Happy California Thanksgiving

When Kelli first announced she was having another baby right before Thanksgiving I knew we had to spend Thanksgiving in California to snuggle that cute baby boy!! 

Emry and I went early because Ryan was out of town for work. And I'm so glad we did because it was a blast!! I'm just going to let the pictures tell the story of how much fun we had. We also went to Disneyland twice, but this post is going to be too long, so I'll do a separate post for those. 

We made it a priority to see this little man! He is such a mini Brian! 

We decided to make this trip when we announced to everyone that we were expecting again!! This little girl is gonna be a BIG sister!!! 

 Cade and Cam were excited to see Em! Love these cousins! 

  Emry loved being with Grandma. This is her coming up with the Thanksgiving meal menu :D

 Eating OUTSIDE with our cousin Cam. We love these sunny days. Cadence and Cam were fighting over who got to sit by Emry. They love their cousin.

Best thing about Grandma's house is making cookies!! She looked so cute in her apron! 

Everyone loved helping!! 

"Look what I got!!" Grandma's house = lots of sugar

Since we wouldn't all be together for Christmas, we decided to do our Christmas picture at Thanksgiving. Everyone is so much older than last year, plus there's a new baby this year!! Can't wait to see how these change each year. 

 More sunny days!! Emry loved getting back to the park! We've been missing outside lately! 

Remember the Grandparents = sugar thing? Grandpa got us an ice cream cone!! 

Of course, we had to visit the beach while we were there! Emry loved playing in the sand. 

Emry and Daddy on the swings at the beach

Grandpa's specialty is digging holes for kids to play in, and all the grand kids LOVED it!

She's cute

 Rides on Grandpa's shoulders

We rode the ferry across the bay at balboa. Emry loved the "water choo choo"

Our cute family on the pier. I really do love these two (or three)

Us on the beach (Also, as you can see, Ryan still has his beard/mustache from "movember")

One day we got Uncle Scottie to let us in to the Disneyland hotel pool. It wasn't quite as warm as we would have liked, but it was still fun and Emry liked the little water slide.

On Thanksgiving day, we spent more time at the park. This girl was in heaven with all this outside time!

All the cousins wearing their Big Sister and Big Brother t-shirts. 

Daddy and Emry

Gardner Grandparents

Rylee was blessed, which was a great reason to get all the grand kids together. These are some cute kids and some happy grand parents. 

Four generations. Great Grandpa Gardner, Grandpa Gardner, Daddy, and Emry

Happy Halloween

This year we got to celebrate Halloween 3 times! First, at our ward Halloween party. I had to work so Ryan took our little lady bug to it by himself. She had a blast eating candy and playing games and hanging out with her friend, the bear. I was really sad that I had to miss this, but it was okay because I had 2 other Halloweens with her.

Leah the bear and Emry the lady bug enjoying the party. Ryan had to say "candy candy candy" over and over again to get Emry to keep that hat on for a picture. She really hated it. haha. 

The second Halloween was in Arizona. My friend Becca and her family threw a fun Halloween party complete with bounce house and games. Emry had a blast jumping in the bounce house with all the other kids.

Emry on the swings at the party. Halloween to me shouldn't be freezing. This was perfect! :D

Lastly, we had Halloween day. Ryan's work set up fun Halloween decorations and invited people to bring their kids to come trick or treat the halls. It was a fun time. Ryan's team all dressed up as Ken and Barbie dolls. Ryan was a BYU Dr Ken doll. Clever and easy. Halloween night we had chili and corn bread for dinner at our house and then set out to go trick or treating. Emry semi-got the idea of trick-or-treating. She knew how to knock on the door and take the treat out but had a hard time only taking one treat. We spent the rest of the night at home passing out candy.

Halloween day--showing off our costume with our cousins. Lila the Bumble Bee, Emry the Ladybug, and Owen the Dragon

 Visiting Dad at work. This girl loves her daddy. 

Ryan's costume complete with the Ken box.

Me and Emry at Ryan's work. Emry with candy, of course. She couldn't get enough of it!!

Emry's favorite game. She would get in the car seat and say Ready, Go!! Ryan would swing her back and forth and she had a blast and would laugh and laugh and say Again! Again!! Ryan got tired fast, but he kept going for her, because he's an awesome dad like that!

 Trick or treating at our neighbor's house. 

Trying to open the door after knocking. She got the knocking part down well. Then we had to work on the only taking one candy part...

