Sold!

Yesterday was a bit of a poignant day for me (sniff). I said goodbye to the house I grew up in and helped my mom wipe out drawers and clean. Yep, my parents are moving and starting a new adventure in their lives! Good luck to them!

(I'm not going to share details since this is a public blog. . . Most of my good friends know the details, anyway.)

Waiting

I have a dear friend Caroline who was so good to me when she came and visited after Maggie was born last year. She just recently had her 2nd baby and I have been anxious to repay the favor, but both of my kids have had coughs and runny noses for almost 4 weeks now (I'm thinking they have allergies instead of colds, but I guess I'm not sure.)

Anyway, I talked to Caroline on the phone last week to see how she is doing, and after I hung up I explained to Jared that she just had a baby but that we couldn't visit yet because he was sick.

Well, Jared's last night's prayer included the following (unprompted): "Please bless me and Maggie to not have coughs, and bless my boogies to go away so that we can visit Caroline."

Sometimes it is REALLY hard not to laugh at our kids in front of them. :)

Happy, Happy Birthday

Maggie and I were the only ones awake for a while on her birthday. This was first thing in the morning.

Let's not even talk about how fast the past year has gone by and how my baby is growing up too fast. It's a touchy subject for me.

We celebrated Maggie's birthday with two little parties: one with my parents and then one with Alan's parents and siblings. Maggie is a well-loved little girl.

I wish I had thought to take off her bib so you could see her cute "confetti dress"

Our little dinner party. Yes, Jared made this face on purpose.

Maggie's new dolly.

Some of the aunts

Aunt Laura and G-ma

Now I know where Jared gets it from. Thanks, Beef.

"What is that glowing thing?"

"Do I have to try the cupcake?"

"Hmm, I'll have to think about whether I like this."

New birthday dress from G-ma and G-pa Curtis. She got so many compliments at church!

Here are some facts about Maggie:

• She is still off the charts for height but has "slimmed down" to a mere 50th percentile for weight. She used to be off the charts in weight until she was about 7 or 8 months.
• She has 5 teeth (that I know of). Four of them arrived at once when she was 7 months old; the 5th just arrived a few days ago
• She crawls everywhere and cruises along furniture. She has stood alone for maybe one second at a time, but doesn't seem very close to walking yet.
• She says Mama and Dada and Nana, but I'm not sure if she knows what she's talking about yet when she says them (???). When I say "Jesus" to her, she'll look across the room to the picture of Jesus on the wall (she is so spiritual). We are working on getting her to clap and wave bye-bye (no luck yet).
  
• She plays games like tilting her head forward until we "bonk" it with our own head. She also loves to find Jared when he's hiding under blankets. She LOVES Jared, except when he hugs her too long or too hard (which he usually does).
• Many people (even strangers at the store) have told me that Maggie looks just like a cabbage patch doll.
  

I have some videos from her birthday I would like to post, but they are taking too long so maybe I'll get around to it later.

Jared's Talk

Yes, this is my child.

Jared will be doing two firsts this Sunday: it will be his first time singing with the Primary children in Sacrament Meeting for Mother's Day, and he will be giving his first talk in Primary! His topic is "Joseph Smith is the prophet of the Restoration."

In the same style that my daddy used with me when I was a little girl, I drew some stick figure pictures to help Jared with his talk. I was going to just write some key phrases down next to the words, but it turns out that my little three-year-old boy is so dang smart that he can READ the sentences!


Alan's mom was over last night, so we got Jared to practice for her. This is only his 3rd run-through of his talk. I'm sure he will freeze up when it's actually time to give it in Primary this Sunday. He doesn't like to perform anything for strangers.



Update: Jared did a wonderful job on his talk. He was a little bit nervous, but the cutest thing was that he would stop in between EVERY sentence and say, "That was really good, wasn't it, Mommy?" There were chuckles all throughout the Primary room at his cuteness.

Happy Birthday, Alan!

This post is late, but we celebrated Alan's birthday four times in the past couple of weeks!

First, we had Alan's siblings over for "Great Wall of Chocolate" cupcakes here at our house. We sang "Happy Birthday" to the other April birthdays, as well.

Alan and I went to Tucano's for his free birthday meal the week before his birthday. Then on Alan's actual birthday I made him a pot roast and his favorite frozen ice cream treat (see last year's post). These pictures were taken on Alan's actual birthday with the kids. It is oh-so-fun to have a little boy who has discovered the joy of making faces for the camera.



My side of the family had a nice celebration of Alan's birthday in conjunction with Easter dinner, and Alan's side of the family celebrated his birthday this past Sunday night. Whew! It doesn't get better than that!

Easter Hunt

A few weeks ago we had Alan's three youngest sisters over for a "sleepover" on their spring break. It was a few days early, but we decided to have a little Easter egg hunt in our backyard. Jared loved it.



We also recently put our swings back up in the backyard (we took them down during the winter). Both Jared and Maggie love swinging on them!

My little girl is almost one!! Can you believe it!?

She is an angel!

Alan loves this picture, where you can see Maggie's "hippo teeth."