Annie girl turns 1

Annabelle and my brother John's little boy Wells turned 1 just a day apart from each other. They celebrated their birthdays together and my sister-in-law MiaLisa bought THE cutest cakes for these two. Sadly, I had the camera on black and white the whole time so I didn't get any good pictures of anything.

The two birthday pals with their cute cakes.

Annabelle just wanted to play with the cake.

I couldn't get enough of Wells. He was inhaling that cake and just laughing the whole time. Annie was pretty cautious at first but here she figured out she can stuff her mouth full of cake.

The boys with their cousins. Jackson was especially sad to know they had to move back to Texas. He said "I'm really sad we don't ever get to see them again." We're hoping John gets into residency here at the U despite what he and Misa want :)

Annie after Jared figured out I was taking pics in black and white the whole time.


I don't care how cliche it sounds, I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW FAST TIME FLIES!!! It's so much fun to watch Annabelle go through different stages but I already miss having a teensy weensy baby in the house (this does not mean we are ready to add another one to the mix, though!!). She is such a sweet little girl and it seems we still fight over who gets to hold her and play with her. Last Sunday after Sunday school she was snatched up by one of our friends and we didn't see her until after church. Apparently people in Relief Society were fighting over her the whole time. As far as her growing, she finally made it onto the chart. At her 1 year appointment she was 18 pounds!! She seems to be chunking up nicely :)

Christmas in a nutshell...

We had my parents over a few weeks before Christmas to make "gingerbread" houses because Jared and I found out neither of my parents had ever made one before!! Here are the results.

My uncle and aunt Paul and Cindy held a little Nativity performance (put together by my cousin Jennifer) and it was really nice. We got to sing some Christmas songs, read about the Birth of our Savior and the kids got to dress up and have fun.

Christmas Eve the boys slept in our room so they wouldn't sneak out and find Santa's loot before us. Here are the boys waiting to see what Old St. Nick brought them.

This little girl is one who LOVES her sleep. Christmas morning did not come as a pleasant surprise to her.

Excited about Santa's gifts!

Jackson kept telling about this guitar and drum set that other kids had and it took me until Christmas Eve to figure out what the heck he was talking about. It's super thin and light and luckily pretty inexpensive!

All Tanner wanted was a cape from the Quilted Bear he saw several months ago. He was excited to see his superman cape along with his Ironman stuff.

You can see how Annie's feels.

It seemed like all the kids and their friends wanted for Christmas were pillow pets. I thought they were kind of silly at first but the kids have loved them and sleep with them every night!


We all had a very nice Christmas!! It was sad to see it come to an end. I think this was the first year in a long time I wanted to do it all over again.