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Sunday, April 29, 2012

Jaxton is 1!



How cute is our little man!? We have just enjoyed having him in our lil family for the past year! He is the sweetest and gentlest little boy EVER!

 We have seriously been super blessed! Darren likes to call him our "Tender Mercy." lol Let's just say Kaiden is our super crazy, super wild child and Jaxton is the opposite so they blanace each other out quite nicely.

 And for us it's fun to have 1 crazy and 1 calm. BUT they both LOVE to go outside! I mean they L-O-V-E, LOVE going outside! So we spend alot of the nice days outside! Luckily, Jaxton's birthday was a really nice day, but it was also a wednesday! We spent most of the day outside playing and treating Jaxton like a little prince!

 Dena even came over and dropped off some special surprises, balloons and some mini cupcakes! Jaxton REALLY enjoyed them!



On saturday, however, is when we celebrated his birthday! Darren and I have just been sooo busy with all of the house stuff and Farrell was out of town so we just waited a few days. And I'm glad we did because I got to make him this super fun cake!

My adorable self making/ decorating Jaxton's personal cake!

A close up of the head!

My "Eric Carle- esque" mini caterpillar cupcakes! (He's the author and illustrator of the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

I really wanted to do a fun dessert buffet, cutsie "Hungry Caterpillar" theme but it just wasn't the right time with everything we had going on. Although I had easily made enough friends that it would have been a BLAST! lol. A little family gathering was just as fun though! And Jaxton sure loved making a BIG mess of his birthday cake!
The end result was AMAZING!!!!!

At first he just started picking at it then he started shoveling handfuls of it into his mouth and finally he started pounding on the cake and watching it fly off into all directions. He gave the word "smash cake" a whole other meaning! We are just happy that he had a good time.
Singing "Happy Birthday" of course he didn't know what to do with the candle, but he sure wanted his foot to touch it! lol



Quite literally "shoveling" the cake into his mouth! lol.

I really like this one, it's like he is saying "HALLELUJAH, cake for dinner!" lol.

the end result! Cake, you have been warned!

Of course kaiden had a great time too, because any present Jaxton gets is "his" also. lol. They both really enjoyed the zoo car Dena & Farrell got for them that goes with our Fisher Price Zoo!

 Darren and I got a few, very small presents for Jaxton but also decided to get the boys a combined BIG birthday present early this year,
TA DA, a Blue Jeep Power Wheel! This is probably the reason we are so popular in our townhome community! haha. These boys just love it! And it's so cute to watch them playing together and having a good time!
TTFN!

Darren's Graduation from BYU-I & Our New Home in Omaha!

Wow 3 weeks ago now seems like FOREVER ago! I can't believe how the time has past! I wish I would have wrote some things down the night of Darren's graduation but I didn't, so now all the details are a little foggy. I just remember being super tired, his graduation started at 7 pm and lasted until 10 pm! And the amazing guest speaker was Elder Ballard, Darren was pretty excited about him being there! I got pictures on Dena's camera that I need to upload on my computer, so I'll have to do that soon before I forget! I'm soooo SUPA PROUD of my amazing husband! He has worked SOOOO hard for his family! I'm so thankful he was in the military and that they have taken such great care of us financially throughout the 3.5 years Darren attended BYU-I! We were able to live really well, ALOT better than most college students, and Darren didn't have to worry about a job AND school. There are a FEW things I will miss about Rexburg, all of the doctors I had picked out were AMAZING (baby dr, pedi, family dr, optomestrist, etc.), ALL of the AMAZING and WONDERFUL friends I got to meet, the safe community, the free splash park, and a few local restaurants (mostly Sammy's and their Red Velvet Cupcake Shake!!)
Well a few days after graduation, we packed up our house, with the help of Darren's folks and his brother Dallen, and headed for "the big city!" Okay, its not THAT big, to be honest their sky line is super weak, maybe 4 tall buildings, lol, but it's MUCH better than Rexburg! We divided the 18 hr drive into 2 days, although I still think I would have preferred to drive straight through! haha. The boys did WAY better than I had expected them to, seriously they went FAR above my expectations! I guess it didn't hurt I made a fun new magnet board with lots of activities to do, or that I bought a ton of toys and movies and wrapped them up as gifts for when they started get antsy! I got Jaxton a rubbery ball that reminded me of a "taggy" and he held onto that ball and played with it the ENTIRE drive. He was sooo happy! Kaiden got to open all the presents and got sooooo excited for each one!
The trip seemed to go by SUPER FAST and before I knew it, we were in Omaha!!!
 **Just 2 wild and crazy kids in love! Starting a new chapter of their lives in OMAHA!****

So, a little back story, Darren and I BOUGHT a townhome after only seeing pictures and a walk through video. We were recommended this place by several LDS families we personally knew. They said this was the place to be if you are LDS! And the price was defintiley GOOD and compared to renting it was a no brainer! So when we did our official "move in walk through", I was a little worried. Not only did the previous tenant leave the place dirty (hooray for deep cleaning our old house to come to our new house and wipe dog hair out of the fridge for an hour) BUT the carpet REAKED of dog pee and was stained, the paint colors didnt match our "style" and several other things scared me a tiny bit (or ALOT a bit). lol.

