{love} summer in nevada

sutton with grandpa and great-grandpa

we have been home from nevada for almost two weeks now and i'm incredibly homesick. boo. there is just something about being at home that is so relaxing, fun, peaceful...i love summers in nevada. i can't get enough of the sweet smell of the alfalfa that grows all around my parents house. i don't think i ever truly appreciated it when i was growing up. to me, fresh cut alfalfa is the best smell in the world. i'm pretty sure that sutton is equally as homesick for her grammie's house. i really think i only held her a handful of times during the 10 days we were at home and that is not an exaggeration. she LOVED being at grammie's. she had so much fun playing with her uncles and cousins, seeing the animals on the farm, going into town to the swimming pool and eating lots of treats courtesy of grammie. i'm so happy that she finally got to meet her uncle markie. sutton took to him right away and it was nice to always have a babysitter on hand when i needed to run an errand, take a nap or go for a run. john really missed us while we were gone so he decided to drive from oregon to visit for a few days and brought jaxson and tucker with him. mark didn't know that john was coming (i like to scare the crap out of people, what's wrong with that?) so we totally set him up. i was upstairs with mark and ethan when john finally got there so my mom let him inside and he snuck into the downstairs bathroom to wait. in the dark.  i told mark to hurry and go get the nose trimmers that were in the downstairs bathroom (so i could help him with this grooming) and when he opened the door and reached to turn on the light he felt a body. john's. he screamed like a little girl and i'm pretty sure he peed his pants. i think it had to be one of the best scares ever. anyway, mark was so excited to see john, tucker and jax. we had a great time being all together as a family. can we go back already???

anyone that knows me knows that i love to take pictures so here ya go...a document of our vacation, photo style :)

Look at this cute boy snack hunting. Ladies, he is available!

swim time with uncle markie!

char and sutton blue just kickin' it (and now i have SWV stuck in my head)

ethan cried because he didn't want to go to the pool that day but sutton forced him to. he reluctantly ended up having fun. 

this picture captures exactly how i feel when i eat anything my mom cooks. sutton was clearly enjoying the hot, fresh crescent rolls that grammie made. she was in food heaven. 

these babes sure love their uncle markie!

do these glasses make my head look big?

so, blue is OBSESSED with blueberries and could easily eat 2 pints in one sitting if i let her. earlier in the day we were taking a nap and i woke up to a stinky room, looked down in the pack-n-play and saw a passed out baby who had finger painted herself with.....blueberry poo. it was like poo play-dough in her hair, feet, blankie, binky...(you get the picture) everywhere. so gross. two baths later with lots of soap and lotion this babe was finally smoochable again.

best buds

sutton loves her cousin sitini. well, mainly because she was using him to get to all the treats at great-grandma's during game night. and yes, she IS wearing an arm floatie which she found AND put on all by herself. 

sutton was "reading" to uncle markie. that girl loves books. 

i have loved the name sutton since i first heard it 12 years so i was super stoked when i saw that virginia city named a street after my baby girl!

just me and that guy :)

me, mark and isaac in front of the silver queen in virginia city. she is in the guinness book of world records and ghost hunters has been here a few times. and yes, they caught some really scary stuff on camera. like scream and pee your pants scary. so we thought it would be a good idea to all go on a ghost tour and see what all the hype was about. 

this place is so beautiful! 

this little guy was out of order. good for him, bad for us. 

can you see my twin? i was so happy he was able to make it on the ghost tour with us.

what you see here is an original, authentic orb (see bottom left hand corner)  outside of the mackay mansion in virginia city, nv.  (insert creepy music here)

me and my friend again. john was getting jealous so he had to be in the picture too. 

inside the crypt in the washoe club. this is where they used to keep the dead bodies during the winter when the ground was too frozen to dig graves. can you say creeeeepy???? 

i thought i'd get a few more pictures for good measure. i mean c'mon...how did he know that denim on denim was back?! only my favorite fashion trend from my college days!

i couldn't get him to turn around for the life of me. it was very frustrating because i know we could have taken some beautiful pictures together. 

i procrastinated going on a run until 10:00 am. bad, bad idea katie. i was forced to call in the water rangers. no literally, they were driving a ranger :) i almost died of dehydration/heatstroke so therefore, i learned my lesson. the hard way.

some babies and a teo bug

isaac and teo. i especially like teo's choice of "running" shoes. 

apparently this was the "millionaires club"...

back yard games

emmery loved tuck and jax

i love this little girl

 three hours of church put teo in a coma. 

this picture melts my heart. 

i freaking love my family. nuff said.

