

I also just started a second job (from home) as a lactation consultant for the WIC office here. I love it so far, although it's a little overwhelming being handed 30 clients right off the bat and hoping I know enough to help each one of them with any concerns they have about feeding their babies. Luckily I have a great support system in the WIC office, including one of my best friends, Juanee, who trained with me for the job in April, and has since been working for them for a few months. I told them I wasn't ready to be hired right away, so they told me they'd pick me up in the fall (after I finished classes in the end of April, moved May 1st and had a baby May 10th...ya know, nothing that kept me too busy!)

Someone found her toes!

This little outfit was the first newborn sized outfit that fit Eliza. She started wearing it when she was 8 weeks old and just grew out of it this week.

The bad thing about not posting for so long (besides sitting down to write Reader's Digest and writing an encyclopedia instead) is that I have several hundred pictures (not even joking) that I've taken since July! I couldn't post them all here (the blogger upload tool is notoriously awful), and I've already posted them on facebook. Usually only my facebook friends can see them, but here are some public links that will work even if you don't have a facebook!

July 2013

August 2013

September 2013

I'll try to be better about posting; it's mostly a family journal for us, but I know our parents and grandparents enjoy reading what's been going on with us, so I'll try to do better.