Bridger's first steps!!!

Bridger is 17 1/2 mos old and on tuesday afternoon he took his first four steps all by himself!!! He is in physical therapy and the therapist comes every other week to work with him on his gross motor skills. She asked us if he was walking yet and we told her no. He only had taken maybe a step from us to the bed or the couch or something similar. She picked him up, helped him balance, and he was so afraid of her that he bolted right to me!!! It was amazing...to see our little guy take those first steps. After all that he has been through in his short life I felt like it was a step to putting that all behind him!! Now he is working on perfecting that skill,which still needs a lot of work, but none the less, he has taken his first steps. He prefers the crawling, so it is just a matter of encouraging him a lot to continue on the walking. I know that before too long he will be running and wearing me out but it is such a good feeling to see him succeed!!!

once it starts...

it just doesn't stop for me!!! yes, today I cut my hair even shorter...is that possible you ask? Well, it is and i did it. I am having major shoulder surgery in May and i need something that requires the least amount of effort each day but yet will still look cute. My sister thinks this is the best look for me and so i will go with that:) I sure love ya maran!! Hope all is well in your lives and in the lives of your loved ones.

Bridger's Surgery

Well, we have survived yet another surgery at the mills house. Bridger went in to Primary Childrens an march 7th and had an inguinal hernia and hydrocele repaired and tubes placed in his ears. We spent a longer thatn normal recovery time at the hospital because he was extremely sensitive to the morphine they gave him for pain and it caused him to stop breathing.That brought us back to the good old days he spent in the NICU!!! Then we got him home and his incision opened...which eventually led to us bringing him back to Primary Childrens the following day to have it put back together. We thought we were in the clear and last tuesday he started on a high fever which led us to the ER at Mckay Dee where we spent six hours running tests and trying to bring his fever down when they decided to run an antibiotic in his IV and his fever finally broke two hours later. he is doing so well now at we only suffer from his lack of schedule and trying to put him back into a good sleeping routine...kids are so amazing and they can recover 10 times faster than we ever could. We are greatful for our blessings and pray that this is the last of the surgeries for Bridger!!!

our first away night from the kids...

Charles and i had the opportunity to go with his parents to the Manti temple on the weekend of valentines!!! it was our first night away without the kids barring the whole hospital things(and those don't count)...it was fun and we were able to go and do a session at the Manti temple. that is one beautiful temple!!! We stayed at a local bed and breakfast, the Manti Heritage House. Great deal for the money. Our goal is to one day be able to make it away for a little vacation on our own and hopefully someday that will happen. Seeing as this was our first trip together, outside of our honeymoon, nearly seven years of marriage, i am guessing it might be another seven.....hehehe!

# 2!

wooo hooo!!! here goes blog number 2....well, what have the mills been up to? we have been having fun and working hard and only a few little bumps in the road. For valentines we took the boys to salt lake and we took them for their first excursion to Build-a-Bear! they absolutley loved it and i think that we have started a thing for it. afterwards we took them to the Joseph smith memorial building and watched the joseph smith movie. it was a fun family outing in the middle of the winter... yesterday i went to the salon to have a haircut and while there we had a little mishap with Isaac. the beautician told Isaac he could get a drink of water from their dispenser and didn't bother to say that he needed to be careful and not use the red button because it had coffee hot and ready water. isaac being five thought that the red button was the most exciting and pressed it, only to have hot scalding water run down his hand. to make a long story short he has 2nd degree burns and is trying to recover from the pain and avoid infection. we have had him home from school to help avoid infection but he keeps asking when he can go back!!! lets hope that it will last through highschool...yeah, right. well the picture will explain that i grew very brave and cut eight inches from my hair and now have a cute, spunky new dooooo! or you could say i was tired of all the maintenance of long hair and got sick of it all and did something about it. i am so excited to wake up and run my fingers through it and go. for me it wasn't too much of a shock seeing as how i spent all of my highschool years with it very short:) well, we hope all is well with all that we love and until next time....the mills fam:)

Thanks for the inspiration...

So my brother and his wife( Jason and Kristen) have inspired me to start our own "blogspot"(or whatever they call them)! You see, I am not very with it when it comes to modern day technology. What a great opportunity though for us to share our lives with those we love and miss!!! We have just been living our lives day to day and loving every minute with our boys. We are anxiously awaiting the spring and warmer weather but we are grateful for the abundance of snow that we have had. Lets just pray that it doesn't all melt at once...the boys have been kept busy in spite of the weather and have had the chance to bowl with their dad, ride horses with their friends and learn and grow at school and at home. Here is how Gage bowls and Isaac has some pretty good form too!!! Although, I would daresay that Gage's form is much more unique...

here i tried to insert a movie of gage and his technique but i couldn't get it downloaded for whatever reason! I will tell you though that it involves walking to the line, placing ball on floor and then kicking with a large growl...pretty hilarious!!! i will try again in the future to put this on our "blog".

Isaac is down low
and all set to go!!!


The horse riding was quite an adventure as well and they loved every minute...





And last, but not least, Bridger has been doing some of his own learning and growing...

He now thinks that he is big enough to feed himself and he can get to where he needs to go. After sixteen months of life he is crawling, climbing and keeping us on our toes.
Life is great and we all miss you tons...Happy New Year!