Playing Catch Up

      Boy, have I ever fallen off the wagon keeping this blog updated.  I can't even say that I've been busier than usual.  I just haven't thought to get around to it.  But I'm back now, so you can all rest easy.  Since it's been awhile I'm going to overload this post.  Hopefully, not too much since I'm afraid we lead pretty quiet lives, but you'll finally in the know about all our goings on.

      In March, I finally got my long locks cut for Locks of Love.  It's such a great feeling doing something for people who are unable to grow their own hair.  I was glad to do it.  I really liked how my hair ended up after the cut, but I must confess I really missed the longer length.  Good thing it can grow out.  :)  It's even longer than this now. It's actually kinda surprising how fast it's grown.  Someday, I'd like to get it long enough to do this again. 

      We celebrated our 6 year anniversary with a night out by ourselves with a little shopping, dinner, dessert, and some driving down State Street.  We loved being together on our own and recharge.

      Easter was a few weeks after and it was so fun to watch Anna enjoy the day. 

Here's a video of her finding her basket.  

       Since we still live in a condo and don't have a yard or grassy area of our own, hunting Easter Eggs was going to be a little bit of an issue.  Thanks to Pinterest, I found some great ideas for what to put into an Easter Egg for a toddler and how to let her find them inside our home.

 

  

      The week after Ty left to go to his brother's wedding.  His parents were awesome enough to pay for all the boys to go.  Unfortunately, the expense for Anna and I was way out of our budget so she and I got to play at home by ourselves, but enjoyed getting texts and pictures sent from our family who were there and it helped to feel part of the day.

 All the Robbins at the wedding.  Doesn't Ty look handsome?!

(Discloure:  I totally stole this from my sister-in-law's FB page.)

      I'm really glad that all the boys were able to be there for the last brother to be married, but picking up Ty from the airport was pretty awesome.  We were pretty lonesome without him.  Well, at least I was.  :)

Visiting the gardens at Temple Square was a great Spring highlight.  So beautiful.  And FREE!

Mother's Day

Memorial Day fun at the Splash Pad

      Anna and I went to the Aquarium for my cousin's birthday.  It had just opened and some of the exhibits weren't filled yet because they were waiting for all the animals to get there, but it was a lot of fun to see Anna see so many of the awesome things they did have.

      The beginning of June was the marking of a personal milestone for me.  Since Anna was born, I had been holding onto that extra weight and struggled with it a lot.  Last year, I started working towards losing the weight again.  Unfortunately, in September I had an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured and I needed to have emergency surgery.  Working out had to be put on hold for awhile and when I was finally cleared for it, it was hard.  I had to take baby steps.  At the beginning of the year, I started my weight loss journey over again. I worked hard and achieved my goal by June.

      The Museum of Natural Curiosity opened up at Thanksgiving Point and Anna and I went with Nathan and Celia's gang and Cheryl, who was visiting.  This is a really incredible place for kids.  So much to do and a great way to get some of that energy out.

Father's Day

This picture actually isn't from Father's Day, but it's seriously so cute.

      We took a drive up Provo Canyon and had a picnic.  It was absolutely beautiful and the perfect day.  There's a river that went through the park we went to eat and it was soooooo cold.  We drove up a little further to go for a little hike to see the waterfalls.  Anna was in her own slice of heaven.  Outside, dirt, rocks.  I think she thought it was paradise.  Haha.  It's definitely going to be something we do every year.

  

 

Anna was such a big fan of the picnic idea, that we started eating our lunches on our balcony.  It was so great to be outside.  I can't wait to have a yard to do this on.

Big Milestone.  She finally has enough hair to put into a ponytail! Instantly she started looking older to me. I don't care for it one bit, but she is still pretty dang cute.

Fourth of July

      We celebrated Ty's birthday two days later.  I don't claim to be a master baker and/or decorator of treats, but I do love to make them.  Especially, for the the people I love.  It's always fun for me to make something new for our birthdays each year.  This year, Ty was inspired by the dessert we did for Memorial Day.  Root Beer Floats.  Only we had a variety of sodas and Ty did a Strawberry Fanta Float.  He was such a fan that he asked if it could be done in cake form.  Well, it was an interesting request to say the least, but I think it turned out well.  We had Ty's cousin, Darcy, and her family over and I think everyone enjoyed the cake and floats.  

      Next up was our road trip to Washington!  We stayed at my parents house for a couple of days and then went to Idaho to spend some time with my brother's family and meet my newest niece, Ava.  We had such a great time and Anna loved getting to play with her cousins she doesn't see often.  We even got to celebrate my nephew, Jaden's, birthday just before we headed out.  Only downside was the deerfly bite I got just as we were leaving.  It swelled up so fast and kept me from being as active as I wanted.  We left Idaho to spend a week in Othello for Ty's family's reunion.  It was such a great time and it was awesome to see everyone.  Never feels like enough time.  Anna developed a cold the day we left and the drive home was not so enjoyable.  We were definitely happy to be home at that point.

