Preschool

Allie is starting a little preschool this year. It's once a week with 6 other friends. Each of the moms and I will rotate to teach them. So I will teach every 7 weeks. She loved her first day. She was "Queen for the Day" since her name starts with the letter A. I was that mom that stayed for a few minutes and took pictures. Can you blame me!? She got to share a story and some of her favorite things. This is what she said:

Who is in your family? Dad, Katelyn, Mommy, and Allie

When is your birthday? June. Wait, when is it? Oh yeah, March

Favorite Color: Pink

Favorite Food: Fruits and Vegetables

Favorite Toy: Bunny

Favorite Movie: Rapunzel

Funny Story: She shared about the first time she ate ice cream. That night we were getting her ready for a bath so she was just in her diaper. She started blabbing like crazy and we called it "Diaper talk." Here...you can watch it.

Dog Days of Summer

This is how we spent our last days of summer...

Dates to the mall...stopping at Mrs. Field's of course!

Splash pad

More splash paddin'

Taking furniture a part with lots of help from Katelyn!

Walks/bike rides

Park..haha!

More park

Ice cream

Getting settled in to the house and getting caught up on the blog....so pictures of the house will be coming soon!

Western Idaho Fair

Some friends from our ward invited us to the fair. Luckily they did because we are so out of the loop we would not have known about it.

It was a great time. We got to feed the baby animals, Allie milked a cow and rode a pony, watched the lumberjack show, saw butterflies and even "held" some, pet stingrays, and walked around. I forgot my camera so my phone will have to do for our memories this time.

They had Q-tips that you dipped in nectar and the butterflies would land on them. It was cool!

Pure joy!

Allie loved all the animals!

{I love us}

Married for eternity to my best friend.

7 years....August 14, 2004

I love this man!

How we celebrated:

Packed boxes and took apart furniture to move into our first home. Not too shabby :)

4 Generations

Our main reason for traveling to UT was that my sweet grandmother from Florida was up visiting my parents. It's our only time each year to see her. Allie couldn't get enough of her and enjoyed all the time she could get with her.

(Katelyn is caught in the act!)

The coolest thing about my grandmother is that she just loves her family. She gets down on the floor and plays with the girls and makes them feel special and loved. What an amazing woman. She is such an example to me and is one of the strongest women I know. She has left such a great legacy for all of us, especially these little girls to look up to and follow. Love you!

I'm going to pretend to start playing catch up. We've had an eventful month.

The first event was the HUBS turning 30! WHAT!? We celebrated earlier this year with a trip to Disneyland. Yes, it was fabulous!

On the actual day we were in Park City with the fam. So...we took a ride on the Alpine Slide (my first employer by the way). It's wierd going back. I don't miss it for even a second (except maybe my nice tan and my strong muscles). Allie and her cuz McKenzie rode on the airplane ride 4 times I think. They were in pure heaven! The girls even went down the slide!! They were screaming and laughing with joy the entire time.

My dad made his famous Ben and Jerry's Mint Oreo ice cream instead of a cake (like I've said on here, we are caked out), which was delish.

Not a bad way to celebrate another decade alive.

What a dork!

But I love him anyway!!

Snickerdoodles

This post isn't about Snickerdoodles. I made some the other night. I have already had 3 today and want another. Maybe if I write it out the craving will go away...

Doug's friend at work got a new camera and offered to take some pictures of us. Yes please! As you know I've been wanting pictures for awhile now. :) Doug drives past a wheat field everyday and thought it would be a cool place for pictures. He was right. Here are some he got to us and I can't wait for the rest.

We started packing and needed a "baby jail" to keep Katelyn from getting into everything. It works for toddlers too.

Allie and Doug tried camping in the backyard since Allie earned it. They did some smores and watched a movie. But we live by a pretty busy street so the noise and lights made it hard to sleep. Oh, and the fact that Allie couldn't stop talking ;) so they went inside for the rest of the night!

4 day week for us and then off to Utah to see my family and my grandma from Florida!! :):)

When friends come to town

This is something I love...when friends come to town.

My old friend Casey from G-town married my roommate from college Natalie. So we will always stay close and in touch with them. On their way to Portland they stopped to stay the night. They have 2 beautiful girls and we loved every minute with them.

Blair and Allie

Lucy

Natalie and Mar (didn't get a shot of Casey. He was thrilled enough to be taking our picture)

Our friends from Logan, Brad and Kim, live in Richmond, VA now for school. Kim's family lives here and Brad is diung a pharmacy rotation for 5 weeks. They had their little girl the day after Allie was born. We met up with them and went swimming and met thrir baby boy. It's so fun to see my friends and watch our kids play together.

Allie and Milah (one day apart). Another reminder of how bite sized Allie is!

More invitations to all those we know and love to come for a visit!! Love ya!

Summer Days

In our family we have summer birthdays galore!! Katelyn starts it off, then Ryan, Marc, Grant, Larry, my mom, and then Doug. It's exhausting and we have had way too much cake. Ugh!

I didn't get any pictures from Ryan's party sadly. He had a pirate party and his mom made a pirate boat cake (AMAZING!) and did some really fun activities for the kids. The party favors were great too.

Grant had quite the cake as well. I forgot who the character is already but maybe you know!? I think my sisters-in-law should start a cake business. I will cheer them on.

Homemade popsicles are a must. We have tried a few. In this picture we made fruity/yogurt popsicles. YUMMMM!

Checked out the free Nature Center. Gorgeous and so fun to have a shaded walk. Good times.

Road Trippin' {in a VERY dirty car...try not to pay attention to that}

But mostly we have been busy with a house! That's right, we are buying a house. We should be moving in a month or less. {sigh} We are thrilled!

Sweetest Kisses Ever

This just melts my heart. Check out her pucker!

Born in the USA

{Click to enlarge}

It was an awesome celebration for us. My parents drove over and we had a blast with them. We started by going to the Melba Parade. It's about 40 minutes away from Boise and claims to have "The best parade in Idaho." They did not disappoint. Loads of candy and it was an hour long. Allie had the time of her life once she figured it out.

We played in the pool, had some great BBQ chicken and corn, and then did our own fireworks. It doesn't get dark until about 10:15 here so it was hard for all of us to wait that long. But we enjoyed it! Allie was not a fan of the noise but loved the glow bracelets we got. Katelyn slept through all of it :)

Proud to be an American!

P.S. I dropped the ball and we didn't listen to any songs. I'm lame. Sorry mom and dad!

Green Thumb

Our garden is growing and we haven't killed it! {crossing fingers}

It has been so fun to teach Allie about food and where it comes from and to have her help us harvest and wash and then of course eat it! We have had lettuce, green onions, and peas so far. Everything is growing great!

I love not writing "peas" on my shopping list. :)

Bring on the rest!

Photography

One day I dream to have a nice camera so I can take amazing photographs. One day I dream to take photography classes so I know how to take amazing photographs. Until that day we make do with what we have.

Second attempt at taking our own pictures. {Katelyn's 1 year and Allie's 3 year pictures} + {Family pictures if possible}

It was too bright.

We were frustrated.

The girls wanted nothing to do with looking at us. (We are boring)

But we did have a fun day in a beautiful park.

And we did manage to get like 4 good pictures out of 200. Eh. Blah.

And of course we will keep trying because we are cheapos!

They are cute no matter what. Would just love to have some pictures to hang someday...

Still dreaming!! :)