Christmas Extravaganza

Beware: We have an avalanche of photos here. How could I not, with a three week vacation to Arizona. Jade and I left a week earlier than Dan, hopefully giving him a little extra quite time to study for finals.

Here is Jade on our flight. She does really well on the airplane. She watched her Barney video, and played with a slinky. Luckily, she napped on the second leg of our flight, and so did I.

My Dad and step-mom have two dogs named Speck and Ruby. Jade wanted to help out by filling up their water bowl, she dunked the hose in the pool and then into the water bowl. She was laughing so hard! It was really hilarious.
We got to go Christmas tree shopping with Grandma Mary and Grandpa Bob.

Once Dan got to Arizona, (after getting straight A's for the semester), we stayed with his cousin Brandon and his wife, Emilynn. We had so much fun with them! We tried several new restaurants and they all were delicious!



This was our Christmas Eve lasagna. This thing was a monster! It easily weighed 15 pounds! Mary's sister Tia made it. The cheesy, saucy, deliciousness was perfect for a Christmas Eve dinner.
Jade was very excited Christmas morning. She seemed excited that the cookies for Santa (and carrots for the reindeer), were gone. She opened everything with a shriek of delight. Regardless of what it was. She was even excited for clothes.

We visited a great children's museum in Mesa with our friends, The Barnett's.








My family on my Dad's side came to visit from California. It was so fantastic to see them, it had been over a year since the last time we'd been to visit them. Jade had so much fun with Savannah, they were running all around the house chasing each other.
All of my siblings were able to be there for Christmas. Here's a picture of my sister Katrina and her fiance Mike.
We celebrated my birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's. It was a lot of fun. I have so much fun there. It was kind of for the kids, but just as much for me.
Me and my grandma Armida. She is such a wonderful person. Love you Grandma!
My brother Michael and his wife Jess, and grandma Armida. It was really nice to have a lot of relaxed down time to chat and catch up with the family.

A four generation picture. I miss my family already! We had such a great vacation, and are so grateful for a fantastic family who we actually enjoy spending time with.

Happy Halloween!

We had a really fun Halloween. Jade dressed as a bumble bee, we thought it would be the best costume for her this year since she loves buzzing around the coffee table. She'll just start running around and around the coffee table yelling "bzzz bzzz". It's really cute!

We took another trip to Apple Jack's Orchards. It was really nice, they had pumpkins and apples you could pick. We walked through the orchard for a little while, and found a really sweet variety called Sweet 16. And the name is correct, it was probably the sweetest variety of apple I've tried.

Jade rode a pony there too. She was really excited, she started clicking her tongue, like she does for when she pretends to ride a horse.
This is when Jade picked up an apple that was partially rotten. :( It was pretty gross.

She was pretty excited to hold on to a whole apple and do it herself. She loves to do things by herself now. She'll say "Jade turn" when she wants to do it by herself.

We're Goin' to the Zoo

Jade loves animals, and usually refers to animals by their sound instead of using their names. For example, when she sees a picture of a seal, she'll bark like a seal, rather than say 'seal'. It's very adorable.

We went to a small zoo in St. Paul, although, it was pretty good for a small zoo. They had most of your typical zoo animals, tiger, lions, giraffe, sea lions, gorillas, monkeys, penguins, and more. We had a great time there in the beautiful fall weather, little did we know it would be the last nice weekend of the season.

Here's Jade riding the turtle. Turtle is one of the animal names that Jade can say very well.
These seals had a really small tank, I'm hoping there was some hidden outlet to a bigger tank outside. I don't know though.


Jade helped me make some peanut butter play-dough yesterday. To make it just use equal parts peanut butter to dry milk, add a couple tablespoons of honey and voila, edible play-dough. Surprisingly, her first instinct was to play with it. I thought for sure the first thing she'd do was take a bite. She had fun using the rolling pin and cookie cutter.

I'm really glad we have baby Jade, she brightens every day.

Happy Birthday Jade!!

Well, our baby girl is 2! She is such a great girl, really funny, and goofy.

She loves to wrestle with both Dan and I. She can't get enough of ring around the rosies, or playing on the playground.

She loves reading books, some of her favorites are Goodnight moon, The Tooth Book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Counting Kisses, and the list goes on and on.

