Death of our hampster Evee

She died today, we found her dead in her cage.
Alas farewell good hamster, you were a good pet

another year gone

So I find myself at the end of the year and in a mood of reflection. I can't believe the year is already over, and my baby is over 9 months old. it has been so much fun to watch him learn new things, and amazing to see his personality developing. here are some fun pictures of him





we got these taken the wee before Christmas, and I just love how adorable he looks in all of them, these ones just a small sampling! Its amazing to think that just a short while ago I was not a mother, when now it seems like it is the center focus of my life.

a couple of my favorite moments that we recorded

The first time we were able to catch his laugh on the camera





his way to big coat





afraid of the cow (the camera work is terrible :))






this is my favorite time of the day, when it comes time to feed him. Jeffereson LOVES food, he can't get enough of it, and if you take to long to get it to his mouth he freaks out. when he he gets excited his hands go crazy, and when its time to eat they are going faster than at any other time!! here is my little bird....

I pod Idol

so I have a lot of videos and pictures of Jefferson, but our connector broke so those are coming in a few days, but Joe Thomas recorded this while we were playing a game called I Pod Idol that some girls came up with while I was in China. how it goes like this; you put a blind-fold on and someone picks a song on the Ipod and you put the earphones in and turn it up all the way so you can't see or hear anyone watching you, and the people watching can't hear the song, except for you singing it, its really funny, and this is Michael doing Enrique Iglaseous (sp?) Bialamos. enjoy!

our Miracle has arrived!!

On Wednesday March 18, 2009 Jefferson Michael Thomas entered the world at 6:42pm. we are so excited to have him as an addition to our family! I was surprised how fast it went! I was in labor for about 6 hours and I only had to push for about 5 minutes. my doctor cheated a little, Jefferson was posterior ( his face was the wrong direction) so he used forceps to flip him over and pull him a little into the birth canal, but he has no marks from the forceps because we have an awesome doctor. Both Michael and I could not stop grinning, it seems almost unreal that this little baby could actually be ours:) but there is no doubt because he looks just like his daddy! he was 8 lbs 4 oz and 21 inches long, so he was a big baby, but not as big as I was expecting! we were in the hospital for a couple of days spending quality time recovering and loving our new little baby. we came home Friday and found out Saturday that he has some jaundice and has to be in a Biliruben bed, so that has been a bit of a challenge because he has to stay in it all the time except to feed and change diapers, but hopefully that will only be needed for a couple of days. my mom has been here for the weekend and has been a huge help with everything and I am so greatful! Our little baby is amazing and its incredible to me how much I love this little boy that I have only known for 4 days! if you want to see more pictures of him click on his picture in this link or I have the link on the side all updated, have fun, he is adorable!!!!!

the amazing escape artist hamster

So our little family pet hamster ( I can't have a dog yet, so I have to have something!) named Evee, short for evil Canieval (sp?) because she has no fear and will jump off almost anything has lived happily with us for about a year. I usually have the lid off the cage becasue she has never been able to get out and its just easier to get to her and play with her that way. However, the other day I was doing dishes and turned around, and there was my hamster scampering around on the floor. needless to say I was rather surprised and have had the lid on ever since, but the next day I took it off and got the camera, and managed to catch on film exactly how she had done it, I was amazed!

waiting for Baby Jefferson!

My Little Man at about 20 weeks

Hey, I am alive, and hopefully my blog will be too from now on!
Ok a few cool things about being pregnant

#1. Baby showers!
well I had my first baby shower, a combination shower with wendy, and it was so much fun! Elizabeth put it on and I loved it! she also did this adorable scrapbook page and emailed to me, and I hope she doesn't mind that I am going to show it off here!


#2. getting the room ready!
So we are getting ready to paint the nursery in the next week or two. That will be so fun, I will get to start finding a place for everything that I have gotten and actually set up little Jeff's room! hooray! in the meantime I am finding myself in the nesting stage, I feel like I have to clean everything, reorganize everything. Its funny I get this list in my head of all the things I am going to do, and then after doing one of them I am exhausted, its funny how being pregnant makes everything twice as difficult to do, hahaha, but thats ok, Im not going to school so I have time:)

#3 speculating
I find myself wondering what my little kick-boxer is going to be like when he finally gets here a lot lately. I can tell he is going to be an active guy just like his daddy. I also wonder what he will look like and find myself picking out features that I think he will have from me and from mike. so the other day I pulled out brand new baby pictures of me and mike and put them next to each other and that was a lot of fun, so I am going to post the pictures

baby Mike

Baby Annie

any speculations as to what baby Jefferson is going to look like?

June Summer fun!

So Summer has been busy and fun for Mike and I. we managed to sell our contract at the end of may. we also had a place to move to because we ran into Mikes good family friend who he grew up with, and although she lives in Virginia now, she has a house in Provo she rents out and she was looking for renters. So that was a blessing to have those two things happen so close together. On the 12th we moved into our new house, and we have loved it.



Front View to our new cute house!

On the 14th, we celebrated my 21st birthday (Annie) by getting drunk and going to Vegas ;) no just kidding, we went to olive garden for dinner then mike took me shopping, bought me the book Host, by Stephanie Meyer, and some clothes. The 15th is actually my birthday, but we were taking off to my parents house so that we could leave with them early Monday morning for our family trip to Nauvoo and reunion in Kansas. It was a really long drive, but thankfully we brought a portable DVD player, and we were able to stay entertained with StarWars, Smallville, and a few other movies. In the morning on the day we arrived in Nauvoo, we were able to stop and spend some time in Adam-ondi-Ahmen because the GPS in the car took us a different route than originally planned. Although it is a simple valley, it has a really neat feeling about it there, knowing that Adam gathered all his posterity there, and that all the faithful saints will be gathered there with Christ again, it is a really special place to be.

