Merry Christmas!

We wish you a Happy Holidays.

Happy Birthday Ava-

Happy First Birthday. It's crazy to think how it's already been a whole year since you joined our family. Here's some facts about you at 1 year old:
- You have 8 teeth & 4 molars.
- You love your big brother Owen- when you haven't seen him for a while you get so excited to see him again. You also like to tease him & copy him.
- At your 1 year checkup you weighed 18 pounds (7%) Measured 28.25 inches (23%).
- You love to look at & turn pages in books

- You love to eat any bite sized pieces of food you can pick up with your little fingers.
- You just started making a few animal sounds- your first was the bear and a few others are kitty, elephant & lion (sounds just like a bear).
- You were pretty stubborn about learning to sign "more" but now you can sign it like a pro and use it whenever you want something. Also just started turning your hand for Owen & the sign for dog.
- You love to empty out cupboards and occasionally like to put things away.
- You a sensitive girl- you often cry when someone else is crying and you usually cry if someone is wrestling or playing to rough in front of you.
- You love to stand up next to things and walk around if you have something to hold onto. Also you can stand all by yourself for a little bit until you realize you are standing and fall down.

-Can say Ma-ma-ma, da-da, and although your mouth is closed when you say it, when ever you see or hear a dog you make the same closed mouth noise over & over and you are sure about what your saying.

You are a real sweetheart. It's so fun to be with you and learn about you. We love you.


Ava really seemed excited for her birthday. She loved having people come over to our house. She is a lucky girl to have so many people that love her.

She was pretty good at opening her presents and was so excited to play with them. She just couldn't play fast enough with them. While she was playing with one toy she saw Owen grab her other new toy and she threw a little fit about it.

Ava snitched a cupcake off the table while I wasn't looking. It was good I guess because then I didn't have to worry about whether she would like the cupcakes or not :).

From her earlier taste-testing, she dug right into her cupcake and smashed it real good.

Thanksgiving Weekend

For Thanksgiving this year we went to Salt Lake. It was fun. Ava especially pigged out with her little bites.



Festival of Lights-



Getting Christmas trees is fun but it's a lot of work so it usually takes about a year before we've forgotten all the work and are ready to do it again. This year there was hardly any snow to walk through and it lightly snowed on us while we found our tree so that was fun.

Ava was happy riding on my back

Here we so happy because we found our tree.

Matthew & Ava enjoying some yummy cinnamon twists at the river after.

Ava loves her uncle Patrick.

It was a fun trip. So the next day Matthew went to get our tree from outside my parents house and while we were putting it in the stand and getting it straight we both smelled something gross. Come to find out- the neighbors dog had been out that morning and wanted to mark our Christmas tree as his territory- gross. We'd gone all the way up into the mountains, hiked to find this beautiful tree and then some neighbor's dog, that shouldn't be out anyways stunk up our pretty tree- aaargh! Well, we'd gone to way to much work to just throw it out so Matthew took it ouside, sprayed it down and thought it should air out outside for a few days. After some thought, we put it in our garage so our other neighbor dog didn't remark it. The next day Matt sprayed some Nature's Miracle on it, that's supposed to take out smells. After about a week, we brought our tree in and I'm happy to report that it doesn't smell. It doesn't really smell piney either but I'd definitely take no smell over the other smell :). Anyways, we are happy with our pretty tree.

Fall 2008

I love the leaves, weather, harvest and pictures taken in the Fall.

Owen in our backyard. We had plenty of leaves for playing in.

Dallin Paul & Owen-Dallin helped us rake a bunch up one day after school.
Of course there was a hot dog involved in the service :).

Grandma Huff & Owen slicing up apples for pie filling.

Owen & Ava in our backyard.

Ava crawling in the leaves. If you look close you can see that she had been eating & spitting out some leaves too.

Ava & Madalyn

Owen & Michael doing some big jobs.

Good Stuff

Pandora Radio- Raffi station. Gives surprisingly much more than kid songs.

Pumpkin's & Halloween

Halloween was nice and low key. Owen got a surprising amount of candy as we only went around our street and a couple other houses. I love that trick or treating gives us the excuse to go visit our neighbors.

