Taking a break

Addie will be 7 months old tomorrow. She is talking up a storm! Her favorite thing to say is, "da-da-da-da," much to her mother's chagrin. But just last week she finally started saying, "ma-ma-ma-ma." This chic is so close to crawling! She gets up on all fours with her stomach off the ground and rocks back and forth. She can scoot backwards, but hasn't figured out forwards just yet. Even though she isn't crawling, she manages to move all over the place just fine between the rolling, scooting, and rocking. Yesterday, I found her hanging out under the couch. She was pretty proud of herself!

So unlike BYU, UVa actually has breaks every now and then. It's wonderful! Last week was fall break, 3 days off from classes. We spent our break in Outerbanks, North Carolina with 9 other LDS families in one gigantic beach house. It was such a fun trip! Many of the students came back on Wednesday so they could make it to class on Thursday, like John. But Addie and I decided we didn't have to be back, so we enjoyed a few more days at the beach.

John's been able to stay on top of his studies and made it through midterms in one piece. In celebration of that, he and a few buddies from school competed in the ultimate challenge called Tough Mudder. It was a 9 1/2 mile run up and down black diamond ski slopes with 25 crazy obstacles throughout the course. Some of the obstacles included carrying heavy stumps up a steep hill, swimming through water with chunks of ice in it, running through live wires, climbing up and over a half pipe, and lots more! I can't believe John made it through the entire thing, we were so proud of him! Julie was here visiting us and she whipped out her camera and got a few great action shots.