Summer is here!

We're so glad the weather has finally decided to get warm! We've been doing some fun things lately. We've gone to the duck pond a couple times. Once with my mom, and then Barrett and I took Reese another day. She loves watching the ducks. When Barrett and I went, we tried to get Reese to help us feed the ducks, but when we gave her the bread she would immediately eat it instead of give it to the ducks! (she loves bread) Our friends Veneita and Bryan had a free ticket to Lagoon so they invited us to go with them last week! I love Lagoon, or any amusement park for that matter. Lagoon just happens to be the closest. They have a daughter a little younger than Reese, so we were able to switch off watching the girls and go on rides! So that was fun.

We went to the Raptors baseball game their opening night. We sat in the front row on the third base line and Reese kept wanting to lean over the wall and look at the players down below! They lit fireworks from the field after the game and Reese didn't quite know what to think about them. She cried a little at first when the loud noises started, but then she just stared up at them the rest of the time. It was fun to be right under the fireworks, except ash kept falling on us.

Reese has never been swimming yet, kindof sad, I know. I guess we just don't swim that much, and last year she was only about 3 months old so I only got her feet wet. So we decided to take her to the South Ogden splash pad to see how she would like the water. Once she got used to it she liked getting wet, but then she just wanted to walk down the sidewalk away from the water, so we left. But it was fun for a little bit. I love seeing her little belly in her swimming suit! Whenever we go outside, Reese wants to get down and practically run down the sidewalk, down the driveway, and up the stairs, which is scary because she has no caution. She wants to go down the sidewalk and see the neighbor's dog, and doesn't understand that we can't just go into other people's yards, so she cries when I won't let her. She just wants to go everywhere, it's exhausting! It's impossible to take pictures of her, she is constantly moving and won't look at me.

I wanted to post these pictures I took last week because I think she looks SO BIG!! She thinks that opening her mouth is smiling or something. Every time she sees me taking her picture she makes this open mouth face. I have so many pictures of her with her mouth open.Licking the water from the top of the blender in the dishwasher!

I got to go with my mom and sisters and brother to the play Singing in the Rain. (at Hale Center Theater in Provo) If you haven't seen a play there, the stage is in the middle of the audience. My sisters and I were in the front row and they gave us these ponchos to wear! They had a fun scene where it really rains and the guy dances around in it with his umbrella and gets everyone in the front wet. Then after the scene they come out and do a dance while sweeping the water to the center of the stage to a light post that I guess has a drain under it.

I have joined a Food Co-op, which has been pretty exciting. Every other Saturday morning I go get a laundry basket full of fruits and vegetables for $15. It's fun because you never know what you're going to get, it's different every time. The first week I went I got all of this stuff pictured below: Two romaine lettuce bunches, a bunch of spinach, green onions, celery, 6 ears of corn, cilantro, 1 avacado, 3 tomatoes, 1 pineapple, 1 canteloupe, 5 bananas, 5 apples, 7 mangoes, and 5 apricots. Today I got 1 romaine lettuce, 1 cauliflower, celery, 2 zucchinis, tons of green beans, 5 roma tomatoes, 4 lbs of red grapes, 1 lb of strawberries, a bag of cherries, 6 bananas, 8 braeburn apples, and 6 pluots (cross between plums and apricots? I don't really know what they are). Fun huh! If any of you live around Ogden you should really do this.

Watch Open House

I am having an interchangeable watch open house! Here are a couple examples of the bands I have bought from her. I love them! It will be


Thursday May 14th

6:30 to 8:30 pm

at my house

If you don't know where that is, leave me your e-mail and I will e-mail you the directions.

• Many styles and colors of watch faces and bands to choose from


• Reasonably priced


• open house -come any time


• bring friends! -everyone is invited

Exciting times at the Batchelders

So lets see, what exciting things have been happening with us lately? Well Reese pooped in her bath for the first time tonight, that was a joy! No it wasn't that bad, I could tell she was a little nervous that she did it, so I couldn't be mad or anything.

The real excitement is that Reese is starting to walk! It is so exciting seeing her take steps on her own! We love it. My sister wrote me a message on facebook that she had heard she was walking and looked on the blog for some video, and there was no video to be found. Terrible, I know. For some reason I've barely even recorded any of it! What kind of a mother am I? I've been meaning to put a video on the blog, but just haven't gotten to it.

