Happy Halloween!!

From Princess Tiana, the Frog and Ray the Bayou Firefly....




and from the annual Halloween sugar cookie sprinkle monster!

more of Van's birthday!

i'll spare you the 3 1/2 minute video of Van eating his cake. if you've ever seen the kid eat a banana you can imagine how it happened - he basically pureed it through his teeth. pretty funny. we celebrated with his friends Jack and Caden and families and Grandma and Pa. thanks for celebrating with us, all! :)


for the sake of journaling, i should document some of Van's favorite and milestones when he turned 1.

height: 33 inches (95%)
weight: 23 lbs 4 oz (50%)
head: big

favorites...

• food - bananas and meat of any kind
• song - In the Leafy Tree Tops (always has been)
• game - wrestling
  
• activity - climbing stairs (at home, at the park... anywhere...) and anything sissy is doing - making dirt soup in the backyard, taking a bath, etc.
  
• toy - balls and your Buzz Lightyear push cart Grandma and Pa gave you for your birthday
  
• attachments - blankey and Froggy (Froggy used to be Emery's, but I told her one day it would be nice if she gave it to brother - which she did! so cute!)
  
• book - Baby Face, Pajama Time (thanks to mom's acquired "reading rap" skills from Auntie Bek) and Gallop
• TV show/movie - his weird parents still don't have a TV but he sure gets giggly when sissy is watching Dora in the car on vacations - I think he has a crush on her
• favorite person - mom. he loves me!
  

milestones...

• words - mama, dad, sissss (for sissy), ba (ball), nana (banana), woof, bye bye
  
• words he's said once or twice - "hi da" (hi dad), amen, potty
• claps with music, dances to music (he's a crazy dancer!), feeds himself everything including oatmeal and cheerios with milk (holds, but doesn't exactly use, the spoon), climbs on things as tall as he is, mimics letter sounds really well, does "up and down" and "open and shut" in the wheels on the bus

and...

• laughs the hardest - when he plays with Emery
• dad says what he loves the most about Van is his laugh, how he always is exploring and moving, unless he's cuddling and how sweet he is

here he is doing what he does best - first, cuddling and then climbing stairs and laughing

Happy 1st birthday, Van!!

how did we get from this (FRESH out of the womb)....

to this... (3 months)....

to this... (6 months)...

to this... (9 months)....

to this so fast!! (1 year - today at his birthday breakfast and play at the mall slides - it was raining!)

Vander Mander - you're such a good boy and we love you so much! I really can't believe how fast you're growing up. You're our big boy now and we love you more every minute of every day. Happy birthday!


the "dig into his own cake" birthday celebration is pending til dad gets home from his business trip. more pictures to come.

5 years

I think this pretty well sums up our 1st 5 years of marriage...
5 years
4 cities
3 college degrees
2 kids
1 (or 1st) real career and 1st home


Dear Aaron,

Being married to you is so wonderful and so easy. So, thank you. Thank you....

• for kissing me on our first date and every day since.
• for always insisting I eat the leftovers.
• for indulging my love for shopping.
  
• for thinking I'm the most amazing cook on the planet and for preferring my cooking to your endless $50/day and hotel employee dining room possibilities with your new job.
• for sweeping the floor and doing the dishes just because when my to-do list gets a little too ambitious.
• for taking care of the little things that lose me - insurance, car maintenance, toilet plunging and this morning - kiddie barf clean up.
  
• for masking your face when you change stinky diapers.
• for being such a hands-on dad and wanting to spend more time with our kids than I could ever even ask for.
  
• for being the world's best story teller.
  
• for unintentionally helping a spoiled princess become even more stingy than you are.
  
• for being so sexy when you install our new tub with your shirt off... and with Van "helping".
• for making me a better, more mellow, more patient mother.
  
• for always putting my needs, wants, feelings, goals and hunger pains above your own.

Love,
Wifey

Thanks, Grandma and Pa, for watching our kids so we could spend all afternoon playing! We went and did the Bootleg Canyon Flight Lines (where my little bro works - thanks for the hook up Boog!), then a sunset mountain bike ride, then McDonalds Smoothies and a dollar movie, then dinner at Chilis (with a gift card - do you think we're made of money or something?). We had a blast! have you ever been off-roading on a short bus? i have now! :) aaron and my little bro.

the view from the top (see lake mead behind us?). did i mention I'm blonde again?

looking down one of the lines

aaron going down one of the runs. so so so fun!

i've never thought sunset was romantic - apparently it is on a mountain bike.

awww.... 5 years later and we still like each other. cute!

my beautiful babies

i took these a month ago with my mom's camera and then had some fun on iPhoto. i'm really happy with the way they turned out. and more importantly, i really love my precious, beautiful babies. i'm so lucky to be their mom.

"I'll always bleed Cougar blue..."

Steve Young said that the night BYU retired his jersey in 2003. I'm with you Steve. This commercial gives me loud and proud warm fuzzies for my school.

World Class University Commercial from BYU HD Video on Vimeo.

my redheads

Any of you who know me well know that 2 of my 3 best friends (from childhood... like Maggi and I met "in the womb", really!) are the most beautiful redheads you've ever laid eyes on. I got to play with them and their families in the mountains this weekend. It was completely dreamy and just as my heaven will be. I love them so dearly. I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have friends like them.

my reds

5 kids and counting between the 3 of us. i can't imagine what this picture will look like in 5 years.

i love these girls.

mom and her cute squirrel. i was so proud of her - she did the entire hike to the waterfall without help. it was pretty steep and almost 1/2 a mile. such a tough girl.

van sat on the edge of the fire pit for 30 minutes just playing with sticks. he loved it. so did his dad.

seriously, lukey. what are you hiding in those cheeks? i can't tell you what a sweet baby this kid is. and adorable of course.

em and her "russell" (i call him Russ-Russ, but she insists on Russell). yes, we're planning the wedding. and by the looks on their faces they are too.

we're not going to lie. we're the cutest best friends ever. (at baby luke's blessing last month)