Our Easter weekend....

....a couple of days late. 

We first headed out to Riverwoods and participated in a bunch of things they had there. The weather was perfect and there were little kids everywhere! Evelyn was in heaven.

^^Evelyn petting the cutest baby bunny and....skunk?!^^

^^Evelyn was in love with the easter bunny. I thought for sure she would cry^^

Easter morning we had a little trail of easter eggs that went from Evelyn's room out to her easter basket! It was so cute to watch her follow the eggs, try to pick them all up, and put them in her basket. 

^^Evelyn had a little too much fun with her basket and scattered stuff everywhere! It was so much to clean up...I'm still finding some in the carpet^^

We then went to church to celebrate Jesus Christ. The real meaning behind this Easter holiday. And we managed to take a couple of pictures with Evelyn in her easter dress.

^^obsessed with all the flowers that are popping up around here!^^

^^Daddy's little girl^^

Hope you all had a great easter!

Happy Love Day!

^^Happy Valentine's Day from us...minus Jake. 

He is working his cute booty off at school! Hope your day is full of mushy, gushy love, 

and most importantly, chocolate!^^

Life lately

I'm alive...I promise. Being sick for two weeks, working, and trying to keep everything together while your husband gears up for finals is a little stressful.  You guys all know how it goes! But I've learned not to let it get to me and just to enjoy any minute I get with Jake, even if it's just sitting next to him while he studies, and to love my little girl up. Plus how could I let myself get stressed when miss e speed crawls to me every time I come home from work to give me a big hug...(oh it's the best thing ever!) So here's a photo dump to prove we are alive and doing well and not stressing!

Enjoy.

A couple of photos

Here are a couple of photos from St. Patricks Day!

Three shades of green!

Very sleepy girl with yummy spit up on her shirt

What baby e looks like when Auntie Megan does her hair

Play time with papa

My mom had the tables all decorated with green everything! I wish I had gotten a picture. And yes the thumbprint cookies were amazing and disappeared very quickly. Hope you all had a fun St. Patricks Day! Oh and may I say what the snow?! 

Go away! Please?

Happy Monday!

I love Monday holidays. Evie is sleeping and my amazing husband is busy making me a cheesecake for my birthday coming up! Boy am I one lucky mama.

Happy Valentines Day!

Love is in the air and our little Evelyn sure can tell. 

She has been making this pucker face all day today! 

Kisses all around for this little family.

A new light

One thing I always look forward to around December is all the festive lights. I could stare at them all night. In fact I sometimes do. Jake and I were so excited when we got our tree that we put it up super early (for me anyways), and placed the lights and ornaments on right away. Jake and I will sometimes turn off all our lights, turn on the Christmas tree and just sit on the couch, wrapped in each others arms and stare at the beautiful lights. Sounds a little silly I know but we love it. Yesterday we spent the evening with Jake's family and were able to deliver a tree with ornaments to a lady in their ward. She hadn't gotten a tree yet so we as a family got a tree and ornaments, went to her house, sang and brought it in for her to decorate. It was so fun to see her so excited. A light just lit up around her, as a light lit up within me.

It's easy to get caught up with your own problems and trials you are facing. But every time I do service I forget about my troubles, and focus on other people who could use my help. A new light turned on within. The light of Christ. It reminded me of all that I have and how I need to be grateful for that. How there are so many people who are in worse situations than you are. How Christmas is about giving. Not receiving. I have been so blessed to have grown up with amazing examples who have this light of Christ and who are constantly going out of their way to help others. I hope that I can take what they have shown me and put it to good use. Not just during the Christmas season, but always. I'm constantly thinking of things that I can do to better myself and be a good example for my soon to be little girl. Like I said I was blessed with so many wonderful people that taught me this, and are still teaching me this. I hope my little girl will have similar examples of these type of people in her life.

Thank you Wright family for being one of those examples for me!

Pink only please!

Jake's nieces and nephews are adorable and it was so fun to see them all excited, looking for easter eggs. One niece, Hazel, would only pick up the egg if it was pink. It was so funny to see her pass all the other eggs and go straight for the pink ones. She was excited until she opened them up to find "not pink" candy. She walked over to Jake and I and started to give us all her "not pink" candy. 

Too cute. 

Tillamook

Thanks to my family members from Oregon, Jake and I are now stocked up on cheese. Not just any cheese. It has been voted the "world's BEST medium cheddar" cheese. Tillamook. They brought to Utah bricks and bricks. I can't even tell you how happy this made me. We are too cheap to buy it at the store. Jake and I opened a brick as soon as we got home. He had never heard of Tillamook cheese so I had to show him what he was missing out on. Lets just say he keeps leaving to slice another slice. Again....thank you!!

BMT Birthday

Remember this? Well it's been another year and Megan and I got to celebrate our BMT (bone marrow transplant) birthday for the 9th year yesterday. It seems crazy that it was that long ago. We have both come a long way since then. I was looking back at all the pictures that were taken around that scary time for my family and it just boggles my mind how young we all were! Crazy that I am still alive and fulfilling so many things in my life right now. We celebrated it this year by going up to Park City and bowling here. I highly suggest you go there if you have not. So much fun! I won for the first time in my life (seriously....sad) with a score of 101. My dad and Jake were having a bit of an off day. We have also started a tradition (9 years ago) where my parents give each of us kids an ornament to put on our own tree when we are older. Jake and I totally forgot to pick up an ornament at Disneyland (also tradition) while we were there so they picked one up for us.

