The place I didn't know existed!

So we live in Iowa now! It's totally awesome and crazy at the same time. Iowa is one of those states that when you hear it you think, "is that really a state?" Because you just never hear about it! I had to look up on the map where it was! All i knew was that  it was east of Utah! There are actually a lot of states like this, they're all in the middle getting lost! But we are here now and it isn't so bad :) There are no mountains, we are surrounded by corn fields, it is pretty humid and sticky...but the people are great and the town is small and cute and we have a really awesome ward and there is a water park that we love to go play at! And we live in the cutest house EVER! like I am seriously obsessed with this house, i love it, it is so cute. Jared is liking his job at Walmart as an assistant manager. The store manager likes Jared and counts on him to do a lot, but that's good because it means Jared can get promoted faster! we will probably be in Iowa for at least 2 years, possibly as many as 4, just depending on how fast Jared can get a promotion! I am not looking forward to winter. I hear it gets deathly cold and snows a LOT, so i say the sooner we move the better!

 This week we went to the Iowa state fair, it was a lot of fun. I love animals so much and it was so fun to go see all the cows and horses and piggies and other animals they had! And then just walking around and seeing all the little shows and performances being put on around the grounds was also fun.

They have been doing road construction on the road we live on since before we moved in and they still aren't finished! We were told they would be finished by July...now we're starting to think they meant July of 2016!

 Hallie is as fun and cute as ever! We can't get enough of her. She has a little laugh and voice that makes you smile no matter what! And she is just so cute! She has squishy cheeks and big eyes and a little nose and tin lips! Its all just so cute!!! She LOVES to play 'boo'. She will do it anytime, anywhere. All a sudden she just yells BOO! and then hides and does it over and over and over! It's just adorable. She is also obsessed with waving to people, especially her Dad. Whenever she sees Jared she immediately starts waving frantically until he sees her and waves back! She loves to be tickles and she loves to play monster. She loves dancing to music! She loves pretty much all food. The only food I know she doesn't like is tuna.
 Here are a few pictures since we've moved :)

Hallie turned 1!! We love her so much!

I had to try a piece of her cake after she was done :)

This was in Boone Iowa, we went for a little hike

exploring this super awesome park we found that was huge and had a river and awesome things

Jared bought this plant that eats flys...i don't think it works...

What is going on in our front yard every day

We went furniture shopping and our new couches will be here in a couple weeks!!! Im so excited!!!

We went for a little picnic at the park 

This is the day we left Oregon, Hallie was waving goodbye!

The newest Assistant Manager at Walmart, and the cutest one too!! 

What you NEED

when I was pregnant i was all stressed out because I wasn't sure exactly what I need for when Baby Hallie arrived! I would google all the time looking for a list that would tell me what I needed! There were lots of lists that were named things like "The ten absolute things you must have for Baby" or "Essentials for having a newborn" or "Must have's to giving birth". And then i would read these lists and feel even more stressed out because holy cow! How am I going to get that bassinet, that bathtub, that baby bag, that stroller, and so on!?!? And then how will I be able to fit it in my house!? Ahhh! Well let me just relieve anyone who is pregnant and wondering what they really NEED. ALL YOU NEED IS MILK! and it comes for FREE straight from your body! So you literally don't need anything else to keep a baby alive. thats it. Period. Obviously it would be nice to have some diapers and wipes handy, but the baby will still live if you don't have that. i mean seriously, I don't know how  i thought i needed so many things. Ok now let me be realistic. Milk, diapers, wipes, clothes, blankets, soap....ok those are the things that I would say you really NEED for reals. The rest is just fluff. Like, you dont need a crib, you dont need a changing table, you dont need a bouncer seat, you dont need a bumbo, you dont need a swing, you dont need a night light, you dont need a rocking chair, you don't NEED it.
I started this post out feeling like it might help people but I think it ended as a vent page with my frustration on all those articles I read about people telling me I  needed all this junk. So hopefully it wasnt a huge waste of time! Thats all! :)

Newberg Life

Everyone goes through highs and lows in life and right now I am at a high! I just love my life! I love Jared and Hallie is just the cutest and I love our cute little apartment and our adorable little town and our ward is just amazing! And then i have a season pass to the zoo where i can see cute animals all the time! Its just so great! :) I'm always telling Jared that I wish i could freeze time and we could just stay in this moment forever! But then i realize that wouldn't be much fun cuz then life would never get better than it already is! ;)

So im not quite sure what im going to write about today so I will just go through my camera and find pictures with a story!

