I need to post!

I am so bad at posting this summer! It's funny, because I have so much time to post but I have been rebellious. Much has happened in the past several weeks:

• We FINALLY threw away Sayer's binkie. Okay, so I actually just hid it. I can't seem to part with that particular security blanket, even though it's been two weeks and he doesn't seem to care about it. The first few days were awful, though. Endless nights of screaming conjured from the darkest depths of Hades, a heartbroken little boy crying for binkie and a weak mother having to be threatened by dad if she gave in. It's definitely a lesson I've learned to keep in mind for the next little one: TAKE THE BINKIE AWAY EARLY LIKE THE BOOKS SAY.
• My mom and dad FINALLY started their addition, which means that Jake pretty much has two full-time jobs. He gets home from work around five and heads straight to Mom and Dad's for another three or four hours, and we're there every weekend as well. But it's exciting that we've begun and it will be even more exciting when it's done and we have somewhere to put our huge family. The best part about it is how excited Sayer is. He loves tools and being with the "guys" and wants nothing to do with Mom or Grandma when the boys are working. Here are some pics from our adventures so far:

Tearing down the back porch my dad built himself


This is what happens when we let Howard loose with the backhoe :)


Possibly the last pic of Sayer with the binkie

• Another fun change for our family: My Uncle Howard and Aunt Linda are staying in their fifth wheel behind my Mom and Dad's for a few months. They actually lived here for years and raised all of their kids here, so not only is it fun for us to have them around, but their old friends are enjoying it as well! My dad is grateful for Howard's help with the house, and we love to have Aunt Linda's company while the guys slave away.
  
• My cousin, Cody, and his wife, Teera, are having a baby girl ANY DAY now. Last month (told ya I've been slackin'), my mom, Aunt Linda, and my niece Kylee drove to Utah for her baby shower. She is the cutest lil' pregnant gal! I didn't, of course, get any pics of the shower, because I'm dumb. Afterward, however, we took advantage of Jennifer's (my big sis) hotel pool and lounged around with Aunt Jan and my cousin Rheanna. It was a fun afternoon!

Mom and Aunt Linda


A particularly flattering pic of Janet :)


Rheanna


Ky...she LOVED the water!

• Last weekend, we took off for our annual McBride family reunion in Bear Lake. Talk about MISERABLE. Not only did the wind blow the whole time we were there, but we woke up Saturday morning to rain that was seeping through our saturated tent. By eight, everything in our tent was soaked and we were loading up to go home! My mom and dad and most of the rest of the family there braved it out. (That's pretty easy when most of them had campers!) We still had fun, even though it was too cold and windy to get in the water or launch the boat for more than a few hours.

Jake and I drove up Thursday night and encountered some major smoke from wildfires. When we got there, the smoke was so thick you could barely see the sun. Yeah, that's not a mountain. It's the smoke:


My silly mom put her dishwater on a rickety table that collapsed and drenched her. The funniest part? This pic is of the next night, when she did the exact same thing!

• I went to the doc last week-everything is looking great! Of course it's too soon to find out the gender of our baby, but I feel like it's a girl just because this pregnancy is so completely different from my last one. This baby's heartbeat is also a lot faster than Sayer's was, and the doctor said that girls' heartbeats usually run higher than boys'. Of course, I probably jinxed myself by saying that, but we really don't care either way. Another boy would be just as fun; we will see!