Meet Cooper Jacob Balls!!!

On Thursday December 9th, 2010 Cooper Jacob Balls came into this world at 9:30 AM.
He weighed 7.7 pounds and 20 inches long.

Our little miracle


I had started having contractions at 9:00 Wednesday night. We went to the hospital at 3:00 in the morning, got an epideral at 4:00 and it was smooth sailing from here!

We are so blessed that everything went so smoothly. We feel so lucky to have our little guy.

Jake is already an AMAZING daddy! He's been so much help, made my life soooo much easier!




We've already had plenty of dirty diapers and late nights but bring on the many more to come!
It's very challenging to be new parents, but we are making the most of it as we figure things out with our new little man! Lots of question, but luckily we have lots of help!
We couldn't be happier to have our little man home!!!

BIG changes SOON to come!

We've had lots of fun things going on lately and a LOT of big changes SOON to come!!!

We had a great Thanksgiving with all our family! We have so much to be grateful for and are so blessed! We LOVE all the yummy food, but love the chance to be reminded of all that we have even more.

Jake's had the chance to go hunting and has even been able to take Koda out a little bit. They've both LOVED it!!!

Our friends Kamille and John got married and gave us a good excuse to all get together! Congrats to the happy couple! We love you guys!


Jake finished his student teaching at Mt. Ogden Junior High and is just awaiting GRADUATION!!! This Friday is the BIG DAY!!! I'm so proud of him!!! Wrestling is also in full swing and they start their tournaments and duals this coming week! In addition to the high school wrestling, Jake also started a little league program this season which allowed him to work with boys kindergarten through 6th grade. I'm not kidding when I say he's been busy!!!

We've also been spoiled with several baby showers!!! Thanks to all our great friends and family who have supported us and helped us to get ready for our new little one! You are all GREAT and we couldn't have done it without you!

We are hoping to make it through Jake's graduation without going into labor. After that if he doesn't come the Dr. wants to induce us this coming weekend.

It's so crazy to think that we're going to be parents in such a short amount of time. It's seemed like forever ago that we found out I was pregnant and now it's hard to believe he's almost here!

It's going to be weird making the plunge into the next stage of life... we've tried to prepare for it, but we know there are going to be lots of surprises and hard times. Hopefully we'll have some help in figuring out how to be parents!
We are getting extremely anxious to meet our little man!!!! The countdown is on!

Vegas & Thriller!

Last weekend we (Jake's family and I) took a trip to St. George and Vegas. Jake however stayed home to go deer hunting, which I have no documentation of...sorry!

We did a session in the Las Vegas temple:

Gorgeous!!!

Went inside some fancy hotels:


Visited M&M World:

Visited the Coca-Cola factory and tried the 16 different flavors...
some good, and some NOT so good!

Walked along the strip:
This picture is a little bit blurry, but how could we resist the photo op!

The next night we got to see Thriller at Tuacahn!

They definitely have a lot of talent!

Although it was a long drive being 8 months pregnant, it was well worth it! We had a BLAST!

In Memory

On October 15th, 2010 my Grandma Elwood passed away.

Oh how we will miss her many stories!


The next day on October 16th, 2010 Jake's Grandpa Balls passed away.

Oh how we will miss his great sense of humor!

We will greatly miss both of their sweet spirits! Thank heavens for the testimony we have of the plan of Salvation and the knowledge we have that we will be with them again. We are so grateful for the legacy they have each left us and the great lives they lived. We are grateful for the time we did get to spend with them and the many things we learned from them over the years. They were amazing people who not only touched our lives, but all those around them. We feel honored to be their grandchildren.

We love you Grandma Elwood and Grandpa Balls!!!
Until we meet again!

Conference Weekend

It all started with Jake's mission reunion in Provo Friday night.

We decided to treat ourselves to some Village Inn after wards...

Jake, Brandon and Clayton
(Jake and his mission buddies from the Hawaii Honolulu mission)


I think this picture is hilarious because Bernie (our waitress) was walking by right at that time and they jokingly invited her to come in...she was so flattered!
(You can also see that my tummy has grown quite a bit!)

That night after the reunion we drove up to Logan so that Jake could wake up to do this:

Drake, Randy, Alan, Jake and Connor
and...their killings. They had a good morning!

Jake LOVES the opening day of the duck hunt. Too bad Koda isn't a hunting dog!

Carter, Susan and I also had to get out and enjoy the sunshine to play with the 3-D sidewalk chalk:

It was such a great weekend! Inspiration from our great church leaders to answer our prayers and lift us. We also love the chance to spend the weekend with family!

Lotoja and other updates

So it's been a while since we've updated!!! No, we have not fallen off the face of the earth, just been busy!

