I hope they call me on a mission...

I hope they call me on a mission....when I have grown a foot or two (or three or four). :-)


Smiling because he knows it's almost bath time and time to get out of his third outfit of the day.

This is why babies shouldn't really have pets. This is only seconds before Jackson's 'pet' Patch got an up close and personal look at the inside of his mouth.

This is one of my favorite recent pictures. Dallin's cousin, Stacey, watches Jackson for a few hours when I go to work. One day, when Dallin went to pick him up, this is the cute hat the had him all dressed up in.

University of Utah...here we come...again!

Dallin got into the University of Utah for graduate school! I am so proud of him and all of the hard work he has done. He will be getting a master's degree in public administration. He describes it as similar to an MBA, but for working in the public or governmental sectors. We just found out last week that he got in. The reason I wrote that we will be going to the University of Utah again is because that is where I got my master's degree from last year. I had a pretty good experience there. Dallin has been the first to say that he will be a Ute who still bleeds Aggie blue. I have to agree with him. We will always be Aggies at heart. :-) I am pretty nervous because this means new jobs, a different apartment and new people and places. We are sad to leave all of our friends and our ward here in Logan. It has been such a great place for us. It will be strange to leave since this is the only place we have lived since we have been married. It will be an adventure though. We are excited to be closer to family. I was pretty nervous when we first decided to move and do graduate school. I'm feeling much better now. We have a little sign in our living room that says, "Family: It's not where you go or what you do, it's who is beside you that counts." That is so true. Everything will be great as long as I've got my boys: Dallin and Jackson. I sure love them both.

On another side note, I took my licensure exam last Saturday. This was probably the biggest test I have ever taken (and the most expensive). It basically covered everything I have ever learned in social work. I had to pass this test in order to get my license to practice social work in Utah. Luckily, I passed! It is such a relief to know that I no longer have to tote my study materials everywhere with me and try to study in every spare minute that I have. No more weight on my back of a test looming before me. I wanted to take it right after I graduated, but with a new baby and family difficulties, last Saturday is when I finally got it done. At least it is now finshed. I feel so relieved! Hooray!

Rolls and Giggles

This last week has been wonderful. Someone once told me that their favorite age for their kids was four months. I can now understand why they would say that. Jackson turned four months old on Saturday and he has really been so much fun lately. He is all smiles and dimples. To me, there is nothing better in the world than when he looks at me and just grins. :-) It melts my heart. Dallin and I were also talking the other day about Jackson's development. I always expected his development to be more gradual. However, it seems like one morning he just wakes up and says, "I think I'm ready to smile today," or, "I think I'll roll over now." It's so funny. This last week, Jackson finally got the hang of rolling over. He's done it once before, but it was probably an accident. It's kind of funny how he does it. He uses the weight of his head to kind of flop over. It's cute though.

The other thing he just started is giggling. There have been a few other times when I thought he may have giggled. Now I'm sure. We were down at Dallin's parent's house over the weekend and Dallin really got him going. I tried to video some of the giggles, but Jackson was already pretty tired from all of the laughing. Who would have thought that laughing could take so much out of you. He was wiped out afterwards.

We were also able to spend some time with our families this weekend. First my mom came up to visit on Friday since she had the day off and "needed a Jackson fix." :-) It was a lot of fun to see her and spend some time together. Then, we spent Friday night and Saturday with Dallin's family. Dallin's sister, Lisa, and her husband, Andrew, were visiting from Louisiana. We had a lot of fun with his family and were all able to go to the temple together on Saturday thanks to an amazing Aunt and Uncle who watched the four grandkids. Then we had a great family dinner. The next day, we spent some more time with another Aunt and Uncle and a cousin who is working on her MPA at the U right now. It will be a lot of fun to spend more time with them and their little girl. Last, but not least, we were able to visit my brother and his wife before we left town. It was so much fun to chat with them. They are expecting a little baby next November and are excited that we will be closer. Jackson will get to know his first Bown cousin better this way. All in all, this weekend left me feeling so grateful for a wonderful family, both on the Bown and Koecher side. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many loving and supportive people. I couldn't ask for a better family. :-)

Here are a few other pictures. What can I say, I really like taking pictures of my little guy. :)

Jackson has also discovered his feet. He loves to grab them. Between his hands and his feet, he takes his toys with him wherever he goes.

Sleeping on Dad's shoulder.

The stylish little guy.

This is the face I usually get when I'm taking pictures of Jackson. The reason....he is camera shy! I have never heard of a little boy who is four months old who is camera shy, but Jackson is. He will be smiling and happy and as soon as I get a camera, or even the camera on my phone out, he will stare at it and make this 'deer in the headlights' face. As soon as the camera is gone, he continues with his smiling, happy faces. It is getting pretty difficult to catch any of his other cute faces. Don't worry though, I'll keep trying. :-)

The joys of parenthood...

