I am SO EXCITED

For any of you that know me know that I am SO EXCITED for my brother to come home from his mission. He has been in Mexico for the past 2 years and is coming home this Monday. He is the oldest of my brothers and is 3 years younger than me.

The night before he left I announced to my family that I was pregnant. At the time I was 7 weeks along. My parents didn' have any grandchildren so this would be their first. Haveing a baby in the family was going to be a huge change, but we were all so excited to begin this new chapter as a family.

A few months after Jared left my parents announced that they were going to sell the house that us 5 kids grew up in. We weren't too surprised, we knew that day would come sometime. My dad was offered a better job so he of course had to do it. After a few months the house sold and my parents went from living in California to living in Utah.

A couple of months later Josh and I baught our first home and moved in a week before my due date. Payton was born a week and a half later.

Durring all this time I was very diligent about sending Jared pictures of all the changes that were taking place. I wanted to make sure he didn't miss a thing. Once Payton was born Jared got pictures every week of his nephew. I would have to say I am excited to see my brother, but I am more excited for him to meet my son/his nephew Payton.

Payton is now 16 months old, walks, talks, playes and just brings so much entertainment to our lives. It's not easy being far from my parents, brothers, and sister, but let me let tell you it is ALWAYS SO EXCITING when we all do get together. I miss my family all the time and can't wait to see them on Sunday. We will be sad not to have Danny with us, but he is serving the Lord in Ecuador on his mission.

The are some fun pictures of my brother Jared that he has sent to us while he has been on his mission.

What a HANDSOME guy!

Can you say... DORKY!

He acts like he has never petted a horse before

Look at those nasty SOCKS. Why would anyone think its ok to wear socks like this?

He was so excited to see this truck. "Yellow" is the trucking company my dad works for.

What a STUD!

Payton is continually growing

These are just some fun pictures of Payton that were taken in the last month. He is now 16 months old. He says lots of words and he understands a lot of what we say to him. He is just so cute and fun. We laugh at him all the time.

New Built-In and Paint

We finished all this about a month ago, but with all my computer problems I have not been able to post any pictures. We painted the kitchen and family room. The brown was easy, but holy cow the red was a huge pain in the butt. I can say though that I love it and I think it looks great. It was nice to have a small part of our home feel more homey.

Update w/out pictures

For those of you who may be wondering why the heck I haven't posted anything in so long I will tell you. Over the course of these last 3-4 weeks our laptop as not been working very well and sometimes not even working at all. We sent it in last friday and have been waiting to get it back anyday now. I don't want to put any pictures on our desk top because we never have it set up since it is a piece of junk. I am grateful though that we do have it for times like these. I would have had no internet if we hadn't kept this old junky thing. So I promise as soon as we get the laptop back I will update everyone on some fun pictures.

Our TV center Built-In

(the pictures are in backwards order sorry, so start at the bottom)

Josh and I have been wanting to get this done for days, and we finally did. We built-in our new entertainment center. It only took us all day Saturday to build and then Sunday and Monday we painted. Josh did such a wonderful job building the whole thing and we are very happy with it.