Ok so I felt bad about the no pictures thing so here are some cute ones of Paige we got taken at Target a few months ago.

It does seem less worth it to blog when you have no pictures, but it is better than nothing. I just though I would update everyone on our life, not that much is going on. Ju is still working and going to school, he just officually got his associates degree. Now we have to figure out which degree his extra credits will go towards the best. I just went back to work, for the year. I have 30 kindergarteners in my class this year, which is better than my 31 last year. I am missing all my time with Paige, but it is good for both of us to get out of the house. Paige is getting so big, I can hardly believe it. She is running all over the place and saying new words all the time, not to mention all the cute tricks we teach her to do. It is so much fun to be parents. She got stung by her first bee today after being pushed in a pond by her cousin!! Thankfully she is fine. Hope everyone is good. See ya.

I hate doing blogs with no pictures, but I figured that a blog without pictures is better then no blog at all.

I thought I would give you an update on what we are up to. My last blog was about my baby fish. Unfortunately none of them survived. The last one died a couple of days ago. Its ok though, we were told it was a long shot that any of them would survive. I keep having amonia problems in my tank, which were stable before the babies, but the addition of the babies made it spike and they (as well as goldie) died because of it. At least I still have Burtis my beta, he was in an isolated tank so he wasn't effected by the amonia (besides, betas are like really tough fish and have this crazy will to live and are really tough.) So, once I can get the water levels fixed in the big tank Burtis will go back to being the king of the tank.

Sean started his new job last week. He is the Chemical Coordinator for the Organic Lab program at Texas A&M. Its great!! Besides the increase in his pay check, he already loves it and is really happy with it. Right now he's crazy busy since school starts next week. He also has been working last week and this week to finish his summer grad student job so for last week and this week he has been at the new job from 8-5 then the other job from 5-7. Its been crazy!!! But he's a trooper and is making it through.

I am still working my same job at the insurance place. THings have been rocky in the past but they have made some changes and things are starting to get better so thats great!!! There are suppose to be more changes coming in Sept so hopefully that happens!

Let's see, well Sean and I just started a new diet, its the Michael Thurmonds 6 week body makeover diet. Sean's grad professor is on this diet with her husband and she's lost 40 pounds and the husband lost 60 pounds (in about 6 months) so we are hopeful. The biggest thing with the diet is portion control and eating the right foods. For instance, we eat 6 meals a day. There's choices for it but because of our body types it limits things. Here's an average day for me and Sean:
______________Rachelle______________Sean____________
Breakfast: 2 eggs whites_________4 egg whites
__________1/2 cup oatmeal________1 cup potatos
__________1/2 cup fruit__________1/2 cup fruit

Snack_____2 oz chicken___________4 oz chicken
__________1/2 cup potatoes_______1 cup potatoes

Lunch_____Salad
__________2 oz chicken___________4 oz chicken
__________1/2 cup rice___________1 cup rice
__________1 cup peas_____________1 cup peas

Snack_____2 oz chicken___________4 oz chicken
__________1/2 cup potatoes_______1 cup potatoes

Dinner____2 oz chicken___________4 oz chicken
__________1/2 cup carb___________1 c carb
__________1-2 serv veggies_______1-2 serv veggies

Snack_____1/2 cup fruit__________1/2 cup fruit

The chicken option can be substituted for lots of different types of fish or turkey. Right now we're eating alot of chicken since I don't like fish. For dinner we can sometimes have red meat, but our body type is supposed to limit red meat. So yeah, i'll let you know how it goes.

Ok, so this turned out to be a longer blog then I thought (i must have more time on my hands then I realized)

I can't believe my little girl is now 1! This year has gone by incredibly fast and we are having so much fun with her and her cute personality. Here are her current stats:

Height - 30 inches (75th percentile)
Weight - 17.5 lbs (5th percentile)

Long, skinny, and still growing! Most everyone was busy on her actual birthday, so we had her party on Monday night at Nevoles where Josh's brothers work. These pictures don't do justice to how cute she looked in her little party dress. (I have to admit I really enjoy dressing her up.) We love you so much Brooklyn! We are blessed to have you in our family and we love your sweet personality and joy you bring us all. We hope you had a wonderful birthday!

