Our 5th Anniversary

On January 14th Justin and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. I doesn't seem like our wedding was already five years ago, but somehow time just keeps going. I have been so fortunate to be married to a man like Justin. He makes me laugh on a daily bases, he ALWAYS puts me before himself, he is so hard working, always trying to better himself and our family, and he is the best father I could have chosen for Laney. For all these reasons and more, I am one blessed woman! To celebrate our anniversary we had my mom babysit for the evening while we headed down to Huntington beach to watch the sunset. This is where Justin proposed to me and we thought it would be fun to go back to where it all started. We brought our bikes and rode them down PCH and pushed them down into the sand where we ended up parking them next to an empty life guard stand. Justin packed us salami, a cheese ball, crackers, garlic stuffed green olives and martinelli's for an appetizer to eat while we watched the sun go down. It was a stunning sunset and we were both so bummed to have forgotten our camera. The waves were a good 8-10 feet that evening, so it was a treat to watch the sets rolling in. We both agreed at how peaceful this was and decided that this may be how we spend our future anniversaries. We were both just so happy there. After the sun went down we decided to ride around a while longer. Our oringional plan was to go to our favorite hamburger place T.K. Burger. It's nothing fancy, but they have the most amazing burgers. However we decided to go to Duke's at the last minute. After we were seated and reading our menus Justin says to me " gosh Tk buger just sounds so good." I told him I couldn't agree more! So we ended up just ordering an appetizer, apologized to the waiter a few times for wasting his time and left him with a good tip as we were off to get our burgers! We had a wonderful night and I am so happy to have Justin as my Husband!

A suprise trip to Utah

Justin surprised me this year for Christmas with a trip to Utah to visit my sister and brother. It was such a relaxing trip. So nice to wake up each day with nothing to do but spend time with family. We spend the days eating, shopping, visiting a dinosaur museum, sledding, and Justin and Chad went snow boarding. It's so fun to be somewhere so different from home. It was freezing everyday. I didn't last very long outside on the day we went sledding. I don't have snow gear and I felt as if by fingers face and toes were slowly turning to ice! Unfortunately we were terrible that week about taking pictures. I only have these few from the sledding day.

Here is Laney out in the snow for one of the first times.

She said the snow was sparkly!

Jack, Sydney, Laney and Allie pose for a silly cousin picture.

While we were walking to the hill Laney asked me "Momma, do polar bears live here?" I thought it was so cute!

Rosy cheecks

She had so much fun. There was a steeper side to the hill that Justin and Laney tried first. After Laney went down the easier side she told Justin she wanted to go down the bigger one again! She is so like Justin.

Snow Angels!

Thanks Deann and Chad for welcoming us into your home! We had a wonderful time and can't wait for our next trip up!

Christmas is FINALLY here! (on my blog)

We had a wonderful Christmas eve that we spent with great friends of ours. Adrian and Ami invited us over to have dinner at their home. They prepared a really good dinner of honey baked ham, stuffing , green beans, rolls, cheesy potatoes, and a green salad. We were stuffed. We stayed and visited until we thought Laney needed to go home and get into bed so that Santa could come. But before she could go to bed we had a few traditions to do first. Laney got to open one gift which was her Christmas jammies and an ornament. I bought one that I thought looked like her, and as I was explaining this to her she said I know I'll name her meme! I told her I thought that was the perfect name. Here she is posing with her jammies on and her meme ornament.

One more thing, we had to have daddy read Twas the night before Christmas!

Christmas morning started with Laney coming into our room to ask us if Santa had come. Then when we told her lets go see if he came she started to cry because she thought he would still be at our house waiting for her to some down. It was really cute. After she calmed down we went downstairs and she was so excited to see that she got her princess scooter.

Here she is holding up her favorite gift from Justin and I. A Bell and Cinderella bath doll. These have made bath time so much fun for her!

Opening a princess sweatshirt from Mommy and Daddy.

This was totally the Disney princess Christmas. It is Laney's favorite thing right now so she was showered with princess stuff. This next gift was just from her Daddy. He went out Christmas eve to do his traditional last minute shopping and ended up buying one more gift for Laney.

Can you just see the excitement?! A new snow white dress to add to her dress up collection. She had to put it on right away. Aunt Annnie and Laney reading a book from Unlce Br and Auntie Rachel. Moto so happy with his bone from Santa. A gift from grandma and grandpa. A bop bop! Here she is learning to ride with Daddy. Now she was ready to go out all on her own! look at how much fun she is having. Like father like daughter. Yikes! Laney wanted to go out and ride her scooter at nana and papas house when we got there. I must have been burned out on picture taking by the time we got to my parents because I only got a few pictures. I didn't even get a family picture of us on Christmas day. Oh well, next year. Here is Laney and her cousin Grace. They had a lot of fun playing together. Merek, Laney, Grace and Mackenzie hanging out together Here is papa snapping photos with these on because of all the noise! we also paid a visit to Laney's grams and gramps a couple of days prior to Christmas to spend the holiday with them too. Here Laney had just opened Snow white. She had been wanting this so bad! She also was given the new Tinkerbell movie and a bugs life movie. Laney and Gramps One more gift, it's a tinker bell blanket!