Will's first birthday!

I cannot even believe where the last year has gone...

My friend Erin took his one year pictures and I am in love with every single one!!!

On Will's birthday we went out to lunch and then spent the afternoon at Cherry Hill.  (so don't judge his swimming hair!)  Then we had some cupcakes from the Sweet Tooth Fairy (Yum!)

My parents came over for a little bit to give will his toy.  He LOVES cars!  (Confession:  I didn't buy him a single thing for his birthday!  He doesn't know the difference, and I had a hard enough time coming up with things for everyone else to give him, there was nothing left!)

The next week we celebrated with Danny's family.  Danny's dad makes the kids these amazing toy boxes!  (I could NOT get Canyon and Caydence to get out of the pictures!!!)

More yummy cupcakes

Happy Birthday sweet Will!  (actually a month ago- July 26)

Faster, Higher, Stronger (Olympic Party)

When we heard the Olympic opening ceremonies were 100 days away I decided we needed to party!  Then I found out they were the day after Will's first birthday, so we decided to throw the 2 of them together.  Who doesn't love the Olympics?!  And who doesn't love a reason to party!

The decorations:

 Cupcake medals podium

 The prizes!

It drives me CRAZY that it puts these pictures in sideways!!!

But here are the favors I made.

 Javelin:

 Even Grandma Betty got in on the action :)

 Discus

 Richie setting up the cups for slingshot.

 (Another sideways picture)  Just had to show you the shirt I got for Will to wear at the party!

 The banner we made for the garage

 Will's toy from my parents.  Unfortunately this is the only shot I have of Caydence's shirt (in the back)

We finished the night roasting hot dogs and watching the Opening Ceremonies.  It was a blast!  I love an excuse to get together and party!

Defying Gravity

If you've seen Wicked, you know that is the BEST PART of the whole show!!!  So my mom and Paige got tickets to Wicked for Christmas, so we all went down early to enter the lottery for tickets.  There were WAY less people than when we went 3 years ago for the lottery.  We still were nervous about winning, but Paige AND my mom won tickets!  So we had 6 tickets (since they already had 2).  They sold their tickets and came up to the front with me, because the tickets in the lottery are AWESOME (4th row!)  So it's the 3rd time I've seen it, but it was just as magical as the first!!!

On a random side note, I just read this and it made me a little crazy:

"Brown's attorney Don Karpel told TMZ he plans to sue the Century 16 theater, which is owned by Cinemark, for having an exit door that was not equipped with an alarm or guarded. (Holmes reportedly left the theater through the exit door, propped it open and returned with his weapons.) Karpel also said he may sue Warner Bros for releasing violent movies that may have inspired the shooter, as well as the suspect's doctors, if he had any, for hypothetically not monitoring James Holmes' mental condition properly."

Really people?  What is this world coming to?!?!?!?

4th of July

The 4th of July is hands down my FAVORITE holiday!!  And this year was definitely a success (judging by the fact that I slept in til 9, Will slept until 9:20, and Caydence slept until 10!)  We had a blast and loved hanging out with friends and family.

We started the day at the Kaysville parade, of course.  I just LOVE Kaysville!  The tradition, the sense of community, etc.  The Kaysville parade never disappoints.  And this year we were lucky enough to have some friends from our new ward join us and it was great!

 Danny's "mini me"

 So lucky to have Paige to entertain Caydence!

 This is supposed to be a star :)

We then hosted a BBQ for both of our families and we had a blast!  We had some baseball, croquet, water fight, good food, and nice family time.

 Fell in love with these firework straws!

 Patriotic treats

 I made this tablecloth with some bandannas.  It was so easy and I love it!

We ended the day at the fireworks, which Will hated and Caydence paid zero attention to, ha ha.  But it is always one of my favorite things!  I wish I had take more pictures of the PEOPLE who came, but I'm just not good at remembering to get out my camera!  But we had a great day, and that's what really matters!

Baby time!

Ha ha, I realized after I picked that title that it probably freaked some of you out. It's not for me, it's for my SIL Lauren. I hosted my first baby shower and I had a blast preparing! The pictures just don't do it justice, but here they are:

The spread. (kind of dark) I went with gray and pink, and my wall just happened to match perfectly! I had a lot of help from my silhouette (love that thing!)