Pic #1 - This picture was taken when we got home. All the partying wore Brooklyn right out!
Pic #2 - Josh with Brooklyn.
Pic #3 - Shantelle with Brooklyn.
Pic #4 - Brayden getting in on the present opening action.
Pic #5 - Dad helping Brooklyn open her presents.
Pic #6 - I don't know who was more excited for the doll and stroller, me or Brooklyn. I'm so excited to start playing with girly stuff, rather than balls all day long. Thanks mom for the fun gift! Brooklyn absolutely loves it!
Pic #7 - Brooklyn wasn't a fan of getting cleaned up.
Pic #8 - On Brayden's 1st birthday we gave him his first taste of chocolate by making him a chocolate cake. We quickly found out he doesn't like chocolate so he wouldn't eat it. We didn't want to take the chance with Brooklyn so I stayed safe and got her a strawberry cake to share with Brayden. I did, however, get everyone else a yummy chocolate caramel ice cream cake.
Pic #9 - Mom and dad with Brooklyn

I just finished 11 new posts on our blog. I was going to post them all here also, but thought I'd spare you all the lengthy entries. If you are interested, head on over to www.joshandshantelle.blogspot.com to check them out. They include:

Lake Powell
The Cabin
Salt Lake County Fair
and many more!!!

*On the right side of the blog is a blog archive section. Click on July to see Lake Powell and the cabin.

So....I wrote a really really long and complex blog on mine and sean's blog....and well its 1:30am and I should go to bed and I don't want to wait for the pics to download again, so check it out at www.seanandrachelle.blogspot.com

Well...it happened. Josh talked me into getting a dog. Our neighbor across the street has a chocolate lab that had 5 puppies and as soon as I saw them I knew we were in trouble. We talked about it for about a month and ended up compromising quite a bit. We finally both felt good about it, however we had fallen in love with both the yellow and black labs. It took us about a week to decide which one to get, and on Friday, July 10 we brought the yellow one home with us to stay. We decided on the yellow one because she was the cuddliest and calmest of them all. She is also the smallest. We thought she would do better with the kids than the black one, which was the most aggressive. I'm still not 100% sure that I can do this, but because Josh agreed that it will be an outside dog I am going to try and hang in there until she can stay outside all the time. The first four pics are when we were trying to decide which one to get, about 2 days before we brought her home. After seeing Brayden with her, how could I not say yes?!

As for her name...that's another story. We took her to Josh's parent's house the night we got her and jokingly I mentioned the name Jazz to Josh's mom. Josh overheard and went with it. To me, Jazz is more of a boy's name so we compromised. We named her Jasmine, which for short will be Jazz. It's grown on us and we love her. What sold me on the name is how cute Brayden was when he started calling her Jasmine and Jazz. The last four pics are from the first night.

First off I just want to say congrats to Nate and Celeste, we can't wait to meet Sadie. We are glad everything went well and wish you luck in this new adventure!!

Anyway,so Paige gets really bad diaper rashes, and it takes a lot of work to get rid of them. One of the things we do is let her run around naked to help dry it out. So the other day I took her outside and just let her play, I could not help but take pictures of her many activities. Like blowing bubbles, watering the flowers, sweeping, and my favorite, running down the street naked!! Enjoy!

I didn't take any pictures on Sunday, so you'll all have to wait with anticipation for Ryon to post those - hint, hint. We had a wonderful experience attending Simon's baby blessing. It was really neat to share it with my brother and his family. The blessing was beautiful and the spirit was very strong. Thank you Ryon and Jana for inviting us and taking care of us all weekend. We had a wonderful time and are excited to do it again!

After we were done with the waterslide, we put the kids down for a quick nap. Before we headed to Jana's sister's house for a BBQ, I tried to get some pictures of the kids. It didn't go so well. And, of course, I realized when I got home that I hadn't taken any pictures of Hannah, Carson, or Harrison. I was very bummed since that was one of the few things I wanted to do while I was there. Oh well...there's always next year! The first 4 pictures are what I ended up with.

We had a lot of fun with Jana's family at the BBQ. My parents were busy all weekend so they weren't able to make it until the BBQ. For the short time they were there, it was a lot of fun. Once again, the tire swings were a big hit with our kids. Thanks mom for pushing them all night

As we were all running to the cars to make it to the fireworks, I realized we hadn't taken a family picture yet. We quickly snapped a few and off we went.

We quickly drove to Idaho Falls to watch their infamous fireworks shows. It's supposedly one of the biggest in the nation. We parked at Jana's great aunt's house and walked to find a spot just as it started. They broadcast the music and narration over the radio, so we luckily were by a truck with it's windows down. It was a fantastic show and the kids loved it, even Brayden! (And yes, I know Brayden is a little old to have a binky. We're working on it...)

Because there was only one entrance to the neighborhood we were in, it took us 2 hours to drive the 1/2 mile to the freeway. We couldn't believe the gridlock we were in and how rude people are. We finally made it home and had a great night of sleep. Thanks Ryon and Jana for a great holiday!