{we love}our markie!

markie has been home from his mission for a week already! holy crap. sutton and i flew into reno last monday morning and our plane landed just 30 minutes before mark's. he had no clue we would be there at all since i might have told a little white lie that we wouldn't be able to make a trip home until august. sutton made us almost miss our flight to reno (can't you always blame everything on your kid? running late, messy clothes, accidental passing of the gas...) and as we were frantically approaching the gate the attendant said, "you must be katie, we were looking for you."that's never a good sign. things went from bad to worse when i stepped onto a hot, stinky plane that was completely full. we sat all the way in the back (we got an aisle seat=silver lining) and had a very friendly neighbor who spent the entire flight leaning halfway into my seat (literally-as if i already didn't have enough room with a baby on my lap and a ginormous diaper bag at my feet that i could barely get to) telling me about his job, his girlfriend who is 15 years younger than him, how much money he makes, how much he pays his ex for child support, and so on. i eat lots of food on plane trips. that last sentence was courtesy of my little turd of a brother but it made me laugh so it can stay. plus, it's not an entirely false statement. this may be hard to believe but i do not like to socialize on an airplane so i was a little uncomfortable. however, i just have to take a minute to brag about how AMAZING sutton blue was. we were SO squished back there and she was a complete angel. she didn't fuss once. she was happy snuggling (she didn't really have a choice in the matter) and eating treats (takes after me). she did keep trying to steal our new friend's beer saying "soda! soda!" so i had to get her a drink of her own. apple juice, not beer. the whole point of my rant is that as annoyed as i was at my seating arrangement, the flight flew by and that just meant less time i had to wait to see markie! sutton fell asleep right when the plane landed(see...angel baby)so i had no one to keep me company while i waited for mark. so i paced back and forth in the terminal. and i couldn't stop crying and sweating. people probably thought someone had just died. i was a hot mess! i decided to be a stellar mother and get blue a happy meal so she would have a surprise to eat when she woke up (unfortunately she is a fan of the french fry). afterall, she did earn it. at this point i had fifteen minutes to get to his gate before his plane was supposed to land but when i got there the plane WAS ALREADY THERE! early! it was a smaller plane so the passengers had to walk down the stairs outside and then up another set of stairs to get to the terminal. i called my mom to tell her he was here and somehow i missed seeing him him walk off the plane and before i knew it he was walking past me looking like a lost little puppy. i frantically tried to get to my camera so i could capture his face when he saw me. i walked up behind him and eventually he turned around, saw me, and went into shock. he didn't say anything, he just did his awkward laugh. i gave him a great big hug and by that point sutton was awake so he got to see her in person for the first time ever! he was so overwhelmed, he kept saying over and over, "this isn't real. this feels so weird. am i really here? haha. haha. this is so weird. haha." it was cute. everyone was so excited to see markie! i'm so proud of him for the spending two selfless, honorable years sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

fresh off the plane! i got the first hug!

mark with grandma and grandpa hostman

proud mama and papa

i really do have the cutest dad and baby girl

markie with aunt susan, sidney and maile

the cute waitress made this for markie. needless to say, he didn't get the hint.

the whole family

my dad saved money from his extra jobs for two years so he could buy mark a brand new truck to drive after his mission-isn't that the cutest thing you've ever heard?

