Today we decided to hike Adams Canyon with Melinda and Caleb.
The hike wasn't too bad, though hiking with two babies came with its challenges.
At the top there was a really cool 40-foot waterfall, which made for a nice end of the trail. By the time that we made it back down, we had four tired adults and two sleeping babies.

There is a creek that follows most of the trail, which along with the shade from the trees, made it much cooler than it was today in the valley:

Rachel is locked, loaded and ready to go:

Here we are hot, sweaty and tired, but finally at the top:

The sun peeking out from the top of the falls:

Rachel and Daddy at the top of the trail:

After our hike, we went grocery shopping. Here Rachel is "helping" us unload the groceries once we got home:

Rachel gets better and better at crawling every day. Tori entered her in the Clearfield City 4th of July Diaper Derby, so we have been practicing lately:

She is growing more and more every day. She really likes to dance, clap her hands and move around as much as possible.

Father's Day Weekend

We celebrated Father's Day a day early with a picnic in the park after Matt's Piano recital. Here is a video of his performance:

Tyler and Rachel fell asleep on the couch together yesterday at Robyn and Aaron's house.

Mae and Jason are in town for the holiday weekend, and this morning we took all the kids to the Dinosaur Park up in Ogden:
I thought this was cool: they had a lot of buildings with dinos on them:

This one is getting ready to eat her babies or something..... that or is protecting them. I forget which.

The whole gang exploring the park:

Rachel was our tour guide. (Mostly she just tried to eat the map)

Rachel just kickin' it in her stroller:

Watch out for the worlds most dangerous creature! (and her mommy standing close by to make sure she wouldn't fall over)


Rachel and Tori:

Dinosaur-back riding in the playground:

This Brontosaurus doubled as a seagull perch. He didn't seem to mind.

Rachel Video!!!

Each day Rachel becomes more and more mobile. Getting her diapered and dressed has become increasinglly challenging. (See video below) Basically, unless she is sleeping, Rachel never holds still. She just keeps going, and going, and going and going...........



In other Lloyd family news...
Rachel sprouted her first two teeth last week. (We'd post a picture of them, but she doesn't let people look at them) We can feel them on the bottom and occasionaly get a glimpse of them when she is smiling really big!

Also, Friday was Victoria's last day of work at the Credit Union. She opted for early retirement so that she could spend more time chasing Rachel around the house. Rachel and I are so proud of her. Way to go Tori!!!

Yesterday Rachel got impatient waiting for her daddy to find a spoon to feed her, so she took matters into her own hands:

Her performance earned her an impromptu shower in Grandma Lloyd's kitchen sink:

I was freezing cold this morning when we took Matt to his soccer game. (The Uncle Matt and Uncle Cameron are staying with us for the weekend because Grandma and Grandpa went to Melinda and Caleb's graduation.) Daddy forgot to bring a blanket for me, so I had to take refuge in Daddy's jacket until the lady next to us shared an extra blanket - which I spit up on.

Its official.... I met with my advisor and registered for classes at Weber State University yesterday.

I'm majoring in construction management and should be able to finish in 2 1/2 years taking evening and online classes, which will be nice since I'll still be able to work full-time and Hamlet is paying for it.

Game Day!!!

We had lots of fun this morning at Uncle Matt's Soccer game!


The only problem was that the game was at 8:00 am!!! ON A SATURDAY!!!

A few pictures of Rachel and Tori at our ward picnic dinner last night. Rachel liked the slide!!

Rachel has finally earned her own seat at the table, thanks to her new portable high chair. We had been looking at these for a while, and found one at a good price at Target, so we finally bought it for her. Its pretty nifty; it just hooks onto the edge of the table and is portable for Sunday dinner at grandma and grandpa's. It even has cupholders!!
As you can see, she loves her new seat at the big kids table!

It's a Regalo Easy Diner portable high chair.

Since we gave a recommendation about the high chair, we'll balance it out with a warning about the following product:

They were giving free samples of these out at Wal-Mart the other day, and I had the misfortune of taking one. It was awful!!! From now on, I'll try and avoid anything that has ''freeze-dried hamburger bits'' on the ingredients list.

