Lily's First Haircut!

 Lily had her first haircut last night! My sister-in-law Jayme did it for her at my mom's house! She also highlighted and cut my hair! Thanks, Jayme! Michael also got a haircut yesterday at Fantastic Sam's. So the whole family is looking good! Lily was a little wiggly sometimes but when we finally gave her the spray bottle she was pretty good.

The final product! She is such a doll!

We even saved some hair to put in her memory box!

August Adventures 2013

Lily with Grandma Malouf and the kitty Bruce

Lily and Bruce are best friends

Biggest news this month in our family is that Lily has 3 teeth now! 1 on top and 2 on bottom.

August is a fun month for us. We have 2 anniversaries. Our 8 year wedding anniversary was on the 20th and our 7 year anniversary of being sealed in the temple was on August 26th! To celebrate we left Lily with Chris and Alison (Michael's brother and sister-in-law) and their 3 kiddos and took off to Park City for a night. We actually stayed in Deer Valley which is way up there on top of the mountain above Park City. We stayed at a beautiful place called Chateaux of Deer Valley. We took full advantage of the hot tub, swimming pool and the plush white robes :) We spoiled ourselves even more and ate dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. If you haven't eaten there and you like steak, you need to immediately. It is very pricey though. Go on your birthday or anniversary and you get free dessert at least :) We also went to the outlets and got clothes for us as well as some cute fall outfits for Lily. It was a fun little getaway! I'm glad we are best friends and have so much fun together. We really like to spoil ourselves so we couldn't stop there. On our real anniversary we also ate at one of our favorite restraunts: Teppenyaki's.

I took this picture the day I threw them away! They were much prettier on our Anniversary.

Here are some flash back pictures from our wedding 8 years ago! I don't have any of our sealing 7 years ago. :( Maybe somebody out there does!

Bishop Ben Chase married us. He was our single's ward bishop. I later had his daughter in my 3rd grade class!

You can see the tears of joy on our faces!

Holly, Megan, Caryn and I. My beautiful bridesmaids.

Michael and his best man Chris, who also happens to be his brother :)

The Stoker Side of the Family! I think we have doubled the number of family members since this picture!

Everybody!

The Malouf side of the family! Sean was on a mission serving in Texas at the time.

The cutest flower girls in the world!

such a handsome ring bearer!

August also meant going back to school for Michael! Its his 5th year teaching. He is very beloved and popular with the students. Lily and I miss him but we are glad he has a good job that allows me to hang out with Lily. I also love that he gets home early, usually right around when Lily wakes up from her nap so he doesn't miss too much of the action.

I decided to join Michael in his no pop pledge! He hasn't had any soda for about 5 years. I decided I might as well not either. I hardly ever drink it but when I do I go overboard (usually because its a restraunt with free refills and I want to get my money's worth) and drink way to much and feel bloated and sick and usually I am up all night from the caffeine. So no more pop! It doesn't really have any redeeming qualities anyway. Good bye Mr Pibb.

This month Lily and I also went to the Tracy Aviary with Shani and her little girl Makadie. Both of our girls love birds so it was a great trip! Lily loved the owls! My camera was broken so these are pictures Shani took :)

Michael and I also went to Lagoon! We were joined by Kim, Reynie and their 2 kids and my sister Tina and her 4 kids and 2 of my neices rode up with us. It was really fun! Not too many people. But I think I must be getting old because I kept getting sick on all the rides! :( I love roller coasters so this is a real bummer for me.

I ran the Alpine Days 5K! It took me 40 minutes. I am so slow. But hey I did it! :)

We watched the Highland and Alpine fireworks. For Highland's Lily was mesmerised and just layed on Michael's chest and watched them in awe. We went with my parents and my brother Mike and Nicole and their kids (its kind of a tradition). For Alpine's we met up with our friend's Brad and Amber and their kids. Lily got all hyped up and went crazy. She was running around everywhere and kept going up to random strangers and tapping their shoulders and just went nuts! She liked the fireworks but she liked being crazy more!

I also took Lily to the Alpine Days parade. She just sat on Craig's (Michael's dad) lap the whole time and licked a tiny lollipop someone threw one lick at a time. She loved the horses (Neighs).

Lily and I were bored one morning so I made playdough by putting 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of warm water, 1 cup of salt, and 2 T. of vegetable oil in a pot and stirring it over low heat until it was playdough like. Then I massaged some food coloring in them and Lily and I went to work! It was pretty fun! Its a nice little activity to have on hand for when I want her to stay in her high chair for a bit.

we made a snowman, a turtle, and some snakes!

Lily has started to really like coloring/scribbling. I put her in an empty diaper box with her crayons and she can be occupied by that for a full half hour. If you know Lily you know she usually doesn't stay in one place long, but in the coloring box she is truly captivated :) Once the box was pretty much completely colored we started putting stickers on it! I have a million stickers from my teaching days so we have a lot to work with :)

Lily coloring in her Barbie Coloring Book. Say "Cheese"!

We went to Farm Country for Thanksgiving Point's $2 Tuesdays with our friends Shani and Makadie and Amber with her kids Ryker, Sophie, and Beckett! We even saw my sister-in-law Nicole and her 2 little ones there for a minute. It was very busy but a lot of fun! Lily loved seeing all the animals but when it came time for the pony ride she didn't want anything to do with it. She screamed and kicked and did not want to get on. So they gave us our money back for that part! It was a fun adventure and I'm glad we went!

