an adventurous and awesome august (so far)

whew. what a month we've had! and it's only the 15th. we've had a lot going on with peter graduating from his AEGD residency in mississippi, the road trip out west, hiking in moab, will turning 10 months old, fixing up our house, and nick, peter's brother, getting engaged!

so then, let's catch ya'll up. peter made will and me proud as he saluted and received his diploma for completing his 1 year residency. we had a good year down in ole miss . . . however, we're glad it's over and that we're once again in the lovely deseret!

after his graduation ceremony, we loaded up our car--with 800 pounds. yep, that's right. we went to a trucker's weigh station and weighed our yukon. (the air force required a moving weight.) so peter, will, 800 pounds of our belongings, and i began our 30 hour drive out west. it was LONG. fyi, lousiana and texas are super boring to drive through. to help you understand, here's a little analogy:

LA : trees :: TX : dirt

needless to say, will had a rough time. about half of every day he did all right. he slept and was generally happy. the second half of every day he yelled baby profanities at us for hours on end. and this pattern lasted the entire 4 days of our journey. we tried many different things to entertain him, including (but not limited to) playing mickey mouse clubhouse and go diego go on our iphone and strapping it in a baggy to the back of the driver's seat, stacking piles of toys on his lap so he'd readily have a new one available once he got sick of what was in his hand and threw it on the floor, and playing peek-a-boo with an awesome fluorescent tie-dye sweatshirt.

eventually we arrived in moab (my first time, ever! can you believe that?!) for a fun afternoon and morning of exploring. the scenery was really incredible and we had a super fun time hiking up to delicate arch and driving through arches national park. we also drove out to dead horse point. okay. do you guys know how that place got its name???? sad story. back in the day, cowboys would round up wild horses in the canyon and then they'd make a make-shift corral on the point overlooking the canyon where they'd put the horses. then they chose the ones they wanted to keep and left the others there to die without any food or water. SAD. why on earth wouldn't they just let the other horses go? i'm so mad at those cowboys.

after moab, we stopped for a quick and delicious bite to eat at grandma and grandpa frandsen's house down in gunnison. it was fun to see them and will especially had fun giggling with grandma. once we got back to salt lake, we joined nick in some very important planning. we went up to snowbird to scout out the location where he would propose. we took the tram up and gave william his first birds-eye view of beautiful utah.

then, on august 10th, william turned 10 months old! right now will is crawling everywhere, climbing up on everything, and walking along furniture. he has recently begun waving to people and he still prefers baby food over any table food, although he does have his two bottom center teeth, and is just cutting two on top. here are some shots of my cute baby boy:

last night nick got engaged to the beautiful kelli craven!!!! yay nick and kelli! peter, jill, steven, kelli's sisters, brother-in-law, parents, and i all went up the tram at snowbird before nick and kelli got there and we hid out so that we could capture the moment on film. it was beautiful and we are so happy for them!

and lastly, as a nice welcome to utah, we've had some visitors. here they are in our front and back yards, just saying hello. how nice.