We like to party!

All of the birthdays in our family seem to turn into a week-long event. Caydence's 2nd birthday was no exception.

We started with a combined party for Caydence and her great grandma (they share a birthday). We did it the week before their birthday because we had a bunch of family in town from California who wanted to join in the fun.

Caydence was pretty cute this year because she actually blew out the candles all by herself.

The birthday girls!

The ONE day a year I'm ok with Caydence being messy.

Dress up shoes from my mom.

The second party was with Danny's family. This was her cute cupcake.

She started out pretty clean.

Her cousin, Analyssa, gave her this purse and necklaces and she wouldn't take them off the whole time she was opening presents. Made for some pretty funny moments.

Party 3 was on her actual birthday. We had dinner with my family, and a couple more presents.

And more cupcakes, of course!

And more messes!
I still can't believe our little girl is 2! I feel like she was just born yesterday, but at the same time it feels like we've always had her. She is the joy of our lives. We love our Caydence!!

A SIDE NOTE (but still extremely exciting)

Danny got a new job! He'll be starting Monday for Goldman Sach's in SLC. We're really excited, especially for the better hours, better pay, and shorter commute!

This is how we celebrated. WINGER'S!!

Where has the time gone?!?!

I still can't believe it, but last night Danny and I celebrated our FOURTH anniversary! Crazy.

I surprised Danny with the entire night. He had NO idea what we were doing. I just told him to take the day off work because I had a lot planned.

We started the day at the Salt Lake temple. I LOVE that they still do live sessions. We even got to be the witness couple which made it even better!

We then had reservations at Donovan's- an amazing steak place in SLC. It was really good, and I just love the high-class atmosphere.
And we finished off the night with the funniest man ever. This is the 2nd time we've gotten to see him. I could watch him every day!

Pretty much the best night ever.

My poor baby girl...

I've really wished that Caydence could talk this last month. I'd really like her to tell me what's wrong.

Four weeks ago Caydence randomly threw up. She had issues with throwing up this summer (you may remember my rant/post about it) and after throwing up 3 times in about a month she stopped and everything seemed fine. But this time it has been way worse. She has thrown up 7 times in the last 4 weeks- 6 of those being in the last 3 weeks. We first thought it was a milk allergy because it always seemed to follow milk, so we took her off milk for a week and she stopped throwing up. YEA! But then we re-introduced it and she started throwing up again, so we thought we had it solved. Took her back off milk, and she continued to throw up. I finally took her into the doctor after 3 weeks and 6 throw ups, one week of diarrhea, and a completely unrelated fever/cough/runny nose on the side. Poor thing was miserable. The doctor sent me to the hospital so they could draw her blood and test it for milk allergy, celiac's, etc. I was hoping the tests would come back positive, but at the same time really hoping they wouldn't.
This is after they drew her blood. She was totally over it because she had a sucker and this slap bracelet :)

So the doctor called today with the results: no allergies. Great. Now where do we go. I'm so tired of throw up, but most of all I feel so bad for Caydence. So they called in a prescription for antacid in case it's reflux, which I also hope is not the case because it was EXPENSIVE and it was only a 1 month dose! And he also referred me to the GI department at Primary Children's, but they are WAY booked, so it'll probably be a while before I can get in to see them. Hopefully we can get this solved. It's the worst to see your baby suffer. But the weird thing is that once she throws up she's totally fine. Not sick, not whiny, nothing.

Just a side note: The doctor was also concerned that she had not gained any weight since her appointment 5 months ago. All I can say is I wish that would rub off on me...

My kind of figure skater:

This costume says it all.

Kevin van der Perren

Belgium

Since Danny never reads our blog...