Jake has started student teaching at Mt. Ogden Jr. High. He teaches 5 periods of geography and 1 period of P.E. It keeps him EXTREMELY busy but he is loving it and learning a lot! He is still trying to work at the Bike Shoppe every chance he gets. On the days that he teaches and goes to work, he wears 3 different outfits, so needless to say, our laundry load has increased a LOT! He's been working so hard and I'm so proud of him! Keep it up babe and Hang in there...only a few more months!

Jake was also able to participate in Lotoja again this year. He decided to do a relay race this year with the guys from the Bike Shoppe instead of putting himself through the whole 206 miles.


Waiting to start his leg of the race


He did the 3rd leg from Montpelier to Afton...46 miles with 2 REALLY steep climbs! He did AMAZING!!! He even beat us too the the end of his leg and we were in the car! Pretty impressive! He still got sick, but it was for a lot shorter time than last year thank heavens!


After his ride with his proof that he pushed his hardest!!!


At the finish line in Teton Village with the team.

The Bike Shoppe Team took 3rd place out of over 50 teams!!! Way to go guys! You did awesome!

Matt, Jayk, Nate and Jake (missing Nathaniel)


Jake's BIGGEST fan!

His other BIGGEST fans, his parents!!!

Jake has lots of friends and even family in the sport and we are grateful for their friendship and support. Thanks for cheering him on!!!

Jake and his Uncle Mike who finished the race for his 2nd time!

Jake and his friend John H. who has been a big inspiration in many aspects of Jake's life.

It was fun to get to spend a little more time with him throughout the weekend than we usually get to. Sunday we spent some time in Jackson just hanging out before heading home.

We are now 28 weeks along and things are still looking good! We are starting to get really excited! He's an active little guy and is always moving around! I say "he" because we haven't decided on a name yet, but hopefully that will soon come!

Things are going awesome and we feel so blessed!

Weddings Galore!

In the past 2 weeks we've had 2 weddings of some of our most favorite people:

Kevin and Stef, our good friends, were married Friday the 13th. We are so happy for them. It was fun to get together and see all our friends.

P.S. LOVED the Spoon Me frozen yogurt at the reception!

Jake and Kristin, Jeremy and Stacy, Stefani and Kevin, Cody and Jill (who are expecting a baby girl the day before us!) We are so grateful to have such AMAZING friends!


On August 21st Chelsea and Connor (Jake's brother) were married. It turned out to be a great day and we are so happy for the two of them! A big CONGRATS!

It was awesome to get to spend the day surrounded by family!

Our niece Aubrey LOVES Jake. When she sees him she gets a huge grin on her face. She's constantly calling his name when he's around. And she LOVES wearing his boots!



Random picture of Jake and Koda.
As Jake says, Koda is OUR best friend. It's just unfortunate that she minds him better and loves him way more than she does me!


We had another ultrasound yesterday...too bad we don't have a scanner! We got to see a 3-D picture of our little guy (well half of his face at least. He had both of his arms in front of his face which made things a little difficult!) From what we could see I think he's going to look a lot like Jake...he'll be so handsome! We are at 25 weeks and my tummy keeps growing bigger and bigger! We are getting more and more excited each and every day!

Hurt in the Dirt

Last night Jake did the first annual "Hurt in the Dirt" race held at Fort Buenaventura. He did it as a relay with Nate from the Bike Shoppe. Jake went first to run 4 miles and then made the transition to mt bike 10 miles. Then Nate was up.

It was a really tough course...they had to run through mud, water, sand and obstacles. The funny thing is that Nate and Jake hadn't even been training for the race so they had been doing a lot of biking, but not any running.



Well I think they both surprised themselves by how well they did! They seriously made it look so easy! Jake finished his leg in about 1 hour and 15 minutes. They finished overall with a time of 2 hours and 38 minutes.



There were 80 individual racers and 40 relay teams and they took 2nd place overall! They were the first relay team to cross the finish line and took the Shop competition that was held between all the local shops.

This is their traveling trophy that they get to keep at the Bike Shoppe until next year. Way to represent boys! It was such a fun race to watch! Jake is a little sore from the run, but they are already looking forward to next year! He never ceases to amaze me with what he can accomplish! I'm so proud of him! Way to go Babe!

St. George Trip

Last weekend I took a girl's trip to St. George with Jake's mom, aunts, sister and sister-in-law. We had an absolute blast!

We did Lots of driving:


Lots of eating:

and of course...lots of shopping!

One of the highlights of the trip is that we went to see Tarzan at Tuacahn.








It was soooo entertaining! Sitting in the 100 plus degree weather with swollen feet became totally worth it!

The next night we actually got $10 CATS tickets so we decided to go to the show again!








The end of our trip came way to fast (we were gone Thursday through Sunday but it just wasn't long enough!) It was definitely good to get away, but I sure did miss Jake!