Some of you may not know this, but Dallin, Jackson and I made a long roadtrip down to Las Vegas this week for a press conference about Dallin's brother, Steven. To read about the conference or watch the press conference, go here. We're so grateful that the conference went well. Hopefully we will be able to get some results and information. We left for Vegas on Thursday at noon and left Vegas at 6:00 Friday night. That means that we drove almost 20 hours in two days. We were in Vegas for less than 24 hours. I was a little nervous about how Jackson would travel. He has been a great traveller in the past, so I had high hopes. He was great. He was either sleeping or content and looking around. Oh how we love him. However, Saturday morning he decided to get revenge on mom for all of the time he spent in his car seat. We spent the night in Bountiful on Friday and, after 4 hours of sleep, got up and made the last hour of the drive so Dallin could get back for his orchestra rehearsal. After Dallin left, I fed Jackson again and he decided to spit up all over me. Then, when I was playing with him on my lap, he decided to fill his diaper to overflowing. That was a major blow out. So, when I was finally done cleaning up his legs and hands and diaper mess, I decided to give him a bath. I didn't want to put a new diaper on him just to take it off, so I was holding my little naked baby while I was getting his bath ready when he decided he wasn't finished going to the bathroom and that mom's lap was the best place to finish up. As I felt this lovely warmth spreading down my legs and all over my lap, I just had to laugh. What a morning! And to think that Jackson did all of this by 9:30 in the morning. This is one of the joys of parenthood that people don't usually tell you about. :-)
But times like these make it all worth it. We sure love our little guy!

This one is the tired little boy after the morning's adventures.

PS. It was also Dallin's birthday this last week. What a wonderful man! I sure love him. For his birthday, we went to Macaroni Grill in Vegas with his family. It was a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed seeing Dallin get embarrassed when they sang to him. It was great.

Blessing Day

On Sunday, February 7th we blessed Jackson. (Yes, it was Superbowl Sunday. Some people were not too happy about that fact.) Dallin gave Jackson such a wonderful blessing. We had a lot of family and friends come up, which was so much fun. It's so nice to have such a great family who shows us so much love and support. Our sacrament meeting started at 2:50 (which put the blessing pretty close to superbowl tip-off ;-) and then we got together for treats and goodies afterwards at the church. Dallin and I decided that if more than 10 people came, our house would be bursting at the seams. It turned out really nice. Thanks to all of the family who came and helped Jackson's big day turn out so well. We sure love our little boy. Here are a bunch of fun new pictures.

These are the people who stood in the circle (minus the one on the left-he just wanted to stand by his dad).

Me and my little boy. He's going to be a heart breaker when he gets older.

Jackson and Daddy.
What a little stud muffin!
This one was Dallin's idea. Since we blessed him on Superbowl Sunday, Dallin decided to do a little photo shoot with a remote and our little nerf football. The nerf football is just the right size for him. Now all he has to do is start liking toys. I think his dad likes them more than he does so far.

A lot of people have told me that Jackson looks like Dallin. The older he gets, the more I agree with them. This picture makes me laugh. I love the faces they are both making. Jackson is looking more and more like his daddy every day. He couldn't have picked a better role model.

PS. Do any of you hard core bloggers out there know why the videos I posted last time say they are no longer available? They worked for about a day and haven't worked since. I'm really still trying to figure out this blogger thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jackson :-)

Lately, I have been wondering what kind of a mom I am? I have a blog and the most adorable little boy I have ever seen, and I have only posted pictures of him once. Who does that? Then I stopped to think. The moms that do this are the ones that work part time, have a brother-in-law who mysteriously disappears, has a best friend get married, spends almost three weeks traveling over Christmas and New Years, throws a bridal shower, has a little brother get married, and to top it all off, is trying to figure out how to be a mom to her little two month old son. That made me feel a little better ;-) So...here is an update on my little Jackson. Overall, Jackson has been a pretty easy-going baby. He has his moments, during the day and during the night when he decides crying is the only way to get the job done, whatever that job may be. As far as sleeping goes, I've decided Jackson likes to tease mom and dad. A week before he turned two months old, he slept 5-7 hours straight, ate, then slept another two or three hours. It was great. The great irony of this is that I had a cold that week and didn't sleep well because of that, even without a crying baby. After a whole week of sleeping well, I was starting to get my hopes up that this might be a trend. Then he regressed. He stopped going to bed as well at night and after eating. He also decided to wake up a lot more. Who knows? He's progressed again (knock on wood) but I've decided to just go with the flow. Two nights ago he slept from 8:30 at night until 7:00 in the morning and only woke up once to eat. That would be nice on a regular basis... :-)

