Happy Birthday Dan!

For Dan's birthday I decided to make him a red velvet cake from scratch.  It was fairly easy and uses a surprisingly large amount of red food coloring. (I knew it was going to be a lot, but a whole bottle?!)  It ended up being delicious if I do say so myself!



Unfortunately, the only real pictures I took of Dan's party were of the cake process.  What the pictures don't show though, are friends and family playing wii and watching American Idol. (Which Dan can hardly stand to watch.  Thanks Dan.)  :)  

Dan is such an awesome guy!  He's a fabulous dad and a hard worker.
We had to get a few pictures of Jade with these cute piggy tails.  She's just getting so much older, and I love every minute of it.

This was Jade yesterday.  She hasn't been feeling well, she has a fever and just seems miserable.  After about an hour of her crying non-stop I heard a knock on the door and I was thinking, "great, who could that be?".  Turns out it was my mom stopping by for a surprise visit.  She couldn't have come at a better time.  Thanks mom.

It's a whole new world

I was making pot stickers in the kitchen when I heard Tish start singing Princess Jasmine's lines from "A Whole New World". I went into the living room to find her curled up very close to the TV wrapped up in a precious childhood memory.

She's almost there!

Today is Jade's 16 month birthday!  Two nights ago Jade just stood up on her own and started taking a few steps.  

The holiday season

The Christmas season is by far my favorite time of the year.  I always joke with Dan about it being 'almost Christmas' once Halloween rolls around.  This year was pretty exciting.  We had a small Christmas party with my family at our house with turkey and potatoes and stuffing and all the extras a week or so before Christmas.  We exchanged sibling gifts and watched It's a Wonderful Life.  My sister Katrina crocheted everyone in my family (10 people!) a scarf!  My brother Nathanael drew a picture of Dan and Jade as his gift to me.  

Here is a picture of Jade with her uncle Joshua.  She has so much fun playing with the boys and they have fun teaching her new things.

Jade wanted to help cook the turkey.

Uncle Mike came home from his mission on December 23rd and we got to meet up with him at the Salt Lake airport before he continued his flight to Idaho.  We only got to chat for a little while but it was really fun.
Here we all are at the Pocatello airport.  Mike's flight had been delayed for about an hour so we hung out at the airport with not much to do.  Luckily the girls, (Jade and Rylee) had a lot of family members to entertain them.
Christmas morning at Grandma Lou's and Grandpa Doug's.  
This was Jade's main present this year, an inflatable bus with balls inside.  She really had fun with it, climbing in and out of the windows and windshield.
My dad and step-mom got this princess castle for Jade and she has had so much fun with it.  She loves that she can crawl in and out of there.

For my birthday Dan decided to get me a Wii, even though I insisted we really didn't need one.  He surprised me and I'm so glad that he did.  It's been a lot of fun and he also got me the Wii fit too so I've been working out with that.  It's a lot of fun, the yoga is my favorite.

We had such a wonderful year and we're so glad that we've been so close to friends and family.  It's going to be very hard to say good-bye to our families for two and a half years to go to Minnesota, they've become some of our best friends.  Until then we'll enjoy all the time we have with them.

Playing outside

Jade LOVES to play outside!  Sometimes she'll even just point to the door and do her grunt for something that she wants, meaning that she wants to go outside.

These are pictures of the last time Jade got to crawl around outside since the snow has come.  She was having so much fun, she didn't even seem to mind the cold and cried when I brought her back inside.



She's eating a wood chip here, she seems to seek them out, she always wants to chew on them.

I sure wish she'd start walking so I could take her outside with some snow boots and a snow suit, at least then she'd get to go out.  But I can't just let her crawl around in the snow, she'd be buried in snow!

Jade riding her rocking horse

My dad and step mom got this awesome rocking horse for Jade for Christmas last year and she's finally getting the hang of it.  She thinks it's so much fun.

Jade meets Santa Claus

We took Jade to see Santa at the mall.  She loved the decorations and was even excited when she saw Santa, but as soon as I set her on his lap she lost it.  I was sort of surprised at how fast she started crying.  I thought it would take her a second to realize she was on Santa's lap and maybe look up at him and start crying, but it was pretty much instantaneous.  I'd say she wasn't on his lap for more than 10 seconds.  The people snapping the pictures were really fast.

