Welcome Home to Arizona!

Now that our time in Boston is over we are officially Arizonans. It is so fun to be around so much family and Katelyn especially is loving getting to be around her fun cousins so much and getting to swim all the time.

Katelyn and her cousin Quinn are just about 6 months apart and they have been having a great time playing around together. Here Tyler put them in a wheelbarrow together and took them for a ride. :)

Katelyn also loves having a backyard and getting to go outside everyday to play (except when it is crazy, crazy hot). She really loves jumping on the trampoline with Tyler or just running around like crazy in the grass.

Looking pretty awesome after jumping on the tramp.

Katelyn also got her first haircut shortly after we got to Arizona. Goodbye mullet! She went with me and Grandma Rapier to Le Studio where Grandma gets her hair cut and got a cute little bob. :)

I don't know if you can see it but she is holding the Ipod in her lap and watching Toy Story. Watching a show is the best way for me to get her to hold still when I want to do her hair so I figured it should work about the same for a haircut. :)

Sporting the new do.

The End of our Time in Beantown

 I think it is safe to say that I am late enough finally posting all of these that this is really just to make sure that my favorite pictures are saved one more location. :) But I also wanted to make sure to record all the fun things we did at the end of our time in Boston. I cannot believe that it is already over, looking over these pictures has made me realize how much I really do miss it and all our good friends.

Trip to New  York

Around Spring Break, Katelyn and I took a fun day trip down to NYC with my good friend Annie and her sister-in-law. It was fun to see the city one more time though I realized at that point that it's not super toddler friendly. Here are Annie, Katelyn and I at Rockefeller Center. We miss you lots Annie!

We also got to see Falycia finally for the first time in forever! It was so great! She had never even had a chance to meet Katelyn yet. I'm sad that our time in the Northeast didn't end up overlapping a bit more but I so glad we at least got to see her and little and now we just have a good reason for going back. :)

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter this year. Katelyn got to try Easter Egg hunting and found that she didn't see the point in looking for lots of more eggs when she already had some perfectly good ones in her basket. :) We also had a wonderful dinner with friends which unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of but we are so grateful for the amazing friends we made in Boston and hope we will get to see them again before too long.

 Katelyn was particularly excited about finding the chocolate bunny. At first when we got it she thought it was just a bunny toy and so when I tried to show her you could eat I was afraid she would be sad about breaking her new bunny. But it turns out she must be my daughter because as soon as she realized it was chocolate she had no problem biting right into it. :)

Having a great time with Daddy.

At her second Easter Egg hunt of the season.

Katelyn with her good friend Josh watching the fountain after looking for eggs got old. We miss you Josh!

All ready for church Easter morning.

A Visit from Sean

Later in April, after his semester at BYU was done we were lucky to get to have Sean come and visit us. He was the only one from my family who hadn't had a chance to come see us in Boston yet so we were super happy that he got to come before we had to leave.

Ready to go on a Duck Tour, Quack Quack!

Playing on the crazy toy at the park.

Walking through the Public Gardens. This is definitely one of the places I will miss the most.

Katelyn got a ride on the "Make Way for Ducklings" ducks. It seemed especially appropriate since they are her favorite animal.

One of the other places I will miss the most, Walden Pond.

We mad sure to take Sean to get awesome Italian food and Gelato in the North End and then even went back the next day to get Italian Pastries at Mikes. :)

Sitting on the cannon of the USS Constitution.

Standing outside the Old North Church. Thanks so much for coming to see us Sean we loved having you!

So unfortunately, I didn't get many good pictures from it but we had a super fun camping trip in the White Mountains in New Hampshire with the Zellers. We were a little early in the season which meant we didn't have any crowds and had a great spot right by a beautiful creek. It turns out this is only camping we are going to get to do this summer so we are so glad not only that we got a chance to get outdoors but also spend so much fun time with our good friends.

Graduation!

We are so proud of Tyler for all his hard work while he was going to Harvard Law School. It was a wonderful day to finally see him get that diploma that he had definitely earned. You're amazing Tyler!

Thank you so much too, to Dad and Linda, and Mom and Dave. It was so good to have you come and see us and I know Tyler was glad to have you share this special event with him.

With Dad and Linda. 

With Mom and Dave.

With the Zellars. We miss you guys already so much! I hope New Orleans is treating you well and that we get to come and see you soon!

Katelyn got to walk with Tyler, she looked very cute up there in her little white dress next to all the graduates. She even ended up in a picture on the Harvard Law School website afterwords with Tyler and Dad.

Receiving his diploma!

