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I’m a behind, once again, in posting about our lives. I guess I don't really have much to post about since we got back from vacation in June… Air's been getting some medical procedures done that have basically put him under house arrest for months. I have been budgeting my butt off and trying not to spend any pennies. Honestly, I have a few reasons to just stop blogging right now, but here I am. You know I can’t stay away from you blog. I’m hopelessly devoted.

So here we go.

↓↓↓Tessa The Beautiful graduated from High School. We loved taking photos for her… she is one of the most photogenic people I know. We are so happy for her to finally be done with grade school. She is definitely going to be a successful human. We love you Tessa!↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓a long time ago Tamera’s sweet baby Jake was blessed//Air in his office on one of his final days at work (unbeknownst to him…)↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓Ames having fun with buckets of water and a yogurt popsicle//summer evening roasting bannock at the fire with the family↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓7-eleven day free slurpees!//Ames beginning his terrible twos↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓watching the Lego Movie with his buddy Rhys//I painted Ames’ toe yellow and it has been the most exciting feature of his life ever since↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓swimming at the Ledge with his buddy Addison//so lucky to have such fun aunts↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓We found an awesome new park one day… Ames and I spend a lot of days at parks//another hot day swimming at the Legislature fountains with friends↓↓↓

 

...aaaaand the videos!

↓↓↓This was Ames' first time in his kiddie pool this summer... he was pretty nervous at first↓↓↓

↓↓↓Sometimes we are lucky and Ames makes up random songs about stuff. He was singing about garbage here↓↓↓

↓↓↓I think we know where Ames gets his singing talents from↓↓↓

↓↓↓Ames learned how to blow into his grandpa's harmonica pretty easily... we need to get him one of these!↓↓↓

↓↓↓he loves going down the slide like "supaman!". If you listen closely you'll hear him say "mommy yook", which is probably the thing he says the most these days↓↓↓

↓↓↓playing in the pools at the Ledge. He doesn't like getting splashed↓↓↓

↓↓↓making up another version of one of his favorite songs on the way to church↓↓↓

↓↓↓I taught Ames to tell you how old he is↓↓↓

↓↓↓One of my proudest moments as a parent was teaching Ames to do this belly trick. He's a natural!↓↓↓

.Ames had a birthday shout hooray!

Ames was really lucky this year. He got two birthday parties since his Grandma and Tessa and Tamera's family were leaving to Hawaii for a few weeks. We combined his and Tiana's parties last Sunday since they are only 4 days apart.

  

After this party he was super pumped up about “Amesy’s birfday!” for the whole week before his actual birthday on Thursday. Constantly requesting that we sing the birthday song and open up his present from Grandma and Grandpa (the tickle monster book and gloves… he loves them).

We decided to go take a ride on the old High Level Bridge streetcar downtown for his big day. This “train” ride was like heaven for all of us. We rode it from end to end twice. It was THE MOST beautiful day ever and I can't imagine a better blessing. Air has only been able to leave the house a few times since his operation almost three weeks ago (part 1 of 3) and we were seriously thrilled to have him be able to come with us.

     

We got home and made some delicious Greek feta burgers for dinner and Grandpa came over for the party.

I decorated Ames's cake with a bunch of party animals:

I made their little party hats out of scrapbook paper I had with pompoms made out of tissue paper. I got this idea from the blog “Oh Happy Day”. This was really fun. They also brought gifts.

Ames loved it and couldn't wait to play with all the new animals. He really loves animals.

 

The cake was raspberry with lemon frosting… yum! I was so glad it turned out so good.

 

Ames opened all of his presents starting with one from his Grandma and Grandpa Leary (we got to have them watch over facetime too!) Thanks Mom, he seriously loves that dump truck the most and wouldn't put it down for the rest of the gifts. We were all astounded at how well you know what 2 year olds like. haha

I would be ungrateful if I didn't mention another enormous blessing/tender mercy we received for this birthday: The fact that we didn't have to buy Ames a single present, because I had already purchased all of these on sale a long time ago, back when we had an income.

It is truly incredible sometimes to see….. God is watching over our family.

So glad we had you Amesy. Thanks for being such a sweet little boy and a happy spot in our family. You bring us joy beyond description. We love you so much.

.Aaron and Amber Forever

Today is our 6th Anniversary and I'd like to finally share the story of Aaron's proposal with this blog of ours.

It's actually a funny story. Mostly just embarrassing for me, but I'll get over it. 

 
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At the beginning of the year 2008, Aaron was living in Canada and I had moved back to Utah after three years in Illinois. We were still somehow dating very seriously after we both felt strongly that we wanted to be together. His job at the time involved every other week of him going up North to the oil field and then being off work the other half of the time. He was driving down to Utah almost every other week to spend time with little old ME. It was crazy.

