I've had a few requests....

...To update my blog. And to show some pregnancy photos. For those of you who didn't know we are expecting baby boy #2 on January 25th. My guess is he will join our family sometime in February. Just a guess, not hoping for it, but just being realistic.

Both requests are completely overwhelming becuase I need to share the entire year of 2011 and I haven't taken any belly photos this pregnancy. The one motivating factor that actually has me typing is that I feel it's only fair to my unborn child that I document something on his behalf. Maybe he'll smile on me from high and greet us sooner...just maybe.
It just so happens I was pregnant for almost the whole year...so I'm totally killing 2 birds with one stone here.


In February we got a dog. A chocolate lab. Named her Cedar.

This was our first day with Cedar. It was like Christmas morning all over again. I'll never forget how much we used to love her. Ha, just kidding. It was a special day for all of us though, unforgettable.

This photo is just funny. Chris was avoiding the diapering, lotioning, and clothing routine after bathtime for a while and wanted to ride his horse instead. That was ok with us because now we have this photo for blackmail sometime in the future.

In March we got a fence. Dont worry, it goes all the way around the house.

We took some family photos in April.

Chris has always been such a helper in the kitchen. I think he just got done cleaning a bowl of chocolate when I took this picture.

I went with Craig to Vegas for his PA conference this year. I happen to be pregnant in this picture.

We got to go to Pawn Stars. It was cool. We didn't see Chumlee though.

I ran a half marathon in June. I am pregnant in this picture too. Only 6 weeks though.

We went to California this summer to visit Nana.

While we were there we went to Yosemite. Another preggo pic. 11 weeks.

We also took a drive out to the Redwoods and saw the Giant Sequoia trees. As you can see from the picture there are 4 tall people and one big kid stretched out across the trunk of this tree and we still didn't reach end to end.

They made a walk way through this giant tree. And here's a close up preggie pic!

Here's another one of them big trees.

Chris had a good time helping Daddy out in the garage this summer.

And then Chris turned 2 in September!

He had a little helper opening presents. And here's a total belly shot of me! I'm around 5 months pregnant.

We planted Canna Lillies in the front flower bed. Here you can see how tall they grew. Almost as tall as Craig. Luckily I got this picture before we cut them all down. And you can also see how big Cedar is now.

Here we are pumkin carvin. Belly shot! 6 months.

Here are our finished pumpkins and our little football player.

Another family photo. And another belly shot!

I have dusted off my sewing machine and found me a little pregnancy hobby. Here you can see an almost finished quilt for Chris's big boy bed. (I really wish I were more of a blogger but I would really rather be sewing something. And that is something I never thought I'd hear myself say).

Santa brought Chris a hoop and we couldn't be more pleased, especially becuase we dont have to make a hoop with our arms for him anymore. And this is a total belly shot of me. See that baby poking out there?

Ok really here's the only profile belly photo I've taken and it's straight off the digi today. Totally fresh. 37 weeks.

First Day in the Snow...many many days ago

Here are the pictures of Christopher with his very first day playing in the snow. Now of course he had seen snow before and touched it...a couple times. But he had never been able to go out and play in it until one day in January after we got him in all his new snow gear.




















He wasn't sure why I kept putting clothes on him.

But as you can see it didn't take long to have some fun.

The only thing is...he didn't really want anything to do with the snow...mostly just the snow shovel. (And I love this picture with the beautiful background scenery).

I have the funniest video of him pushing the snow shovel, and then he gets mad at it because it gets stuck on some ice, and so he bites it! Then he falls face-first in the snow! Sounds mean, but it's really really funny...and I've tried and tried to share it but it just won't upload. It's only about 2 min long...and suggestions?

Bad News

Due to the smooth sailing of Sarahs pregnancy after the early complications we made it public news with friends and family. Unfortunently, this last weekend we once again had complications. It looks like too much of the placenta was torn away for the baby to continue developement, in short we lost the pregnancy. We appreciate all the love and support that we have recieved from all of our family and friends and hopefully the next pregnancy will be better news and a lot less eventful in terms of complications.

Something to say...

Hi Everybody!
It's been about 4 months, so I guess it's time to blog again!
As you can see the background has been changed and there's also a widget up on the blog. Much thanks to Craig who made those changes, but never put any words of his own up on the blog. Silly guy, I think he's scared of all of you. I could tell him that if somebody makes him mad, I just won't blog for 4 months. ha ha

So anyway, we have something to say....we are expecting another baby this September! We are excited and for some reason I've been hoping it's another boy...which I think is why Craig put up the baby-blue background. I have really been trying to listen to my mothers intuition about if it's a boy or girl, but it hasn't said anything really clear yet, so I can't make an official guess. What I do know is that so far this pregnancy is very different from the last one, does that mean girl? As you can see from the widget, right now it's just an alien. An alien we already care very much about, and one who has already made us worry..we think it may have tried to escape already... But as of right now, things are going great! I will be posting pictures of the last few months soon...so stay tuned in, cuz they're pretty funny!

