Family Collages

Along with our family pictures every year we like to do a few collages. One of the family and one of each of the kids. Since my sister, Britta, did our pictures this year, we asked her if she would be willing to do our collages as well. She loves to do digital scrapbooking, so this was a fun project for her. We are so grateful she was willing to do this for us!

Thanks Britta!!!

Family Pictures

Every year around our anniversary, Aaron and I like to update the family pictures. We wanted to get some outdoor photos this time, and to save money and the stress of finding a professional photographer, we decided to ask my sister Britta to take them for us. She's been taking some Photoshop classes to help her with her digital scrapbooking and it's really paying off, and she's starting to be a better photographer from it as well!

We planned on Wheeler Farm for the pictures. We had to reschedule twice. The first time because I ordered the wrong size for Zack's shirt, and had to send it back. The second because it was rainy and crappy out, and for outdoor pictures I wanted it to be sunny and green and beautiful. This week it most definitely was sunny and green and beautiful!

My other wonderful sister Charlene and her friend Buffy came along to help keep the kidlets entertained and smiling for the pictures. It's a good thing we brought them along, because we needed all the help we could get. Despite having two naps Lexi was distressed at the slightest things. She had a rough time sitting still for anything but her personal shots. If anyone tried to touch her, especially Zack, she freaked out. This made things quite difficult to get a good shot of the kids together. But Britta did a fabulous job with what we had!

Whenever I look at Zack in pictures, I wonder when he could possibly have grown up. What a little stud! He is going to be one heartbreaker when he gets older.

When Britta got home she started downloading the pictures onto her computer, she had over 900 shots! After deleting all the crying, screaming or otherwise bad shots, she was down to 205. I've only put a selection of my favorites here, but I am so grateful to her for getting so many wonderful pictures to just have for our albums.

Thank you Britta! You did an AMAZING job! (And I can't wait to see the edited versions.)

And thank you Charlene and Buffy! We really couldn't have done so well without you.

Happy Birthday Zack!

Last weekend we had a party for Zack's 4th birthday. This was our first party that wasn't just family invited. We had a pretty good turnout of friends from preschool. CRAZY! I know my little guy is full of energy and is all over the place, but to add some of his little friends into the mix and they all just feed off of eachother. Bless their teacher!

Anywho! So, I asked Zack what kind of party he wanted and he told me he wanted a Wall-E cake. This kinda scared me. This was my first year making the cakes instead of buying them, so to throw a pretty complicated one at me on my learning year, I was pretty intimidated. I found a Wilton cake pan, that has a helpful paint-by-numbers instruction on the insert that I figured I could do. I learned last week after doing Lexi's cake, that I would need to make all the frosting along with the cake the night before if I wanted to frost it by the time the party started.

His birthday weekend started Friday afternoon. Grandma and Grandpa Bates decided to take him out for his birthday. They picked him up from school on Friday and took him to lunch and to the bookstore to pick his present (All he asked for this year for his birthday was books!). Then he got to go to their house and spend the night. What fun! This made it a little easier for me to get started on the cake too. We put Lexi to bed at her normal time and I got goin'! Aaron greased the pan for me so well, that it just slid right out. Whew! What a relief, because I needed to used this as a guide for frosting, I am not an artist, so this was important. I made the frosting and seperated it into the colors I would need and got to bed around 11. Not bad!

I got up and got started on the cake by 6 Saturday morning and it took me 3 hours to finish. But look how cool!

The party was a success. I found a few fun robot-themed games to play and we opened presents. I say "we" because I don't think Zack got to open a single one by himself. Overall, the kids had fun, and that was the most important part. And I realized how small my house feels with that many people crowding in for a seat!

Thank you to everyone who came and helped Zack feel special for his day!

We love you, Zack!

Alexis' Birthday

Today our beautiful little girl turned one. It's hard to believe that it's already been a year. It is truly amazing to watch a child grow, and it has been an adventure as well.

We had a small party for her with family. I made a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake. She LOVES Mickey. One of the things that I remember the most from growing up is the cakes my mom made us for our birthdays. Aaron has the same kind of memories. It's fun to carry the tradition on with our kids.

She loved eating her cake. At first she wasn't sure what we had put in front of her, but after Aaron gave her a taste of it, she dug right in. This just happens to be my favorite part of their first birthday!She had fun opening presents for the first time. It took her a while to understand that it was ok to rip the paper, but once she got into it, she really got into it! It will be fun to let her do it again next month for Christmas. Thank you everyone for the wonderful gifts, she's been playing with all of them this afternoon.

We love you, Alexis and we are so glad to have you as a part of our family!

Family Home Evenings

This year we were very excited for Easter. Zack is finally catching on to traditions, and holidays are so much fun because of it. I am really getting into it too, this is one of the fun parts of having kids! I got my new Easter baskets done, and they look so pretty! I went to Michaels and bought some matching baskets for all of us. Then I bought some springy ribbon, one for each of us. The boys got the ribbon around the basket and the handle, and the girls have a bow as well as the wrapping. I am so proud of them. While I was getting into the traditions of the Easter Bunny, Aaron reminded me about the importance of Easter and that he wanted to focus on the real reason we celebrate; the resurrection of Christ. Later that week I was talking to Britta about how excited I was for this Easter, and about the conversation Aaron and I had about the reason for Easter. She told me about her tradition with her kids, she does her baskets on Saturday, so they can focus on Christ on Sunday. I love this idea, so naturally I'm stealing it.

