Let's play catch up!!

We have had a really great year so far! To start thing off, our friend Laurel got us tickets to see Imagine 1-2-3 Elmo and Friends (she was part of the cast). We went with our friends, the Smiths. Jade and their daughter Samantha are only a week apart and they've become great friends.

We had great seats and even got to meet some of the characters before the show. Jade wasn't too happy about that, although she warmed up to Abby Cadabby, and even blew her a kiss.

Dan and I have been having date nights, thanks to another couple in our ward who we switch babysitting nights with. Thanks guys!
Jade is getting so grown up! She just looks more like a toddler/kid, than a baby. She is hilarious too. She has this one joke she tells it goes like this "gibberish, gibberish, gibberish" then "MOO!!" She laughs so hard, and we laugh too, of course, even though it makes no sense whatsoever.
We played Settlers of Catan with Stef and Kevin over Skype. :) We just set up our boards the exact same way and played for them on our board. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I won!
Toddler Tuesday at Mall of America has once again impressed us by having something fun to do on a Tuesday. Jade and I went for a Chinese New Year celebration. They had a dragon and martial artists did some cool routines.
And we got to meet Kai-lan. Ni-hao!
Dan turned 30!! We had a big celebration with some friends. Dan's mom sent him some Louisiana craw fish so we spent the night dissecting those and playing games.
Here he is feeling sorry for himself.
Not to worry Dan, I hear 30 is the new 20!
Jade got a double ear infection so we let her hangout on the couch watching Elmo videos on youtube.
My sister Katrina got married last week! She's been together with her boyfriend for over 4 years and they finally decided to make it official I guess. So I got to surprise her by showing up for the occasion. We had a fun girls night with my sisters and mom. We had dinner at The Gateway (my favorite mall), and shopped for lingerie!
My dad got to come for the wedding as well.
My sister and her husband Kyle, killing time with my younger brothers before the wedding.


Batman was the ring bearer.

Congrats guys!

They had a party at the bowling alley afterward, it was so much fun. I bowled a 127! Ok, that was with bumpers.


Jade is so imaginative. Here she is, feeding her babies string cheese.

Happy new year!

I hate trying to figure out how to use the laptop (mac) to load pictures on Blogger so you'll have to wait a little longer, until I get my butt in gear, for some pictures of our awesome holiday hi-jinks. We hope all of our friends and family are having a fantastic new year. And you can be certain that we miss you (you know, except for our friends here in MN)!

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.