 Ryan taking Emry door to door

End of the night hanging out with Grandma

Our doorstep with our pumpkins. She was done, you think? 

In all, we had a very fun Halloween this year!

Arizona

One of my best friends and roommate for 3 years decided to up and leave me for Ohio because she thought it was good to be with her husband while he went to med school. Who does she think she is. That was 3 years ago and even though she has made a couple of trips to Utah, I have really missed her. So when I heard she was going to be in Arizona (a lot closer than Ohio) for like 2 months, I decided we HAD to go visit her. The plan was for Ryan, me, and Emry to drive to Flagstaff to Becca's parent's cabin and spend a weekend with Becca, Jacob, and her two kids Brock and Jane. However, Ryan's work got crazy busy and wouldn't let him take a single day off in October and I was getting really sad it wasn't going to happen. Then my wonderful husband told me to just fly out and see Becca. Spend a week hanging out with my college best friend? Yes!!! So off we went to hang out in Mesa, AZ for a week. It just happened to work out that one of my other best friends from college just moved to AZ and had a baby two weeks before (YAY!) and Ryan's brother just moved to the area about 3 months before. It was time for me to go visit :D
We stayed with Becca's parents (they were so nice to let us take over a bedroom, eat their food, use their car, and invade their life! So nice!!) in Mesa but we were able to visit everyone, so it was a successful trip.
I can't remember everything we did, so this might just be a post in picture form, which will be long, but worth it. I completely fell in love with AZ while we were there and absolutely want to move there! It was like 80 degrees and sunny every day. The people were so nice and I'm moving next week (ok, not really, but I wouldn't object!)

Seriously, I didn't bring enough pairs of shorts because every day was beautiful and sunny. It was so nice to go back into summer when Utah was starting to turn cold and snowy... Here is Brock and Emry playing outside. Brock looks super happy about me taking his picture. haha!

Becca with the girls Jane and Emry. Jane is such a happy baby and content to just be. Adorable!!

One of the first nights we went and found this fall carnival. We expected it to be fine but not all that great, but it totally exceeded expectations! They had so many fun things to do, we ran out of time. Here is Emry and me on the tractor ride. I was scared she wasn't going to like this because the driver was really fast and liked to whip us in circles but Emry just laughed and laughed. I guess she is a daredevil at heart!!

Emry and Brock on the teeter totter. Emry would have stayed on that forever but my legs got tired from the squats I had to do to balance out the weight. 

A collage of the activities. Emry riding in the wheelbarrow. We went to go pick out pumpkins and she just wanted to hang out here. It was funny. Teeter totter again. They had these blow up horses you could sit on and kinda bounce around on. It was pretty funny and Emry loved it. Us on the tractor again.

One day I drove out to see Miss Rachael and her beautiful new baby girl Myla. She lives about 45 minutes away from Becca but thankfully Emry slept the whole way both ways. That makes for a happy mama!! I am so sad Rachael left Utah, but so happy that she is having the time of her life in Arizona with her new baby. Myla is so darling and tiny!!! New babies make me realize that Emry isn't a baby anymore and it just makes me sad. Rach and I went to lunch where Myla did awesome (in the car and just hanging out while we ate) and then we visited at her house for a while. Then we had to get back. It was such a fun day and I hope we can spend more time in AZ so that baby knows who I am (I realize the chances aren't good, but still...)

We decided to spend Saturday morning with Jenna and Jason since Jenna had to work all the other days we were there. We couldn't come up with anything fun to do that was open in the morning, so we decided to go back to the Fall Carnival. I'm glad we did because we basically missed half the stuff the first time anyway. It was really really hot, but fun too. Here is Jenna on the teeter totter with Em.

Here is Uncle Jason helping us race the duckies with the water. Emry like to put the ducks in and pump the water to make them race to the other side. I liked that this was in the shade and out of the really hot sun!!!

Oh my gosh, this was hilarious. We saw a big gathering of people with umbrellas and little cages so we wandered over to see what was happening. I thought it was a petting zoo or something where people could come look at the animals. Well we realized quickly there were just a bunch of guinea pigs. And I mean a bunch. Like 50 people each with their own guinea pig all gathered around a table. After asking around exactly what was happening, we were told it was a guinea pig eating contest. Like see which guinea pig can eat the carrot the fastest. I am not joking. It was the funniest most hilarious thing I've ever seen. (In case you were wondering, guinea pigs eat really slowly. We stayed for like 5 or 10 minutes and no one had finished their carrot yet. Hilarious!) Also, Jason now wants to own a guinea pig so he can enter it into this contest. :D

Becca's mom put on a fun Halloween party for all her grand kids and some of their friends. It was awesome and really fun. They had a bunch of different stations where the kids could play games like pin the tail on the cat, cookie decorating, a cake walk, etc. She had a bounce house and Emry was completely happy!! Here she is in her cute lady bug costume (she doesn't look that happy here because she isn't in the bounce house. haha) I don't have any pictures of her in the bounce house, just videos, but that was her favorite part of the evening. 

