The Walkers

Keatons "crazy" excited smile

This Pic melts my heart. Keaton and Grandpa up at the Cabin

Uncle Jon and his son Patrick

     Finally home after 6 long months of being away. This is by far the longest we have been away from home for a summer but such a fun summer it was! I was so nervous going into it and starting with a new company and new people but they ended  up being the best group of wives I could have asked for! I think this summer flew faster than any other! Flying home with two kiddos and just me was interesting to say the least. We actually spent more time in the back socializing with the flight attendants then being in our seats . Kaleb was being a little flirt and me.... well I might have been seeking refuge just a little bit from a a creepy couple on the plane ... Im not going to say what ethnicity they were because it doesn't matter other then some things that they might feel are "appropriate" in their culture are NOT in mine!! That being said this is the story..... tell me how you would react if you had a woman keep stealing a seat close to you every time someone near you got up to go to the bathroom and then not only oooooing and ahhhing over your baby but physically taking your 9 month out of your arms against your protests and having her husband snap pictures of her holding YOUR baby  while you are grabbing your baby back!! Yes this happened to me. This really nice man started urging this lady to back off because she just wouldn't stop. She didn't speak english but my body language was pretty clear! Anyways I made friends with the flight attendants and it made time go fast to not be stuck in our seats the entire time.  The day after I flew into SLC I participated in the Park City Dirty Dash 10K- Oh my goodness this was SO much fun I was so happy my siblings were willing and excited about doing it with me! Then I made the 4 hour trek home and Mike came home a week or so later pulling our car and stuff with him! And we've been going crazy ever since getting things settled back in. Kaleb has also started preschool and we got to spend some time at the Walker cabin on Henrys lake before winterizing it. I feel so extremely blessed to go up to that cabin every year I love it and the Kids love it! 

Naomi and Amanda-- These girls are AMAZING! I absolutely love them! So glad I met them! This was our Good Bye Dinner at Cheesecake Factory.

Getting checked in at the airport

Packing the luggage was probably the hardest part!

Going to the park with "Dama"

Morning of my 10K.......... My lovely sister signed us up for the earliest time..... This was me at 5:30 a.m. waiting to head to Park city...... it was a VERY cold but fun morning! (I think keat is trying to copy my duck face ;) )

Headed back to the Hotel after the run and our hott showers.

 My sister and I planned kind of an impromptu family reunion this year. Our whole family wasn't there but we still wanted to get together and do something fun. Our "Theme" was halloween and Minuet to Win it. 

Mikes family has the only cabin on the south side of Henrys Lake and it is RIGHT on the lake. Words cannot even describe the beauty!

Baked some goodies to bring!

Sunrise on Henrys Lake

We planned some fun activities for the kiddos. This was a Cupcake/Cake walk that we  did with them.

Frankenstein Noise makers....... ALLLLL the kids loved these the babies kept trying to steal the big kids!

Mike won the Most awesome Dad/Uncle award. He spent a couple hours playing all the old school trampoline games with the kiddos. I joined it too-- It was a lot of fun!

Late night S'mores and glow in dark lanterns with the kids.

LOTS of this! :)

Playing on the tramp

Mike steam-rolling me

Grandpa and some of his grandkids. I don't Really "look-up-to" or genuinely admire very many people in this world but this man is DEFINITELY someone that I wholeheartedly admire and look up to. He is amazing. Tid Bits of our time up at the cabin.....

So I never really updated our Blog this last summer! Where has the time gone!? It goes too fast. Im averaging one blog post a year hopefully I can be better!  This past year we switched companies.  We switched from vivint to Pinnacle. For those of you that don't know they are both alarm companies. I remember 4 or so years ago when we first got approached I was so nervous at the thought of moving clear across the United States to Washington DC. I was only 18 And Mike was only 20 we had Kaleb and had just purchased our first home 6 months prior so the thought of the "unknown" was terrifying! We were currently enrolled in ISU so we decided we would just try it out after we finished our second semester. Vivint was willing to work with us and let us wait until our courses ended in May to fly out. Well 4 summers later here we are ha ha! It seems every year we go out a little earlier.... stay a little later. I have such mixed feeling with this job industry! We LOVE to travel and we love the freedom the money gives us. We were blessed to be able to pay for 2 years of school without loans and received so many other blessings from this job including life long friendships we've built with people. We have lived in Washington DC/Rockville MD, Pittsburg PA/Wilmington VA and then last but not least Washington DC and Richmond VA. Aside from living in those places we have also traveled all the way down through AZ and NM close to the mexican boarder for 6 weeks.  I have also had the opportunity to travel all over West virginia, Philadelphia PA, Hershey PA,  New Jersey, Buffalo NY and NYC, Niagara Falls NY, Delaware, Maryland, North carolina and South Carolina and last but not least Ohio. Driving across the country every year also has its perks. My MOST favorite thing about traveling is Mike and I talk and talk and talk about EVERYTHING! Over the course of Mike and I's cross country travels we have seen Mount Rushmore, Chicago IL, Kansas City, St. Louis,  Kentucky-- those are my most memorable... I don't have much to say about all the other states we went through ;)
        The funny thing with this job is I start feeling like our life is too crazy and then we get home and after being home for a few months we start feeling restless to go somewhere or do something! The cons are we really do put soooooo much on hold to leave for the summer, we pay double living expenses and as we have more children and they get older is wears on them more and more.
      Here is a random little video with clips from the summer of nothing in-particular....... After playing with IMovie my mind is spinning about what videos I should be getting of the fam.

