The Windy City

Well our next adventure has begun here in the Windy City of Chicago. The first couple of weeks were rough, but I think we are finally getting used to our new life now. Blake is happy to have us to come home to, and we are happy to be a family again. The girls and I are trying to figure out how to fill our days so that we can keep busy. Luckily we live close to the library, children's I museum, and the YMCA where we signed Jay up for a wacky wiggles class that she absolutely loves. They have a swimming pool at the Y too so we are looking forward to doing that there too with Blake on the weekends. We live in a really nice area and our ward is great. Jaylee stayed in the second part of nursery by herself which for those who know her was huge! The ladies in there are amazing!!! She really enjoys being there "with all my friends" as she says it. I can tell that she gets bored with it just being Emery and me all day, so any chance to be with other kids is a real treat for her. Chick-fil-a had become our favorite place to eat because of the play place the have and the new friends she gets to play with;)

Emery's first few weeks

Wow I can't believe my little baby is already a few weeks old. It's been a blur and probably the longest and shortest weeks of my life. It was nice that Blake was able to come right in time an spend two weeks here. It was really sad to see him go again. Jaylee is loving being a big sister and is so good with Emery. She has just the right balance of being excited about her but I don't have to worry about her trying to pick her up or hold her too long. She likes to have her turn with her and then she is done. She does panic when she starts crying and is very concerned if she doesn't know where she is. She's like "mom where is baby sister" like I am going to forget about her and she needs to remind me haha it's cute and fun. Here's some fun pics of our first few weeks together

Meet Emery

Emery Joy Voorhees was born on Saturday November 10th at 6:12pm. She weighed 8 pounds and was 19 1/2 inches long.

I waited as long as a could to hold out for Blake and he made it just in time. He flew in Saturday morning and we went to the hospital an hour after he got here. When I went in they checked me and I was dilated to a 4+ and started me on antibiotics and pitocin to get my contractions more regular. We waited for the doctor to come in and break my water and once he finally got there and did that, I had her about a half hour later. I went from a 6 to a 10 in a matter of 20-30 mins and then pushed about 4 times and she popped out. This time I opted to get a low dosage epideral (since I wasn't at an 8 this time, dang;) so things went pretty smoothly. She is such a good baby and has thick black hair! Jaylee is loving being a big sister and is way cute with her. Every morning she likes to come in and give her a kiss on head and say oh she's so cute. We hope this continues....

It's a girl!

Well we just found out that baby number two is another girl! Yay! When the ultrasound technician said it was a girl I turned to Blake and said well we must need more drama in our life haha! We are way excited that Jaylee gets a sister, and she seems pretty happy about it too so hopefully that stays after the baby is here. Wish us luck haha

Wrapping up our NYC adventure

So this past month has been a whirlwind! Between Blake traveling for interviews, studying for finals, and finally graduating, and me keeping busy with Jaylee and special guests (Lacey, Alicia, their friend Tom and Blake's dad) all while being PREGNANT, wow what a month! Yep I am pregnant with number 2 and due in November. Blake got a couple of job offers but we finally decided on a firm in Chicago called McDermott, Will and Emery. So off we go on another adventure, wow it seems like we have had a lot. He won't start until the fall so we are headed back to Utah for the summer which I am super excited about! I have been missing family like crazy and am sad that we won't be able to stay there for long, but at least it is a few months. We have had a blast here in the big city but we are definitely ready to move on. So here's some pics from the past few weeks First Blake's Graduation YAY! We were excited that Blake's dad got to come and see him graduate, little did we all know that it was going to be 3 hours long, haha!

Right after graduation we hit the last thing on our to do list and went to a Yankees game.

We also celebrated Jaylee's 2nd birthday while Lacey, Alicia and Tom were here.

These are pics of our fun adventures in the city while Lacey was here We went to the Bronx Zoo and it was huge! Luckily there was a zoo tram that took us around to the exhibits or else we wouldn't have seen it all. Jaylee's favorite part was feeding the goats. We thought she would be scared but she walked right up and stuck her hand right close to the goats mouth and it ate it up. She laughed and wanted to keep doing it over and over and over.

We also walked over the brooklyn bridge and played at the park on the other side. It had awesome views and we were glad that we did it because we almost decided not to when we saw how long it was, haha.

The main attraction for Jaylee during Lacey's stay was carousels! She rode on 3 different carousels and did them multiple times. We did the bug one at the Bronx Zoo, the one in Brooklyn called Jane's carousel, and the Central Park Carousel. Wow she was spoiled!

We rented bikes and went to Central Park. About half way through we decided that Central Park was huge, haha we were both dying going up and down hills while pulling Jaylee. It was way fun though!

We also played on the "BIG" piano at FAO Swartz toy store, had a huge frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity's, and went on a sunset Cruise in the rain.

Thanks Lacey for a fun trip

More Easter

Jaylee and I went to a fun Easter egg hunt that one of our cute ward members planned and boy did they do it in a picture perfect place. They live in apartment right on the water and they have great views.

Easter

Happy Easter everyone! We are sad that we will miss out on fun family traditions again this year :( but we are enjoying this time with Jaylee. She saw the Easter bunny at the mall and said that she wanted to sit on his lap and I thought ya right, she will chicken out when it's our turn but she didn't. She sat there a little shy at first but then started smiling for pictures.

Cheering at the the game

On Monday we were able to go to the Jazz game cuz they were playing the Nets. We got an awesome deal on tickets and sat on the 11th row for only 8 bucks each! Jaylee loved the game and was given some of those blow up noise makers. She loved banging them together and cheering with the crowd. It was more fun to watch her than the game (the Nets are not a very good team and the Jazz won by a lot).

Stink Eye

Here is Jaylee's new favorite face, we call it the stink eye face.

BABY!!!

Sorry that I have been MIA, I have been here there and everywhere. From New York to Salt Lake to Albuquerque back to New York. We had a wonderful elongated holiday stay and loved seeing family and friends in Salt Lake. We now have only one semester left, yay! We will be excited to be done but we are now stressing about interviews and future jobs so cross your fingers for us.

So funny story...Last Sunday as we were leaving for church Jaylee decided that she wanted to take her baby doll with her and because we were already running late we decided that was alright. Jaylee was excited to show her baby the train that we take to church so Blake picked her up as she was holding her baby and they were looking for the train when the unthinkable happened! The baby started to slip and Blake, who minutes before commented on how tragic it would be if Jaylee's baby fell on the track, tried to catch the baby and knocked it onto the tracks. Jaylee's face told the whole story! HORROR! She burst into tears and started screaming BABY BABY OH NO!! Just then the train came and miraculously left the baby unharmed so Blake ran and told the agent about the baby lying hopelessly on the tracks and he called the next train to have it stop so that someone could get the baby for us. It was seriously the longest 10 minutes of Jaylee's life. She just kept crying and calling out for her baby. Well needless to say she was an emotional wreck the rest of the day. Blake and I couldn't help but laugh as we boarded the train that we just stopped haha! Oh Jaylee...