...I can post about his funny/embarrassing mistakes and he'll never know :)

So last night Danny and I took out our 4 garbage cans (2 each). I looked in mine to make sure they were full before I took them to the curb because we don't always fill all of them. I told him to check his too - he didn't. This morning he went to throw something in them, and the one he opened was empty, so he brought them all back in. I told him I was really surprised because the garbage man usually doesn't come that early, so he said he'd check them on his way out to work - he didn't. Turns out that since he didn't look last night he ended up putting an empty one at the curb, and he just so happened to pick that one to throw garbage in this morning, and so he assumed the garbage man had already come - but he hadn't.

Point of this story: the garbage didn't get dumped, even though we took out all the cans and brought them back in, ha ha.

To our neighbors who read this: Sorry!! We tried! I guess we'll have to go light on the trash this week - or maybe we can go across the parking lot and fill the neighbors' cans without them knowing :)

Birthday Week!

Since Danny's birthday and my birthday are only a week apart, we call the whole week birthday week, and celebrate all we can! :)

We started the week with Danny's birthday with lunch at Texas Roadhouse with friends (YUM!!) and Avatar in Imax 3D. Everyone LOVED it (but I was pretty bored. just not my kind of movie.) The 3D was really amazing though.
Then we met up with some more friends for bowling at Boondocks. (Love that place!!)

We ended the night with brownies and ice cream at our house. Happy Birthday Danny!

The majority of Danny's family has birthdays in January so we had a big party the day after Danny's birthday. Here's Danny opening his gifts.

Our cute nephew Canyon. This picture is just TOO good!

All the January birthdays.

On Friday I went to the Cheesecake Factory with my mom for lunch. UH-MAZ-ING. I always love that place. This time I tried the 30th anniversary cheesecake at it was to die for!

On Saturday (my birthday) Danny surprised me with breakfast at Sill's with my friends and siblings. My brother Michael was really in the birthday spirit :)

Danny made me wear this ribbon.

We asked the waitress to take our picture. Why do people have such a hard time with cameras?!? Poor Danny is only 1/2 in the picture...

That night we used our free Jazz tickets from the Sing-a-long we went to in December. We were in the 2nd to top row in the whole arena, but it was still really fun.

The Jazz pretty much blew away the Nets. I think the final score was something like 117-86. We knew it would be like that because the Nets have won like 3 out of 40 games this season. How embarrassing... I almost felt sorry for them, but hey, they're in the NBA!

The next day we celebrated our birthdays with my family. (We will forever have 1 birthday) My family made us wear these crazy things for the whole night. Danny's button had Yoda and said "birthday Jedi knight" ha ha.

Opening our presents. I got my Cherry Hill pass, and I can't wait for summer to use it! Except I hate summer... ha ha

It was such a great week and we were so spoiled! Thanks to all of our friends and family that made it such a great week!

We had a big snow storm and decided to take Caydence on her first sledding trip. She was so cute all bundled up. She cried the first 2 runs, so we let her watch Danny go down a few times. She then tried it again. I think she was still terrified, but she didn't cry! I am REALLY bummed because I filmed it with my flip cam and when I plugged it in to the computer to upload the video it said I needed an update (I haven't downloaded my videos in a while). I did the update and it erased ALL of my videos! I'm trying not to freak out, but all of my videos from my NYC trip are gone, this Christmas, and more. At least I had already downloaded the pictures of Caydence's first steps, or I would literally have a breakdown. I'm trying to keep calm. Maybe they're in the computer SOMEWHERE...

Disaster...

In our almost 4 years of marriage, and ALL of my cooking experience before that I have NEVER had a dinner disaster. I have had some recipes that weren't all that great, or that could have been better, but they were always edible.

This morning I got up early so I could make this chicken soup with a leftover carcass before I headed to playgroup. It was full of vegetables and goodness. I was really excited for it.

After playgroup I ran to costco and to the bank. My mom said it was supposed to boil all day, so I didn't even think twice about it.

I walked in the door around 2:00 and out poured tons of smoke. I ran to the kitchen and found this:
Those used to be vegetables, and a whole chicken carcass with lots of meat still on it! And it was filled to the top with broth! Dang it. Guess it's a PB&J night...