Nieces and Nephews

This is an "I'm proud to be an auntie" blog. The reason I do this is because by the end of this year, between my family and Chad's family, we will have added 6 babies to the family. The babies are not the most important thing, it's that we love that our family is getting bigger and that we can be a part of our neices and nephews lives. Chad and I are so happy to be the(favorite) aunt and uncle of all these kids! It is so much fun for us to watch our nieces and nephews grow!

My brother, Aaron, and his wife, Jen, added a baby boy, Kevin, to their family in February. My sister, Hayley, and her husband, Mike, added a baby boy, Brayden, to their family in June. My sister, Mandi, and her husband, Ryan, were called three weeks ago to adpot twin boys. Mandi brought the first one, Darek, home on Sept. 4 and we went up to meet him on Sept. 5th! The second twin, Ian, is still in the hospital in Virginia (they were born at 25 weeks and are still very smal., but ever so adorable). Chad's brother, Colby, and his wife, Stephanie, are due to have a baby boy, Jax, in late November/early December. My brother, Aaron, and his wife, Jen are due to have another baby in late December. The gender of this baby is yet to be determined. I have my money on it being a boy, which probably means it will be a girl. We'll see. Here are pics of the new additions and then some...

Uncle Chad entertaining Kevin. He is a sweetheart- we don't get to see him ever he lives in Maryland...sadness. That's Mike in the background with Brayden.

The second nephew this year, Brayden. He is a chubby little low key baby. He weighs 16 lbs 8 oz @ 3 months old.

Twin #1, Darek, with a very excited Aunt Bethany and sharing nap time with Uncle Chad while we were visiting. My husband is so cute!

Twin #2, Ian, still in the hospital- we can't wait to finally hold him (and spoil him too)!

I don't have pics of the unborn babies yet.. but here's the rest of the (Titus side) kiddos with Grandma and Grandpa Titus.

Left to right: Alex (5), Emma (2), Grandma holding Kevin, Tyson (almost 6), Anna (above Tyson-almost 4), Christopher (3), Papa holding Brayden. Ian and Darek were added to our family about two weeks after this picture was taken.

I also have pictures of (some of) the Baker side kiddos. We love being involved in their lives and participating in their activities, it's such an honor that they want us around too- we love them so much!

Baylee (almost 3) with Colby watching Thomas and Lottie!

Lottie (15) cheering! She is one of the captains of the cheerleaders this year (as a sophomore). She's such a cutie- it was fun to finally see her perform, we are proud!!

Thomas #11 (17) on the sidelines- he played almost the enitre game last night and it was his birthday! Thomas is also one of the captains of the varsity team. P.S. he is awesome, we are way proud of him!

Judd and Britney (both 20) at their wedding in June. They are a great couple and we are so happy and excited for them!

All in all thats pretty much them. We don't have up to date pics of Kevin (18) or Haven (1 1/2), so we'll have to work on that. So the take home message- we love our nieces and nephews!

Pictures- FINALLY!

These pictures have taken me forever to post! Life has been busy with all the new changes and posting pics hasn't been priority. We are surprisingly at home in Hurricane. In fact we really love it. The environment at work is so amazing for both of us and we are both doing what we love to do. We have a FANTASTIC neighborhood and ward and just love the people here. We live about 15-20 minutes away from Zion National Park (if you ever want to come out, let us know- you can stay with us)! Life is so good for us right now, we are very happy. Chad is still working Tuacahn, but only has 10 shows after tonight! We are excited to be on a regular sleep schedule! Enjoy the pics- (a disclaimer to the pics- I am not a professional.... and we LIVE in our house, it's not a museum, so there are things out...crazy, I know)

This is the front of our wonderful home. We LOVE not having to share walls with our neighbors and that we have a garage! I didn't realize how picturesque the sky is- beautiful!
No, our house is not on a slant, apparently I was having some trouble. This is the first room you see when you walk into the house. We got to buy a cute little red loveseat! I was excited!This is the living room. Chad was taking a nap...To the left is our awesome TV (which now has cable- by the way, bad choice...). You can see the kitechen/dining area in the background.
The kitchen/dining area. We love having the space to keep our table out to its full size all the time.

Here's our kitchen. We had to give up kitchen space from our last apartment (our kitchen was huge in our last place), but we have more storage here. Also, the fridge is ours, we had to buy one for this house, our landlords "don't do fridges." We found this one used for $200- we were pretty happy about it!

These are the storage areas in the kitchen. The one on the left is big enough to walk into! Yea for storage!

Keeping with tradition, we had to set aside a room for the neices and nephews! This is our playroom. There is a TV to the right that you can't see that has a Playstation2 and Xbox hooked up to it. We have to be the favorite aunt and uncle. This room is to the left of the sitting room. We have a lot of windows in this house which is nice, unless you're taking pictures...

This is the guest room/office. Again- awesome big window, not so good for the pics. This is where Chad spends a lot of time- hence the messiness...

I promised Chad that if we got a 4-bedroom house that one could be an instrument room- so here it is. Our (I say our...but really, do I play on them?...not really) drumsets and any other instrument we have goes in here.

The spare bathroom. The floorplan of the bedrooms and bathroom are almost identical to our last apartment- so if you never got to see it, this is pretty much what it looked like, minus one bedroom.

This is the master bedroom. No, we don't have a blanket on our bed right now- Chad is picky and can't sleep hot, so I get to put a blanket on my side until the weather cools off a bit. The bathroom is off to the left, it's nothing special- we had to give up a LOT of master bathroom space...I was sad. Oh, and dad, notice whose clothes are NOT on the floor...yeah, that would be mine. And no I didn't just clean them up for the picture.

This is the back of our house. We have a cute little backyard filled with lots of plants. It's pretty awesome. We have two pomegranate trees (can't WAIT for those to be ripe!! They're my fav.), a peach tree, and a pear tree, which means we get LOTS of awesome bugs...not my fav...but we also get hummingbirds like crazy. One favorite of the hummingbirds is right outside the dining room window, so every night at dinner we get to watch hummingbirds!!

This is the little patio in the back. The window above the chairs is the window in our living room. The door on the left goes into the dining room and the door on the right goes into our bedroom!
Last, but certainly not least, out garage. The top picture is of my cute little scooter which has gotten me the nickname "Morotcycle Mama" with my co-workers. I love it! The second picture is Chad's bike. He loves it when we ride together- its cute and fun! The bottom two are our new car (its a 2006 Chevy Cobalt 5-speed). We were very sad to lose our cars, but really love this one. My dad calls the color "ticket red" but we have not gotten any tickets yet- we'll see what happens on our drive to CA in October!