Look WHOO's turning 1!

My little Avonlea Elise turned the big 1 year old yesterday. I just can't believe it has been a whole year since she joined our family. She has been such an easy baby and has such a fun personality. We LOVE YOU SO MUCH Avonlea!

We spent the day just enjoying our girl and doing things that she loves. Thankfully, she is pretty much all better now and in good spirits. She got to eat her favorite lunch all by herself...which required taking a bath afterwards. I just let her play in my kitchen sink while I put away dishes.

After her bath, she played in her birthday suit and read books. Always a favorite pastime for Avonlea

Time to open presents. Nana gave her a mirror and I think it's safe to say that she loved it...or rather, that she loves herself :-)

She played in the tunnel with her brother and sister

And of course, there was Birthday cake

We tried practicing blowing out the candle but she never quite grasped the idea

She did grasp the idea of eating it though

"hmmm...this is pretty. I'll fix that"

"How does it look on my teeth?"

"It looks much better all over my face right?"

At age 1, Avonlea is:

*walking all over holding on to furniture but is still to timid to take a step on her own.

*Says "mama, dad, ow (no...and shakes her head), ahh (yeah...and nods her head)

*signs "more"

*loves to YELL!!! just to hear herself

*loves to clap and roll her arms for pattycake

*Loves the song baby shark and the 'shark attack' part

*Loves her brother and sister

*Loves to climb things. thinks its a game to climb the stairs when we don't want her to.

an old journal

Tonight I found an old journal from a couple years ago. I found an entry that really made me laugh and I had to share. Addie was 2 and we were driving. She was thirsty so I gave her my water bottle. She took a drink and then she started tooting.
Me: "Addie!"
Addie:"that water makes me toot."
Me: "What do you say" (waiting for an 'excuse me').
Addie: "There's more where that came from"

I'm so glad I wrote that down because I had totally forgotten about it.

Just one of those updates

I thought it was time for an update of what is going on in our lives around here.
It is starting to warm up a little but it has been pretty dang cold. We love to play games inside. The kids favorite are "races" that Ammon makes up...more like an obstacle course that they have to go through. Ammon is such a great dad and these kids adore him. They also love Lego's Avonlea has been learning how to feed herself. For the last couple days, if I try to feed her, she just turns her head but if I give it to her to feed herself...SHE GOES TO TOWN!!!

We have some little builders on our hands. Lowes does this awesome thing where every couple weeks they do a project for kids. Yesterday, I took the kids and they got these goggles, aprons (to keep) and hammer and they got to make these little basketball hoops. They loved it and the best part is that it was FREE!!!! How cool is that

While Addie is at school, Kimball and I try to keep busy. He loves going to the zoo. Avonlea and I love it too.

He loves to help me paint, which I have been doing A LOT lately. This last month I have painted the master bedroom, the girls room and the guest room. Before and after pictures will be coming soon. I just have to finish a few of the accessories before I take the pictures. I am really loving decorating this house.

We enjoy watching the garbage truck picking up the garbage :-)

Oh...and we have been doing A LOT of this. These last 2 weeks we have had sick kids. Last week was Addie, this week has been Avonlea and Kimball. Avonlea has RSV and ear infections. NO FUN! Especially since it has been Ammons Spring break and we had plans to go out and do a lot of different things. Oh well, Summer is on its way.

We were able to go to the IMAX theater that is included in our zoo membership this year. That was pretty dang cool.

I love how many things there are around here that are geared toward family. There are so many fun activities with the Zoo, the botanicle gardens right by our house, the childrens museum and wonderful friends all around. We love living where we are. We do still really miss Utah. In fact almost everyday Addie tells me how sad she is because she misses Cedar so much. Today, when she was coming home from church with Ammon, she told him that sometimes she gets so frustrated with me because I took her away from Cedar ;-( How sad. I try to help her look for all the good things about Omaha and I think she takes that as me saying I don't miss Cedar. I feel bad that this has been so hard for her. We are hoping to go home in May for a visit and for Ammon to graduate from SUU so hopefully that will help. All in all, yes we miss Cedar and Utah and being around family but we are enjoying our new home too. We just can't wait for it to warm up