This picture was taken a couple weeks ago before we left for church. I LOVE Hallies hair! It is so much fun and SO SO adorable! I think it is so cute when i pull it back in a ponytail like this, but it usually doesnt last long because she rubs her head on the floor and the ponytail comes out or Jared pulls it out because he likes it to look "natural". lol

Hallie thinks it is the funnest thing to grab everyone's face and squeeze it really hard! and she likes to put her fingers in others peoples mouths and pull hair and all sorts of fun things! This picture is extra good though because she is also rubbing her feet all over my face! 

For Valentines day we did a little photoshoot in the bedroom. I got some really cute pictures of her, but the ones with all the kisses didnt turn out as well! HAHA Maybe because my kiss marks dont look that good! but they did turn out really funny! She is such a silly little baby! 

My favorite part of the day is when Jared comes home from work and he and Hallie just 'hang out' together. They are such buds! It is so sweet and cute and just makes my heart happy!

I started "oil pulling" like a week ago! This is the Before picture. i think i can already see a difference in the whiteness but i need to do it longer to tell! It was really disgusting when i started but im getting used to the taste!

We went to the park on Valentines day. It was a fun little outing as a family :) 

Hallie really likes this little pay thing her Grandma nelson got her. She thinks it is really fun! I like to stick her in here while I clean the apartment ;)

A Baby!?

I keep waiting for the moment when I have a bunch of free time so i can sit and write a nice blog post about the birth story and Hallie and then i just decided that is NEVER going to happen! So I will write what i can before the crying starts ;) So here is a summary of Hallie's birth story.
Jared and I had been trying to move for a couple months since he had a new job and was having to drive an hour to work and back again every day. But finding an apartment was taking a LONG time. It was less than a week from my due date when Jared's mom and i found some new apartments in Newberg that still had openings! So we filled out the papers and waited to know when we could move! My Due date was August 7th, a Thursday. They said we could move in on August 4th, a Monday. Well, I began having contractions on Sunday August 3rd. They were very consistent all day long, but weren't very strong And were coming every 20 minutes. That night they started getting pretty strong and were hurting and were about every 8 minutes apart. Monday morning we were supposed to get everything loaded up and move to Newberg but we decided I should go to Newberg early so that if the baby came I would be close to my hospital. So Jared's mom and I came to newberg and started walking around to get things moving. (Jared was at work) and Jared's Dad and employees loaded up our old apartment and moved us over. I went into the hospital in the afternoon, the contractions were strong and every 3 minutes apart! But they said I still wasn't dilated enough. So I came to the apartment and started getting things unpacked! i went back to the hospital around 7pm and they admitted me in! They let me sit in the Jacuzzi for a while and when i got out I asked for an epidural because those contractions are PAINFUL holy cow! I never expected labor to feel the way it did, it was a surprise! But then the epidural came and I thought I was in Heaven! It was so amazing. i couldn't feel any pain, but i could still feel the contractions! Hallie Ann came on Tuesday morning at 1:30am. She is so beautiful and we love her so much! We can't help but smile every time we see how cute she is!
That was a very watered down story, but I'll add some pictures and then get Hallie because she's calling me!

Our new apartments in Newberg

My last bump picture taken August 4th

As fresh as a baby gets

making funny faces from the moment she was born

her first outfit, she still fits in it :) But it actually fits her now

I love it when she yawns

She was so tiny! 7lbs

Looking back i would have taken A LOT more picture in the hospital. Next baby i guess!

outside

I love to be outside! And i LOVE the sun. That's why summer is my most favorite time of the year! There's just nothing better than getting to be outside, it doesn't matter if i'm just sitting in the grass, hiking, walking down the street, playing in the water, or just going to take out the trash, it makes me happy to be outside in the sun! When i'm inside i always open all the blinds in the whole house because i want it to be as bright as possible! Summer is just the best, this summer is quite a bit different from the other summers in my life, and I'm thinking i may have to get used to it, at least for a little bit. I miss having summers off from school and from work and from any worries and just going on long road trips and vacations the whole time. That was so fun and i will always remember and treasure those times because they really were a huge part of my life. were not quite in the position where we can do all those things now though, with Jared working and not getting any time off. Hopefully as he moves his way up the Walmart chain we will get more time to vacation!
But don't worry, were not completely boring people :) We've made some of our own little mini vacations on the weekends!

A couple weekends ago we went for a drive up the mountains and took our gun and went shooting. It was a fun day out :)

We stopped on this bridge over the river. i want to take a tube up and float the rapids another weekend!

 

 

After shooting we went to the Rose Gardens, it was a cool place. (Can you spy me? I was hiding!) haha

I thought that ray of light shining was kinda cool

This was at a mansion up on a hill and we could see the whole Portland City from up here!

Another Weekend we went on a picnic at a duck pond we know about. The picnic was really fun but then we tried to feed the ducks afterwards and they wouldn't eat our bread! They were already full! So I thought we needed to find some other ducks that were hungry to feed our bread to. So we googled a new place to go and fed those ducks instead and they LOVED it! They were starving! :) And then we found a trail along this little creek nearby and we hiked that, it was fun!