I love my family so much and am so grateful for this time when we can all be together for the holidays. Grateful for Megan and for this experience that brought us close together. I'm also very grateful for the chance Heavenly Father gave me to continue my journey in life. Hope you all have been enjoying this holiday season and hope you ate a lot of good food because I sure did!

Here is another journal entry from my time in the hospital that I would like to share from my dad.
Nov 21, 2001 11:16pm
"On my way to the hospital on Tuesday I heard a radio add for a new book called the Angel of Eleventh Avenue. I thought it was just a new little Christmas "feel good" book that I might enjoy reading with Heather so I asked Ruth to pick me a copy. We started reading it together and I was surprised to find out that it was about Primary's Children Hospital and a little girl who is 12 years old being treated for leukemia in 1966. Many of the emotions of the last two weeks came flooding back as I sat with Heather in her bed and read to her. More than once she had to take the book and continue reading when I couldn't continue. She would say "That's alright dad, let me read for a while". It helped us both pass the time as we waited for her first chemo treatment to begin. After they got her started with the Cytoxan we finished up the chapter we were on so Heather could try and get some sleep. Before she went to bed I asked her if she would like a fathers blessing to help her through the night. I am so grateful for the Priesthood at times like this when I feel so powerless on my own. As the tears were flowing from both of us during the blessing, Heather put her arm around me and held me tight. So much for me being strong for her. I hear her breathing getting heavy now, she is resting well...thank you."

Fake Swine Flu

Who gets sick the day before Thanksgiving? That would be me.

However I am thankful that it is not swine flu because I'm pretty sure I had all the symptoms.

Three

Okay last week was no bueno. Minus a get together with the old roommates and being with my little sister who finally came down to visit us for Thanksgiving. I am ready for a new week. But it could skip Monday. That's fine by me. Anyone else excited for Thanksgiving? Mmmm my dads cheesecake keeps coming to mind. And mash potatoes. I can never get enough of those. I was excited for Thanksgiving until I found out that I will be having three this year. Yes three. Yuck. Just thinking about all that food makes me want to puke. I think I will finally be able to have sympathy for the missionaries across the world on Thanksgiving. I always hear funny stories on how they usually have a couple of Thanksgiving dinners in one day. Man! At least mine are semi spread out.

Crave

Is it bad that I already want this semester to be over with? Not that it's been a hard semester or anything. I have notta to complain about there. I'm just done taking these silly classes. I want to tackle to real deal. I crave to be doing clinicals. Probing. Scaling. Anything. I'm sure my mind set will change once I am doing clinicals. But for right now....

I crave it.

Halloween this weekend! I am going to party-it-up Flapper style!

Labor Day

Labor day = fun with family!

Sadly my mom and dad took Megan and ALL her stuff up to Idaho to get all settled for school at 4:00 in the morning so they didn't get to participate. We missed them just the same. These pictures are out of order but I am too lazy to fix them. We hiked the Y, which I have never done before and have been wanting to do for a while. It's such a steep hike! I'm pretty sure that we never had any just straight ground to walk on. And hardly any shade. But I can now cross another thing off my list! After that everyone else went to a BYU women's soccer team which I heard they did very well in. I however went home to be a good college student and work on some homework.....did I get any of it done?

Nope.

After the game we all met at my grandpa's house for a little snow cone making. We got the huge blocks of ice and made tons of snow cones. I honestly think I had around 4. Before you think I am totally disgusting, 2 of those were just plain ice. I just love being here close to family. I love my HUGE Packard family and love that I do stuff with the cousins all the time. Well enjoy the pictures...even though they are out of order!

4th of July Weekend

The best part of the 4th of July is having the family together. I can't get enough of it! We first started the weekend with a good ol' pool party while the dads were working at the BBQ.
Food FOOD and MORE food!

Little miss Janey had too much fun when I threw her in the air to catch her in the pool. I would throw her up and catch her and she was say "Do it again!" I did it over and over until my arms got too tired! She loves the camera as well! Natalia had her camera with her and Janey walked up to Natalia and wanted her to take a picture of me and her. I think we took about five pictures before she was satisfied!

The pool that we were at had this awesome rock slide as well as a waterfall feature that hooked on to the pool. The kids loved LOVED going down the slide.
Of course Nate had to be a show off and jump off the waterfall.

The next day, a bunch of friends and I went tubing down the Provo River. I had never done it before so I was a tad worried. Not too much though. But man was it freezing! I don't think the sun came out until the last five minutes of our ride. Jess and I were the newbies, but were also way ahead of everyone else for quite a while! We had no idea what we were doing!

But we all had so much fun and I totally want to go again....when the sun is out!

Moe and I are getting excited for fireworks!!

Happy (late) 4th!