Paige the Terror and Videos

Paige really is still such a good baby, but compared to what an angel she was when she was a newborn that never moved - the mobile Paige that gets into everything is a little terror!  She LOVES shoes, she will go after them over anything else.  The only problem is she likes to eat them, especially the bottoms where all the dirt and e. coli is.

She took out every single baby wipe in this wipes container.  She was pretty proud of herself.

She is a good little eater, though.  She loves food and she is fast.  I put food on her tray and look back a few minutes later and all the food is gone.  I always think maybe she just dumped it all on the floor, but no, she's just a fast eater.  She loves bananas, grapes, strawberries, goldfish, and cheese.

Paige has gotten a lot better at walking in the last few weeks.  She has actually been able to stand up in the middle of the floor without holding anything since a few days after she started walking, but she has only been able to walk across the room without falling for about a week now.

Paige LOVES slides.  She loves to climb up them, and she loves to slide down them.  Here's two videos of her on slides.

Paige loves Lucas and Lucas loves Paige.  They are so cute together.  I want to just video tape them for a whole day so I can capture all the cute stuff they do.  Lucas will play bad guys with Paige and she will chase after him growling and he will knock her over and she will just laugh and laugh.  Here's a video of Lucas tickling Paige.

I can't believe how quickly the summer and Paige's first year are going by.  We're having fun, though!

Utah Trip Part Two

One of the days we were in Utah, we went down to Provo so we could visit our old stomping grounds.  We visited campus and stopped by the Clyde.  Ryan's picture is still up, so we got a picture in front of it.

 Another day we went to This is the Place Heritage Park - another place we had never been before.  Geez, you'd think we never actually lived in Utah.

 There were a lot of buildings to tour and see how the pioneers lived when they first got to Utah.  We did more outdoor stuff, since Paige and Lucas were not interested in holding still and not touching things.  We rode the tram a lot.

 They had a little petting zoo area with pony rides.

 Paige didn't actually ride, she just posed for a picture.  She liked the horse, though.

 Lucas learned how to milk a cow.

 They had a little ship to play on.

 And an area to pan for gold.  Lucas loved this, and found a few gold flakes, and was so excited he had found treasure.

Right before we headed home we took a little train ride.

We had a fun time, but it was really hot.  That was kinda the theme for this trip.  Later that day we went to Julie's pool to cool off and then had some barbecued brats for dinner after.  Somehow I did not get a single picture of this, but we had fun and the food was delicious!  Julie made roasted strawberries and buttermilk ice cream for dessert and it was AMAZING!

The next day we went to the Utah Olympic Park.  We took a guided tour and it was actually way cooler than I thought it would be.  We got in a van and got to drive around and see all the different tracks they have up there, up close, and learn about all the different sports and records and stuff.  Here we are getting ready to try out the bobsled.

 This was taken from the top of the Nordic ski jump track.  It was a really steep hill and we held on extra tight to the kids for this part.  It was really cool to see everything up so close, though.

 And here's Paige and Lucas trying out the Luge sled.

 There was a little museum area with info about skiing, and a poster to take silly pictures.  Paige snuck in to Ryan's picture.

We had a pretty fun time.

We seemed to be pretty good at taking pictures while we were out doing things, but not so much of the stuff we did with family.  I didn't take a single picture on the 4th of July.  Oh well.  On the 4th we decided it would be a good idea to go out to breakfast for pancakes and waffles, but so did the rest of Utah apparently.  We had to wait a while, but we finally got some food.  Next time I'll just get stuff ahead of time to make breakfast at home.

Later in the afternoon we went mini golfing, go karting, and we played laser tag.  We left Paige behind to nap with grandma and grandpa, but we took Lucas along.  He loved everything, especially shooting people in laser tag.  Then we went to the Sandy city fireworks.  Lucas and Paige stayed awake to watch them, but they were really sleepy.  They were great fireworks and we had a nice close spot to watch from.

We tried to leave bright and early the next day, it was only sort of early, but we still got on the road in enough time to make it home all in one day.  Here's Paige terrorizing the play room while we were packing up the car.  She seriously sat in the play room keeping herself entertained for an hour while we finished getting everything together.  She particularly loved dumping out really messy things.

We had a really fun time on our trip, and we're glad we got to spend so much time with family while we were out there.

Utah Trip Part One

We drove out to Utah for the 4th of July.  I've never really announced this on the blog, but we are now a van family, and we took the van on the trip.  It was so nice to have SO much space!  This was our first rest stop as we were coming over Donner Pass.  It was so pretty.  We actually did a really good job not taking too many stops considering we were traveling with kids.

When we got to Grandma and Grandpa George's house, all the cousins (that were in Utah at the time) were over for a sleep over.  Lucas was so excited to play with everyone, and his cousins were excited to see him.  So excited, that no one went to sleep until around midnight when we finally moved Lucas into a room of his own.  Lucas will definitely need to be a bit older before we try another sleep over.  It was nice to have all the kids together already in the morning, though.  They all seemed to wake up within 30 minutes of each other.  First Paige, at 5:50, then Dash and Annabel at 6:10, and Lucas at 6:20.  Ezra and Asher slept for a little longer and it made me pretty envious of Jeni and her late sleepers.  We ate breakfast...

