One / Thirty-...Five?

A few weeks ago our Smoochface reached that big first birthday.  At her checkup this week she was looking great, measuring leaner and taller than average as per usual, but (to us at least) in the highest possible percentile for adorableness.  She didn't much care for her shot at the moment, but a few snuggles from Mommy and she was her usual happy self again.  She's overall such a pleasant and sweet girl, so cuddly these days and usually pretty sweet to new people.  She is absolutely walking and starting to talk just a bit and make animal sounds, which we can hardly stand how cute it is.  She has her way when it comes to meal time, hungry for what she's eating but only in just the moment she wants to eat it, and her naps are kind of hit-and-miss but her nighttime sleeping is great.  We love her ombre hair and her close-to-double-digits teeth and her scrunchy smile and her bright blue eyes.  She definitely has a nice loud wail that she uses to great effect when she feels it necessary, but overall she is a delight to one and all.

The Wife's great twelve-month update is just here, but here are some of my pictures:

Helping herself to one of Mommy's Valentine's Day gifts

Throwback to visiting the Puppy Barn

At the Provo City Center Temple open house.  She at least was very well-behaved there.

Enjoying a tea party hosted by Big Brother.

Helping with some home improvements

New favorite game!

The weather was finally getting nice enough to go out.

I love being home on the weekends and able to fetch this face after naps!

On her actual day of we just opened some presents (BB was happy to help her out with the wrapping paper/playing) and she tentatively tried out the strawberry shortcake provided by Mommy, and a few days later we had her birthday party playdate at the park, which was fun and with lots of cousins, and Mommy's amazing butterbeer cupcakes.  Kind of the opposite of The Boy's first birthday party, it was beautiful all morning long and then turned windy and cold by afternoon party time rolled around, but we bundled her up and she enjoyed her treat and some cozy snuggles while the kids played on the fun playground (and big bro took a tumble into the dry creek bed... watch your step there, Boy... more to come on that later).

Every little girl's birthday dream come true:  Costco.

Oh all right, and the mall.

Hee hee, Baby Yoda!

New book!

Ummmmm yes.

3 Cs: Cute, cold, cupcake. 

As usual, it's hard to forget our tiny baby but it's also hard to imagine her any other way than she is right now!  She has the sweetest disposition and I am always so so glad to see her clutching to the baby gate at the top of the stairs waiting to see me when I come home.  It's all I can do to not smother her with kisses at every moment.

Oh!  And then I had a birthday too.  Is it so weird that it's just hard to remember exactly how old you are when you get to a certain age?  I say it is so weird.  But I never mind a birthday (even if I am about halfway through the decade to 40...), and The Wife always makes it such a special occasion.  I went in to work a little late so I could enjoy my special birthday cereal with my three favorite people, and then was treated to lunch by my coworkers, and then had a special delicious dinner of my childhood pick spaghetti followed by presents, and THEN we had friends and family come over to enjoy another of The Wife's confectionary masterpieces.  She always does, but she really outdid herself this time.  It was great to have so many fun people come over, but we admit that we were sorry not to have leftovers...  Next time we'll make a bonus and hide it away.

Yes, Boy, you can have some Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Aww, thanks, work.

The best pants ever.  I have worn them every day since then.

Masterpiece!

So much for good luck -- St. Patrick was not with me when I somehow or other shattered my poor iPod screen.  At least it still plays just fine.  Back in the day I would have done a whole blogpost about this, but eh.

Happy birthdays to us!  We both had good ones.

Epic European Tour Tease

We went on an epic European cruise!  It was epic and European and a cruise.  After what seemed like an eternity of traveling on basically every mode of modern transportation known to man, we made it home a week ago.  I will post more details and pictures soon, but for now I wanted to post just a little something saying we're home and we had a great time with Elise and Jeff, and saw so many awesome things and ate so much awesome food and only had a few minor bouts with seasickness.

KERMIT!  (Washington, D.C.)

Like we do.

My wife the lil' bear!

This is Elise being Belle and me being a sheep at this very French fountain.

Elise took this picture of us taking a picture of ourselves.

And this is the picture we took (Sanary, France).

Same situation here.

Perfect companion pieces! (Barcelona, Spain)

I don't have the other side of this one on hand. (Sanary?)

Tres français!

