inuvik

what's up people. it's david this time. i decided to show everyone some of my pics from my trip up to canada for work. it was awesome. it took 3 days to fly up there, but it was worth it. i flew from salt lake, to denver, to edmonton, to yellowkife, to norman wells, to inuvik, and finally to the radar site on cape parry. this is a statue of a polar bear and a seal in the airport in yellowknife.
this next pic is in inuvik, one of canada's northern most cities. its on the western side of canada kind of close to alaska just south of the arctic ocean. you can't see it very well, but this is the begining of one of the ice roads you hear about. this dude in the white truck was throwing big rocks out there to decide if he wanted to drive out there or not. crazy fool. the black dot in the ice is a little ski boat frozen out there.

i took this little plane to the radar site. it was about an hour and half ride. kind of a cool little plane though. they call it a twin otter.

the radar sites come with their own runway, usually, and in this picture you can see two “trains” as they call them which are the two long rows of building. the radar is in the tall golf ball, and the other two radomes are the communication stuff. as you can see, its right on the edge of the arctic ocean. pretty cold. i got off the plane and the wind was blowing like crazy. with the wind chill it probably was close to minus 15. not too bad right for may? Idaho is worse.

this is my little project. a little door to fill a hole in the wall. its meant to keep the snow out, but open up when the Air Conditioner turns on. yeah, the AC. so it worked really well. this was the main reason I was up there. there was a bunch of other stuff to keep me busy cause it really only took a few minutes to install these.

this is another picture of the radar. the tower its sitting on has been there since the fifties and the radar is as old as I am. so there is enough stuff breaking on them for me to figure out how to fix.

so on the way out, I decided that instead of taking the plane, I wanted to take a ride in the helicopter. it was leaving at the same time so I convinced the HVAC guy to trade me seats. so since it was my first time and I was so stoked about it, they let me ride shotgun.

we took off and flew over the arctic ocean a ways. these are the smoking hills. you can see a big crack in the ice. they were saying the ice they drilled through at the site was seven feet thick. we could see a bunch of seals though chillin out on the ice. I couldn’t get a very good picture though. no polar bears. I was hoping one would jump out and get some lunch. we did see a herd of muskox though. they are an interesting looking beast. look it up if you’ve never heard of them. we circled around and chased them a little bit in the helicopter.

this is a picture of pretty much everything I saw from the two and a half hour helicopter ride. a lot of nothing. there were a ton of lakes and rivers, some baby pine trees, but other than that, there wasn’t very much.

probably one of the weirdest things I saw, except for the drunken Eskimo, was the sun. this picture was taken before I went to bed the last night. it was around 11:30 at night and its not really even close to setting. the sun would supposedly set around 2 am and would rise before 5 am. it was crazy. I never saw it dark at all. even if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would look at the window and still see that it was light outside. all the windows had big heavy shades on them so you could get to sleep. I thought it was kinda cool. it would be late, but it seamed like I had a bunch of energy cause it was still bright outside. kind of a weird feeling.

that was about the end of my adventures. I took a ton of pictures that turned out really cool, but its hard to tell on a blog. it was an awesome trip. it was good to get home. stella was the coolest. her and Julia picked me up from the airport and she was pretty excited to see me. except for when she saw her bottle, then she was more excited to see it. funny baby.

Small steps...

Hello everyone!! The weather has been so nice, we've been finding ourselves outside...instead of inside...updating our blog ;) Stella has had a lot of firsts lately. She started crawling just a few nights ago. She gets a little upset, usually because David or I are coaxing her with a toy and keep pulling it further and further away. Mean hu? So she'll last a few 'steps' forward then get frustrated and start crying.

Crawling or not, she'll find her way across the room. Never on her stomach of course, no no, she still hates being on her tummy. She learned awful fast how to push herself up into the sitting position.

While in the tub the other night she pulled herself up on the side of the tub into the standing position. As if she's known how to do it all along. Which I am wondering how long she's been able to do it, because when I go get her in the mornings or from naps, she's got her hands on the rail, sitting up, and her head pokin' out like she's been waiting a lifetime.

She's momma's walking buddy in the mornings and daddy's biggest soccer fan when he plays his games during the weekdays. And she's so content to watch us play tennis as the ball goes back and forth and back and forth... oo a treat... back and forth... oo a toy....

She's also mastered picking up all foods and putting them in her mouth. Even small peas and slippery bananas. In fact she prefers to feed herself. She's an awesome little eater. She'll sit in her highchair while I cook dinner and make wonderful conversation.

I'm expecting her to stand by herself any day now as she raises her knees off the ground and pushes further and further back with her hands. Well, stand or do a summer sault!

I can't believe she's almost 9 months old!

Hope you enjoy the pictures. We took them this last sunday outside of our apartment after church.

Popcorn popping....

Hooray!! Spring is here! This is the tree outside of our bedroom window. Just a little reminder that winter is drawing an end and warmer weather really is on its way. David and I have gone out to play soccer a few times, just the two of us kicking around, nothing official. We take Stella with us and put her out on the lawn and she LOVES being outside! She'll play on her own or follow the ball with her eyes. Usually she has a perma-grin.

She has also graduated into the 'big tub'. The transition was easy, she didn't seem to have a problem, in fact the baths last longer and she can fit more toys in with her. I like to teach her how to splash... maybe I'll regret it someday but right now I think it's cute.

