My 23rd Birthday & Father's Day!

I can't believe I'm 23 years old. It's crazy how time flies. For example, Kimbri is going to turn 1 year old next month!! Ah! I can't believe how fast she is growing up. Well, I began my 23rd birthday by sleeping in. It was super nice. Kimbri was a little angel that morning and slept til after 8. It felt good! 

After getting up and having breakfast, Rick went and dropped Kimbri and I off at the Riverside Country Club so we could watch Enoch at his swim meet. Meanwhile, Rick had to run some 'errands'... errands meaning birthday shopping. Haha :)

Enoch was really nervous to do the backstroke but he totally won his heat! 

Enoch is the one in the second lane from the front of
the picture, with his arm diagonal in the air.

The finish. It was a close one but he won! Enoch is on the right. 

Proudly showing is 'Heat Winner' ribbon. Good job, Enoch!  

After sitting out in the blistering hot heat....so maybe it wasn't blistering but it was really, really hot... I called Rick to see what his plans were. He was still getting ready so we drove back to Spanish Fork. Before we left Provo we stopped by our house to pick up some extra food and formula for Kimbri. To my surprise Rick was home! I thought he was out doing errands! So it was a surprise for me and for Rick when I started unlocking the door to come in. He stopped me with a smile saying, "You're not supposed to be here!" Haha. So I told him the things I needed and he gathered them up while I waited on the front porch. 

So Kimbri and I continued on our way to Spanish Fork with my parents, Olivia and Enoch. We hung out there, played outside, ate lunch, played in the playroom, etc... while we waited for Rick's phone call. After a couple of hours he came down to Spanish Fork to pick up Kimbri and I. We drove on to Salem to drop Kimbri off at the Stone's house to be babysat. Thanks so much Sundee for watching Kimbri for us! Then we got to go on a long date together for my birthday. 

First we went straight back to our house in Provo. When I walked in I saw what Rick had been up to! He had washed all the dishes and cleaned up a bit along with surprising me with absolutely BeAuTiFuL and amazingly smelling roses. They seriously smelled divine! Along with the roses there was a "Happy B-day Alina" sign made from little pieces of paper. 

Here's a closer up shot...

Under each letter of "Happy B-day" there was a surprise/birthday gift. 

Wow. I have such a creative husband. :) 

H = Hefty amounts of red things. 

I love these little red gummy ball things (on the left side of the picture below). I don't even know what they are called but around Valentines they sell red and pink ones and throughout the rest of the year they have a bunch of colored ones. Rick went through the bulk candy bin and picked out all the red ones for me. Haha! Love it.  

A = Activity of your choice.

I'll tell you more later in this post about what we did.

P = Particularly clean dishes.

As I already mentioned, Rick did all the dishes!

P = Poco Loco, or wherever you need to go to buy a swimsuit and cover.

A gift certificate to Poco Loco.

Y = Your very own birthday card.

B = Beautiful roses.

And they were definitely SO beautiful! 

D = Dinner with me. 

Meaning with Rick.

A = Apparel from JC Penny.

A gift card to get a new shirt or something. 

Y = Yogurt from Spoon It Up 

Gift card. This is kind of a birthday tradition. A year ago for Rick's birthday when I sent him on a scavenger hunt, Spoon It Up was one of his stops and he had to eat the whole container of yogurt to get  his next clue. Such a yummy place!

And the 'Alina' part of the 'Happy B-day, Alina' was a birthday card from my sweet husband, Rick. He is so good at writing cards. I have quite the collection of cards from the love of my life that I will always cherish! I love going back and reading them.

So here is the result after opening all the pieces of paper:

After doing that we took off to JC Penny to use my birthday gift card to buy a new shirt or something. Well, I didn't really find anything in particular that I wanted that day so we ended up getting something for Dawson and Stacie's baby that is due in about two and a half months! I would post a picture of how darling the new outfit is but I don't want them to see it yet :) 

After going to JC Penny we ran over to Home Depot since it was really close by to get my dad a saw for Fathers Day. 

