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!

Hanging in there...

We have had a busy month...I will do a better update next Saturday/Sunday but here's the last month in a nutshell:
Chad gets new scooter.
Chad crashes new scooter and sprains ankle 5 min. after buying scooter.
We begin packing our apartment right after we get home from Zion.
Bethany goes back to work July 21st for SPED time @ Hurricane Middle.
Beth gets a scooter.
We are packing our apartment.
Chad is working Les Mis and The Sound of Music @ Tuacahn 3-5 nights a week.
We apply (and are approved) to move into a house on July 31st.
Beth's car dies on July 27th- not sure why. We now have 4 vehicles- only our teeny scooters work :)
Beth goes back to work for District SPED meetings July 28-30th. Beth crashes her scooter after one of these meetings- just took some skin off the knee and bruised her ENTIRE calf...both scooters still work- no worries!
We are STILL packing our apartment.
We begin looking for a new car on July 28th.
We find a car July 30th- and they will take the truck and car from us as trades!
We move into our new home on July 31st (they even put new carpet in for us- its a rental)!
We also finalize the car on the 31st. Yea for our cute new car!
Mom and Dad (Titus) come to St. George for "baby Brayden's" blessing.
We have lots of family time from Aug. 1-3 (i.e. no UNPACKING time).
Chad and Beth go back to work for Quality Teaching Time and Teacher Prep time on Aug. 4th.
Beth goes CRAZY living in a house full of boxes and an unorganized classroom and unpacks the house on the 4th, 5th, and 6th in the evenings!!
Steph and the kids come on the 8th and spend some time!
School starts Aug. 12th- we are busy prepping and organizing our lives at school!
Aug. 15-17 Beth's whole family is in St. George! Yea for meeting a new nephew and having family pics...someone is now bound to get pregnant so that the pictures will be outdated! (P.S. that person is not me...it's actually my sis-in-law Jen- due Dec. 20).
More craziness of getting back into the "back-to-work" routine.
Meanwhile, Chad is still working Les Mis 3 nights a week.

Which catches me up to current. As I said, I will give details next week. We don't have internet at home and the internet at school won't let us get onto facebook and myspace, so if you are waiting for us to reply to that, we will have internet (and TV for the first time in 3 years) hooked up next Saturday! I will post pics of our new house, scooters, car, etc. as well. Love to all-

Zion National Park

Chad and I (and Chad's friend Kent) went camping at Zion National Park on Sunday night. We got to Zion on Sunday afternoon and went to hike the Narrows (my fav @ ZNP) but just as we got to the entrance, the whole sole of Chad's water shoe came off :( So we turned back and went to the Emerald Pools and Weeping Rock. We camped out Sunday night and Monday morning, we packed up early and headed out to Angel's Landing. It was the most incredible (and difficult) hike we have ever experienced! I highly recommend it if you're up for it and if you're not afraid of heights! We enjoyed beautiful views, adorable little critters, some creepy bugs, good company, good food, and some wonderful memories!

This is the view of The Narrows as you're coming in. It is absolutely gorgeous and serene. The water was REALLY murky and a bit gross this time around as you may notice. Usually the water is crystal clear.

Me- all by my lonesome since Chad's shoe broke. I decided to hike in a little bit by myself.

Chad and Kent touching the 2,000 year old water dripping at Weeping Rock.

The view from Weeping Rock into Zion Canyon.

Chad being very manly and making dinner on Sunday night!

We were about 10 feet away from these two deer as we started our hike to Angel's landing!

"See, I'm fine babe!" What you can't see from this picture is that this rock juts up from one of the "21" switchbacks from hell and that if I took one step off the opposite side I was standing, I would have fallen to my rocky death.

The final ascent to the top of Angel's landing. As you can see, this is not a hike for the faint of heart. There was a point where there was only about five feet of rock and a chain to hold on to and on either side- 800 to 1200 feet of death.

Chad being VERY cautious at the top of Angel's Landing and enjoying the view down!

Me being not as cautious as Chad :) You can't see down well enough though...

A very happy Bethany at the top enjoying the view!!!