We've got Green Thumbs....

Well, after last year's failed attempt at gardening, we were a bit nervous about trying again this year but decided we'd give it a go. We have a bit more room at the new place and considerably more sunlight, which, as we discovered last summer, plants apparantly need in order to live.

We planted two boxes of flowers on the railing, and two pots of flowers, as well as a tomato plant and some herbs, both in pots on the balcony:

We also thought that it would be cute to pose Rachel and take a nice picture of her with the new flowers. As soon as she saw them, she reached out and pulled one of the freshly planted Snapdragons right out of the ground:

You're so vain......

Rachel has so much fun playing with her new friend-her reflection. She gives herself kisses and laughs. She has a great time enjoying herself infront of the mirror.
She does a new trick with her tongue which she loves to see in the mirror too. I think she thinks that she is so cool with all her new tricks and discoveries.

Wiggle Worm

Rachel still can't crawl, but she is getting to where she moves, wriggles, and squirms a lot. We usually ind her in a position like this when we wake her up in the morning:

This morning, I sat her up in the chair in the den while I was working at the computer. A few minutes later, she had moved into a more comfortable position and found the TV remote, which is quickly becoming one of her favorite toys:

Happy April Fools Day!

We have been quite busy lately, and thought it was about time we updated this thing and shared some new pictures with everyone.

Rachel keeps growing and growing! With General Conference this weekend and the Young Women's Meeting last weekend, Tori has been quite busy with her translating. Rachel and I listened to the Papiamento live stream on the internet this morning. Tori did great.... I think. I didn't actually understand anything that she said but it sounded terrific. Rachel kept looking around the room because she could hear her mommy's voice on the computer but couldn't find her anywhere. It was cute, but I think we thoroughly confused her!

Rachel is getting to where she can sit up on her own longer and longer without falling over and can even stand up (with help):

She will put anything that she can get her hands on in her mouth:

Rachel liked her cousin Corbin's "Johhny Jump-Up" so much that we bought her one of her own:

Rachel loves it because she can stand, spin, jump and play in it all by herself, and Mommy and Daddy love it because we can keep her happy without having to hold her all the time.


Today, against Daddy's advice Tori and Grandma Lloyd decided it would be a good idea to let her suck on a piece of black licorice. Rachel loved it but was quite a mess afterward:

Last week our Oldsmobile died. The 2007 Volvo S-80 Daddy wanted was a bit out of our price range, so we replaced it with this beauty instead:

It's a 1996 Chevy Corsica, and its main feature is that it runs and doesn't stall in the middle of I-15 like its predecessor did. Its a nice little car and should be good enough to get me to Murray and back for work each day.



In other news, I found out this week that I was accepted into Weber State University's Construction Management Program. I'll start school again part-time this fall. I'll still work at Hamlet full-time, and it will be nice because the company will pay for my schooling.

I think that about does it for now. We'll try and take more pictures and update the blog more often in the future. Until then...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! Mommy was working again today, and since it was so nice outside (75 degrees in March!), Rachel and daddy went for a walk in the stroller.

You can see some of the other pictures that daddy took here:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=127567

One year older and wiser too...

It's my birthday!!! I turned 24 today! Grandma and Grandpa Lloyd came over for dinner as well as Uncle Matt and Uncle Cameron. Mom and Dad gave me Seasons 1 & 2 of 'The Office', one of my favorite shows. Its been a great birthday!!! Me not being a cake lover, we put all 24 candles on a lemon creme pie:

Rachel contiunues to grow and amaze us with her "cuteness." She loves to sqeak and squack and hear the sound of her own voice. We had to take her out during church today because she was laughing and squeaking so loudly. One of her new favorite things to do is roll over. She can go from her back to her tummy, but not the other way around. She doesn't like being on her stomach, so she constantly rolls over, then cries until we flip her onto her back, then flips right back over and starts the process all over again. If we weren't so in love with her, it could get annoying!

This is our new home. We bought the condo almost a month ago now and love it. Its fun to do all of the little things to make the place "ours". Over the weekend we had our first experience sewing together (even Rachel helped). We made pillow covers for the new love seat to match the window treatments. Not too shabby!