Hooray for the Red, White and Blue!

Hey Everyone-
We have been busy and we need to update on a lot! We had a happy Fourth of July and hope everyone else did too! We watched the fireworks out at Thanksgiving Point this year. It was a nice change. Connor had fun with sparklers and pops before we went and then was very entertained by the big booms and flashes of light with the big fireworks! Grandma Neilsen and Aunt Brittney were very patient on the ride back while Connor became devil child! Oh the screaming!!! Oh well, he is a very entertaining child. We cannot show you any pictures of this day yet because our firewire to get the video from the video camera to the computer is not the right kind, so maybe we'll show the video of Connor and the sparklers and pops on a future blog?! Anyways, it was a lot of fun!

Then we were excited to take Connor to the Ute Stampede rodeo this year. We had a wonderful breakfast provided by the Lions Club and which we were able to eat free because of Grandpa Neilsen. (Thanks Grandpa!) We wanted to dress Connor in wranglers but those suckers are too big and expensive, so maybe next year! We had the opportunity to meet Uncle Greg's old mission companion and his new wife. They are from Atlanta and now attend BYU. They had never been to a rodeo and it was funny and hillarious to sit behind them as they experienced the cowboys, animals, and hair-dos! Connor wasn't all too impressed, but we all had fun anyways!

Patrick has still been having fun at the jail. He says the new Lieutenant likes to keep things in very strict order, so anytime the inmates fight, they get locked down. They were locked down for five days this week and so you can imagine how many movies he watched at work. However, he did read some more Harry Potter, so that's great!

Kelli has had some very stressful times at work, including a code blue where the mom seized and we lost her. They eventually got her back and c-sectioned to get baby out. I cried my eyes out just watching the dad watch his life fall apart. I still don't know what I am doing in the medical profession, but here I stay until something else! Work, work, work is all we do, but at least it pays for the things we need and can afford right now. That is, until we are walking everywhere or Flintstoning our cars around!

We have finished our back yard for now! We still have some other plants to put in, but no money to do it right now. It looks awesome and we are so thankful for everyone who helped us with it! It cost us a pretty penny, but it is so much better than looking out the window at weeds. We hope to be able to put a swing or bench out there to enjoy it more. Patrick did awesome work and had very good planning when all Kelli wanted to do is sleep! Thanks to Grandma Neilsen for helping us pick out the plants and working so hard with us! (And keeping us going when we were ready to just go inside to the air-conditioned house!)

In other news, we believe Connor is getting his sixth tooth. Yes, his sixth! What a busy baby this one is! He is working on becoming mobile and is very vocal when he wants to be. At his nine month appointment they told us he is anemic, and very small. So small that we are on an all you can eat diet. He basically gets whatever he wants to eat! The more calories, the better! We hope that it will help him gain weight and keep him strong! We get to go have him weighed in a month, so we will let everyone know how it worked! All in all, we are all doing very well. Check out the pictures and we will try to be better about updating!