Ava was a ladybug.

Owen was batman.

The Great Pumpkin Walk-

Patrick, Dallin Paul & Owen.

These stick your face in board things are cute but one of the times we were there a little girl got stuck in one- bet she'll never forget that.

I love Owen's face for this one.

It's hard to tell but this display is a little pumpkin waterfall.

We're back

Don't you love when you say "we" when you really don't mean "we" at all. Like at our house when "we" make creme brulee I love to say it when really I had no part in it at all. Well that's how this blog works too only this time Matthew has no part in it. But either way, we're back because we got our computer fixed on Apple's tab even though our warranty had expired. Thank you Apple.

I have lots of pictures that I want to catch up on over the next little bit but here's a couple to start-

I went to check on Owen the other night and turn off his light. When I got downstairs he was asleep and as I was reaching to turn off his lamp I saw his socks on his hands. Funny kid.

Zucchini Soup

So, our computer is broken again. Yes, conveniently about 1 month after the warranty ran out it decided it was tired of completely booting up so instead it just gets stuck on this pretty blue screen. Thus the lack of posting even though our camera is full of fun pictures and we even took a little family trip all the way to Salt Lake City. So, hopefully soon we'll get it fixed so I can post pictures again as I'm not very good at posting my deep thoughts or maybe I'm just not good at having deep thoughts.

I do want to post my most very favorite soup recipe. This pretty much is the only soup I make other than the occasional chicken noodle cause when I feel like soup, this one hits the spot so well. I've even heard it is worthy of marriage, so anyways, with out further delay, here it is-

Zucchini Soup

Sautee until tender:

-2 medium zucchini chopped (I use 1 green & 1 yellow zucchini)

-1 medium onion

-2 Tblsp. Parsley

-1 tsp. dried basil

-1/3 cup butter

Stir in:

-1/3 cup flour

-1 tsp. salt

-¼ tsp. pepper

Stir in:

-3 cups water

-3 chicken bouillon cubes

-1 tsp. lemon juice

Bring to boil 2 minutes

Add:

-1 can tomatoes

-1 can evaporated milk

-1 pkg. corn or 1 can drained

Reduce heat. Simmer 5 minutes

Just before serving, Add:

-¼ sup parmesan cheese

-2 cups shredded cheddar

Also, here's a link to the story of Matthew's cousin that went to the hospital to deliver her baby but found out after she delivered one that she was having twins. Anyways, it is a fun. crazy read.

Family Vacation 2008

We have a goal to take a family vacation each year. We have been good at keeping the goal even though we don't get to far away from home- we went to Salt Lake for our trip again this year. It's actually really great. We were going to go a little farther from home all the way to Boise but decided the less driving to Salt Lake would be nice. Here's a picture recap of what we did-

Thursday- we went to Hogle Zoo. We love the zoo. Ava was happy to hang out and do whatever we were doing. Owen loved the binoculars our whole trip. My personal favorite was the penguins. They make me laugh.

Train Ride.

Gotta get a lion picture.

Happy Ava.

Carousel- Owen riding his savorite (favorite) eagle.

Friday-

Swimming at our hotel.

Aquarium-

The aquarium trip took a lot less time than we thought it would because of it's size and the fact that about half of the museum is all about the native fish of Utah, aka trout and more trout but Owen loved seeing the Nemo fish, sharks and jelly fish.

Temple Square- While Ava took a nap in our car- Owen & I walked around Temple Square.


Conference Center Waterfall.

Relaxing in our hotel room. Take a vacation, fun hotel room & our night owl Owen and Owen is a happy boy late into the night. He loved the all day long party. This picture was taken at about 10:30 at night and he had a lot more in him.

Saturday-

Swimming at our hotel again.

Owen was a hard core traveler and wanted to look the part.

Discovery Gateway Children's Museum- Me & the kids had so much fun at the museum. Owen just ran from place to place.


Owen loved the treehouse.



Matthew missed out on the fun at the museum because he was purchasing...

Yes, we are spoiled.