She can say a few words really clearly, like hi, bye, back, go, book, mall, daddy, momma, bath, meow, outside, snack, shoe, sock, toes, Jadey, more, hammock, and then there are a bunch more words that I think only Dan and I understand. :)

We had a party for her at our apartment playground. Unfortunately, we didn't charge the battery for the camera beforehand so we only got two pictures.

We did some coloring with sidewalk chalk, Jade seemed to have fun with it, but also wanted to eat it.

The day of her birthday we went to the Mall of America where they opened a new butterfly exhibit. It was smaller than I thought it would be but still neat. You can tell from my pictures that you could get pretty close.



We got to meet Spongebob!
We're so happy to have a cutie pie like Jade as our daughter. Love you Jadey Jade!!

Summer's End

Sadly folks, summer is coming to an end here in Minnesota. The leaves have already started changing this week. Our last week of summer has been a lot of fun. Here's a picture of Jade "cheesing" it up for the camera. Here we are at Dan's cousins' baseball game. His team lost but he played hard and was a good sport.
The Minnesota State Fair is a big deal here so we thought we'd see what all the hub-bub was about. We took the bus from a stop near our house. Jade seemed to think it was pretty cool to be riding on a bus, although she kept wanting to stand up.
This is the only picture we have of us actually AT the fair. This is the only ride Jade went on, she's still sort of small for even wimpy rides. This one seemed like it would be fairly boring, however, maybe we should have watched it before we got on. It went up and down and around, by the end Jade was crying. :(
We love having a pool at our apartment complex, it's the best rainy day activity. Jade always tries to get into the hot tub though, so we usually just spend half of our time over at the hot tub with our feet dangling in.

Well summer, we'll miss you. Don't leave us......we're scared of winter.

I'm singing in the rain!

Today, as I was getting Jade ready to head outside for the playground, it started raining. So we grabbed our raincoats and headed out! Jade loved it! We were singing "I'm singing in the rain", kicking our feet up (Jade tried to, it was really cute).

Back to Zion! :)

I'm talking of course about Utah! Call it what you will, Zion, Happy Valley.....I just call it home. When my sister called me to tell me she was getting married, the first thing that popped into my head was, Yay, I can go home. We've only been in Minnesota for 4 and a half months, but I was ready for a visit back.

I was really excited that Jade and I got to visit our friends, the Fromms! We had a yummy lunch at Chadders and then hung out for a while at their house. Jade was really glad to see Coleson.

Jade loved this little slide at my mom's house, and even though she could do it all by herself, my younger brother Christopher wanted to help her out.
Jade loved the flowers at the temple. My sister was married in the Manti temple. We grew up there and I think everyone in my family holds a special place in their heart for Manti.
My brother Matthew is so cute in this picture, I couldn't help but add it. His job was showing guests to the sign in table. And as you can see, he took it very seriously.
It was so awesome to see my sister Katrina and hang out with her like old times. Here she is with her boyfriend Mike. She totally surprised me by losing 40 pounds!!!! I was so surprised, she looked fab! Mike also lost about the same amount. They are so cute together.
And here are the newlyweds! We had such a fun time at their reception which was really low key at a local park. I wish them the best.
Here's the first dance. Cassandra was dancing with my dad and bawling like a baby. What's new though, huh Sanny?
Having a pinata at your wedding had kind of become a tradition in my family now. And it is an awesome one!

Here is a picture of their car. We didn't add the saran wrap or toilet paper, Kyle's family wanted to add to our work. Quick story here: We wrote the usual "Just Married" on the back of the car and "Groom" on Kyle's side and "Bride" on Cassandra's side. Then we decided to add a little more.....we wrote "go get her" under "groom" and "non-virgin" under "bride". Apparently, these were appalling things to write because my grandma (whose bed and breakfast the newlyweds had stayed at) asked who'd written those skanky things on her car.

The day after the wedding we decided to run the 5k in Salem. Here is a picture of all the participants from my fam. Katrina and I stuck together. Michael and Jess came in first, then my dad!!, then Katrina and I. I ran it in 39 minutes 45 seconds. I felt pretty proud of myself even though the time was not that great, I can honestly say I gave it my all. My mom kept an eye on Jade for me while I ran and I waved to them at the finish line. Apparently, as soon as I ran past, Jade started crying.
After the race!
Here's a little cutie pie, waiting for our flight home. We had so much fun in Utah. We already miss being there, but that doesn't mean we don't like Minnesota, it's been really nice here.