My favorite ONE year old

My Jake man is ONE! He had more cake to celebrate his big day - he definitely liked it! And thanks to Ben's and my family for all the wonderful presents (mostly good lookin' clothes for my good lookin' man)






I can't believe how much I love this guy. He's just so handsome and nice. He gets so much attention from the ladies everywhere we go. :) Happy Birthday little man!

Springtime... with a little snow

The kids and I have been in Utah this past week, and as always, it was wonderful! Even with most of us taking turns being sick, we had a great week and did a lot. The highlights....

Dad drove with me from Arizona to Utah... oh how I know that 12 hour drive so well... the best part was this-


We played a lot of games, namely Qwirkle and Monopoly. Monopoly got a little heated, but we all still seem to like each other all right. ;)


We ate lots of goodies... the best was experimenting with mom's new chocolate fountain (more than once).


I love to visit my Grandma and Grandpa Smith in Salt Lake. They are amazing people and awesome great-grandparents too! And they have a really cool backyard. :)










The Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point was once again quite impressive. Becca missed out on this outing because it was her turn to be sick and stayed back with Grandma. Did you know that this museum is the largest dinosaur museum in the world?! wo!











Hmmm... this picture turned out strange


The girls helped Grandma plant some flowers in her front yard - they really enjoyed it.






I hadn't been to the Tracy Aviary since I was really little myself, so we planned in advance to make a trip up to see it. It was fun! And the weather was very pleasant. After experiencing the large variety of birds, we fed the ducks at Liberty Park.



























Emma really wanted to roll down this hill at the park
So, remember how the weather was pleasant... well, the next morning there was this (it melted by the late afternoon)-


We went out to lunch at this crazy hot dog place in Orem. Aaron's hot dog was so big, it was practically eating him.


It was wonderful to be able to be able to go to the temple with my brother and dad one evening. This was my first time visiting the new Draper Temple. It was lovely.


We went geocaching with Grandpa and it definitely turned into an adventure. We were prepared with coordinates to 5 different caches, thinking we'd find all sorts of fun stuff... but the first 4 were failures and we were unable to locate them. We gave it one last go with the 5th cache and finally had success! It was a multi-part cache and the first task required us to read through the historical marker at an old LDS church nearby in order to piece together the coordinates to the actual cache - we then traveled about a mile south to sign the log and collect our treasure... there is nothing nerdier than geocaching - it's so great! :)





Dad diving into the prickly pine tree to unhook the small container attached inside


There was a hill near the cache, so once again, the kids wanted to roll down it

Jake's first birthday was going be just after we left Utah, so we did a little pre-birthday party and Jake got his first taste of his very own cake... yes, he very much liked it... so much so that he then tried to eat the plate.








So, yes, it was a full, busy, and great week in Utah with my family! I'm so glad when I can go see them. Another highlight from the week that I didn't get a picture of was visiting with my wonderful friend Charis - we met at a nearby park one morning and visited while the kids played, but it was SO windy we didn't quite manage to pull out a camera... but I was so glad to see her! Even though our trip is now over, our fun continues with my sister now staying with us for a few days here in Arizona. And I'm staying up till the wee hours of the morning to get this post done because we've been quite busy doing fun things during the day. But more posts to come soon. I need to go bed!

A Visit from Grandpa!

We love it when people come to visit us and it was really great having my dad in town for a few days this past week. He is the best Dad and a really great Grandpa. My kids just love him and had been talking for the past month about how excited they were for Grandpa to come visit. We filled our days with Qwirkle, Beatles Rock Band, celebrating St. Patrick's day, enjoying the weather by eating meals on the back porch a couple times, visiting the zoo, playing at the park, shopping at some favorite stores ;), and going on a little hike.

On the day we went to the zoo it was really quite hot! The high that day was 88 or something - I was definitely glad we wore capris and shorts and lathered on the sunblock. But it was a great day to be at the zoo and we had a memorable time...









peering over the bridge at the turtles

taking a peek at a tarantula... I kept a safe distance



ooo... a kimodo dragon















Dad posed this pic while at the zoo, pretending that I had bought a jeep and then totaled it in the mud... not sure I'd be smiling so much though

The girls got to ride a camel! They LOVED it! Here's a video...



So it was a fun outing... and fun outings usually lead to this...


In the evenings we played Rock Band... and we really took it seriously...


Even though we've been in our house for 9 months now, we are still exploring our neighborhood and discovering new things. A friend told me that there is a great little hike right within the community - the trailhead is just a 10 minute walk from our house! Pretty awesome! I feel lame that I didn't know about it till now. We took the the shorter 'scenic overlook' route of the trail and it ended up being perfect for the kids and plenty rewarding with the view.










The park is near the trailhead too, so after our hiking adventure we played for a while...






Thanks for coming dad! We love you. Lucky for us, my sister, Sarah, is coming to visit us soon too, so there is even more fun to come. Yay! I sure do love my family.