My favorite thing lately, by far, has been the fact that Jackson has finally gotten the hang of smiling. He has smiled before, mostly when he is half asleep. A few times, he smiled at me and I thought he did it on purpose. It was just hard to tell. I no longer have to wonder. Last Friday, Jackson figured out how to really smile and decided that smiling is fun. He has become a very happy baby. Maybe he always was and we just couldn't tell. Or maybe he just really likes all of the attention he gets when he gives us a big grin and shows off his adorable dimples. There is nothing better in the world than having your little boy smile at you. I love it. It is so much fun to start seeing more of his personality, other than just the awake/asleep/hungry/crying part. We were even lucky enough to get some fun pictures of his big grin. He is quite the little GQ baby. I have a hard time picking my favorite pictures, so I'll probably end up posting a bunch of them. But isn't that what moms do anyways?

This morning, I was able to catch Jackson on video with some of his favorite things. Here are just a few things that he loves.

1) Smiling-His newest love

2) His bouncer

3) His neon green blanket, lovingly nicknamed 'The Grinch'

4) Chewing on things, especially his fist.

5) Yawning (Okay, so maybe he doesn't really like this one, but his mom thinks it's really cute)

Here are a few more things he loves that aren't in the video:

6) His Daddy. Dallin is such a great dad. Jackson loves to just sit and stare at him. I love seeing them spend some good Father/Son time. What a great role model for our little boy.

7) His hands. He loves having his hands by his face. Some of the poses he comes up with are hilarious. He's quite the little model.

8) His tongue. He loves sticking his tongue out. Now he smiles with it, but at first I think he was just trying to figure out what this thing sticking out of his mouth was.

9) Helping mom with laundry.

10) Baths. Despite what this picture looks like, I think Jackson is starting to enjoy his baths. He is starting to wiggle around and has even splashed Dallin a little. I had to include this picture because I'm pretty sure Jackson has the saddest little cry and pouty face ever. His bottom lip will quiver and he pulls out the biggest frown I have ever seen. I've yet to get a good picture of it.

11) His family. Hopefully we aren't quite this low on his list, though.

12) Sunglasses. Just kidding. We're not so sure whether or not he likes these yet, but this picture is just too cute not to post.

13) Shots were one thing that definitely did not make the list of loves. He recently had his two month check up. He was 10 lb 10 oz and 23 1/2 inches long. That puts him in the 40th percentile for weight and the 70th percentile for height. So, a long skinny boy. I wonder where he got that from? :-) The binki, however, definitely made the list. He's a binki baby and not ashamed of it.

Missing...

One month ago tomorrow, our lives took an unexpected twist. While I was visiting teaching on Thursday, December 17th, Dallin received a phone call from his family telling him that his older brother Steve was missing. His parents were called by a Henderson police officer to let them know that Steve's car had been abandoned in Henderson Nevada in a nice, upscale retirement community for several days. Steve hadn't been heard from since that Sunday, December 13th. His cell phone was dead and his answering mailbox was full and not accepting messages. No one had any idea why he would be in the Las Vegas area, let alone a retirement community in Henderson. The Koechers don't have any ties to that area. Dallin and I immediately packed up our stuff and tood off with Jackson to Bountiful to be with his parents while we continued to do our own investigation and detective work. Dallin and his dad left at 3:00 the next morning to drive to St. George, where Steve was living, and then on to Henderson. They spoke to police officers, neighbors, his landlord and boss on their way while Dallin's mom and I continued to follow up from Bountiful. Bank accounts were checked, cell phone records and text messages were looked at, people from Steve's ward and his friends were talked to, and no one had any answers. Everything related to Steve stopped on December 13th. This last month has been hard. We don't know what has happened. We all keep on asking ourselves if there was something we could have or should have done and keep coming up blank. Sometimes it is still mind boggling that this is happening to us. This is the kind of thing that happens to other people, or people far away on the news, not to you, your family, and your brother-in-law. We have felt an outpouring of love from family, friends, ward members, and people we hardly know. Thank you all for your love, phone calls, hugs, and offers of help. Everyone is so willing to help, we just wish there was something we could do ourselves. For now, all we can do is pray and hope and keep on going as normally as possible. To know more about what is going on, you can check out the Help us Find Steven Koecher facebook group or one of the following articles and news reports. The first one is written by Dallin's dad, who is also the editor of the Davis County Clipper.

http://www.clippertoday.com/pages/full_story/push?article-INSIDE%20STORY-%20An%20outpouring%20of%20friends-%20strangers%20&id=5388187

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705356478/Powell-isnt-only-missing-Utahn.html



http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/Exclusive-ABC-4-talks-to-parents-of-missing-Utah/774hcIASHE2bx66oAVVAMg.cspx