Starting a Business

I am really excited to start my new business, Liz Stephens Photography. Brett got me a camera and everything to get started. When we went down to Burley for Andrea's graduation I took pictures of some of my family to get a portfolio started. I really love doing photography and am excited to take many pictures in the future! These are just a few of the many I took over the weekend. To see them all go to my website www.lizstephensphotography.blogspot.com

These ones are of my beautiful little sister. It was so fun to take pictures of her.

These are my adorable nephews and my neice Kaelee. This barn was a perfect backdrop for their pictures.

This train car was also a perfect place for pictures!

Love these little girls.

I think that this is a great picture of my parents. Love you mom and dad!

I am so grateful for my husband and the help and support he has given me to help me do this. Love you Brett!

Nothing Better

These girls and Brett are my world. I love them all so much. Mother's Day was a few weeks back now but just thought I would still do a little post about it. I love my mom and all that she has taught me. And I love being a mom now. There is nothing better!

Brett and the girls got me something that I have really been wanting for a while, a scroll saw, for mother's day. Although I do like teaching and am glad Igraduated from school I want to be a stay at home mom and be with my kids. So I have been trying to think of ways that I can make some money for use doing things from our home. With my new scroll saw I am making these family blocks and selling them. Hopefully I can make enough and even sell them at a craft fair. I have also been interested in something else that I want to do but I will save that for another post another day.

5 Months

Oakley makes some cute little faces. We are so grateful and happy to have this little girl in our lives. We love her so much and Avery loves having a baby sister. Like I have already said Oakley rolls all over the place now. She also is eating baby food now too. She loves carrots. That is all we have tried so far along with the rice cereal that wasn't such a big hit. This little girl is a happy little thing and loves to give us lots of smiles. She is very much a momma's girl right now. Oakley is now five months old and is growing so fast. I am cherishing the moments that I have with her being a little baby becasue they just grow way to fast.

Easter

We had a fun Easter this year. I love the holidays with little kids around. I love to do all the fun things that come along with that holiday and I make Brett do them with me and he usually enjoys it in the end :) We painted eggs together as a family on Saturday night.
Avery liked to draw on the egg with the magic crayon

Our beautiful girls and our beautiful eggs

Avery was very excited for the Easter bunny to come. She kept saying he was going to bring her candy. She loves candy too much! And sure enough he brought her some candy along with a Tangled Barbie and some play-doh.

Oakley got a new rattle that she really seems to like.

The Easter Bunny even hid more eggs filled with candy around the house so that Avery could go on a little Easter egg hunt. I planned to take her to the community egg hunt Saturday morning but it was at 9:00 and we just didn't make it out of bed in time. Avery likes her sleep. Plus I have heard that those egg hunts can be pretty crazy and the parents are the ones who make it crazy. So we enjoyed our own egg hunt at home where Avery wasn't having eggs stolen from right under her hands.

Also we gave Oakley a little taste of rice cereal this weekend. She wasn't a huge fan but I think that we are going to start introducing her to some other foods soon.

Learning to Golf

It was a beautiful Saturday... possibly the best that it has been around here for quite a while. Brett wants me to learn to go golfing and I want to learn too so we went together today. I was finally hitting pretty good by the sixth hole. I still do need lots of practice though. I am excited to learn to play this sport because I love to do things like this with my Brett. The girls came with us and Avery brought her own golf clubs.

Even Oakley enjoyed going with us. It was a fun stroller ride for her.

This was my best drive of the day! It went about 120 yards which I know isn't to impressive but it was good for me.

And here are some recents pics of my growing baby. Oakley is so big. We put the swing up and got out this toy for her. She really seems to like it. I can not believe my baby is about 5 months old already. Time flies! I love her face in this picture.

Oakley first rolled over from her belly to her back just about to the day that she turned four months. She can roll from her back to her belly now too. We are excited to see her learn to do all the new things that they do in the first year of life. It is so fun and rewarding to be a parent. We love our girls!

And just wanted to post this picture of this awesome chair we saw at Big 5. It is huge!

Long TIme Needed Vacation

We got invited to go St. George with some friends. We had a really great time and I took quite a few pictures so here is a picture overload. It just happened to be perfect timing when we went down because our sister-in-law was having a baby shower the day before we were supposed to be in St. George so we went down a little early so I could go to that and Avery and Trevor had so much fun playing together.
We finally made it to St. George and it was beautiful. It was in the high 60s and 70s while we were there. It was perfect.

Brett and our friend, Andy, went golfing together. They went to a place that had some of the best views there while golfing. Brett said it was way nice. They gave them a golf cart with the 18 hole purchase and it had a gps and range finder in it. Brett loves golfing so I know that they had a good time.

Sucks that he hit it in the sand but at least he got it out on the first try :)

The girls hung by the pool for a little while.

This was Oakley's first time swimming. She was totally content in the water. I think she liked it.

One big thing we had planned while we were down there was to hit up Zion National Park. It was beautiful and the weather was perfect. Avery even got a $17 Zion t-shirt but only because she gets car sick and threw up on the way there and her shirt was a mess.

We rode the shuttle to different hikes throughout the park.

Enjoy some of the pics that we took

I don't if there is a story behind all these people stacking these rocks but it was everywhere at the end on one trail where the narrows starts. It would have been awesome to see the start of the narrows but the water was too high so we weren't able to.

This is the group that we went to St. George with. Thanks so much Andy and Makenna for inviting us!!!

Avery loved to drink from Brett's camelbak.

While we were in St. George we also went to the temple. This is the most white temple I have ever seen. It is beautiful. If I am remembering right it was built in 1877. We are so happy that we were able to go to the temple. It is such a peaceful place and it always makes me feel so good to be in there. Thanks for watching our kids Makenna and Andy!

After we went to the temple we wanted to take the girls back and show them the temple.

I love to see the temple

This was also in the visitors center that they had there. Avery is pointing up and saying Jesus has toes in this picture. It was pretty cute.

And of course Avery loved swimming. She always does.

We also got in a hot date while we were down there :) Andy and Makenna said they were watching our kids and that we were going out so we did. Thanks again! We went to Fiesta Fun and hit at the batting cages.

We hit at the driving range. I got a set of Wilson clubs at the DI there for $5 so Brett is going to help me learn to play so that we can do this together.

We also got in a round of mini golf. I would like to say that I won but I probably didn't since we didn't kept score and I said who ever does better on the last hole wins and Brett just happened to get a hole in one there. But we had a good time together. I love that boy!

These are the condos that we stayed at.

It was so pretty down there and we were sad to have to go.

We also got lucky and on the way home we got to go see our new niece who was just born the day before. She is beautiful. Here name is Emily Love.

Here are the happy parents and an Oakley- Emily comparison. Oakley is huge and they grow so fast.... that is all I have to say. We are so glad that we got to see the baby and spend some time with Ryan and Rachel since they will be moving to Alaska soon and we will not get to see them as often.

We are so happy that we got to go on this vacation. Now we are back home and it is time to get back to work and school :)