{amazing}independence day

patriotic perfection 

i know the Fourth of July was almost three weeks ago but i had to post some pictures of what a fun day we had. (and by that i really mean that i want to post pictures of how dang adorable sutton blue was) we went to a party at some of our great friends in the afternoon after spending a lazy morning at home. it was relaxing and so good to spend the day with such a great group of people and even better food :) i'm kidding about the food...but it was pretty good. i packed our pack-n-play because i thought for sure sutton would crash at night and want to go to bed. i was wrong. she stayed up until we headed home at 11:00 pm and she was happy the whole time! maybe all the treats she consumed had something to do with it. she had her first encounter with pop rocks. she wasn't sure what to make of them at first but she decided to give them a second try and then i couldn't get that baby crack away from her! last year she was a bum and slept through fireworks (i didn't give her too hard of a time because she was just barely over two months old) so i was really happy that she rallied and stayed up for the entire amazing firework show courtesy of costco. she cheered and clapped for more. she is so cute. i just want to eat her up. 

piper and sutton. unamused, to say the least. 

i have no words for this

or this....except i'm glad you got dressed you nakey baby

{we love}family visits

last week my brother and two nephews came to visit from nevada. here are some pictures of our adventures!

sutton was in heaven when the boys were here! she loved having extra bodies in the house and the more people to entertain her, the better. she especially took a liking to mateo, who is 6. i loved watching them play together. we went to the zoo, swimming, to the oregon coast (it was ethan's first time going to the pacific ocean!) and ate lots of yummy food. mateo said he wanted to move here as soon as he discovered that we live across the street from a nice, big park. i asked him if he would miss his mom, dad and emmery. his response, "but we have a baby here". that's what i like best about the kid, he's always thinking. 

i said smile kid, not grimace

that's more like it!

this is the park he wanted to abandon his parents and baby sister for

we had a great time at the zoo. i always have a little bit of parking anxiety when we go, especially during the summer months. i know, i'm weird. i own it. anyway, it was a cloudy day and the forecast called for light rain and apparently that scared tons of people away so we ended up having the whole place to ourselves. it was awesome. and it didn't rain one single drop. 

pure joy

we went swimming a couple of times while the boys were here. they had a blast.  i think they really appreciated swimming in clean water. not the mystery farm irrigation water in the ditch back on the ranch, aka "farm swimming pool". swimming in the ditch was one of my favorite things to do as a kid. now i say gross. but hey, maybe that is why i have such a good immune system. maybe swimming in cowpie infested water wasn't such a bad thing. 

peyton working it. well, that was until she realized that teo was only six. waaaaay to young for her. she quickly moved on to ethan when she realized he was 16. old enough to date. she told him she was 8, no 12, no 15. she must have been flustered to not even remember how old she was! 

sutton blue didn't really want to give piper a ride but persistent piper wouldn't take no for an answer. 

she preferred people watching over swimming

we decided to take the boys to the oregon coast for one night over the weekend. john has a patient that owns a motel right on the beach in rockaway. we had never been there before so it was a fun adventure. i think john and i can both agree that we don't really need to go back. it was fun to stay right on the beach but the town wasn't our favorite. the highway runs right through the middle of it and it's safe to say it lacked the charm that some of our other favorite beach towns have. however,  john and the boys had fun playing football on the beach with headlamps at night and the boys (mainly isaac and mateo) had fun getting in the ocean. john and i got up early the next day and went for a run with sutton and then packed up for the drive to manzanita, which is our absolute favorite beach town. we grabbed some breakfast at wanda's (super yummy) and continued onto cannon beach. it was such a perfect day! the boys played around haystack rock and in the ocean while sutton and i hung out on the beach. she loved how the sand felt and was perfectly content just sitting there watching all the people and doggies go by. we had to hit up bruce's candy kitchen and grab some fish and chips (another first for the boys) before the ride home. ethan and isaac loved them and teo...well, not so much. i did give him two thumbs up because he tried it 3 different times with different sauces. looked like he was going to barf with every bite. so i fed him fries and cotton candy instead. it was a great weekend and i'm so happy to be able to say that ethan finally got to experience the pacific ocean for the first time ever. 

i love this picture of the boys racing to the water 

we had to stop by the tillamook cheese factory for some lunch. aka ice cream. 

big girl chompin' on her big girl cone

i loved having the boys here and we were sad to see them go home. there was minimal fighting, only one broken picture frame, no one peed the bed (yay!) and i think i taught ethan how to wash dishes! sutton kept looking for everyone for a few days after they left. tear. i just asked her tonight if she wants to go see the boys at grammie's house and she nodded yes. she doesn't say yes or no but she sure shakes her head to let you know what she is thinking.