Good-bye summer break...

Well, summer break is over and Kylee is officially a 1st grader!!!! Soooo much has happened this summer. I really need to update my blog more than once a month because I have so much to journal and so many pictures to post. I had to cut them down so this post won't get too overwhelming!

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Since my last post, I spilled the beans and mentioned that we are adopting a beautiful baby boy! He is still "cooking" and won't be here until the end of October, but we are anxiously awaiting his arrival and preparing to welcome our little man into our lives. Everything with our adoption journey is wonderful and couldn't be better. I'll talk more about that later.

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I'm kind of OCD when it comes to my blog and I have to talk about thing in order from when they happened. Haha! So first things first! Christina turned 30! Just to explain, I grew up with an amazing group of friends....all LDS....and we have been each other's support group from day one. I don't know what I'd do without my girls. Well, Christina is the oldest out of us by a couple months so she has always been the first one to "get older". Well, we all knew this year was coming....but did it have to be here already? Ugh! We are all turning 30 this year and Christina was the first one to take the plunge. Those of us who were in town all got together to help celebrate her big day. Words can't express just how much I love this girl. :)

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Kylee has been keeping busy this summer with her cousins. Since moving from Queen Creek, she has been making friends in our new ward but she has also had the chance to get closer to my side of the family. Kylee misses her Queen Creek cousins DEARLY, but she is also loving this time with her "West-side" cousins. She had quite a few sleep overs at Aunt Nanny's house and spent some quality girl time with her cousin Kyrstin and friend Landyn. She also has spent quite a few summer days swimming at Aunt Tera's with her cousins there, and spending some fun time at the Montez home with her cousins there. I don't have any pics of that but she has had the best summer with all of her cousins!

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The highlight of our summer was going to meet our birth Mom in San Diego! We decided to make a little "trip" out of it and went up a few days early to see Grandma Deede and Grandpa Jiggs. It was Grandma's birthday so we were excited to spend the day with her while we were there. No trip to Grandma Deede's is complete without swimming!!! Here is Kylee and Daddy enjoying a hot and extremely humid swim!

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After spending a couple days in El Centro, we drove out to San Diego to meet our birth mother. We couldn't wait!!!! We spent a great day with her and her family. We feel so blessed to be adopting from such a wonderful family. We don't know how we got so lucky! After spending the first day in San Diego with the birth Mom and her family, we went back and got to go to a 3D ultra sound with her. It was the most amazing thing I've seen!!!!! We got to see our little guy swimming and dancing on the screen. It was beautiful. Kylee got to see it too. We are so glad she was able to experience all of this first hand. It helps her understand where her baby brother is coming from. Here she is all dressed and ready to see her brother....

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And here he is......our handsome little man! We have had a heck of a time trying to figure out what his name is. He is such a special guy that we knew there was a very special name that was meant to be his. So through much prayer and recommendations galore from everyone we knew, we found his name! Everyone....this is CARTER AARON PEW! :)

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It was a great trip and we absolutely love our birth mother! She is amazing and comes from an even more amazing family. We feel so incredibly blessed!
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Now onto our Kylee girl. She turned 6 years old on August 9th! Time is flying by and we love watching our princess grow and learn more everyday. With things being a little crazy this summer, we didn't have a big "blow out" party like we have every year. But we did have two small little celebrations. The first one was a joint celebration with my family. There are a lot of birthdays in August on my side of the family so we all celebrated at Natalie's house and had a fun time! Then we took Kylee out to Queen Creek to celebrate at Peter Piper Pizza with all our family and her friends out there. Kylee was so excited to see all her cousins that she hadn't seen in a while. They are all amazing and we miss them everyday!

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Of course with Kylee turning one year older, that means my traditional birthday "picture" post comes with it! I try to find different pictures when I do this so I'm not posting the same ones every year. So with that...here is the growth and progress of our princess:

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New born (2 weeks old)

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6 months old

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1 year old

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2 years old

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3 years old

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4 years old


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5 years old

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6 years old

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With summer break over, that means Kylee has started 1st grade! She started at her new school and she is loving it so far. She luckily has 1 girl from her primary class in her school class, and another girl from her primary class in the room next to her school class. So she gets to play at recess and eat lunch with both of her new friends. And I know she is making more new friends everyday at school. I'm so thankful she is a social butterfly and doesn't have a hard time making friends. We are so proud of her and the person she is becoming.
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Here are some pictures of her first day of school!

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We love you baby bear....more than you'll ever know! We can't wait for you to be a big sister (VERY SOON!!!) and know you will be the best big sister Carter could ever wish for. You are going to be the best helper ever. And Carter is going to be the most loved little guy ever! All our prayers are coming true this year. It's amazing to go through so many years and months of hardships and to finally see where all those tears have lead us. We can't believe how amazing it all is. We never expected it to be THIS good. Heavenly Father loves us more than we can ever possibly imagine. Life is so good! :)