Now we're happy, eating candy and decorating cookies!! 

On the swings like a big girl. She loved it.

On our last day before heading to the airport we went to a really good breakfast place. It is so much fun hanging out with Becca and just talking about old times and our new lives, discussing problems, joys, kids, etc. It was a great time!

Emry outside soaking in the last bit of sun before we headed to the airport. We are going to miss playing outside all the time. Utah summer cannot come soon enough!!

This is what we did for like 30 minutes while we waited for our turn to board the plane. Walked back and forth on these runways. Emry loved it and it kept her from running all over the place. 

Arizona, we love you and we are coming back soon!!! Thanks for the fun times everyone!!!

Pictures

An update in picture form

This is my favorite time of the day. Emry just sits still and drinks her milk and I get all my snuggle time in! 

Emry and Leah at the Bee's game

Eating her ice cream, or "treat" as she calls it

Emry so happy playing with her "baby" 

The cutest Father-Daughter Duo ever! 

Emry after helping me make red velvet cake. She was my taster. She did an excellent job, as you can tell.

Emry shopping with me. She walked around the whole store saying "hello, hello" with this phone. Too cute!

Bike Rides!!

We have been meaning to get a bike seat for Emry all summer long but never found one we loved. Last week we finally found one we liked and it was a good price so we bought it and I'm so glad we did! Emry LOVES it so much! When we went to buy her helmet, though, she screamed so loud if we put it on her so I was worried she was going to end up hating riding with me. So glad I was wrong because once we started going, she had no issue with the helmet and lived it. She kept saying "Bike! Bike!" over and over. It's adorable. I'm really sad it's going to be winter now and so we can't take her out as much. We'll just have to enjoy Fall for as long as possible! 

15 Months

Weight: 22 lbs 11 oz (70%)

Height: 31.7 inches (85%)

Head: 18.75 inches (75%)

With a 15 month old also comes all sorts of fun things like throwing fits, screaming when she doesn't get her way, saying No to everything, and teething that seemingly will never end. :D Even though 15 months has all of this, it's still one of my favorite times. Emry is learning so much and understands so much too. She is so sweet most of the time and wants to give loves and kisses. She loves her mommy, which of course just melts my heart! :D Here are some other things she learned to do this month:

*Talks like crazy. I'm amazed at all the new words she knows. It seems like every day she learns a new word. It's so fun teaching her. I can't remember all the words she says now, but here are some I can think of off the top of my head: balloon, baby, bonk, no (all the time), mine (all the time), owie (with a kiss of course), swing, slide, bike, book, jump, trash, airplane, turkey, milk, outside (side), binky, chocolate, movie, Elmo, Mormon (for Book of Mormon), Jesus, thank you, please, poo-poo, and so many more.
*loves to be outside. All day if we could. I'm really dreading winter, being stuck inside all day.
*Every time we go out to the front yard, she heads around the corner and toward the park, saying "swing, swing, swing" That girl would live at the park. She loves the swings, the slide, and watching all the other little kids play too.
*Loves reading books. All day, starting right when she wakes up. It's almost always her first word in the morning.
*Is pretty obedient. If I ask her to stop doing something, she normally will. Or if I tell her to put it back, so will normally do it. She is my little helper already. She loves to "help" me with laundry and loves to throw things away. Putting things in the trash is one of her favorite things to do. 

*Her favorite song is Popcorn.
*Loves to smell the flowers (outside and in the books she reads).
*Loves the trampoline. If we are at someone's house that has a big trampoline, Emry will be on it the entire time we are there. She LOVES them. Also, if she sees on in someone's backyard (like our neighbor's) she really wants you to take her there to jump.
*Along with that, she loves to try jumping. She squats down really low and then stands up really fast. One of these days, she is going to get off the ground! (She must take after me in that regard...)
*Has long hair in the back but not really in the front. So we do a lot of piggies in the back with a clip in the front.
*Loves to play with dolls (or her babies, as she calls them).