Our Little Princess is Three!!!

Bailey turned 3 last week! It's so amazing to think that, in a blink of an eye, our princess is growing up so fast!

2007

2010

We started off the morning with presents. It's hard to tell who was more excited, Taysum or Bailey! My camera has a nice feature on it called blur reduction. It's great for "trying" to take pictures of kids. However, even blur reduction doesn't help when we have a birthday at our house! :)

Sometimes I get worried whether or not our kids will like the gifts we get them. We did pretty well with Bailey, though! She loved all the gifts we got for her. She loves animals and farms, so we got a Little People tractor with farm animals. Who'd have ever thought about going birthday shopping at McDonald's!? However, they have been giving Littlest Pet Shop toys in their Happy Meals. When we were going to Denver, Bailey got one and she LOVED it! I had been wanting to get some LPS toys for her anyway, so I bought all the different types of animals they had. They were really nice about it and helped me find all the different animals: koala, armadillo, giraffe, bird, cat, dog, and ferret. She also LOVES Toy Story, so we got the movie Toy Story 2 for her, a poster, and a stuffed Woody and Buzz. Taysum quickly adopted these two! She was very happy!

That evening, we had a birthday party for her in the park, which was perfect for her! Every night we talk about what made each person in our family happy that day. A lot of times she will say that playing in the park made her happy, even if we didn't go to the park that day! Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Tyler, CJ, Quinn, and Carissa came, too!

CJ and Quinn

Bailey LOVES cats, so this is my try at a kitty cake. I must say that Mr. Potato Head parts make for great cake decorators! She wanted rainbow cake (party chip) and white ice cream (vanilla bean).

It was a little windy and the match box I brought only had one match in it. It broke when I struck it and went out before I could light the candles. So she just pretended to blow out the candles and she was totally fine with that!

Opening a present from Grandpa and Grandma

Another great love! Dora!

Uncle Tyler is SO GREAT with the kids! It's going to be so sad when he leaves for college next week! We're just trying not to think about it right now, though!

Hayden was so cute in his little hat!

In May I did a post called "I Baydee" and I wrote about all the fun facts about Bailey: what she loves and the fun things she does and says. We sure love our little princess! We think she is just adorable and she makes life so fun! She has a temper, that's for sure, but I'm sure one day we'll look back on even her screaming with some fondness! ;) Since we only get one girl, we're sure glad we got her! We love you so much, little B!!

Sentimental Journey

Last week, we went to Denver for my brother, Matt's wedding. We were staying with some friends in Cheyenne. After the wedding, on the way back to Cheyenne, we stopped in Fort Collins, CO where we lived for a year and 1/2 and where Taysum was born. We haven't been back in nearly five years. I thought I would feel more sentimental about things, but we didn't live there very long and a lot of things have changed. Plus the kids woke up as we got into town and were grumpy, yelling and crying...so it was kind of hard to feel those warm happy feelings I thought I would feel! We drove by our old house. Not much has changed, other than the two little trees in front have gotten a little bigger. Also, there used to be a big bush in front; they took that out and replaced it with a little flower bed. We also drove by Ken's old work... didn't feel much about that either! :(

I was really glad we drove around. We loved Fort Collins while we lived there! We also met so many wonderful people!!

I thought we'd have stronger feelings the next day as we went home through Laramie because this is where we met and spent the first four years of our life together; but between a repeat of grumpy kids, an expensive lunch, rain and diarrhea, again it was hard to feel warm and happy thoughts!

However, I was glad that we took the time to drive around. We drove past the Education and Engineering buildings and our old apartments. It was really great to see the Institute! We didn't really stop anywhere, we just drove by. We did take the kids to LaBonte Park. It's a park that was really near the apartments we lived in and I used to dream about having a baby and taking our kids to the park to play. That didn't happen while we were in Laramie, but it was fun to take them now! Plus it was a nice break!

Then we went to Old Downtown to one of our favorite spots, the train bridge.

The kids were so excited to see the trains... until one actually drove by! It goes right under your feet and it's loud and hot and shakes the whole bridge! It scared them to death!

We actually had our engagement picture taken on the train bridge and I always thought it would be so neat to get a picture of our whole family in the same place. It didn't turn out too bad for rigging it up on the self-timer on the stroller!

July 2010

November 1999 Just some other fun pictcures:

I'm so frustrated that I didn't have Ken stick Hayden behind the rail and get a shot of him too!!

I'm really glad we took the time to go back and see the places we used to live and remember some really good times and the start of our life together!

On the way home, we were kind of tired of fast food, so we just got some ham, cheese and crackers at a Wal Mart in Casper. We let the kids take a quick ride as well. This was their ride...

This was Hayden's ;) ...

This was the last picture I was able to take. I totally killed the battery on the camera!