Davids mission companion Jesse Garley came up for General Conference and spent a night with us. It was so good to see him, you are welcome here any time Jesse!!

Stella warmed right up to him... or maybe it was his phone

So I finally finished Stella's crib bedding set. I know, I know, she's almost eight months old but It took a while to find the fabric I wanted and it took a while to sew it and put it all together. So I made the bumper pads which have cute little scooters on them, and I made her baby duvet cover with little bird fabric.

Here's a closer view...

I was going to make her sheet too, but it was cheaper to just buy it =p

Random cute pics

So here's my favorite video of Stella laughing. I don't think she's ever laughed this hard. This is one of those times we went to the park to play soccer, I sat down to prepare her bottle and a mosquito kept landing on my face so I started shaking my head and tried to blow it off... well... this was what followed.

GOOOAAAAL!!!!!

We got to go to a Salt Lake Real soccer game last saturday. It was Stella's first game and she loved it too...well, mostly. It was a free game and we got to choose our seats. We were one of the first people there and David decided to get us seats right behind the goal. This was scarey during warm-up, soccer balls were flying everywhere, hitting everyone in the stand...also very funny. During the second half of the game, Real scored two goals on the goal closest to us and everyone stood up and started screaming, yelling and cheering and Stella's fun ended, she got so scared! Michelle was holding her and she dove into her arms and started bawling. Poor thing, scared her to death. Other than that she loved being outside. Before the game there was a small carnival and she loved looking at everyone and scoping everything out.

David and Steven got their pic taken with the guy that made the last goal. Steven said after he made the goal he looked up at him as he was running by and Steven, holding up "number 1", the guy saw him and did it back. Yes, the little things that get us excited.

Stella and MommyWe got our picture taken with the mascot during the carnival

Giggles

I love it when Stella giggles, something about the sweetness and the innosence. Luckily this time I caught her giggles on camera so I could show you all.... Enjoy!

In the snow

Here's another home made snowboarding video of David doing the rails. Notice I didn't take part in this one... I'll leave that to the pro's and just take pictures. Good job honey!

In case you wonder what we did with Stella....

The snow has been great this year. We had a chance to go night boarding at Powder Mountain about a half hour away from here, it was a fun date and the pow pow was amazing. Thanks Brad and Kacie for babysitting!!


We always get to see how cute Stella is during her bathtime but no one else does, so we thought we'd give you all a little taste.

She's such a sweetheart, she loves her bathtime, it's always her favorite part of the day.

Thank you Garley for the New Mexico Lobos shirt=)

Stella and Addie

Getting dressed with daddy

And yes, David's hair is staight, we had fun with a straightener one day=)

Saving the best for last, we don't know what exactly was happening at this point... we caught her doing something maybe? don't know, but we think its so funny.

Stella is growing so quickly, we're amazed at how smart she is too. She pulls her pacifier out of her mouth to play with it, then, when she gets bored she'll pop it back in. She's sitting up all by herself too, toppling over here and there and she still loves her 'stand up drop a toy, bend over, pick it up, stand up and drop it again' game. That game could go on for hours if our arms didn't get so tired. She adores the baby in the mirror and she's also a lot better about riding in the car. She loves eating her solids too, her favorite is still sweet potatoes although she'll eat what ever we put in her mouth. David and I teach CTR 7 and she loves to sing with the kids during singing time. She still sleeps all through the night, usually about 10 hours and when she wakes up she talks so sweetly in the monitor until I go in and get her, she waits with a huge smile. She giggles at random and also when we tickle her...anywhere. She loves her mommy but gets so excited when daddy gets home. She squeels and kicks her legs and smiles and smiles and smiles. In fact, that's all she ever does... our smiley baby.

Hello everyone!! We have been having fun lately with all the new snow. We visited our grandparents in Cascade and went boarding at Tamarak, that's my new favorite spot, too bad it's so far away!! This last weekend we went boarding but since we've got the babe it's hard to go to a resort so we went to a local park that had some hills and David set up a box slide and some jumps for us to hit. He's a good coach, this year is the first year I've tried jumps and he said I "got like three feet of air that time" =) I thought that was pretty good for a beginner. Enjoy the videos.

Our Beautiful baby is growing so quickly, she has her fingers and toes discovered and all figured out. She prefers standing over sitting and the smiling never ends. She's also found her laugh, although sometimes she'll be laughing and screaming then follows the crying and screaming, I don't think she knows the difference yet. We went to her Dr appointment last week, she's under 12lbs and she's 25 inches long. She's in the 4th % for her weight but she's setting her own healthy steady curve so we're not worried. David and I have a new calling teaching CTR 7 class in primary, she loves singing time and sings and squeels right along with the rest of them.

Daddy has a kagaroo pouch! Stella was helping take the trash out so daddy put her in the bjorn. She absolutely loves being in the bjorn, that's when she does the majority of her singing. Top that with putting her in front of the mirror and she's in 7th heaven.

Back off... these are my sweet taters

She also loves watching and listening to daddy play guitar and sing songs. She usually helps him sing too.

Just beautiful, healthy and happy, who could ask for anything more?

Here's one more video. She does okay with rice cereal, she'll tolerate it anyway. But once those lips touch sweet potatoes she's all over them. Thank you Nick, Jessica and Colton for letting us borrow your high chair, it makes eating a lot easier!!