 And then we didn't waste any time getting to playing with toys in the toy room.  Paige liked taking the cookies out of this cookie jar and then putting them all back in again.  Taking stuff in and out of bins and drawers has become a new favorite of hers.

 The kids played with puzzles, cars, the play kitchen, and Dash did a puppet show for everyone.

 Later after lunch, we went to the Tracy Aviary.  We had never been before so we were excited to check it out.

It was pretty toasty outside, but we just tried to stay in the shade and drink lots of water.  Paige and Lucas liked feeding these ducks.

 The aviary was really cool.  I was surprised how many of the birds were actually out where we could see them.  Including this peacock that we accidentally took a picture in front of.  I asked Ryan to take a picture of Paige guzzling some water, not even realizing there was a peacock hidden in the background.

So then we took another to get a good shot with it.

Our avian family.

 I liked the cute bird decorations they had everywhere.

 After we got done at the aviary, we were pretty hot, so we decided to cool off on the water slide in Grandma's backyard.  She also had these adorable pool chairs that I just had to get a picture of the kids sitting in.

Going down the slide!

Stay tuned for more from our trip...

Trip to the Oakland Zoo

We finally moved the computer out of Paige's room so I will hopefully be able to catch up on my blogging this week.  To show you how far behind I am, this post is from a trip we took to the zoo in the middle of June.  Wow, I'm a month behind!

Our friends have a pass to the zoo that gets us in free, so when they invited us to go with them, we said "definitely yes!"  Here's Lucas, Zac, and Jane looking at the giraffes.  

Pretty much the same picture, but looking at the Zebras.

Paige fell asleep in the car on the way there, so she was snoozing in her car seat for the first little while.  She woke up very excited to be at the zoo.

We saw some really cute bears.

After a while of walking around looking at all the animals, we stopping to be silly on all the animal statues.

Then we saw the fruit bats, which I had never seen in person before.  I thought they were going to be little, but they were huge!  The kids loved the fruit bats and hung upside down on a bar and pretended to be bats. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture so you'll just have to imagine that part.  Then we finished seeing everything there was to see, and stopped for lunch.  After lunch we played on more animal statues.

Then the kids played around for a little bit and we headed home.  The nice thing about a free trip to the zoo, is you don't feel like you have to spend all day there.  We got home right around nap time and the kids slept for a long time and let me relax.  Perfect day!

Amber's Wedding

One of my best friends got married the middle of June, and I went out to Utah to be there for the wedding.  Amber and I have been friends since sophomore year of college.  We were both Mechanical Engineering majors, we were in the same classes, we studied together, got awesome grades together, and graduated at the same time.  Paige and I flew out to Utah, and Lucas stayed with his daddy.  This was Ryan's first time being alone with a kid for a long period of time, so he was pretty nervous.  Here's me and Paige getting ready to leave.

We had a dinner the night before with all the friends and family from out of town.  Here's our little group of friends, and the bride and groom-to-be.

That night Paige threw up all over the hotel pack-n-play, so I let her come into bed with me.  I really was hoping she wouldn't throw up all over me, and she didn't.  She was so cute and cuddled up the next morning.

Grandma and Grandpa George came up to the hotel to watch Paige while I went to the wedding.  I didn't think to take any pictures of the happy couple, since there was a photographer there, but then I realized, that meant I didn't have any photos of my own, so I stole this photo from facebook.  They were so cute and looked so happy!

And here's our little group in our fancy clothes.

The luncheon/reception after the wedding was downtown at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  I picked up Paige from grandma and grandpa and took her along.  We wandered around a bit and took pictures in front of the pretty view of the temple.

After the luncheon was over Paige and I went to city creek, which was just right next to us, and we walked around and went shopping.  My friend Shannon met up with us and we had a good time talking, laughing, and getting hand massages at Lush. On my way back to the car, Paige fell asleep so we stopped to relax for a bit before the chaos of the airport.

Since our flight out to Utah was delayed for 3 hours and everyone was in a rush to get on the plane, we didn't really have time for pictures.  The way back home was much more relaxed so I decided to ask the pilot to take a picture with Paige to remember her first, almost first flight.  He was super nice and excited about it and he held her out over the controls and stuff.  But Paige was pretty grumpy after a full day of not very good sleep and still feeling a little sick and she was not very excited about some random stranger holding her in a weird place.  We settled for the pilot taking a picture of me holding Paige in the cockpit.  Almost as good.

The flight was empty so they let me bring her car seat on the plane.  Paige was like this for the first few minutes...

And then as soon as the flight took off, she fell asleep.

She slept the entire flight, woke up for a bit on the walk out to meet daddy, fell back asleep for the entire car ride home, stayed asleep for the transfer to her crib, and slept till morning.  Yep, she's amazing!  We had such a fun time!  Thanks again Amber for getting married and giving us an excuse to get together again.