Matthew's Wedding

Last week, we had quite the adventure! We went to Denver for my brother Matt's wedding! I was excited, but nervous to go. This was the kids waiting for Ken to come home from work before we left. We had a really nice set of car DVD screens that fit nicely over the seat heads in our van, but they stopped working a few months ago. When we went to Lehi in June, we tried the trip without videos and I literally just about went nuts! It was so hard without them! We also have a single DVD player (not set up so easily) that we tried to rig up in the back for the kids. It took a while, but by the time we got to Douglas, this is what Ken had come up with :D

Once we got going, my nerves settled and I actually became really excited! I was really excited to be going back to Denver and to be staying with some wonderful friends of ours (who we met when we lived in Fort Collins) in Cheyenne. Denver was our temple while we were in Laramie and Fort Collins and I was really excited to see it again. We got to the Johnson's around 11:30 and everyone went to sleep really well and we had a good night. We woke up really rested and it was so nice to not have to rush. When we left, we were on schedule to arrive an hour early!! However, we accidentally took a slight detour. It made me a little nervous, but we still arrived a half an hour early. It turned out to be a blessing because the kids got a nice little nap and it was just enough time to get the kids settled and go into the temple! Also, we ended up going through a cute little town I had forgotten about. It is AULT, Colorado. The actual name of the town is A Unique Little Town, but they call it Ault! I was glad to remember it!

The ceremony was just beautiful! My mom's dad is a sealer and he was able to perform the sealing which made it extra special! It was so great to be there with everyone! Grandpa & Grandma Garrick, my parents and my sister and two brothers were all there together. Tyler hasn't been through the temple yet and Lindsay's husband had to stay and work, so he and the kids weren't there... we really missed them. Also, our cousin Katie Garrick was there, too. She and Tyler were wonderful and watched our kids for us!

Matt bought a tie for Taysum. This was his first tie and he was so excited and proud of it! (It has little sail boats on it)

Taysum made a new best friend with Megan's nephew, Braden.

Matt's best friend was able to come as well... it was so fun to see him again. I feel bad that I forgot his sister's name, but here is Bryan's sister, Brennan, Bryan, and Kody (Bryan's uncle and my best friend, Kori's, brother). Kori and I got Bryan and Matt together, when they came to Laramie. Megan is a friend of Bryan's sister and Bryan introduced Matt and Megan. The best babysitters ever!!

Hayden, true to form, was a complete angel the entire time!! He was so easy going and pretty much didn't make a peep!

The flowers around the temple were fantastic! There was so much yellow, which was perfect for their wedding colors!

Mr. & Mrs. Matthew & Megan Anderson!

When they came out of the temple, someone yelled for them to say something. Matt punched the air and said, "Yahoo!" Megan said, "We're married!"

The Anderson crew: Nick, Hayden, Matt, Lindsay, Tyler, Katie "Flower Girl"

The Anderson women: Grandma Garrick, Mom, Lindsay, Megan, Katie, Lindi, me and Bailey

The Anderson Men: Nick, Taysum, Dad, Tyler, Matt, Grandpa Garrick, Ken and Hayden

Kody was making a wedding video for Matt and Megan and he wanted to do a dance scene. Grandpa hurriedly offered to watch the baby! :)

The Cutlers

This display is in the ancillary of the temple. I've always loved it and I'm so glad we got a picture of our kids in front of it! We had dinner at the Country Town Buffet. The kids were really thirsty after being out in the hot sun for so long, so they both gulped down their chocolate milk.

Still content as can be...just hanging out through all the craziness!

Grandpa was telling Bailey some great stories and she was loving it!

I really love this picture...

Stealing some love from the bride The Andersons had to put the icing on the cake... or rather, the car! They raided the restaurant for supplies to trash Matt's car. They were really helpful and provided them with pie and toilet paper!

Driving off into the sunset... It was so wonderful to be with everyone, especially Matt and Megan, on such a special day! On our way back to Cheyenne, we hit the evening commute traffic and it took us hours to get out of Denver!! I vividly remembered how much I DON'T miss Denver traffic!! We stopped by a couple places in Fort Collins on our way (more about that in the next post).

We got into Cheyenne around 9:30 or so. The kids had been asking to play with "that boy and three girls" (you're one of the girls, Bri!!) all day, so we let them run around for a while, even though Kessie was the only one awake! We had a really nice time staying up and talking with Aaron and Bri for a while. We all went to sleep pretty quickly when we finally went to bed!

The next morning, everyone was up EARLY and ready to PLAY! We weren't in a hurry and it was really nice to just take our time and enjoy the Johnsons. We had a YUMMY breakfast and then they took us out to see their chickens.

Taysum feeding the chickens

Aaron holding a chicken for Taysum, Bailey and Louie

They even found a few eggs!

Hayden, Bailey, Taysum, Louie and Lanny (Kessie was asleep during this picture)

(The cat that Bailey is holding has a story. When we went to the wedding, she borrowed the pink cat that Louie is holding. By the end of the day, we knew it was going to be extremely unpleasant to try and have her give it back. So, we did some early birthday shopping and she got this cat. I suggested the name Tangerine or Ginger and so, she calls it Gingerine. It was just "one of those days," so Taysum got a puppy and he named his puppy Bob.)

Aaron was getting his boat ready to go fishing and the kids loved "helping"

It was a wonderful wedding and so wonderful to see so much family! It was also wonderful to be with our dear friends the Johnsons for a while! They are such great people and they're the kind of friends that you may not see for five years, but you pick up like you've never been a part! Thanks again for putting up with our craziness! We sure love you guys!!

I'm so thankful that we were able to be with Matt and Megan for their sealing. There was such a wonderful and strong spirit present and I know they will be happy and "make it work!" They are wonderful people and I know they'll be happy!