This is Lily's constant companion, Dog. 

Makadie and Lily

checking out the chicks!

Lily wants the kitty to see the goats too!

Shani, Makadie, Beckett, Amber, Ryker, and the back of Lily's head on a horse hay ride!

Lily zonked out in the car on the way home. She had way too much fun! Ignore the huge mess!

One and a half!

Lily is 18 months old! Nursery time! (We'll see if that happens)  I feel like she is full blown toddler now.

Well Check Up Stats:
Weight: 22 lbs. 1 oz 38%
Height: 32 " 48%
Head Circ: 45 3/4 cm. 31 %

Talking: She is constantly jabbering away! Usually nobody knows what she is saying but it sure is adorable. She can say a few words we understand and she uses a ton of sign language still too which makes communicating with her a lot more helpful. My favorite is when she puts her little hands in the air and says "Where did _____ go?". Some new words are: Owl, Gaffe (Giraffe), Tweet Tweet, Sleep, "That's Mom" "That's Dad", Bruce (Michael's parent's new kitty's name). She also says "ow" when she is hurt. She gave us a false alarm one day because she kept holding her ear and saying "ow" so we took her to the doctor. No ear infection! Sigh!

Eating: She is a really good eater now. I haven't stressed about it for a long time. She feeds herself everything and is getting pretty dexterous with a spoon and a fork. She looks healthy and is gaining weight well.

Teething: This girl is going to be 20 years old before she has all her adult teeth because she is soooooo slow at getting her baby ones! It seems like she has been working on her top teeth for half her life! They look like they are really close. One of them has even started to cut through a bit.

Sleeping: She is a great sleeper! Sleeps 12-13 hours a night and a 3-4 hour nap in the day! We are pretty lucky that way. She does like to have the perfect environment though: room darkened, lots of white noise, in her sleep sac with her dog and a bottle.

Discipline: Over the last few months Lily has gotten more moody. Lately she has been whining a lot and throwing tantrums and hitting! Where did our sweet little happy girl go? So we read this book called 1,2,3 Magic where you count to get them to stop obnoxious behaviour and put them in time out. No getting upset or trying to lecture her! Then you make sure you do lots of praise and positive reinforcement when she is doing things you want her to do. I hope it helps!

Sick: Lily had 2 ear infections and a cold and croup twice the last few weeks! Poor girl! Hopefully she can be healthy the rest of the summer.We went to the doctor 5 times this month!

Favorites: Lily loves her stuffed dog, Grandma Malouf's kitty, swings, slides, swimming. one-on-one time with Mommy or Daddy, otter pops, her cousins, her granparents and aunts and uncles, climbing on things, Sesame Street, Curious George, and Bubble Guppies.

Funny: Lily has a great little sense of humor and the cutest laugh. One of her funniest latest "tricks" is to flex her muscles. She does it with so much intensity I'm worried she will give herself a hernia! Michael's favorite thing she does is go "wub,wub,wub,wub,wub"in kind of a deep but fast voice. You do it to her and she will do it back. Its a cute little game they play :)

Swimming Lessons: Last month we got to do parent and tot swimming lessons at the Scera Pool for 2 weeks with my friends Amber and her kids, her mom, her sister Jess and her kids, and my long time friend Shani and her little girl that is only 2 weeks older than Lily. It was so fun to have something to do each morning and get in the water. Lily loved the songs and would try to sing along. Her favorites were the ones where we did lots of jumping and throwing her in the air like Ring around the Rosies and Zoom Zoom Zoom. Unfortunately our teacher wasn't that great. Amber pretty much taught the class every day. But we still had a great time!

Shani and I with our little girls at swimming lessons!

While Michael was in Montreal Lily and I still did some fun things. We went to the Lehi Parade to watch Ryker on his float and then to the Lehi Round Up with my family. The parade was way too hot! But Lily enjoyed the rodeo. She kept going "moo" and "neigh" and doing the sign for horse and clapping. She would get a little nervous when everyone was yelling and when they were wrestling the cows but she would just snuggle against my shoulder. Thanks Mike and Nicole for the ticket!

Lily with Grandma and Grandpa Stoker at the Lehi Round-Up Rodeo!

The Stoker Fam at Lehi Round Up!

We also got to visit my long time friend Caryn at her sweet apartment in downtown Salt Lake and  swim in her pool! Amber also came over one night and we had a late night watching a chick flick. We had to be home a lot during the day because our house got flooded and Servpro guys kept coming to rip stuff out or check on the drying process and make estimates. But we still had fun even though we both missed Michael.

This is how Lily watches T.V. when she is sick.

Michael, Sean and Craig at Primary Children's with Blake

Lily got another cousin this month on the Malouf side! Blake was born to Sean and Brittany about a month before his due date! He has had some breathing issues so he is Primary Children's getting excellent care. Hopefully he can go home soon! He is such a cutie. We love him so much!

Fireworks!
Lily had a lot fun watching fireworks last month. We saw the big ones that Cedar Hills did and some close ones on the 24th at my brother's house. She loved them. She only sits still for fireworks :)

Amber and Me. BFF's! Poor Amber had to get back surgery last month! She had a girl's night with me while Michael was in Canada. Love her!