Butterfly Wonderland

This was such a fun family activity that we did in January! Dr. Michelle Allen, the kids' pediatrician recommended it and so we decided to give it a go. And I'm so glad we did! It was so fun and Kimbri and Garrett really enjoyed it. It was really a cool place.

At the beginning you watch a short movie about the life of a butterfly and then you get to go into a big room with a bunch of butterflies from around the world!

Rick was able to take a bunch of cool pictures on his phone of several butterflies. One even landed on Kimbri's shoulder and one sat on Garrett's head for a few seconds before flying away. 

After seeing all the butterflies and walking around in the big butterfly garden area, we visited the other areas of the museum. They had a stingray, tons of different fish, spiders, scorpions, etc... to look at. It was so fun. I love to see the kids so excited when we do family activities like this. Children bring so much joy and meaning to life! I love you Kimbri and Garrett!

Garrett's Birthday

My mom sent a package down with my aunt Carla and uncle Craig when they came down to Arizona to visit some family.  She sent this package for Garrett for his birthday. He loved the little trucks that she sent and spends tons of time rolling them back forth across the living room floor, down the hallway and around his room.

He also loves the big buttons on the book she sent. I love that they are easy-to-push buttons that make it easy for younger toddlers!

On Garrett's actual birthday we spent the morning hanging out as a family. We went to the park off of Recker/Ray that they had a blast at. For his birthday that night we had pizza and chocolate cupcakes with blue frosting. Garrett wasn't feeling 100% well that day but he still looooved that chocolate cupcake!

Kimbri "helping" Garrett open his presents... I don't think he appreciated that too much!

Kimbri's Rash

Right before we left on vacation to Utah for Christmas break Kimbri broke out in a terrible rash! I had no idea what it could be from or if it was harmful so we took her to the doctor.

Dr. Allen said that it most likely was a reaction to some virus or possibly an allergic reaction to something. The only way they would test her for allergies is if this occurs again. So hopefully it won't! But I'm glad we took her in to the Dr because we also found out she had an ear infection. Poor girl! So it was a good thing we got her on some antibiotics before heading off to Utah. 

Here are some pictures of the rash:

Poor Kimbri- it itched like crazy!

Happy New Year

Well, the year 2013 is coming to a close... in less than 2 hours! There are fireworks going off like crazy all around our house, ringing in a new year! 2013 has been so crazy but oh so good! 

We started off the year with a sweet little baby boy who is such a blessing in my life and now we are just 4 days away from his first birthday! Rick graduated from BYU. We moved from Provo to Spanish Fork (for six weeks) and then to Arizona. Rick started medical school at A.T. Still university in July and has been working and studying so hard for our little family! And it is sooooo great that he has a long Christmas break with absolutely no studying that he has to do... which means a lot of fun family time for us! :) 

Here's to a great year we had and we are excited to see what 2014 will bring! 

Happy New Year!

Christmas 2013

Christmas time was so fun this year! Rick took his last final the week before Christmas and then we headed off to Utah to visit family!

We were so grateful to be able to go to Utah and see everyone and spend Christmas break there. Before we left we actually celebrated with a little mini "Christmas morning" with the kids and let them have some of their gifts so we didn't have to take them all to Utah.

Gifts from Rick and I to each other :)

Gifts for the kids. We feel so grateful to the Goodrich family for giving us all of these toys!!! Will Goodrich is in Rick's class and his wife, Tara, and I have become really good friends. She has 4 kids and was trying to get rid of toys that they don't use much anymore and she gave them all to us! Thank you! Kimbri and Garrett love them!

They gave us a jungle animal set,

a house set with a bunch of little people and a minivan,

a farm set,

and a fire station set! Wow, I can't believe how kind that was of them to give us all of that. Kimbri and Garrett LOVE it!

Here was the set up before they came out on our early "Christmas morning":

Christmas decorations:

We had already bought a trike for Kimbri off a yard sale site before the Goodrich's gave us all the toys so we gave that to her too. She loves it :)

And my friend Erin gave Kimbri this little baby car seat/baby carrier thing and Kimbri loves toting around her baby in it!

Trying on a stocking cap... we had to pack some hats, jackets, coats, etc. to take with us to Utah! This cute little stocking cap was almost too little for Garrett's extra large head!

Christmas cookies we made before heading off to Utah.

Filling up with gas on the drive to Utah, sound asleep. This is how we like it on 10 hour drives :) Rick is amazing and is really good at night driving, so it's nice to be able to drive when the kids are sleeping. I, on the other hand, am terrible at night driving.

I can't seem to find any other pictures from our Utah trip... weird. Pretty sure I took more than one picture while we were there, at least I hope so! I'll have to update later if I find more... but we had so much fun! Even if we don't have pictures to prove it. 

Kimbri with her Uncle Enoch

We arrived in Utah really early on the Saturday before Christmas. It was seriously a good thing we drove through the night because we were just under an hour away from Spanish Fork when a huge snow storm hit! So it was pretty slow moving the last little bit, but we were grateful to have been so close instead of driving the whole way in those snowy conditions! 

Well, I can't remember tons and tons of detailed info on what we did every second of our trip (since I'm really behind in writing on my blog... it's February people! Yes, I'm a little behind), but here is the run down on what we did while in Utah:

We spent Saturday morning in Spanish Fork, to say hi to my family and then that afternoon we headed over to Salem to the Stone family Christmas party. We spent Saturday night through Christmas morning at the Stones, going back and forth to various Christmas and family parties. Sunday we went to church with the Stone's. Monday we lounged around and relaxed and that evening we went up to Draper to my aunt Margaret's house for the Haycock family Christmas party. Tuesday we spent a couple hours that afternoon of Christmas Eve at the Haycock's and then headed over to the Stone's for the rest of the evening and to sleep. We woke up on Christmas day and had fun watching all the excitement of the kids opening presents, mostly the aunts and uncles of Kimbri and Garrett (Rick's siblings). We did give Kimbri and Garrett a couple of other things to have something to open on the actual Christmas day, like several books for Kimbri and sippy cups for Garrett.  After a while we packed up and headed over to the Haycock's and had another "Christmas morning" with them. The rest of the day was spent just how a vacation should be spent, relaxing and doing nothing, really. Just visiting and having fun. The second half of our vacation was kind of a blur seeing that I came down with what they called parainfluenza. Ugh. It was no fun at all. It stinks to be sick on vacation! But anyway, we ended up leaving I think Sunday morning and drove back down to sunny Arizona! 

That was pretty much our vacation in one rather large paragraph. Hopefully next year I'll be more on top of it and write about our Christmas vacation NOT at the end of February. Ha! Then maybe I could remember more details... oh well. Merry Christmas everyone!