The one with all the pictures

Long time, no update huh? Well, a lot has been going on. I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for an update and here it is.
We celebrated Easter with my family a couple weeks early. Here are a few pictures of Jade hunting for Easter eggs. She started to get the hang of it after a few eggs.

After the egg hunt we had a pinata. We were also celebrating my twin brothers' birthday so we couldn't let an opportunity go by for a pinata.

This past month has been so crazy mainly because we moved to Minnesota!! We broke down our trip out into three days. We stayed with Dan's sister, Stefanie and her husband Kevin for a few nights. It ended up being a little longer than we had planned due to a blizzard on the plains that we didn't want to drive through. They were so accommodating though and we had a lot of fun. We made a delicious Chinese feast one of the nights.

Jade wasn't feeling well, unfortunately, so I didn't get any pictures of her and her cousin Rylee playing together.

This is the only Easter picture I took (it's in the lobby of our apartment) because our Easter Sunday was rudely interrupted by the fact that our car had been broken into! We headed down into the garage, which is shared by everyone in the building, and noticed someone had smashed in our passenger side window and taken our navigation system. That was only our second night here!

I gave Jade her first haircut. Here is the before picture. (It really was just more of a trim to get all those little wispy hairs out of her eyes.)

She was fairly cooperative, but just wiggly.

Here is the after photo.

The Mall of America has this awesome program called Toddler Tuesdays where they have different activities and such for kids every Tuesday. Jade and I love it and have been every week since we've been here.

This particular week was about the princess in the brown paper bag (or something like that), it was a very cute story and they had a local theatre come out and do a short performance.

The dragon was really neat! Jade was a little apprehensive but she did want to go up and see the dragon.

Jade has started attending nursery now at church. She seems to enjoy it, although, I think she will like it more when she starts to recognize some of the other kids. She just needs to make a nursery buddy. Most times when I peek in she's sitting on one of the teachers laps.

This is us taking a walk on the path that goes around our apartment complex. It's very nice, I'd guess that it's about a third of a mile track. It goes right past the playground so of course we stop at the end and let jade swing. She LOVES swings.

Today we went to Toddler Tuesday and they had a Mexican band and told Mexican stories and we learned the Mexican Hat Dance. It was a lot of fun.

I took this picture today of Jade, she's getting so big. She's just a sweet baby and lots of fun.

Baby goats

Our last trip to Idaho sort of made Dan and I want to get some baby goats. These kids were so cute, they kept climbing in and out of the trough. We saw baby ducks and baby chickens too. McKee's pet shop in Chubbuck has a fun "petting zoo", really you just walk around and look at the animals but the girls really loved it. Jade would walk right up to the fence and try to poke the goats in the eye.

Here's a picture of Jade riding forward-facing for the first time in her car seat. She was so excited it seemed.
Stefanie and I took Jade and Rylee to the play area in the mall and they really had a blast, jade was crawling through all the tunnels and sliding down the slide, except, she likes to linger at the bottom of the slide so I always have to move her so she doesn't get pummeled by some other kid.
Grandma Lou, reading bedtime stories to Jade and Rylee (who are wearing matching jammies).

The Aquarium

My family and I decided to plan a family get-together before we move so we thought we'd go to the zoo, but when we found out it was going to be freezing we changed our minds and went with the aquarium.
My younger brothers love to help out with Jade, they wanted to help her walk all around and see everything.

She's a walker now.

Jade is walking so much better now and I thought everyone would get a kick out of this cute video we took today while wondering around the mall.

Chocolate dipped snacks

Yesterday morning I put on a cartoon for Jade and figured I'd take a quick bath. I know you're thinking "bath? who takes baths anymore?", well I love them and figured I could hear Jade better if she started crying. Anyway, Jade wandered into the bathroom while I was washing my face and all of a sudden I heard a splash. Jade totally got into the bath, fully clothed. I laughed so hard; she was laughing and splashing.

We had some chocolate left over from fondue night so I figured Jade and I could have a chocolaty snack, we dipped pretzels and oranges into the chocolate. It was so delicious!

The picture below is of Jade signing 'more'. She's really learned quite a few signs. She can sign milk, more, baby, and potty, although, I'm sure she doesn't actually know what potty is yet.

Jade gets The Croup!

This picture is the beginning of a semi-scary night at the hospital.  Jade started getting a cough sometime around Saturday, it's hard to say exactly when it started because she hadn't been feeling well since Wednesday, so it's hard to say when it morphed into croup.  
We have been temping fate for the past year or so going without health insurance and fate finally caught up with us.  Jade's cough sounded like your normal cough for a little while and then you could tell she was really having a tough time breathing, so, we decided to take her in to the doctor.  Pretty much right away when he saw her his first words were "I'd like to hospitalize her".  That's when I started to feel nervous.  He was afraid that eventually her throat would become so sore that it could just close off, causing her to not be able to breathe.  Seeing as how we don't have insurance though we tried to see what other options we had.  When it came down to it though it just wasn't worth the risk so we went to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
Jade was just so tired she didn't really seem bothered by people hooking her up to monitors and giving her breathing treatments, and she fell asleep pretty soon after her first treatment. 
She slept in this plastic humidifier tent.  Her hair eventually became soaking wet, but she seemed to be sleeping much better than she had been at home.
In the morning she seemed better and we were able to leave early that evening, nearly 24 hours later.
Here we are watching her favorite show, Yo Gabba Gabba.  She is doing better little by little even though I keep checking on her almost every five minutes.  We just can't wait to get our fun loving baby girl back. 

The fires of love (a.k.a. valentine's day)

Jade's best buddy is Coleson.  We get together at least once a week with Brian and Lindsay and Coleson (usually for The Office).  Last Thursday we decided to have a crepe night!  It was such an awesome dinner/dessert.  Dan made the savory filings which included Buffalo Chicken, Chicken Curry and BBQ Chicken.  Lindsay brought all the fillings for the dessert crepes, strawberries, bananas, nutella, whipped cream, caramel.

I found the most delicious recipe for snickerdoodle cookies on my go-to website for recipes (allrecipes.com), they were scrumptious.  I decided to give Jade her own cookie and even though it took her about a half an hour to finish it off she really liked it.
Hope everyone had a lovely valentine's day and got to be with those you love.

The pictures don't match the story (but they're cute).

Baby Jade (I wonder how much longer I can get away with calling her that) is getting so big.  She's so adventurous and loves to climb.  Today when we were at the library for story time Jade started crawling away because she had spotted the stairs.  Every time we go to the library I take a minute or two, ok fifteen, to let Jade crawl up and down the stairs.  She loves it!

I think she might be experimenting with throwing fits now because when I picked her up to leave (after giving her sufficient warning that it was almost time to go), she arched her back and started yelling.  Even with all that though, she's the cutest baby in the world.

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.