Uncle Paul

Hi everyone, it's Christopher, the star of the blog. I just wanted to take a turn and tell a story.
Once apon a time, Utah played BYU. We went over to my Uncle Pauls house to watch it. Even though I wanted to go through all the cupboards, and play with Harley, Uncle Pauls dog, I was really tired, so I took a nap and just dreamed about all the food I love to eat. (I can do run-on sentances in my story if I want.) I was so tired that I slept through the whole game! When I woke up I got to play with the Harley again and then I climbed up on Uncle Pauls lap to sing some songs. He's almost as good at singing 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' as my Mom is. My Mom's version is really intense and loud, but Uncle Pauls version is so relaxing. I got so relaxed that I let myself go. It took Uncle Paul a minute to realize what he made me do. I guess he got kinda relaxed too, with all the new warmth in his lap. But when he realized what happened he just passed me off as if I wasn't his favorite nephew anymore. Rude. Then he went swimming. I guess he needed to do something to wash off and work off his frustrations since his team didn't win the game. We all lived happily ever after, especially me!
-Chris

Pumpkins and Hamburgers

Happy Halloween! We like to carve us some pumpa-kins in our family. This would be Christophers first experience with the pumpa-kin carvin.

He wasn't too sure about it at first...

Actually he didn't like it at all, as you can see me putting his hand in to touch the pumpkin guts.

We ended up with a wolf, a grave site, and a racoon jumping out of a jack-o-lantern.

And here's our little hamburger...

It's like he just jumped right out of that happy meal and started walkin around.

Elk!

Craigs most favorite time of year has come and gone. Hunting season! I'm glad he has something to show for it this year. He's been in school every year since we've been married and hasn't really been able to go. After 5 years of marriage, the term 'Hunting Widow' makes a lot more sense. You should really hear the story from Craig but, let's be honest Craig, you'll probably never make a post on our blog again. :) Love you though!
If he were to tell you how it went he'd say something about how he and his brothers got up at like 4 am and hike 20 miles up the mountain before noon everyday. And I think that's pretty much it. Ha

Christopher had a Birthday (his very first one!)

Chris's birthday was on September 30th. He weighed 25 lbs 9 oz and was somewhere around 31-33 in long. I don't even remember exactly. I know, I know that's so bad becuase I should be logging his stats in a scrapbook or something like that, right? All I know is he was off the charts again in all categories so it doesn't really matter how tall he is because it's pretty much garaunteed that he is bigger than your kid at this age. He is even bigger than his Daddy was at one (thanks to Grandma Yerke who kept a log in a scrapbook of all that stuff).

So anyway the big boy is ready to party!...regardless if he had 5 shots on party day.

He has his party hat on!

And the cake modeled after the hat is ready to eat!

But dinner is first. No problems here. Chris loves to eat!

Now it's cake time!

Braydon was dying to get in on the action.

I think Braydon likes Christophers hat. Either that or he's trying to show Chris his backhand.

Chris's cousins helped him open his presents.

Ok so that pretty much sums up the Yerke party. The next day was the Hutton party. But I guess Christopher was all caked out. He didn't want anything to do with it this time.

We may have gotten it all over him, trying to get him excited about it, but this was the outcome...so sad. But Grandma Hutton thinks it's pretty funny! (I was there too...it was funny.)

I kept trying to tell him not to cry, becuase like his hat says, 'It's FUN to be ONE'. But later, he told me it's his party and he'll cry if he wants to. I guess I can't argue with that.

Before and Afters

Uh, Hi. I don't know if you remember us, but we're the Yerkes. We haven't blogged in a while. I guess that's pretty obvious. I don't think we'll promise that we'll be better bloggers, because quite frankly, blogging frustrates me (Sarah). Just little things like how I accidentally deleted 5 photos I was going to share. Yeah, that's why I don't blog. Oh yeah, and there's that thing about the first photo you upload, becomes the last on your post...I always forget about that. Why can't the computer just know that the first thing I want to talk about comes first, and then everything else comes after that, in that order? Does anyone else feel that way? Or am I just so blogger un-savvy?

Well anyway, you don't have to answer that. Here are some before and afters photos of me trying to turn our house into more than just walls and a roof. Oh by the way, we bought a house in Stansbury Park, Ut. Moved in Jan '10. If you don't know where Stansbury is, maybe you've heard of Tooele? It's over there, about 20 min west of SLC. I like it because it's in the country; so we don't have all the traffic; and the views are awesome; but I can escape to the city in less than a half hour!

Here's great big empty wall. I put up the paper to see if the layout of photos was what I wanted.

And this is how it turned out. I love it!

This was the "rocking chair" I was using in Chris's room. To give it a little credit, it's called 'The Big Boy' and it is the most coveted camp chair around the camp fire. But it did lack the whole rocking aspect. And it was difficult to get out of when I was holding a sleeping baby.

I was just waiting for the rocking chair which I was given (thank you Jim and Heidi!) to be refinished. As you can see it was white, which didn't really go in Chris's room.

And I don't have a picture of the original pads but Jim and Heidi also gave us this baby swing with fabric that was almost identical. They had kids in the 90's when the teal with the pink scribbles was totally radical. (And we so appreciate them saving that stuff for us for when we could use it!)

But it didn't go in Chris's room either. So Craig painted the chair black, and I had the pads re-upholstered. (Any of you Stansburyians need any re-upholstering done, I know just the man to call...he charged me $25 for labor, fabric, and extra padding! I couldn't even find slip-covers online for less than $90. It's just a hobby of his that he does out of his garage. He's so sweet too.)

And this is how it turned out. Much better.