By the end of that little excursion we were both super hungry! Rick was so kind to let me choose where we went. Ha! Since it was my birthday and all:) I decided on Los Hermanos. One of my all time favorite restaurants. Yummy. Their chips and especially their salsa is sooooooo good. Wow. Even when I think about it, it makes me want some. My aunt Donna got a Los Hermanos t-shirt when she was out here in Utah going to BYU. For those of you who don't know, having a Los Hermanos t-shirt acts as an 'Eternal Coupon'. My aunt Donna used it many years ago and when she moved out of state she gave it to me, and I'm still to this day using it. Now, if you don't know, you may be wondering what you get if you wear the t-shirt when you go to Los Hermanos. You get a FREE specialty drink! So a while after Rick and I got married we decided to invest in another t-shirt so we could both get a free specialty drink when we go to Los Hermanos. It was $14.95 for any of you who may be interested in purchasing one. Haha:) Or....if anybody wants to borrow ours they are more than welcome. 

And by the way, my favorite specialty drink is the El Tropico...just in case you were wondering:) So after drinking our drinks and eating tons of chips and salsa we got our meals. I was pretty full by that point. Rick got the combo burrito and I got my favorite, a baked chicken chimichanga. I was only able to eat a few bites of my meal because I was so full off of the chips and salsa and my El Tropico. So I had a ton of leftovers. But that's okay because leftovers are the best! Oh, and since it was my birthday, they gave me free fried ice cream. I, as I just mentioned, was already stuffed so they put it in a to go container and we came home and put it in the freezer for Rick to eat another day. You just can't pass up a free dessert, right?!

After such a delicious and incredible meal we decided to go bowling at Fat Cats. I got in free for my birthday! So we only had to pay for Rick. Here is a random picture of Rick's bowling shoes. Size 11. I got size 7...just to compare a little bit. Haha. And we got so in to the game that I totally forgot to take pictures of us actually bowling! It was way fun. I was ahead the whole entire game! And then on the last bowl Rick got a spare so he got a bonus bowl and passed me up..... by. ONE. point. I couldn't believe it. I thought I had that game in the bag. But nope. My wonderful husband won it all. But we had a blast anyway. It was way fun! 

Final score = Alina at 111 and Rick at 112. 

After that we decided to go see a movie at Spanish 8 Theaters. Well, I think it's called Water Garden Cinemas or something like that now. But either way, we had a buy one get one free! We went and bought our tickets cause we were about 40 minutes early. The sun was setting and it was gorgeous!. 

Then I told Rick that I wanted him to give me a ride in a shopping cart. Hehehe. I had to do A LOT of convincing!!!! I hopped on in and he just looked at me and laughed. Then he asked for my camera. I told him the only way he could take a picture is if he gave me a ride:) So he did. We walked down to Kmart and went right on in the store. I think Rick was pretty embarrassed. And after seeing someone that I knew (but she didn't see me) I decided that I was kind of embarrassed too. So Rick pushed me right on out of the store and back toward the theater. We went down the ramps and over to the grass to the side of the theater and just watched the sun set some more.

The colors got even deeper from the pictures I got earlier and it was so pretty. We just sat there and got to chat for a while before the movie started.

Yes. There is the famous shopping cart in the background. Rick purposefully wanted it in the picture :)

We also had a buy one get one free for popcorn and drinks. I had been wanting movie popcorn for so long so for $6 we got two LARGE popcorns and to LARGE drinks. Wow. That was a lot of popcorn and a whole lot of drink. Needless to say, we had a whole lot of popcorn left over. We took it to the Stone's house when we went to pick up Kimbri and they got to enjoy the rest :)

Oh, and by the way, the movie we saw was called "October Baby". It was so good. I would see it again. And again. I would probably even buy it. You should all see it. It leaves you with a really good message and makes you think about forgiveness and the need to always forgive others.

The next day was Fathers Day! Happy Fathers Day, again, to all you great fathers out there! After church we went straight to Spanish Fork. Okay, back up. Rick was reading over my shoulder and said, "What about before church?". Haha. Well, for his Fathers Day gift I gave him a new electric razor before church so he could use his gift for Fathers Day. His old one was just that, old. And it took him forever and ever to shave. No offense, Rick:)  But he would agree with me. So, he got to use a nice new shaver and he looked way good for church on Sunday;)

Anyway, we spent a few hours at my parents house having dinner with my family, my cousin, Eric, and my grandparents. After dinner my dad made homemade cookies 'n cream ice cream in honor of my birthday! Oh is was sooooo good. And he also made strawberry and blueberry pies. 