The other excitement of the day was this morning when Reese and I were looking outside through the screen door, I saw that a bird has built a nest in my wreath hanging on the door! And not only built a nest, but laid three eggs in it! You can't see it looking at the wreath from the outside, (it's under that big flower) it's nestled right up against the window on the door, so you can see right into the nest looking from the inside.

I don't know what to do! I haven't seen the bird at all today, I've been peeking at the nest periodically, so I don't know if she has abandoned it or if she's still around somewhere. I don't really want to have little baby birds making all sorts of noise at my front door (I've had that experience in another house, there was a nest above the back door in the rafters somewhere, and boy were they noisy), and I really don't want to have the mother bird dive bombing whoever comes to my front door to protect her babies (also a previous experience from the other house). I would feel bad for the mother actually, because she would always be scared that someone was attacking them. She really should have scoped out a more private location...

We got a new bike trailer! This was the first time trying it out around the house. I'm so excited to go on family bike rides. Reese seems to like it, as long as it stays moving. I was afraid she would be scared in it, because she is a little scaredy cat about a lot of things, but she did ok. She would not keep her helmet on though, I don't know what to do about that.

Reese's birthday!

This is Reese's new big girl car seat! (Her main birthday gift from us -how exciting huh). We started using it a couple weeks before her birthday, and she loves being able to look around in it.

She got a birthday girl crown as one of her gifts. She wouldn't keep it on for more than two seconds of course, but it was cute. The necklace goes with it.

Of course she had to have her own little cake with lots of chocolate frosting on it to get as messy as possible. At first she just touched the very top of it and laughed like "you're really going to let me touch this?"

This picture is blurry, but her face was so funny-her eyes got really big as she pushed her hand all the way into the cake.

Birthday guests -my Mom, brother Jade, and sister Micall. My dad and brother Ryan were there, they just came late and I didn't get a picture of them. My sister Kellie and her boyfriend Heath

My sister Krista and Reese in her new swimming pool she got as one of her gifts.

Barrett's sister Brittny and brother Wade

Our friends Brett, Debbie and Taylor Sims. I was glad Reese got to have some little girls come to her party too, not just grown ups!

Our friends Paul, Ashley and Brooklynn Giddings. Brooklynn was so cute to help Reese walk around and she loved helping Reese with her presents! Okay I'm going to copy you Ashley. This picture was taken when Reese was only about 5 days old. (Too bad you can't really see her huh :)And so we had to take another one at the party now that the girls are so grown up!

Thanks everyone for the nice gifts and for sharing the day with us! We had so much fun and were glad you all could make it.

Reese had her one year appointment on Monday. She weighs 21 lb 12 oz (65%), 30 1/4 inches tall (85%) and her head is in the 85% as well. She is already in the 85th percentile for height and is still skeletally immature (her soft spot hasn't closed and she's a little behind with her teeth), so the doctor thinks she is going to be tall. She asked if we have tall people in our families, which we don't really, mostly average. I just thought that was interesting. I don't know if I believe her, but I guess we'll see.

Now if I could only get her to drink milk. She takes one little swallow and then pushes it away. If anyone has any suggestions please share!

It's hard to believe...

It's hard to believe that it's already been one whole year since our sweet little baby Reese was born!! She is one year old today. This has definitely been the fastest year of my life! I still remember that day so well. At the same time I don't even remember what is was like before Reese was part of our family, she is our whole life now. She brings us so much joy and happiness, and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be her mother.

She has gone from this cute little thing......To this cute little (but bigger) thing. She loves us to help her walk, and to walk with her walker. I think it won't be too much longer before she can do it on her own. She stands up on everything and walks along furniture or the wall or whatever she can hold onto.
She has such a cute little personality. It's so exciting to see her learn so many new things all the time. Sometimes I get surprised by the things she knows and the things she can do. I've been asking her to point to things in books lately like a duck, shoes, socks, bird, ball, and she can point to all of them! She's learning where all of her body parts are, and sometimes she'll know a part that I didn't teach her, she just knew.

She loves to look at herself in the mirror and give kisses. She loves to give kisses to all of her stuffed animals and to animals and people in books.

I love this girl so much!

Happy Birthday Reese!!

I'm finally done!

I'm finally done with all of the blocks I'm selling this weekend at the boutique! With only two days to spare! I could have been done a long time ago, but I've been procrastinating of course. So here are some pictures. You can't really tell how bright the colors are in the pictures though. I thought they turned out cute!