The view of the Virgin River from the top, as well as the shuttle stop at Big Bend into the Temple of Sinawava- entrance to The Narrows.

The view down Zion Canyon toward the Visitor Center from the top- this was by far my favorite view!

The Rest of the Weekend

We went up to Salt Lake for two days- just a quickie trip to get out of the heat and visit family. We went up on Sunday and left Tuesday morning (the 6th-8th). We had a great time! It's always nice to be with family and we hadn't been up since April. We went up to go to Lagoon, but it ended up that we went to the Gateway with my nephew, Alex, instead- a stellar choice, seriously!

There is a train you can catch from Woods Cross (abt. 5 min from where my parents live) that goes into Salt Lake. It is a commuter double decker train called The FrontRunner. So we decided to take the train- what 5 year old boy wouldn't prefer that?- into Salt Lake and catch Trax to the Gateway so that we could meet my mom at Discovery Gateway. What a cute place- Chad and I totally want our house to be like this place when we have kids- all hands on kid sized stuff- a house, grocery store, garden, water area, building area, a real friggin helicopter, you name it! Awesome!

We ate lunch, finished up at Discovery, went to the fountain- the most popular place at the gateway- then had some ice cream (after all, what kind of Aunt and Uncle would we be if we didn't have ice cream?) and Alex showed us the Clark Planetarium. We lamented about how there is NOTHING like these places in St. George and it is sad. We would so enjoy something like this all the time. I guess we'll have to take more trips to Salt Lake!

We took the train home, went to dinner, and then to Alex's T-Ball game. Ok, kid sports are THE BEST! We've watched Tyson play soccer and video of Anna at her dance recital, and now Alex at T-Ball. There really aren't any words to describe the entertainment it provides and how sweet it is because they are so proud of themselves!

My parents also saved their box of fireworks for when we were there! It made me so happy because, like I said, they are my FAV! Ok, enough rambling...here are pics:

This is our "flying things" invention we put together at Discovery Gateway. We were proud that we got all of the pieces moving! FYI- Discovery is kind of like The Exploratorium in San Fransisco (for those of you who have been there), just geared toward a younger audience.


The two pics above are of us with Alex on the air med helicopter @ Discovery Gateway! So fun!

This is us on the moonscape at the Clark Planetarium (notice the EARTH in the background- yeah baby!!)
Alex and me sucking on our rock candy on the train back home! Yea for rock candy- it's the best!
Chad in a very "Big Brother is watching" pic, sucking on his rock candy on the train home.

Alex on his last batting of the game- he gets to run everyone in, so ultimately he's the only one that gets a home run. T-Ball rules are friggin' weird, but it was cute!!

Happy 4th of July...a few days late

Chad, Tyson, and Bethy- a pic from the camera phone- these are not as easy to take as I thought. Maybe it's just my phone.
Tyson and the hand sanitizer he got from the parade- he was very proud! As he should be!
Anna: "Bethy, look at my new shirt!" Bethy: "Anna, your shirt is so cute!" Anna: "Its a United States of America shirt!" Bethy: "*Laugh* Oh, is that what it is?!" Real dialogue about Anna's shirt.

Our 4th of July weekend was so much fun! This is the first summer (out of 4) since Chad and I have been together, that Chad didn't have some kind of show he was performing in on the 4th! It was AWESOME! We went up to Cedar City for the annual 4th of July "Parade"- it usually consists of a bunch of ATVs, Trucks, and Emergency Vehicles driving down main street- that's what it was this year again, we musn't break tradition! It was fun- we met with my sister, Hayley, and her family to watch the parade.

Chad and I took off for a bit to check out scooters in town and decided to go to a movie. We took the niece and nephew to Wall-E since we hadn't seen it! Oh my gosh- it was so cute! I definately reccommend it to anyone! We then got 5 buck pizza (our fav) and took it to The Greenshow!

We went back to St. George- tired from the long day- and staked out a spot for fireworks at the park. It was great! I love fireworks!

I love this holiday because if it wasn't for this day Chad and I wouldn't have ever met (probably), so it always makes me happy! Also, y'know, we wouldn't have the freedoms we have...eh...