Me and Mike at Adam-ondi-Ahmen


Nauvoo Day one

On the drive we saw a lot of the flooding that was going on, especially with the Mississippi, we had to detour because our bridge was under water, but we saw it when we went across another bridge next to it. it was insane to see how much flooding there was, and really sad to see so much damage, whole fields under water and such things. We arrived in Nauvoo later that evening, it was really special to drive around the corner and see the Nauvoo temple all lit up, wow it was incredible, both the beauty and the feeling. Shawn, Becca, Sarah, and Ethan had arrived earlier that day so we met up with them ate dinner, and went to a fun play that was put on by the missionaries. by the time that was over, the day was to and we went back to the Hotel to greet Dave and Michelle who were just arriving, and who were so gracious to share a hotel room with us when our reservation fell through!
this is a picture taken out the side of our car window
as we were driving.


The beautiful Temple


Nauvoo day 2
We started the second day in the Nauvoo Temple doing a session, which is a choice experience I will never forget, there was a really amazing spirit in that temple, I felt privileged to be able to enter the rebuilt temple and feel the spirit of the saints who were in the original temple. After that we went to a bakery for lunch where we ran into Felicia Bennett, a roomate and close friend I had in St. George, who also became a close friend of Mike's, she has been in Nauvoo serving a summer singing mission, it was fun to run into her!
We spent the rest of the second day touring Nauvoo, and seeing all the neat sites there were to see. We went on a wagon ride through the town and saw all the houses and shops that are still there, or have been rebuilt. It was neat to be able to see places where early saints lived, like Parley P. Pratt, Wilford woodruff, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and so many others. Near the end of the tour we went to the end of Parley street, which was flooded, but this was the street the pioneers lined up to cross the Mississippi. after that we got to go and take a tour of the Joseph Smith sites, his original house in Nauvoo, the Mansion house he moved into, Hotel Nauvoo where his and Hyrum's body's was secretly placed instead of the Funeral site, the Cemetary where the Smith bodies all were moved eventually, and the Red Brick Store, in the upstairs there were many important meetings, including the forming of the Relief Society. What a neat experience to walk in places where we knew the Prophet walked and lived. we went and saw the brick house and learned how they made bricks back then, and got a Nauvoo brick.
After that we went and saw the Carthage Jail. If I didn't do anything else while I was there it would have been worth it to see the Carthage jail. The feeling in there, especially in the room where the prophet sealed his testimony with his blood was incredible, I was not expecting it to be so incredible, but it was an experience I will not soon forget.
Then we came back just in time to see the play outside called Sunset on the Mississippi, this was such a fun play, it was almost like a talent show for the performing missionaries and in my opinion is a must see for anyone who goes to Nauvoo.
The Wagon Ride


the top floor of the Red brick house where Relief Society was formed

Carthage Jail

Nauvoo Day 3
On the third day we got up early and went and did baptisms in the temple, Bruce and Joseph were able to join us there. after which we took some family pictures in front of the temple ( we also did this after the session, but Me and Mike had forgotten our camera). Mom and Dad wanted to get on the road so we could make it to the dinner for the reunion, so we packed up and were on the road again, and after a few detours because of flooding, we were able to make it on the right route headed for Kansas.

KANSAS

We arrived in Kansas that evening just in time for dinner. we were at one of my dads cousins houses. This reunion was for all my dad's dad's family. It is interesting because there are only 4 of my grandpas siblings left living., all brothers, and my grandpa is not among them. That night me and Mike spent the night in a camper at the house of our second cousins the Knapps, they were some of the most sweet gracious people I have ever met. they live on a farm, but they are not the ones that work the farm. It was a fun place to stay, out in the country, lots of stars ( when it was not storming...) and fireflies. The next day we had breakfast in the downstairs of the Knapps church with all the family. after that we had a little break before lunch. we went to a little pony express museum. after that we all met up at a restaurant and ate, did some family trivia, and took pictures with the different families. later that afternoon we met up at the original farm stead that my great grandparents Henry and Gertrude built. from there we did a tour where we got to see the dug out where an original house was built, we got to see the grave sites of Gertrude's parents, then we got to see the little one room school house where the kids all went to elementary school, and actually a lot of the cousins went there too, since it was only decommissioned as a school house 20 or so years ago, if my dad had grown up in Kansas he would have gone to school there. then we finished the tour at the cemetery where my Great grandparents are buried. it was so interesting to that there were a lot of graves there that were Droge's, which is unheard of in Utah. We then went back to the farm house stead for dinner. it was really neat to learn so much family history that I didn't know and to meet so many family members that I had not seen before. We stayed at the Knapps house again that night, but ended up in the house half way through the night, because of a storm:) the next day before taking off to come back home, we went to church with the Knapps. My grandpa was the only one of his brothers to join the LDS church, so my aunts and uncles are the only family that are members of our church. Kathrine Knapp's husband is a minister for the Babtists hope church, so we went to chuch with them, and it was the first time I had ever gone to a different church. it was an interesting experience, but a good one. I really appreciate the fullness of the truth that we have in our church. it was a fun trip!
anyway now that I am done with my novel, if you want to look at all the pictures I have the link to them on the side with the other pictures.

The original Homestead
My Great, great grandmother gravestone
Cute little nephew Sammy playing with a 3rd cousin The church we attended on sunday