As part of our focus, we made sure our family home evening was about the resurrection. I put together a lesson about how Christ died and was buried in a tomb, then he came back to life. I cut out a tomb, a stone and a picture of Christ for us to color, and showed him how Christ was laid in the tomb, the stone was rolled in front and three days later, he came out resurrected. I hope he caught on to the concept, but it's hard to tell. It was exciting to see his face as he was learning new things. He will now answer the question "Why do we celebrate Easter?" with "Jesus was resurrected!". It's times like these that I love the most about spending time with my family!

Trimming the Tree

Things have been a little crazy with Alexis coming 2 weeks early and all. So we have finally pulled out our Christmas stuff. Aaron insists that we can only do this AFTER Thanksgiving. Understandably so, Thanksgiving is a very important time of year and not one that should idly be looked over. Having your daughter born on that day kind of makes it important too!
So Aaron pulled out all of out Christmas stuff and he and Zack started to put it all out. Zack had a blast helping dad with the tree. We think he was most excited to do this because he saw the big train set that we have that goes around the bottom of the tree and we told him that we can't set it up until we set up the tree. There is a great motivator!!

Stud!

Granted, it's his aunt Ranna and Nadene, but look at our little Ladies-Man! He's got an older woman on each arm.

Oktoberfest

This time of year holds a lot of traditions for Aaron. It first starts out with the State Fair which we have already posted. Usually the next event is Oktoberfest. Aaron's dad served a LDS mission in Germany and has brought a great love of the food home with him. Every year Snow Bird hosts an annual Oktoberfest celebration. Most of the crowd is there for the beer; which Oktoberfest is most famous for, even here in Utah. It also has a menu of German food. We don't go for either, I'll explain. It is a beautiful time of year up Little Cottonwood Canyon, with the leaves changing and the fun German atmosphere. This is why we have been going. Aaron says that the food selection used to be better but they changed caterers. So now Aaron's parents cook their own German dinner. This is something of an undertaking, but well worth the wait every year. We went up the canyon on Saturday and then had dinner with his family on Sunday. After dinner they clean up and then draw names for Christmas. This has been a tradition that Aaron has said he's enjoyed for many years. I hope it is one that we can continue to enjoy throughout the years as well.

State Fair

It is that time of year again!

Summer is settling down and Autumn is beginning to show it's beautiful colors. This is my favorite time of the year. One of my favorite parts about it is the State Fair. We love going to the fair as a family every year. Aaron grew up going with his family and really wanted to pass the experience along to me when we started dating, and we have continued to go every year. We took off work early Thursday so we could get down there in time to enjoy it before it got too late. We like to go on opening night, partly because that is a discounted rate to get in, and also because it's before too many of the crowds descend on the fair.

I picked up Zack from my parents and met Aaron at home to drive to the fairgrounds. The whole drive Zack sat in the back seat yelling "Let's go to the fair!" He was pretty excited. When we got down there we first walked through the animals for Zack. He doesn't really like the idea of touching them, but he likes to look. After that we walked out to the pony ride. Aaron asked Zack if he wanted to ride the ponies this year. He said no. Aaron asked if he was sure, he still said no. So we decided to walk on. As we were walking away Zack starts yelling "Ride the ponies!" I guess he just needed time to warm up to the new idea. His horse was named Thunder and he had fun wearing dad's hat and yelling "YeeHaw!"

While Zack was riding the ponies Aaron's parents came to meet us. They like to go to the fair multiple times each year, and we have fun spending time with them on the night we go. Grandpa and Grandma loved seeing Zack trying out something new. And he just smiled bigger with all the attention he was getting.

After that we went to find some food! This is my personal favorite part of the fair. I love all the variety. Aaron skipped lunch just for the occasion, and I had a small lunch (pregnant women don't skip meals...ever). We love to get Navajo tacos every year. That seems to be our favorite meal there. All we could seem to get Zack to eat was pickles and fries...we tried with other things, but to no avail. Sometimes you just can't seem to fight a two year old! When Cathy saw the pickles and fries, she said "Pickles and fries, perfect for a pregnant woman!" Which I had to quickly respond that they were for Zack...I can't stand pickles right now!

After that we just wandered to booths. This is so much fun! We rarely buy anything, but it is so fun to see the stuff people have to sell. Zack likes to see the toy booths, and we have to hang around those booths for quite a while for him to be satisfied. After Zack went potty (more on that later! yay!) we promised him some ice cream for being such a big boy. Dippin' Dots are always a good summer evening treat! Shortly after that we decided it was time to go home. It was almost 9 at this point and Zack was saying he was ready to go home. We sometimes try to watch part of the rodeo, but this year we decided to skip it. It sure was a fun night to spend as a family!