Trampoline Fun

On Saturday night we made plans to spend time with my cousin Breanna, Gene and their boys. Their littlest Ben had a birthday party at a trampoline park called Airborne Draper. So we decided to go with them and while Ben was at his party the rest of us could hang out and have fun :) Since Breanna and I are both pregnant we didn't jump but it was so much fun to just sit and talk since I hadn't seen her in about 4 years! Daniel had fun jumping with Mike though. I have never seen that boy so happy in his short 20 months of life. It was tough to get pictures because he was never still but it was a lot of fun! I don't think he stopped laughing until we had to leave. He really didn't want to go home even though after a half hour he was rubbing his eyes while he played and yawning.

After all that jumping, we went to get frozen yogurt which was yummy :) I think that my favorite part of the night was being with my cousins and specifically their son Joseph. He is almost 8 and just the sweetest. He was so sweet with Daniel and protective of him even though he had just met him. He wanted to sit by him at the yogurt place and just talked to him and played peek a boo with him. It was so sweet to watch and Dan loved the attention. It also made it easier for Mike and I to talk to Breanna and Gene. It was so great to see them!

Lunch Date!

We love going out to lunch when we go visit people! Its fun to visit and also to try new places! We went out eat at Greek Souvlaki. The food was super yummy! We went with my Uncle Bob, Aunt Gail and grandma. Daniel was of course the star of the show but it was fun to talk and catch up :) Daniel impressed everyone with how good of an eater he is. He ate a corn dog and half a plate of fries, rice pudding and pita bread. The water bottle was his favorite toy. He loved rolling it back and forth across the table to my Uncle Bob and Aunt Gail. He also got to show off how ticklish he is when the tickle monster came for a visit during lunch :)

Its so nice being closer to extended family and being able to have them watch Daniel and the rest of our kids grow up, at least more than they would if we were on the East coast still.

Utah Trip

In December Stacey told us about the Provo City Center Temple open house that was happening during the first 3 months of this year. We decided to travel from Vegas up to Provo to go see it. It was also a nice opportunity to visit family in Utah.

We were planning on being cold and seeing snow but I'm happy that we don't have to stay and deal with it for a long time :) We have about a 7ish hour drive up to Salt Lake area since we lose an hour. Daniel did great on the drive. We stopped in Beaver on the way up and let Daniel play in the snow for the first time. He didn't know what to think at first and wasn't a huge fan but he warmed up to it after playing in it for a while :)

While we've been in Utah Daniel has gotten lots of opportunities to experience not being an only child. We're staying with my cousin and they have 3 children. Daniel has loved how busy the house is and having so many toys to play with. We also have spent time with Mike's cousin Kaytie and her family. They have 4 kids who loved playing with him and loving on him since they have a new baby in the house.

All the kids love grandma :)

 Its been so much fun to spend time with so much family and I love seeing Daniel around other kids. It makes me more excited to see him as an older brother in a few months!

Provo City Center Temple

Our main purpose in going to Utah was to go to the new Provo City Center Temple open house. This is the temple that was once the tabernacle until the tabernacle burned down a few years ago. Instead of just tearing down what was left and building a random building, the church decided to build a temple.

We had planned to go with Mike's mom, Stacey and Doug and also Mike's cousin Kaytie and her family. We got a wonderful surprise when Kaytie's husband Jared offered to let Daniel stay at there house during the open house so he could nap. Jared was staying home with their two youngest so Dan could just nap while they napped. It was perfect! It was so much more relaxing and made it so much easier to enjoy the spirit that is felt in the temple and it was better for Daniel too. Thank you so much Jared!

The temple is beautiful. It has a very vintage look to its interior. They did a beautiful job of creating something new but also paying tribute to the history of the building. It has a staircase that is beautiful and belongs in a castle. I felt like I should be walking around in a princess dress :) It is cozy since the halls are the size they always were so they are a bit more narrow than what we're used to. It was beautifully done though and you can feel the spirit as well as the history.

Meeting Great Grandma

One of the benefits to visiting Utah meant that Daniel could meet his great grandma Williams. Grandma was super excited to meet him and introduce him to everybody! She loved showing him off and I'm pretty sure he brightened everyone's day :) We went and saw he Thursday and she told me that on Saturday people were still talking to her about how sweet and cute and funny he was. That just makes me happy!