This is jared chasing the ducks that were too full to eat our bread. He figured they needed some exercise. haha

Here we are on our little hike up the creek

we went camping this past weekend. There's our tent in the background

Jared made a nice fire with all the sticks we found around camp

We hiked up to thee top of the hill

There were flowers EVERYWHERE, they were pretty. I had to smell them. :)

he is just so cute i had to kiss him

Kidney Lake

This past weekend we went camping at Kidney Lake. It's across the Columbia River in Washington. We had a lot of fun hiking and making fires and hanging out, but sleeping on the ground was NOT fun for me while pregnant! The last 8 pictures were from our camping trip.

So this has been our fun the past few weekend! It's such a great life :)

Scatter post

BEWARE; this post is very long and probably boring!

Ok lets just start with baby talk! So, being pregnant is not what I expected! Like, half the time I don't even remember that I am pregnant. The only time I really know Im pregnant is when I can feel her kicking, and thats like the coolest feeling ever! Sometimes it freaks me out though...i mean, theres a human inside of me! WHAT?!? isnt that weird? I mean, how is that even possible!? But its super cool too. The rest of the time I don't feel pregnant, I just feel sick or achey or tired and that's just kinda lame and not as awesome! But I guess I know what people mean when they say they feel pregnant now. They're basically just trying to tell you that they're not comfortable and feel bloated!

We got a crib!

 We can't wait to meet our new baby girl! We have her crib and changing table all set up in her little room! I have been sewing crib sheets and a nursing cover and a nursing pillow too! Its so fun getting things ready for her arrival! Even though we're no where close to being where we probably should be! Like, if I went into labor early it's gunna be bad news for this baby! So we are thinking of naming her Halle, but we don't know how to spell it. I liked Halle, but Jared says Halley, and other people say Hallie or Hallee. It's just so hard to decide! I just want people to see it and know that it's pronounced Halle. Not Haley or Hollie! Oh decisions decisions. I mean, i guess it's not a big deal, it's just someones name who will be carrying it around for the rest of their life that's all. ;)

So a couple weeks ago I got to take a little vacation! It was so much fun, the only thing that would have made it better was if Jared could have come with me! i started out by flying from Portland into bakersfield! Krystalee was there with Fife!!! It was so great spending the whole vacation with KL and Fife! I just love that boy! Hes just the cuttest little chubby cheeked baby in the whole world! So we spent a few days in California with our parents and Donny and Alyssa! It was really fun, i wish we could have stayed in Cali for longer! The weather was just so perfect and hot! We ran the river and had a picnic and i had a baby shower there too! It was all so much fun! Then we drove to utah for the next week and a half! We visited Troy and Aubree in logan and got to meet new baby maysa! She is soooo cute! oh my goodness so precious! And we saw new baby Miriam as well! Dang, jared and i have our work cut out for us if we want to have the cuttest babies...gulp! We also went to Elk Ridge for a few days, and we stayed in Provo with Colby and Mykel for a few days too! It was all very fun! i loved being able to see everyone! We ended the trip staying at Gma and Gpa's house in Draper for a couple days! It's always fun at Grandma's house! 

Me and KL on the Kern

Colby carrying sleeping Fife, dad and kl hiking up Red Rock Canyon in Provo

So I've been home for a couple weeks now, which is super strange because i feel like I just got home! The weather here has actually been pretty nice! IT was sunny all last week and its sunny today too! I'm actually sitting outside on our picnic table as I write this because the sun feels so good! Tonight I am challenging Jared to another tennis match, we played last week and i lost by one game! (but i let him win, ha! Like he could actually beat me! ;) 

Jared and i at our latest tennis match!

today's view out our sliding door

Ok one last story. On sunday We were over at jareds parents house for sunday dinner. After dinner we decided to play a game called Heads Up, it was our first time playing it. basically you have a word but can't see it and everyone on your team trys to explain it to you and you have to guess what it is. It was a fun game and it got me laughing pretty hard! Well I was drinking some milk and started to laugh! Never a good combination! well milk started draining out of my nose so i headed for the bathroom thinking OH SHOOT! And then i started coughing because i was choking on the milk! And since i've been pregnant its never a good idea to cough, ever. Well I couldn't help it! I peed my pants like completely! It was so bad! So I call jared over and quietly ask him to go find me a new pair of pants somewhere. he closes the door and i hear his booming voice announce to everyone that "Sierra is in the bathroom and needs a new pair of pants!" Wow. Wow. I sure do love that guy. Well tah tah for now! 
I wanted to post more pictures but my computer wouldnt let me!