.good long marriage

Air and I have been married for 5 years today and we are enjoying our day together traveling to my family's cabin in the Uinta mountains. Where my family is awaiting our arrival (we can't wait!).

-Last year we were in the hospital on our Anniversary since Ames was just born.

--The year before that we were on our way home from Utah and staying with our friends in Calgary.

---The year before that we were flying home from Chicago to make it to Tiana's baptism.

----The year before that we stayed at the Anniversary Inn in Logan, Ut and then drove up to stay in Helena, Mt.

In other words... Our Anniversary has been a very special and eventful day for us every year, and we've been so blessed to be spending these years together.

I love you Aaron. Thanks for being my best friend and eternal companion. For eternity. It means a lot. For real. I'm not just saying that. I mean it.

Sincerely (!!!), Ambs

.Happy Birthday Ames, you’re #1!

Dear Amesy boy,

Right now you are just beginning your life. You're starting to learn how to communicate what you want and interact with your Mama and Dada. Your sense of humor is already fully intact and you love to be silly and giggle at anything. Even if you don't know what the joke is, you're ready to laugh at the drop of a hat. You walk around feeling happy every day, no matter what. You know that we love you. You know that your Heavenly Father loves you. You are so very confident.

Buh-buh, you are such a special little boy, the first child we can call our own. You're teaching us how to be parents and we thank you for being such a patient and kind teacher. We promise to feed you when you're hungry, to try to make you happy whenever you're sad, to keep you clean and healthy, and to protect you from harm. We'll never hurt you.

And we forgive you for growing up so fast, we understand that you have to...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Love love love,
Mama and Dada

.insta-vine

Are you finding that my blog posts are getting farther and farther apart these days? Well you would be correct... and I am hating it.

Things have been insane for Air and I this month of July... Between Air’s job consuming his every waking minute, our second car being broken down, Air being quite ill, my talk in church last week, and we are still working on our bathroom renovation (almost done); I’ve been finding it a bit challenging to make sure that Ames has a decent first summer.

Oh and his first BIRTHDAY is coming up real soon! Can you even believe it?

Anyway, we are just counting down the days til our only vacation this year--Our trip to Utah in August! You have no idea how excited we are for my whole family to meet Ames, and for Ames to meet all of them. (not to mention how awesome it will be to have Air’s full attention away from his job for two whole weeks) This is gonna be great.

On a related topic: ↓↓↓ here is Ames learning to fold his arms for prayers, we love it! ↓↓↓

↓↓↓ the park in our neighborhood… Ames likes the sand in is toes ↓↓↓

↓↓↓ right behind our house there is this amazing yellow field and frog pond. We took a little walk back there the other day and Ames was so overwhelmed by the beauty he couldn’t stop giving me kisses ↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓ new favorite food is strawberries, I don’t blame him ↓↓↓

↓↓↓ countless hours of fun in his playhut and tunnel ↓↓↓

↓↓↓ splash parks are from heaven ↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓ also from heaven is our new car seat. Ames was SO ready to face forward and sit up we couldn’t wait to strap him into this beauty ↓↓↓

↓↓↓ the only downside is when he falls asleep and his head hangs, poor guy ↓↓↓

  

↓↓↓ we like having the missionaries over for dinner (there are a lot of them here these days), and they are big fans of Ames ↓↓↓

And the videos:

↓↓↓ I was feeling lucky to have a cuddly baby ↓↓↓

.eleventh month

Ames has been a trooper sitting here for these pictures every month, but I can tell he's done. He really hates holding still these days—there are too many things to go and do around here.

Practicing his walking is what this guy is all about.

For our photo shoot this month I made this little movie of Ames walking… oh the joy it gives me to see his chubby little feet stepping all around. He’s so brave these days and will just dart away at any given time, at any given place.

Enjoy!

Dear Ames,

My dear dear boy, we are so very glad to have you in our family. We love your little scrunched nose faces and your funny teethy grins. We love your laughs and your cries too. We love to hear you sound out words and sounds all day. We have been so blessed for the past 11 months to have a baby like you in our home, you bring us so much joy and excitement. We're excited for you to be getting so big and strong, but we also wish you could be our little cuddly lovey forever too. So glad we get to have you for eternity little guy.

Love, Mama-Dada

.Canada Day 2013

I love Canada, it's no secret. All Canadians love Canada. On Canada Day I saw a dude walking around wearing a Canada flag as a cape and carrying a hockey stick, which also had a flag cape on it?

The weekend was crazy for Air and I. We celebrated the holiday on Saturday by having a picnic with the family at Rundle Park, and on Monday (Canada Day) we tore apart our main bathroom. Thus commencing the beginning of our week long bathroom reno extravaganza! We worked so hard all day Monday that by the time the evening came, we put Ames to bed and just sat in our garage listening to fireworks from afar... In other words: FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I DIDN'T WATCH FIREWORKS! AND I'M OK WITH IT!

Are we getting boring?

I guess that’s just the time of life we’re in… and we had a beautiful night listening to the frogs croaking so loudly out our window (like every night) as we laid in bed planning out the big week.

Here are the photos from our family picnic, we sure love our family!

 

We surprised everyone with water balloons and had a blast tossing them with towels.

We tossed Ames around a bit too…

Happy 4th of July today now too! Wish I could go back home and see your fireworks USA.