So I am really terrible at staying caught up on our blog there are always several month gaps in between posts. I'm making it a personal goal to be better at it. There are so many things that are happening in our lives that I want to remember and I'm going to work on documenting them better!
      Since I last posted we have had  two major changes in the walker household; an adorable healthy baby boy joined our family on December 5th 2011, and  we moved clear across the united states to Glen Allen (Richmond) Virginia! We are temporarily over here until the end of August but its amazing how familiar you can became with an area so fast. Its BEAUTIFUL here but the sticky humidity is a killer! I love the east coast! We've spent the last 4 summers traveling all up and down and around the east coast and central united states (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvanian, Washington DC, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Illinois, Indiana, Kansas and Missouri). You can say we LOVE to travel! From My last post you know that my pregnancy was really high risk with Keaton and I was on bed rest for the majority of it Well he was born at 38 weeks! Such a blessing we made it that far! We are so grateful for him he has been such a blessing and a wonderful amazing addition to our family words cant even express. I Remember sitting in the hospital with Mike and Kaleb holding Keaton and thinking how crazy it was that adding another member to our family just Increased the love within our family and home.... I remember having a small melt down before having Keaton realizing it wouldn't be just Kaleb and me anymore. It had been just the two of us being "buddies" for so long. Its silly now to think that crossed my mind. Kaleb LOVES having a little brother and they are just the cutest together! A lot of people ask me if it was a hard adjustment going from 1 to 2. To be honest it was an easier adjustment than I thought it would be but they are 3 1/2 years apart! The only thing I struggle with is "Time". Getting places on time became a little harder. And managing time for each so they both still get that one on one special mommy time!
I was a little apprehensive about this summer because we switched companies but I have to say I'm glad I just put my trust in my husband it has been so great for us! We absolutely love the group of people we are out here with. A lot of them I'm grateful to have met and become friends with they are truly great people. I was worried because I didn't know anyone this summer I'd be lonely but everyone has been so fun and so welcoming!


 This was me right before leaving to go have Keaton! BIG belly!


Traveling over to Virginia....

And last but not least there was a fair share of Keaton doing this ^ during the trip. He didn't exactly like being in his car seat too much which was new for us because Kaleb has always been an AMAZING traveler!! Oh well Keat will learn ;)

Till next time......

This last 4th of July was probably one of my favorites that we have had in a long time!
The morning started off stressful and hectic because I was trying to get everything pack to fly out bright and early on the 5th! We had a BBQ in the afternoon followed by the kids playing some baseball and the adults playing with fireworks. When it got dark we lit off fireworks. We definitely were not lacking in fireworks this year that day Mike went and bought a ton of fireworks as well as Brandon and one other guy that was out there! Im sure between the 3 of them alone we had over 1000 dollars worth. My favorite was the mortars mike bought! He bought over 40 of them. If you don't know what they are, they are the huge huge fireworks that you see at big firework shows! So we had the guys lining like 5 up at a time and lighting them off! We also had at least 3 big firework shows going on around us that we could see. Some of the boys ended that day with wounds because as you know boys will be boys and they took it upon themselves to have wars with an assortment of fireworks. Some left with holes in their clothes some with burn marks on their skin. CRAZY BOYS! And the cool thing is this all took place in the parking lot of our hotel! Got to love a small town in Virginia! After Fireworks we decided to end the day going out for some yummy milkshakes!

When I flew home on the 5th of July I was originally only planning on flying back to see my nephew be born and have my 18/20 week ultrasound appt but ended up not being able to fly back to VA. I tried to stay super busy when I got home I had big plans to go to bear lake and go boating and rent jet skis and go hiking and floating the river and on and on.... well i only got to do a small handful of what I had in mind. When I went into my 18/20 week appt they discovered my cervix had begun to thin. Usually at that point in pregnancy the like it to be at least a 4 or a 5. Well mine was a 2.5 which meant I just became a high risk pregnancy (as if i wasn't before) and am at a huge risk for pre-term labor. They put me on strict bed rest and asked if I would come back in a week. I honestly broke down a little when I heard this news because I just felt like man if its not one thing its got to be another I so badly want to give kaleb a sibling and add another little member to our family does it really have to be so hard!? Kaleb came so unexpectedly and easily with absolutely NO complications ,even labor was awesome, so I just didn't get it!