"A person is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be."

-Abraham Lincoln















Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Second Dam Tin Foil Dinners

June 3rd, 2011
This year has been extremely rainy and abnormally cold - so in anticipation of warmer days I decided to plan a little getaway evening to 2nd Dam.  We went with 3 other couples who are good friends of ours and had a great time cooking up tin foil dinners and making ourselves some s'mores.  

It was Maggie's first time in the mountains and I thought it was fun to show her what fire is and all that stuff.
She was so good up there and sat in her little bumbo and just enjoyed the fresh air.
Emily and little Gwen
Spencer and Maggie
We really had so much fun.  I was just so grateful for a beautiful, rainless evening and for good friends who were so willing to go up there with us and have a good time.

Whitney took some other fun pictures of the night so hopefully I'll be able to get those from her and post them later.

A Baby's Laughter

As Maggie has gotten older and learned more and more how to interact with us, it's been especially fun to hear her laugh and show her joy in this way.  Seriously, when she laughs, the whole room joins in.  Here are just a few of the moments of her laughter that we have caught on tape.  I've put it in chronological order so that we can kind of see the evolution of her laughter.  I love watching these videos.  You can't help but laugh too. 

May 6th
May 8th
May 13th
June 7th

June 11th
June 12th

4 Month Antics

In doing some catch-up on the blog, I have just put together many of the pictures that we took of Maggie just before and after she turned 4 months old.  Hopefully you all enjoy them as much as we do.

May 22nd
I don't know if you can tell - but Maggie's got a killer mo hawk going on here
May 25th
It's my happy baby!
May 30th
I caught Spencer and Maggie chillin out in front of the TV.  Can you believe these two?
I couldn't stop laughing at the sight of the two of them just staring forward like that.  It was really cute!
June 4th
I needed to put Maggie down to do a couple things this day, and I thought it would be fun to lean her on Spencer's head while he was laying down.  This is how she started.
It didn't take her love to make use of her literal head rest though
MMM... Yummy ear!  Spencer was about to cry he was laughing so hard.  It was just one of those funny moments.
Later that day was went for a family walk.  We had lunch at the park, went shopping at Smith's and then stopped at the Sno Shak for some summer slushies!  I love warm weather!!!
I think Maggie agrees that it was a good day!
We certainly tired her out.  
I love it when she sleeps like this.  She just looks so cute all sprawled out.

And Finally - the biggest accomplishment of being 4 months old... she gets to start eating rice cereal!
Her first time eating the stuff was June 5th.  She honestly had no idea what to do with the stuff
It went into her mouth and came right back out here.  It was hilarious.
Here are some fun videos showing her trying her luck at it just a couple days later on June 7th.

Yay for the mess of eating rice cereal!  She had so much cereal on her face and in her neck crevis, I couldn't even wipe it all off.  We HAD to give her a bath to get her clean.  It was just that bad :) 



Hogle Zoo

May 21, 2011
This particular weekend Spencer and I had made plans to go visit my family in Centerville because my mom had planned for us to get family pictures taken.  Well, last minute we had to cancel the pictures because my brother, Josh, got a job for the weekend in St. George.  Lovely... but because we already had it all planned, and because it was one of the last weekends we would have with both Aimee and Porter, we decided to go down anyway.

It ended up being a total blast!  We ended up going to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie on Friday, and after a great girls outing to the mall on Saturday, we met up with our husbands at Hogle Zoo!

Trying to fit both Smoot and Maggie in the backseat.  They looked so cute!
We had such a great time.  It was Maggie's first visit to the zoo, so I had a great time taking pictures of all the animals that Maggie had never before seen.  
Oaklee loved her ride on this horse.  She was so cute!
Monkeys
A vulture.  Apparently vultures are closely related to dinosaurs.  Weird.
I think the elephants were my favorite
I especially loved this mom and her baby.  I thought it was really cute.
More monkeys
One of the big cats... I can't remember if it is a cougar or tiger or what...
Maggie and the big cat :)
This was the tiger!

Little girls picture!  Sadie, Oaklee, Maggie and Sydnee
I love Maggie's expressions when she's put next to the windows with these huge animals on the other side.  
What do you think's more exciting to Maggie?  The giraffe or Daddy's hair?
It's a sloth!
Cute Oaklee and some sort of mini kangaroo things :)
Spencer and Maggie
Porcupines 
I think this was an alligator... it may have been a crocodile though...
The zoo's thing this summer is Zoorassic Park - so there is dinosaur stuff everywhere.  Oaklee kept walking around saying, "Oh no, It's Sharp Tooth!"  So we decided to get a picture with him.
The animal adventures didn't end when we left the zoo though - Look what we found on the window sill at my parents' home.
They're newly hatched baby birdies.  They had literally hatched while we were at the zoo.  I couldn't believe it!  They were adorable!

After a long day of play and in preparation for church the next morning, both Maggie and Smootie were in need of a bath.  They were so cute in my parents' bathtub.  We laughed at them almost the whole time.  Smootie kept wanting to roll over onto his stomach, but would then get mad because he couldn't put his face down without getting it in the water.  And Maggie realized the joys of splashing in the water.  She would throw her feet and hands down just to hear and feel the splashing water.  It was a lot of fun.  

Gotta love these cute babies!


Thursday, June 9, 2011

Temple Grounds

May 19, 2011 - A kid Spencer knew from the mission was getting married to a girl from Hong Kong.  Her family was in town and she had 3 siblings and a good friend from Australia who wouldn't be able to join them in the temple.  Spencer was asked to accompany them on the temple grounds while everyone else was inside, so that if they had any questions they had somewhere there who could help them out.

Maggie and I joined the party on the grounds and because it was a perfect day for picture taking, I seized the moment and got Maggie into the flower gardens.
Right here, I actually sat her in the dirt, inside the tulips.  It was so pretty!  I couldn't help it.

I think Maggie enjoyed the flowers as much as I did.

She can't quite sit up yet, so I tried relentlessly to hold her up without letting it show... it didn't exactly work too well.

There's a good smile!
The smile's gone here though... She was probably sick of me taking so many pictures of her.

So while I didn't exactly spend a lot of time getting to know the people that were there for the wedding (I didn't even know who the kid was to begin with), I had a great time taking all these pictures with the beautiful temple flowers!