Here are just a couple of random cute pictures of Katelyn to end the post. Cuz ya know, why not? But I also just want to say what wonderful time our time in Boston was. It had its ups and downs as most places do but there are a lot of things I love about and especially a lot of amazing friends we made there. I'm so grateful for the chance to have such an awesome experience.

Spring Break in Sunny Cleveland

So this is a long time coming. It's actually been sitting mostly finished in drafts for quite some time so it's about time I got it up so I can finally catch up with all the other stuff I've also been waiting for, enjoy!

 This year for Spring Break we decided to go hand out with Cameron, Hillary and Grant in Cleveland while we are still living "close." I must admit when we were having such freezing weather here in Boston many of our friends were a little surprised we didn't pick a warmer climate as long as we were getting away. But we were so happy to have gone to Cleveland and had a blast with the Lovingers and were so sad to leave them when our time was up. So now we are just crossing our fingers that Cameron will get into school in Arizona so that we can see them more often. :)

Here is cute cute Grant. He is such a happy guy and always gives the best smiles.

Here is Katelyn showing off her toy from Arby's that she got on the way there.

                                        Yay cousins! 

 Nothing like a good cousin bathtime. :)

They have an awesome indoor pool at the community center where they live. We had a great time going swimming.

We also went to this really neat place that had a bunch of animals and science display type stuff and was free!! Katelyn had a great time looking at turtles and crawling through this big, hollow log.

We also got to go to Kirtland, OH and see the temple there. I had only ever driven by it so it was really neat to get to go inside and have a tour and everything.

Another shot of the Kirtland temple.

We also went and saw the church sites like the Whitney store. It is amazing to think you are standing in the same place that Joseph Smith and early Saints stood.

We had such an awesome time in Cleveland!! Thanks so much Cam, Hill and Grant for letting us come stay with you! Here's to hoping we'll be hanging out in Arizona before too much longer! :)


Just a side note to end. On our way home we went to see Niagara Falls since I had never been there. It really is pretty incredible. Luckily Katelyn likes windy days because it was super windy there, mostly though I think she was just happy to get out of the car.

And finally I just had to post a couple of pictures of how Katelyn looked when we finally made it home. Poor little orphan child. :)

Big Sister

Katelyn is going to be a big sister! :) We are going to be blessed with another little one in our family coming in November. I had my first appointment yesterday and so far everything looks good. We are so excited to welcome one more in our home!

Boston Children's Museum

A couple of week ago we were able to get the library passes to go to the Children's Museum here in Boston. (Hurray!) The local library has free or almost free passes to most of the museums in the area but there are only a couple for each day and the Children's Museum ones are always the hardest to get. Anyway, after hearing how much fun this place is ever since we got here we finally went to check it out for ourselves and we were not disappointed. We started off in an area designed especially for kids ages 0-3. They don't even let the older kids in so they can just run around and not have to worry about getting knocked over. Needless to say, Katelyn had a blast running around, playing with and on all the toys and talking to every other kid and adult in the place.


Enjoying the slide with daddy. She also was very into some of the dolls for quite a while.

Katelyn loves smashing her face up against things. :)

Having a great time!

Next we went to a room based on one of Katelyn's favorite shows, Peep and the Big Wide World. There is all sorts of stuff about shadows and other things they learn about on the show and a big water area based on the pond one of the characters lives in. Here are Katelyn and I with Peep. She was pretty excited to see them, though you can't really tell here, I think she was a little sad that they didn't move.


Playing in the water.

We also saw a room full of different bubbles contraptions and another where you can run golf balls on all sorts of tracks and we didn't even see half of the stuff they have there. It was a great time. Hopefully, we'll be able to get passes again before we go.

Finally, you may have noticed Katelyn's new pigtails in the earlier pictures. I recently discovered that her hair was long enough to put up this way. The best part however, is how awesome her hair looks when we take it out at the end of the day. Tyler likes to refer to it as her Wolverine look. :)

From Snow to Sun!

After having lots of fun in the snow in Spokane we were lucky enough to be able to go down and have the best of both worlds by enjoying the sun down in Arizona. It was really nice to be able to just go outside without the long process of getting all bundled up first.

Katelyn and Tyler enjoyed the warm outdoors playing on this scooter at Grandma Rapier's house.

We also got to go up to the LeBaron cabin and enjoy some Arizona snow. Unfortunately, poor Katelyn had a bit of a cold while we were up there and so she looks pretty sad in most of these pictures. But despite how she looks she had a great time playing with all her cousins. Here is Liam snuggling on the couch with her.

Again, I promise she was much happier than she looks right here, she and Quinn just hanging out on the counter.

We tried to have Katelyn and Quinn sled together. As you can tell Quinn is having a blast and Katelyn, well . . . not as much.

Later she went sledding with Daddy and had a bit more fun.