We both knew we'd get married. I had given him the 'go ahead' on proposing whenever and however he desired, and then I was just waiting to see how he'd do it. I also had shown him wedding ring styles that I liked. One specific style was my favorite and he wanted to give me that. I didn't know this at the time, but he had found a friend of one of his mission friends in Utah who was a jewelry maker, and he was commissioning him to make my ring. Getting the ring made was taking longer that he wanted it to... he wanted to have it right away so he could propose on this trip to Utah. The jewelry maker agreed to let him borrow the diamond (set in a temporary band) since the actual band wasn't ready yet. Only problem was he had to return it and go back to Canada the next day!

So, in the evening of March 7th, while he was on one of his short visits to Utah, he wanted to go down to visit our friends who lived in Provo. We love hanging out with the Larsen's and Hooley's, he met Jesse and Colby on his mission and they are still really close friends. We played rock band (as was the thing at the time) with all of them and had a super fun night. Air was pretty sneaky and managed to get the diamond from Jesse at some point that night.

And luckily for all of us, we were really camera happy:

 

We left pretty late that night to drive back up to my parent's house in West Jordan. We had taken my car, therefore I was driving. While we were on the freeway Aaron started saying he wanted to stop and go for a walk at the Daybreak lake (where we went on our very first date). I said, "Nah, it's too late and really cold outside". Then he tried to get me to go to the theater where we went on our first date by suggesting we could go to a movie at Daybreak. Again I said it was too late and I was tired. We could just watch one at my parent’s house. He finally dropped the subject after a while, and since I was driving it just wasn't happening.. (I am so embarrassed).

We got to my parent's house and I went to my room and he went to the guest bedroom (where he had been staying that week). A minute later someone was knocking on my bedroom door. I opened the door and there was Aaron, down on one knee in the hallway of my parent's basement. Holding a beautiful wooden ring case with a big diamond in it. He said, "Hey, do you want to get married?"

I felt pretty silly for not catching on or being willing to just go to the flippin’ lake for a walk! Anyway, it made for a funny story… right?

And we were still pretty camera happy as you will see:

 

Happy Anniversary Air bear. I’ll love you forever.

.Ames is 2

There's nothing so sweet as experiencing life for the first time. Except for maybe experiencing life for the first time... again. As a parent.

Lately Ames has been understanding and communicating about everything he sees. He wants to know about everything. He loves the world and everything in it. He gets most excited about animals, insects and people—especially children. He loves to play outside and I swear he can spot a park out his window at least 50 miles off. He goes down slides by himself now, you can tell he's being very courageous every time. When he's swinging he likes to lay back and look at the clouds and say what they look like, then lean forward and say that he's flying like a bird. He closes his eyes when he doesn't want to be bothered about getting out of the swing.

Ames has the absolute best personality I can imagine. He is outgoing and friendly (to anyone and everyone). I feel bad whenever people ignore him saying "hi" everywhere we go. People aren't always so friendly as him. Also, most babies his age don't talk as well as him, so he thinks they're ignoring him when they don't respond. His "terrible two's" really haven't gotten too terrible so far. He's mostly just constantly happy and sweet.

He loves music and singing. We sing all day. I sing to him when I put him to sleep each night, he recently started requesting the songs he wants me to sing and singing along with me as he lays his head on my shoulder. When I finish singing a song he's requested he excitedly says, "thank you Mommy!".

He never misses an opportunity to be polite. You will hear him all day saying, "Oh, sowwy" or "snack pwease?" or "oh, thank you ____" or "help you Amesy?" or "Hewwo! How awe you? Good!" or "yeahsure!".

He tells me he loves me at random times when he is just feeling happy and good. He melts my heart like a popsicle on the fourth of July.

He's a parrot. He spends all day repeating anything and everything he hears. We watch what we say these days.

He knows lots of colors (his favorites seem to be orange and pink, he can always correctly spot those ones). He likes to count (random numbers in succession) and sing ABC's (he can fill in the blanks when you sing and pause). Shapes... he knows heart, star and circle.

He likes to call himself "Amesy" and often I catch him alone pointing at his chest and just saying who he is.

He has these stunning blue eyes, perfectly swept blonde hair and beautiful baby soft skin... Air and I are blown away by his sheer adorableness every moment of the day.

Honestly to think that this "baby" of mine is turning two is a little bit scary to me. If the last two years went this fast, how fast will the next two go? Seriously though.

Amesy we love you! Happy Birthday little buddy!

(then he repeats back “happy-birfday yittle buddy”)