Hannah's Birthday!

I can't believe my little girl is already 1! The last year has flown by. We had such a fun time celebrating Hannah's Birthday.

On her actual birthday Hannah opened her presents from Jake and I and then we took her to Arctic Circle and let her have as much of a cone as she wanted. She devoured both Jake and my cone. I was afraid she wouldn't sleep that night with so much sugar running through her system, but surprisingly she slept just as well as usual.

First reaction, a little cold, but that didn't stop her...

We celebrated her birthday a couple days later when family was in town. 

We started off the day swimming at the local recreation center. It was a lot of fun. We even took Hannah down the big water slide and she loved it.

After that we went back to our house for a BBQ. It was so much fun to have a lot of family in town to help us celebrate.

Here is Hannah's cake and matching cupcakes for everyone else.

She did surprisingly well opening all of her presents.

This was one of her favorites.

And then the grand finale.... the cake. I think Hannah was a little overwhelmed with everyone staring at her while we sang Happy Birthday.

She started by delicately pulling off the eyes.

And then came the head.

The first taste.

A little encouragement from her cousins.

And then she really got into it.

This is what was left by the end. She really didn't eat much of it, it was more fun to play with.

Here are most of her cousins who came.

Happy first birthday Hannah! We feel so blessed to have your sweet spirit in our home!

Changes....

I have been such a slacker at blogging lately. I guess I have a pretty good reason though. We finally bought a house! I have never been a big fan of changes, but the latest change for us has been great. It actually was really hard leaving our old neighborhood, friends, callings, and ward. I really haven't missed our old apartment and all of its quirks though. We really wish we could have transplanted our new house into our old neighborhood. Our new house is located just 3 minutes west of where we used to live.

Here are Jake and Hannah taking a break from packing in front of our old place. We have so many great memories here.

Here is our new house!

Catching up

Here are a few other things we have been up to this summer:

Learning how to make scrubbies with Grandma. My grandma spends a lot of her days making these scrubbies and donating them to different organizations. She also likes to make them for all of her grand kids. We use them all of the time at our house. My mom, sister and I decided we needed to be able to carry the tradition on, so we spent an afternoon with grandma learning how to make them. Mine didn't turn out as pretty as hers, but she has had a lot of years of experience. Grandma just celebrated her 98th birthday!

Jake's sister Tara got married at the end of June. All of the kids in Jake's family are now married. We had a lot of fun celebrating with Tara and Ryan.

These are all of Jakes siblings and spouses.We all were married in the Salt Lake Temple. (All of the siblings have also graduated from BYU).

Sleeping in weird positions!

Celebrating Christmas in July by pretending to be Mary. Hannah loves wrapping blankets around her head and snuggling with them.

Catching up with former gradschool classmates

Taking rides on Grandpa's motorcycle and in his Corvette

We went to a Salt Lake Real game celebrate Jake's birthday. The game we went to just happened to have David Cook performing after the game.

There will be more posts to come (hopefully in the not too distant future) on the rest of our summer activities.

Happy Birthday Hannah!!!

One amazing year down and many more to come. We love you Hannah!

Reunions

We started out the month of July at my extended family reunion. We camped at our usual spot up in the mountains above Fish Lake. I realized after the reunion was over that I only took these three pictures the entire time. It was a lot of fun catching up with some of my cousins that I hadn't seen in years. No matter how many times I have been up in these mountains I am always amazed at how beautiful it is.

The very next weekend we headed out to Jake's extended family reunion on the Oregon coast. We were able to spend 8 days in Lincoln City at a beach house that we shared with Jake's immediate family. We split the 14 hour drive into 2 days. I was a little nervous about how Hannah would do sitting in her carseat for that long, but thanks to Baby Einstein, Fig Newtons, and Mo-Tab she did great (we learned that "High On A Mountain Top" is one of her faviorte songs).
I was amazed at how beautiful and green the Oregon coast was. I was also amazed at how cold and windy it was in July! We wore jackets most of the time we were there. Here are some of the things we did:

Lots of hanging out on the beach and playing in the water

Hannah had to be in on all the action- helping to bury cousin Spencer

Playing with cousin Kate

Building sandcastles with dad

We visited the fishing docks at Newport

We went out to the beach at low tide and found some neat starfish and sea anemones

We visited an old lighthouse in Newport

We went to the aquarium in Newport

We did lots of hanging out with family

We spent a lot of time with family at the beach house