Here is Uncle Zach with Kimbri on the grass outside while the boys were cranking the ice cream. 

Here is my dad and Nolan, hard at work at that delicious ice cream! 

And here are some more pictures of Kimbri playing in the grass.

Daddy-Daughter pictures on Fathers Day with the cherry tree stuffed with cherries in the background.

Here is when they were whipping the cream to go on top of the pies. And we let Kimbri have a little taste. And oh boy did she LOVE it!! I probably took too many pictures. This isn't even all the ones that I took! But oh well, it will be fun to look back on them later.

This is her, "Don't you dare take that away
from me!" and "Give me more!" face. Ha:)

Then everyone sang Happy Birthday to me and I had to blow out three candles. Why three? I guess because I'm turning 23. I don't know. But it was good. 

Here was everyone that was there! Plus my Mom, but she was the one taking the picture. 

Pretty sure I've said this before, but Kimbri loves to eat.

It was a great Birthday and Fathers Day weekend! Next year my birthday will be on Fathers Day. So it will be one big ol' party!  It's been a great 23 years! 

She Breaks Her First Dish

As I'm sure many parents have experienced a child breaking a dish or something else breakable and probably not so fixable, I can now say that because of Kimbri I, too, have experienced it :) 

Often times Rick and I will sit on the floor with Kimbri when we eat breakfast. Well, this day in particular we decided to give Kimbri her own bowl and spoon to try and distract her from ours. Otherwise she tries to crawl up in our laps and eat our cereal the whole time. 

We only thought this would be a great distraction...

...and this is what became of this so called distraction. Ha!

So here's how it happened. It's kind of one of those stories that it's just better to have been there. But I'll try my best to help you imagine how this all went down. So when we gave Kimbri the bowl and spoon, like times before, she went right for the spoon and started lightly tapping on the bowl. Loving that she was making noise and she thought she was such a big girl for doing so. Just imagine an almost 1 year old little girl sitting there proudly TAPPING her bowl with a sly LITTLE grin on her face. Hehe :) 

Well, now you should imagine an almost 1 year old little girl sitting their proudly BANGING her bowl with a bold HUMONGOUS grin on her face!! Right after she started the banging part I said allowed, "Woah, Kimbri. You better watch out or you're going to break that."

 I guess I jinxed her because one more bang 

after that statement and this is what happened:

Rick and I just busted up laughing in unbelief that, that had just happened. Even more funny that it had happened right after me saying such a thing. I guess you just had to be there. But we sure thought it was funny! 

And so for the rest of the day Kimbri innocently played and sucked on the spoon she used to break the bowl. From now on, she will only get to play with a spoon and not a bowl. Haha :)

She Winks!

Okay, so I may have over done it on the pictures but she was just acting so stinkin' cute! And she is only in a diaper because as I mentioned in a previous post, our house has been sooooooo hot. So Kimbri got to sport the diaper outfit;) And she totally loved it.

Also, Kimbri can wink!

She seems so happy about it too. And as a side note...you can kind of see her hair fluffed up in this picture. There's proof! She DOES have hair. Just not very much:) But it's growing.

She likes to play with my sunglasses...and wear them too. 

Another wink!  

And another one...what a cute face she has! 

She makes me laugh. And smile. A lot.

I think I mentioned a couple posts back that Kimbri always crawls over to the piano and stands up to reach her little fingers up and play the keys. But I don't think I had a picture when I did that post so here ya go. And also, look at those chubby legs! I am in love.

She just had to stop and wink at me again. Haha! I can't get over how adorable she is!

That facial expression just cracks me up every time I see it!

She has learned a new trick and just loves showing it off!! Keep on winking, Kimbri. I love you! 

Summer Fun!

Well, I guess this first picture is not so fun... Our house has been soooooo hot. And I was beginning to melt. Although it is fixed now, (our landlords finally had someone come put in the swamp cooler) that long while where our house was too hot to be in, Kimbri and I went to Seven Peaks several times! And  spent several days in Spanish Fork because I was just miserable in our 85 degree house. 