Daniel loves reading books so of course he had to read books with great grandma while we were there. He also played with her basketball and got to bring it home with him.

cake decorating

A few months ago I mentioned to Mike that I wanted to learn how to decorate cakes and cupcakes. I like baking but I want to be able to at least decorate my kids cakes myself. So for Christmas Mike bought me tickets to a beginners cake decorating class. We had two tickets so we made a date night out of it. I love Christmas presents when you can't break it or outgrow it or lose it. Its a skill that can benefit you for as long as you practice it and use it.

We had a lot of fun at the class. It was just us and one other girl so our teacher was able to really focus on us. We spent the first hour practicing and learned lots of tips to make decorating easier and less messy. After we practiced on a piece of cardboard and wax paper, we each got 9 cupcakes to do different designs on. The practice board was something I had never thought of. You just cover card board with wax paper and practice your design and then scrape it right back into your bowl...no wasted frosting! It was harder than I expected but I think for it being my first time I did a pretty good job. We did a little piping and worked with fondant a bit too.

 A few of our favorites. Mikes are the green and yellow cupcakes and the pink fondant roses. Mine are the pink and green.

 I love the elephant the most. It was so much fun to do. I also really loved the bouquet of roses.

I hope that I can take a few more classes so I can keep learning more! The cupcakes were delicious too! Thank you for a great Christmas present!

A Year in Review: 2015!

I saw this done on a friends blog and I love the idea so I decided to do it! It was so much fun to go back and remember the year! 2015 was a big year for our family and doing this makes me so excited for 2016!

January

• Daniel had his first trip to the park! He loved the swings! It was so much fun to see him laughing away. He didn't really like the slide though. We had been in Charleston for Christmas and New Years and it was really nice to be back home together. Just me and my little boy again, staying busy while daddy is away at school.
• Mike started his final year of chiropractic school!!!
• We went back down to Charleston at the end of January for Mike to run in the Charleston Marathon. He ran the half marathon in 1 hr 41 minutes.

February

• Spartanburg got snow in February! We had a couple of snow days with daddy because school was closed. So we got to go outside and play in the snow and have fun with our friends Bri and Craig.  
• Mike ran another half marathon this month. It was super cold. It was below freezing for most of the race and it was way too cold for Daniel and I to be outside watching so we watched daddy finish the race from inside of a CVS. 
• We bought a new car! Our accent was just too small and we got a great deal at Hyundai to upgrade to the next size up. So we traded our grey accent and got a pretty blue elantra. 

March

•  We celebrated our 5 year anniversary!!! We were planning a big trip together at the beginning of April so we just had a small celebration together. We had baked ziti for dinner and the three of us went to Cold Stone for ice cream :)
• Daniel started pulling himself up on everything this month. He was getting really brave trying to walk around the apartment. 

April

•  Mike and I both ran races this month. Mike ran a half marathon and I ran a 5K. This race was in the pouring rain which gave me motivation to finish. This was my second 5K and I did it in 32 minutes 37 seconds!! Mike finished his race in 1 hr 34 minutes- his fastest half marathon he's ever done! We were both very happy and proud of each other! After the race we got cinnamon rolls as a reward haha
• Daniel had his first Easter! It was so much fun to see him find his basket and his books. He loved the Easter eggs. We didn't put anything in the eggs this year because he was still under one year old but he didn't seem to mind. We filled his ball pit with eggs and he threw them all over the apartment. 
• Mike and I left Daniel for 5 days and went on our 5 year anniversary trip to Jacksonville Florida and Orlando. It was an amazing trip! We had sunny weather the whole time and had fun going to the zoo, Downtown Disney, St. Augustine, the beach and the temple. It was super relaxing and so nice to spend time just the two of us. It was a great trip and one I definitely want to repeat but with more time to spend at Disney.

May

• I turned 25!!
• My baby Daniel turned 1!!! 
• Daniel got his first hair cut. It took a year but his hair finally got too long and so we took him to see a friend of ours for his hair cut. He sat so still and looked so grown up sitting in the chair all my himself. It was so sad to see my baby getting a hair cut. He didn't look like such a baby anymore. 
• I had my first mothers day with Daniel. I was pregnant the year before but this year Daniel and I went to a special Mother's Day breakfast at Chick fil a on Saturday. Its a tradition that I would love to continue with all of our children. We had breakfast and also decorated flower pots together. 
• I ran another 5K. This time I ran in the woods. It was much more of a cross country 5K and I really didn't like it. I didn't have a bad time and it was nice to run in the sunshine for once but I definitely would have preferred roads. 
• We went down to Charleston for Daniels birthday because my little brother Josh graduated from high school on Dan's birthday. It was fun to have a dual celebration for both of them.