I went with elephants for the gray.


Love the striped paper straws that are everywhere!


Made my first cake pops. They turned out so cute! (and yummy!)


My mom made this gorgeous fruit bouquet.


C for Claire


Pinwheel boxes from pinterest as party favors.


We are so excited to meet baby Claire and for Caydence and Will to have a new cousin!!

-Tarin

The Chevron Wall!!

I'm excited to show you all my new wall!!  We had a LOT of maroon-ish and it needed to go!  So I found this great tutorial on pinterest and knew I had to try it.

Here is the wall before (I forgot to take the picture until I had sanded and patched the wall, but the color is still just as yucky :)

 First I painted it the lighter gray.  Make sure to wait 2 WEEKS before moving on or else the chalk line won't wash off.  The hardest part was deciding how to divide the wall.  I wanted 2 things.  1-Less stripes that are big (not lots of skinny ones)  2-All the stripes to fit on the wall without running off the edges.  (Lost you yet?)  So our wall is (almost exactly) twice as wide as it is tall, so we just divided the wall in 1/2 (using some crazy fractions) and marked it with chalk.  Then we kept dividing it in 1/2 until we had (almost) even squares.  We used a chalk line to connect our marks making the squares below:

 Using wide painter's tape, tape off the wall from corner to corner.  Make sure you tape so that you can paint on the inside.  Rub the tape HARD to seal the edges.  Then sponge the light color along the entire tape line so if it seeps through the tape, it will be the right color, instead of the dark paint seeping.  Let that completely dry, and this is what you'll have:

 Paint the dark color, I did 2 coats.  Make sure to IMMEDIATELY remove the tape while the paint is wet.  I painted one stripe at a time and removed the tape before moving onto the next stripe.

 And TA-DAH!  Bummer is you have to wait ANOTHER 2 weeks before washing off all of the chalk, but worth the wait!  I LOVE it!!

It's been a while...

I know it's been a while. We've been working like crazy every night when Danny gets home from work to put together Caydence's new swing set, which is taking FOREVER! This is what it looks like right now:






Hopefully we'll finish today.

I've also been painting a few rooms in our house. Thus is my first experience ever painting, and I am loving the results! I forgot to take a before picture, but it was a dark maroon. Not terrible, but too old! Our new front room:






Not the best picture, but we LOVE IT! I'm now painting the family room. I'll show you that when I'm finished. Next is our bedroom, which I am WAY excited about! I've been copying some pinterest pictures and I am excited to see it all come together. Anyone know where I can get yellow chevron fabric?






Yellow is so popular right now that everyone laughs when I ask if they have it. Every OTHER color is available...

Every year I buy Caydence 2 pairs of flip-flops (because it's 2 for $6). She LIVES in them until they literally fall apart at the end of summer. She took this picture herself:






Caydence is so ready for Cherry Hill to open! She asks to go EVERY DAY! I'm pretty nervous to do it with 2 kids this year!

She got a new sandbox for her birthday from my parents, and she would seriously live out there if we let her!







Will is just the cutest thing ever! I took him to his 9 month appointment and the doctor said he is just not getting enough calories! His growth chart was seriously a straight line from 6-9 months in height, weight, AND head! So he told me to completely cut off nursing (ouch!) and he would get thirsty enough that he'd "eventually drink something!". He still hates formula, even when I try to hide it in chocolate! But he is loving the life of yogurt, cheese, carnation instant breakfast, ice-cream, whole milk, and gram crackers! I have to take him back in a few weeks to check his growth again. My goal is 16 pounds! He is so much happier and sleeps so much better now, so I'm sure he's full and growing!

This is how he "crawls" so far. But he definitely gets where he wants! We call it the army crawl :)

We took him to the park and he LOVED his first time on the swings!





He is just such a little man! I love him!!

We've spent the last week at the ice skating rink getting ready for Caydence's first ice show. She's taken a few little lessons and it's pretty cute. I took a few phone pictures before we left and the camera died as soon as we got there :( But it's ok, because we get to to it again tonight! Ha ha. So I will post the video when I get it.






-Tarin