After awhile, things got back to the normal crazy.

We went to a fair.  Anna thought the animals were too loud.  There was a Lego display that was awesomely impressive.  They even recreated scenes from The Lego Movie.

 

 Anna helped me make snickerdoodles.  She LOVES to help us bake and cook.

      At the end of September, Ty's Grandma Robbins passed away and we came back to Othello for the funeral.  We miss her very much and are sad she isn't with us, but we know how much she wanted to be back with Grandpa Robbins and are glad they are finally together again.  It was great to see and spend time with so much family again.  Even though these were sad times, we definitely appreciated a reason to gather together.  

      The day before we came home, my sister-in-law had her sweet little baby boy.  The labor and unbelievable trauma that occurred afterward were something you see on one of those crazy "it-couldn't-possibly-happen-in-real-life" kinda shows.  She is fine now and the baby, Emerson, is perfect and by far their best baby.  I went over as soon as I could to help Celia's mom out before Celia came home from the hospital.  Her mom got to take a nap and I got to snuggle this sweet little man.  Best Deal EVER!

      We went to pick pumpkins.  There was dirt so Anna was happy.  Haha.  She loved looking through all the pumpkins and I think she would have taken a dozen different ones home if we hadn't stopped her and told her only one.  The patch was really cool.  They lined all the pumpkins up in rows and gave them all farming street names.  They also had some Cars and Planes characters.  I was more excited about it than Anna was. 

Pause for this sweet random moment.

And this crazy one. :) No idea why this happened, but it's too funny and cute.

Pumpkin Decorating & Carving

Anna's Halloween Costumes

Originally, she was just going to be a pumpkin, but somehow the witch thing just kinda fell into place.

      This was her first year trick-or-treating and it was fun to take her and have her figure out this whole get-free-candy business.  The first time was at Ty's office.  They set up a day for the employee's families and kids to come around to everyone's desks and even decorated part of the office as a haunted house.  Halloween night we went to the town Trunk-or-Treat and then to one of the nicer neighborhoods.  It was fun.  She was a little timid to actually interact with people, but she was sweet and always said thank you.  

      Ty's parents came to town for a weekend and took us to dinner one of my favorite places, Leatherby's.  If you ever get a chance to go, do it! So good.  The food and the ice cream are amazing.  While they were in town, Nathan and Celia had Emerson blessed.  I'm so glad we were able to make it

      My parents came to visit for a week and Anna even let her Papa hold her hand.  This was big stuff since she's really leery of touching anyone male, other than Daddy.  It was good to have them here and we love getting visits from family.

      Ty's cousin, Darcy, invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner the day before Thanksgiving and it was awesome!  She's an amazing chef and everything was fantastic.  Lucky for us, there were enough leftovers for us to have on Thanksgiving with Nathan and Celia's family.

      I started decorating for Christmas as soon as December started.

Anna and I made Sugar cookies.  And by that I mean I bought some premade, already rolled out dough and we just cut out the shapes with cookie cutters.  I love that stuff!  We definitely enjoyed eating it.

Anna has been singing Christmas Carols all year long, but now that it's the season she's our own personal Christmas radio.  She knows so many songs and surprisingly knows most of the words.

      We went to go to the Live Nativity that our church was doing, but the line was about 3 hours of waiting and she was getting ancy.  I had heard about a park in Draper that had a tree completely covered in lights that was nicknamed "Tree of Life" because it reminded people so much of the Tree of Life in the Lehi's Dream in the Book of Mormon.  We were so glad we went! The whole park had trees covered in lights and it was great to let Anna run around.

St. Nikolaus Tag and Emily the Elf

      We went to a Christkindlmarkt that was being held in Salt Lake in Heritage Park.  I was so cool and really reminded me of being in Germany with my family.  The lines for the food were way too long and I think next year we'll go during the day or just not on a Saturday.  

We haven't had any snow and are still playing in the leaves.  It's nice that we aren't freezing, but I'm aching for a blanket of white.

Anna helped me make some more Christmas cookies.  She just loves to be in the kitchen.

Like I said, we haven't had snow.  So when it comes to building snowmen, we've had to improvise.

      And with that ladies and gents, we are officially caught up.  Christmas is fast approaching and we're all excited to celebrate.  We'll be here for Christmas and the day after we're heading to WA and Anna will experience her first plane ride.  I'm kind nervous, but it'll be great to be with family.  My youngest brother is leaving on his mission in just a few weeks so this will be the last time we'll all be together for at least two years.  I won't be posting until after Christmas so I hope everyone has a great holiday!

Anna turns 2 YEARS!!