Here's proof:

So we met my mom and some of my siblings at Seven Peaks and after a while of being in the sun we went back to sit in the shade and to give Kimbri a snack....a snack consisting of partially frozen strawberries but thawed enough that they were soft for Kimbri to eat. 

And she loves to eat! Can't you tell?! Haha:)

Well, that cute face above soon turned into this extremely sour face! And no, she's not crying or screaming, she just must've gotten a sour bite of a strawberry and made this hilarious face!

Still a slightly concerned face but still willing to eat them, because like I said, she LOVES to EAT!

 

And just look at the beautiful eyes! She's so adorable:) And yes, I know I'm biased. I can't help it. I'm her mother.

Another day we went to my parents house and my Mom set up the little pool on the deck for Kimbri to play in. And she loved eating the watermelon while playing in the pool :)

And I'm sure we have many more fun adventures coming our way this summer! Many days will probably be spent at Seven Peaks, taking Kimbri to play in the fun kid pools, the wave pool and down Flash Floods - she loves that one! 

The Laundry Basket Incident

Kimbri figured out how to get in the laundry basket!  I had just finished bringing the laundry up from the basement and set the basket in the front room. Kimbri quickly crawled right over and stood up using the edge. Then she began to try and pull herself into it!! It was so funny to me. She is such a determined little girl in EVERYTHING she does!

She eventually was able to pull herself in using the side of the basket. And then she got stuck because she pulled herself in the short way...so her torso was down in the basket but her head and feet were sticking up on the sides. And so naturally, I took pictures before helping her out :) But she didn't seem to mind. She was just looking at me and giving me some classic Kimbri faces.

After taking her out I was curious to see if she would do it again. And sure enough, she did! This time she crawled in the long way and was able to eventually get to her knees and then her feet to stand up inside the basket! Haha...this little girl makes me giggle oh so often. I love her!!!

She made it in...

...and then made it to her knees...

...and finally to her feet! And she seems so proud of herself too! Look at that adorable smile ;)

Kimbri Update ~ 10 Months Old

Wow. I know this is a phrase that everybody probably says but I can't believe how fast she's growing up! I honestly cannot believe that she's 10 months old! She hit the 10 month mark on May 25. Has it really been that long? Kimbri is just the joy of my life! I'm glad that I get to be her mommy! 

So far she has 3 teeth and another one is trying to poke through on the bottom. I've been meaning to write about that for a while. She got her first two teeth right after we got back from Nebraska around the first part of May. So she was about 9.5 months old. I guess it took her a while to start getting teeth:)

We take her to her next checkup in about one week so we'll know the more specific details of her growth and development but until then, she weighs about 21 lbs. And she seems to be getting so tall/long. Sometimes when other people are holding her and I can see her all stretched out, I just can't believe that she was once small enough to be inside me. And now she's getting so grown up! Ah!

Kimbri is also getting SO good at getting around. She's been crawling for quite some time now and is pulling up on anything she can get her hands on. She goes from the couch to the tv stand to the table to the chairs and can even over to the piano. She has learned that she's tall enough to reach her little hands up and play the piano keys. She will stand there forever just reaching her little heart out to try and push down on the piano keys. It's so cute. 

She also has learned where I keep the bread and fruit :) I keep it on a little shelf/stand thing next to the fridge and yep, she's definitely tall enough to crawl over to it and get whatever is on top of it! The other day I was doing dishes and she was crawling around the kitchen, standing up using my legs, etc... but what seemed like seconds later she had crawled over to that little shelf and had the bread bag down and open and eating it as fast as she could! Haha!! And naturally I had to snap a picture of her going to town on the bread :)

If you couldn't tell from the above picture, she is really loving 'big people food' nowadays! Even if I have just fed her, she will grunt and flail her arms and legs until she gets whatever is on mommy's plate:) What can I say? She loves to eat! She's trying new things almost every day. Her uncle Nolan is especially bad when it comes to giving Kimbri new food. He's always trying to give her soda, brownies, treats and anything else that would probably make her like him more. Ha! 

These next few photos are just some random ones that I took the other day. I put her little black stretch pants on her head and she apparently thought it was hilarious, and I did too ;) Don't you just love those little chubby legs?! 