Happy Thanksgiving

We went to Idaho this year for Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun. This picture isn't actually of Thanksgiving day, it was just another get together over the weekend to celebrate us all being there.

We went to the light parade, it was very, very cold but fun. You could tell Jade enjoyed it because she would look down the street waiting for the next float to come by. There were several dogs in the parade as well, and if you know Jade, you know she loved that. I kept pulling her hat down so her head would stay covered but she seemed so fussy, then I realized I had pulled her hat over her eyes. :)

Jade and Rylee got matching sweaters for Thanksgiving day. They really had a lot of fun playing together, at one point Jade was riding Rylee like a pony! When Rylee left with Stef and Kevin to go over to her other grandparents house Jade was so sad! We went to the window and watched them drive away, I said 'do you miss rylee?', and Jade answered with a grunt and a sad face.

Grandpa Doug helping feed Jade.

We have so much to be thankful for this year.

Our 6th Anniversary!

Well, it's been an awesome six years!  To celebrate we went to dinner at Magleby's, Dan got crab and I got steak.  It was delicious!  We saw Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond movie.  It was action piz-acked!  

It's 11:30, where's your baby?

I hope the answer is, tucked in bed. But if you're this baby the answer is, sitting in front of the tv, watching baby einstein while munching on cheerios and juice. Jade has not been feeling that great over the past couple days, she has a runny nose which makes it hard for her to breath and she's teething (I swear that there are about 4 teeth coming in at once, it's wild!)
Sleep tight everyone.

Jade's First Xray

Jade and I had just finished up our errands on Saturday and were on our way home. Jade was fussy because she was sleepy so she was crying, but amidst the crying I heard a gagging sound. I looked back and she had her hair barrette in her hand, so I took it from her as I looked for the other one that had been in her hair, praying that she hadn't just choked it down. When we got home I did a more thorough search and couldn't see it anywhere so I called Dan and told him I thought Jade had swallowed her barrette. He called me back a little while later and told me to come by his work and we could have an xray done. So Jade had her first xray.
And if you look closely you can see the clip in the xray on the right hand side, just under the ribs. (At this point it was still in her stomach).
Here is a picture of the twin clip. As you can see it is mostly covered in cloth so that was definitely a bonus and also it had not opened up before she swallowed it, which was great too.
Luckily, she passed it the next day. Even though we picked up quite a collection of these cool clips in Hong Kong, they all are going in the trash. It's not worth the worry.

Halloween

Well, it's a bit late but I wanted to post pictures of Jade's first trick or treating experience. We were in Minnesota at the time, visiting Dan's aunt and uncle. We also had a ward trunk or treat that was a lot of fun and had a huge turnout, but unfortunately those pictures were deleted.
Originally Jade and I were both going to dress up as cats but I found this flower costume on sale at babies r us for only 5 dollars!

Dan's cousin Natalie, her son Ashton, Jade and her daughter Jasmine.Here's the whole gang on our way back to the house. Because Jade was in her stroller the whole time I felt sort of silly holding out her bucket for candy, I felt like I was trick or treating again. It was fun though, and the kids were so cute.

Fall Outing

While we were in Minnesota we took a trip to a local pumpkin patch/petting zoo with Dan's aunt and second cousins.  It was a very cute place.  Here is Jade riding her first tractor.

Jadey listening to some tunes with dad.



Hope everyone is enjoying the autumn weather because winter will be here before you know it!  p.s. it is officially ok (in my book) to start listening to christmas music now!  yay!

Jade loves the library

Jade and I like to frequent the library.  They have fun story times and Jade loves all the room to crawl around.  This evening we had a little time to kill before picking up Dan from work so we decided to stop by the library.  Jade had so much fun crawling up and down the stairs.  She's really starting to get the hang of it.

Tissue Mischief

Earlier today Jade was watching a show on tv while I got ready. After a while I noticed it was pretty quite and I knew I'd better get in there and see what kind of mischief she was getting into. I found her like this, surrounded by tissues and stuffing them in her mouth.

Utah Hogle Zoo

I've been dying to take Jade to the zoo, she really seems to love animals. However, I wanted to go on a day that Dan could go with us and before it got too cold. We had a great time, it's not the most spectacular zoo but there were enough kids there to keep Jade entertained. She seemed more interested in watching other kids run around and play than she was in the animals. She really liked the monkeys though, they move around a bit more than other animals like the elephants.