Seriously I was NERVOUS! But Darren told me to fear not we could have this place up to our standards, he is a construction management major after all, and we could make this house a place we would be proud to call our home! Well, it's taken us about 2.5 weeks but we are almost there! Darren had to do some back breaking paint jobs, some Mr. Fix It jobs, and we even ordered in some new carpet, but IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT!And he was right! I look around at our beautiful home and can't BELIEVE this is, technically, our first house! How LUCKY are we!? 
(We even celebrated with sparkling cider and Darren surprised me with my FAVES, See's chocolates!)

These are some pictures from that night, this one was taken by Kaiden!!


And then Kaiden wanted in the pictures!

And our friends were right about this being an LDS community! I met SOOOOOO many people the first day who recognized me as a new face and invited me to all sorts of fun activities, they are sooo friendly! We have lots of fun places really close by, the Botanical Gardens, THE ZOO, and a Children's Museum are all within 2 miles! (And yes we've already gotten the Zoo pass and have used it about 3 times a week!) I've gotten really close to alot of people here and I just KNOW this is the place we need to be right now! And I'm sooo excited to be here for the 3 years while Darren goes to school! I've heard Law School is pretty hard the first year but that each year gets better, and I'm so thankful to be in a ward and community where the relief society really looks after there own! (It also doesn't hurt that Darren's parents are just 15 minutes away!)
*Did I mention all of the beautiful butterflies........ and moths, which is what this lil guy is!****
Jaxton wanted to eat him! lol

By the way, we live in the BEST location in these townhomes. We have a forest behind our house, so no one looking in and it feels suoer private, and in our front yard are lots of trees for shade, a picnic table and a little swing set, so naturally all the girls from my ward congregate there all day. So whenever I get bored I can just go out my front door and be with friends!
I'm just so thankful to be here and soo excited about our upcoming adventures in Omaha!
Me cooking our first meal in our new house!

Pictures to come soon of the new house as soon as I get it camera ready! ;D
BUT in the meantime, here are a few sneak peeks!




I have a Tiffany Blue wall somewhere in my house!!!

Monday, April 2, 2012

General Conference Weekend in SLC!

Well we last minute decided to head down to SLC to visit my mother and hopefully grab some standby General Conference Tix. Had we known earlier we could have gotten them EASILY, however last minute they are quite hard! All in all we had a great weekend though! We arrived thursday night, it's about a 3.5 hour drive for us and Jaxton must have been really antsy because when we got him out he WALKED down my mom's hallway 14+ steps and continued to take long walks all evening. (Before this his max was 5 steps!) Anyways, it was short lived because he's refused to walk since. Hehe, he is so silly! Did I mention he finally got teeth? Yup like 1.5 weeks ago, the top 2!! Anywhoo haa, we played all day friday! Starting with a tea party per Kaiden's request! H_ehe, he had found Sadie's tea set at Grammy's and how could I say no!? It's been sooooo long since my sister and I have had a tea party! It was pretty cute and fun!!
SLC just got a new uppity upscale mall called City Creek with all kinds of fun hoity toity shops! And I finally got to walk around a Tiffany's shop! (I almost talked Darren into a charm I fell in love with, something about the $1100 price tag turned him off. Haha, maybe next time!) The boys shopped until they DROPPED lol!
Jaxton loved playing with this Ukelele!! It was soooo cute!
Then I had the brilliant idea of putting him into this green tub and throwing in a bunch of Easter Eggs! It was like an Easter Egg ball pit! And he LOVED it! lol.
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The next morning, before Conference, we walked around Temple Square, staring at the crazy protesters, and enjoying the beautiful flowers and spirit around temple square. Then we walked to City Creek Mall again and had breakfast in the food court. We decided to do this because the food court has an AWESOME new play area for kids and Kaiden and Jaxton had the time of their little lives! Photo Montage to Follow!
Peek a BOO!
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I just love all the dinosaurs! lol
My FAVE pic of the boys from the tri!
Typical Kaiden!
How cute is this!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? <3
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Then we shopped around and Darren found a new suit on a heckuva deal! I was sooo happy becasue this guy NEVER buys things for himself and he's only been talking about getting a suit that fits since we've been married! And might I say, my husband is one Handsome Devil! Saturday night he tried to get tickets for the Priesthood session, but sadly he missed out. My mom also colored my hair, because who knows when I'll see her shining face again! Sunday morning we were planning on getting tickets early, but my mom, who would have watched the kids was HORRIBLY sick. Poor thing! I felt so bad leaving her like that! But it was also nice because when you're sick it's hard to have 2 wild n crazy kiddos running and screaming about. On the car ride home we listened to COnference and the kids zonked out in the back. It was the first time in FOREVER that Darren and I got to listen to 1 whole conference session uninterupted! It was sooo great!
Well, it was sure nice that we had an enjoyable and relazing weekend because this upcoming week is going to be BUSY! THis week we will be packing, Darren's parents are coming in friday morning, Darren's graduation is friday night, we're packing up the U-Haul saturday and cleaning through the weekend, on monday we're heading down to Inkom to say our goodbyes to the fam and tuesday morning we are making the great trek East to our new home in Omaha!!!!!!! I just can't WAIT!!!!!!!