June

• We had Daniel's birthday party at the beginning of June. My parents came up to Spartanburg for it and we also got to celebrate with a lot of our friends who all love Daniel so much!
• We got our family pictures back finally that we had taken and we love them!!! Daniel was so good during the photo shoot and we were able to get a lot of really nice pictures. 
• We stopped giving Daniel a bottle this month! We had been transitioning him slowly to no more formula but around the second week of June we ran out of formula and Dan did so well without it. He didn't cry for his bottle at all. We are so blessed to have a boy who is such a great eater!
• Mike went on a trip to Las Vegas at the end of June to interview for a possible job after he graduated. So it was just me and Dan for a few days. It was hard to be without Mike (it was my first time alone) but we stayed busy.
• Mike and I went on a trip to Charlotte to see Taylor Swift! This was a late Christmas present for me and it was totally worth the wait!! It was my first concert and I loved every second of it! We had so much fun singing and dancing to every song. I'm sure people thought we were teenagers haha

July

•  My parents came up to see us for the 4th of July again this year. We opted for a quiet night in so we didn't have to take Daniel out super late. We did sparklers at the apartment and had yummy food. 
• Mike and I started taking golf lessons from Randall, one of Mike's classmates. We took Dan and he just sat and played with the golf balls while we tried to play. I'm not the best at it but it is pretty fun to do. 
• We've been spending lots of time at the pool because its been hot and Daniel loves the water. 

September

•  In August Mike and I started doing fertility shots to have another baby. On September 11 we did the IUI to hopefully get pregnant with our second baby.
• At the end of September went on our East Coast trip with my brother and Mike's brother and sister. It was awesome and we had so much fun visiting so many cities on the coast. Maine was the most beautiful place we went and New York was the most fun. 

October

• We found out on October 1st that we were pregnant!! We took a blood pregnancy test and after a couple weeks we shared the news with our friends and family. 
• We got to celebrate Halloween with my mom and we got to go trick or treating twice. We had a truck or treat at church and also a small one at Sherman. We dressed up as Jurassic World characters so Mike was Owen, I was Claire and Daniel was our little dinosaur!
• Mike and I ran races again on Halloween. For Mike it was another half marathon and I ran my first 10K. It was a rough race for both of us but we finished strong and I'm proud of us for setting the goal and finishing it!

November

• We went down to Charleston to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. It was our last trip to Charleston before we moved to Las Vegas. It was fun but sad at the same time to know we won't be there next year. It's always so much fun to see Daniel with his grandparents and his uncle Josh.
• Mike was very busy during October and November trying to finish up school and I was also very busy packing up our apartment for the move. November especially was a crazy month of packing and trying to figure out what we could live without for a while and what we couldn't. It didn't help that I was sick for the first trimester of this pregnancy so some days I just got nothing done. 

December

• Mike graduated from chiropractic school!!! His graduation happened on the same weekend that we were moving from South Carolina to Las Vegas. It was so much fun to celebrate with friends the weekend before and then to celebrate with our families on the day he graduated. I am so proud of him!
• We moved to Las Vegas! We spent 4 days driving cross country and let me tell you, it was not fun. Daniel was a trooper though and did so much better than I expected and honestly probably better than I did. We're settling into life here but we've adjusted to the time change at least pretty quickly. 
• Daniel officially started going to nursery! He could've gone at the end of November but with traveling for Thanksgiving and moving we waited until our first Sunday in Vegas. He has loved going every week and we're loving it too.
• Mike ran his last half marathon of the year. The Paris Mountain race and it was horrible. The course was absolutely awful. The only good part was that when he came home we had his graduation party so all he had to do was sit and eat cake :)
• We announced baby #2 to the world!
• We celebrated Christmas and New Years! We had a wonderful holiday season and are very blessed. 

 *I know August is missing but other than doing lots of fertility stuff, August was pretty boring and I didn't take many pictures.

2015 was a wonderful year of fun and change for our little family. I'm excited and nervous for the changes that 2016 will bring including becoming a family of 4!