      Um, say what?  How did she grow up so fast?! She is definitely not a baby anymore.  It's almost silly to call her a toddler too.  She's just too darn smart.  Her personality comes out with everything she does and she is definitely her own person.  We just love her and the fun she brings to everything.  How could you not love this girl? She's hilarious, adorable, sweet, and fun.  Ty and I feel so lucky that she's our daughter.  While we've had to introduce time-outs, she's pretty well behaved most of the time.  It's very interesting to see how her little mind works and processes things. We've always said she's a smartie pants and she's constantly proving it.

      I'm incredibly late in posting this and since you won't see another post like this until she turns 3, I'll just update you with what she is up to now.

- She is so smart and learns things really well.  We're always so surprised at how quickly she picks up on things and makes connections.  I wish we could take credit for her intelligence, but let's be honest.  She is just smart and the shows we choose for her to watch are pretty good.  Haha.

- Her imagination has grown exponentially, even in just the last few months.  She pretends to talk for her stuffed elephant and doll, with adorable voices to match.  It gets even better when she has conversations with the elephant and answers back.  We love it!

- Along with that, she definitely gets my flair for the dramatics.  She will repeat and even act out scenes from her favorite episodes or movies.  She can pretty much recite the entire episode of Mickey's Adventures in Wonderland (her favorite).

- She also loves to sing and does so well.  She's even started to make up her own songs.  Adorable.

- Her hair has grown so much! It's amazing and beautiful.  I love the little curls she's developed in the back.  I hope they stay for always.

- She is so active and LOVES to be outside.  You'd think that it would wear her out.  However, it seems to have the opposite affect on her.  Her absolute favorite thing is rocks and dirt.  I'm serious when I say that I think she might have a future as a geologist.  Haha.  For grass is cool and all, but what it doesn't hold a candle to dirt and rocks.

 - Her favorite thing to eat is Mac n Cheese.  She does eat lots of fruit and we've been really enforcing that she eats what we do at dinners.  She doesn't really love everything, but she's done really well at trying everything. 

- We tried potty training....it didn't work out.  Haha.  I think she's as well prepared for it, but she just doesn't want to yet.  That's cool with us.  (Especially me.)  It was and extreme amount of work to start potty training her and by the end of the week, I really couldn't take any more of it and not see any progress.  We'll have a go at it again when she can tell me that she wants to go.  She's too dang smart that I know when she's ready and really wants to start using the potty, she'll just tell us. 

- She knows shapes, colors, counts to 21 on her own (sometimes higher!), and letters.  It's getting harder to keep up with knowing what to teach her next.  She watches a show called Super Why! and they do a good job sounding out letters and words.  She's been doing this all the time and will start figuring out what letter different words start with. 

- She thinks she's the funniest person you'll ever meet.  She loves to laugh and loves to make people laugh.  Her laughs are pretty contagious. 

- Because she is so smart, she gets incredibly frustrated when she can't figure something out or it doesn't work the way she is expecting it too.  We usually have to end up taking toys away from her because she gets too upset. 

- She went from being incredibly introverted, to absolutely loving being around people and doesn't quite understand Stranger Danger.  Haha.  She won't exactly run up to and give hugs and kisses just anybody, but she will play and laugh will almost everyone. 

      We just love this baby girl!  She is such a joy in our lives.  Parenting a toddler isn't always fun, but when that toddler is Anna, it can definitely more fun.  It's hard to not be able to see family because we live so far away and not get to show off Anna.  We can't wait to be around family and let them see all the amazing, funny, and awesome things that she does.  She's so easy to love and we just are so happy that she's ours. 

 

Ice Castles in Midway, UT

      Ever since I found out about the Ice Castles a month ago, I've really wanted to go and check it out.  Making it a reward for losing weight was definitely good motivation to work hard.  It's about an hour drive away in Midway.  Once we started getting into city limits you could tell that was German/Swiss inspired.  Even the church buildings were followed that design.

      How cool is that?! I looked up Midway later and it is in fact all about the Swiss culture. I will definitely come back for some of the events they have going on in the year. It reminded me of Leavenworth and made me feel like I had a little piece of home. 

      There were two lines for the Ice Castles. One for people who needed to purchase tickets and one for those who bought online. Really glad we bought online before because that line was much shorter. The downside was that we went on a Saturday and so it was still really busy, so we were still waiting to get in for about 20 minutes or so. It was FREEZING! 

      When we finally got in, it was amazing to see what these people had created. You got an idea for it from the outside, but being inside really made the experience whole. Anna was just excited to be outside and running around and she kinda made her claim on an in between area where the snow was softer and she kept falling and getting snow all over her sweatpants. It was cute and I would have let her just go for it, but there were too many people and she was getting in people's way. Once it started getting darker, you could start to see the lights under the ice. So cool! Definitely the best part. 

      There was a lot more to see, but we were cold, hungry, and it was too crowded to enjoy any more than we did. We came home and ate quick meals. We decided that next year we will come on a weekday and then go out for dinner afterward. In all, though, we marked this visit as a success. We got out of the house and did something we've never done before. In the winter, that's definitely a success.