And this is a picture Rick snapped the other day. She was trying so hard to arch her back up to see what was going on. I love my little love bug! She's a cutie!

Kimri also loves going to the park! We go pretty often cause there is a little park just a few blocks from our house. She loves to swing in the baby swings and crawl around on the grass. She just loves to be outside! And we're looking forward to this summer when we can go swimming all the time! Cause she loves the water too!

I love you Kimbri!!

5K Fitness Day Race with Olivia

Well, these are the only two pictures I have of this not so lovely day... Maybe it would've been cool to have taken some pics of the disaster that happened, but maybe it's best not remembered! 

It all started out when Olivia invited me to run a 5K with her for her school fitness day during the last week of school. I thought that it sounded fun and had her sign me up! The day got closer and closer (I think it was May 22 that this all went down) and I was pretty excited to run this race with her. It was a smokin' hot day!! So, the race started and we decided to try and run the whole way. That should be easy, right? After all, I had just gone 7 miles with Rick just a few days before. So run we did. 

My mom snapped these two photos as we came running toward the finish line, and just a little while later was the part of that day that I'm still recovering from...

Soooooo, after we crossed the finish line we went and picked up our times and then walked over to get a water bottle and a granola bar. We walked back over to where my mom and Kimbri and a few other people that we knew were waiting. I started to feel super light-headed, so I walked over to some shade and just figured I needed to stretch and cool off. Like I said before, it was seriously a smokin' hot day! Not to mention we were running in all that heat. After a few minutes I got up and walked back over to my mom. I started to feel sick. You know that feeling you get when you're so hot that you start getting cold? My head was hurting and I knew I needed to go. My mom started pushing the stroller and offered to just drive me home and that we could pick my car up later. Well, for some reason I thought that if I could just make it to my car and sit down with the air conditioner on me that I would start to feel better. And let's face it. By this point I was feeling really bad. 

Well, I was trying to get to my car - which by the way was parked just on the other side of that portable classroom in the pictures above - and suddenly just felt totally crazy. My car was like 5 feet away but I felt the need to lean on the portable to just rest my head for a second. I remember my mom walking by and asking if I was going to just ride with her. That's when I  think she knew something was wrong and asked me if I was okay. And that's when I don't remember anything else. From what I'm told, my mom said that I turned toward her after she asked my that last question and then I just fell forward. My right arm sliding along the extremely scratchy side board getting all scraped up, my knuckles luckily breaking some of the fall on the asphalt and my nose also hitting the asphalt. I also received a slight bruise and scratch on my left knee and a little scrape on my chin.

Yep, I passed out. 

It was my first experience passing out in my whole life. 

The next thing I remember is my mom saying "Alina! Alina!". She had seen me start to fall and tried to run and catch me but I was too far away and fell too fast. I awoke and saw blood all over my hands and my nose was bleeding. One of Wyatt's friends used their longboard to prop my feet up and a jacket to prop my head up. It was the weirdest feeling. I felt a lot better right after waking up than I did just before! But as soon as I tried to sit and stand up I started feeling the exact feeling as before and had to just lay back down. A bunch of people were, of course, surrounding me and I was just totally embarrassed by the whole situation. I ate a granola bar and drank some more water. Everyone was asking if I had eaten breakfast and drinken enough. And yes! I had some Rice Chex that morning and almost a full water bottle during the race but I'm tellin' ya...the heat was bad!! I just had to lay there for quite a while until I felt that I could sit up and then eventually stand up. What a weird experience!!

My mom gave me a ride back to her house and I just rested and took a long nap while my mom and Olivia took car of Kimbri. What a day! What a day! My nose is finally feeling almost all better - still sore but showing a lot of improvement. And I still have ugly looking scabs on my knuckles which made it really hard to bend my fingers for several days...but they are also feeling much better. I'm just really grateful that my knuckles broke the fall, otherwise my face (especially my nose) would've been much worse off!! 

Anyway, I'm grateful for all the people that were there to help me and especially my mom for taking care of me and watching Kimbri the rest of the day so I could rest! 

I'm not so sure if I'm going to love the idea of going running for the next while....maybe I'll start up swimming again :)