Riding a dolphin on the roof of the Monaco museum.

Cruisin'.

Now, for the real tease...  Do you see what I see?

Stay tuned for more details!

Many Thanks

'Tis December.  Christmas is coming!  I'm excited.  But last weekend was Thanksgiving!  And it was exciting too.  Here's what we did:

The day before Thanksgiving (I couldn't let this go unreported...) we went to see The Muppets.

!!!!!  I have not stopped thinking about it since!  Those who know me well know that I have long held a special place for the Muppets in my heart, and after their most recent cinematic offering turned out to be pretty disappointing, fans were super excited that they were coming back to the big screen (10+ years later) in what looked to be fine form.  And in fine form they truly were!  It was funny and sweet and nostalgic and (okay, maybe at times a little overly) sentimental, but fans of the original movies or The Muppet Show will find plenty of references and exciting throwbacks throughout.  It was a musical, as it should be, and Bret McKenzie (of Flight of the Conchords) wrote some really awesome songs that fit perfectly into the canon of Muppet Music.  I have no particular love for Jason Segel's body of work, but I do admire his diligence in bringing the Muppets back to the movies in the right way, and he owned his silly but touching role in this, and Amy Adams was perfect as his sweetly pining girlfriend, basically the kind of part she was born to play.  Anyway, go see it!  I think the new character of Walter actually fits really well in the world of the Muppets, and I'm kind of curious how he will factor into the franchise as time goes by.  It had heart and it was a perfect Thanksgiving weekend release.  I basically haven't stopped listening to the soundtrack since it came out.  We had been having a Muppet 'thon the weeks leading up to this big event, and it was so exciting to end on such a high note.  Thanks for the support, Wife!  (It was even worth the swap for the Fast and the Furious marathon, ha ha.)  I want to see it again!

Then on Thursday we were up nice and early to head over to The Fleet Feet Turkey Trot 5K in American Fork.  It was a pretty unique race, going all around the shopping center, behind stores and through parking lots, and it made for a pretty flat and interesting course, and there was a nice big turnout!  We just don't usually run in races with 800 people!  I came in 4th (ouch, I came THIS close to winning a pie... I guess it's a good thing our Thanksgiving dinner's success didn't depend on me winning one, though among us we took home a few anyway), but I was satisfied with my time (about 20:42, 6:42/mile), and Julie, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Cami, Amber and Amber's friend Corie all did great too.  And the race shirts were hoodies!  Right on.

You really want to see the one that was taken right before this when Cami tried to jump up next to me and she's making this face kind of like ;Sp and it's all blurry, but... I think I would be put on Santa's (and Cami's) Naughty List if I put that on the interwebs for all to see.

 

We love to run and we love each other.

Amber and Corie wanted to take a jumping picture.  We're all in this together!

So then Cami decided to pay tribute to an old favorite.

I tried to join in, since the original had two people (see a reunion reenactment here), but we just couldn't get it in sync.  This turned out to be the best one we took, and it was actually the first.

But Cami decided to have a solo one with a little more evident enthusiasm.

Then we rushed home so we could get our contributions to dinner ready.  Julie worked all afternoon on a most beautiful cake, which was amazing, and very well-received, and we also packed up some green bean casserole and sweet potatoes and headed up to the house.  Dinner was delightful and delicious!  We were a little late, so we were sad that people were kind of full by the time our wonderful sides arrived, but I guess that just meant that we had more leftovers to enjoy. :D

Aaaand for some reason I never ever have any pictures of Thanksgiving dinner, so you'll just have to imagine scrumptious-looking foods and scrumptious-looking people eating said foods, or wait a few days and perhaps find those on everyone else's blogs.  (But you can [and should] see the cake that Julie made right here.  OMGoodness, sooo delicious.)

I am thankful for ever so many things that I can hardly enumerate or name them, but definitely at the top of the list are faith, family, Savior and of course Wife.  Happy Thanksgiving, one and all.

(And now this means I am safe to listen to Christmas music without fear of abuse or ridicule, right?  Suckaz, I've been filtering it in for weeks!  In past years I have been bullied so into waiting until the "Christmas season" that by the time Christmas finally arrived, I realized my paranoia had caused me to hardly listen to any at all.  NO MORE!  There's too much great music and meaning to relegate its listening and celebration to just a few weeks.)