Happy Birthday Anna!

It was Anna's first birthday on Sunday, April 19th. This year has gone by so fast! I can't believe how quickly she is growing up. On her birthday we did our normal Sunday routine: church and dinner at my parents' house. Then at 7:00 we went to her Grandma & Grandpa Gibson's house and had a little party. We took lots of pictures of Anna, but I realized after it was all over that we didn't even take pictures of all the family that was there. We didn't even get a picture of Anna with her Daddy on her birthday! :( I'm sad about that, but I guess you live and learn! It was a fun little party anyway. Both sets of grandparents were there along with my brother Greg, sister Lara Jane, Barrett's brother Jason was there and his sister Jacque, her husband Ricky, and their kids Cameron and Katelyn.

We let Anna open her presents first (after she walked all the way across the living room between Barrett and I!) She got spoiled! She got two Little People play sets: a boat and a farmer with a tractor. She also got a book, a toy phone, and a ball. She loves them all!

We sang happy birthday to Anna and lit one candle. We thought she was going to attack the cake when we let her at it because she was struggling in my arms to get to it while we sang to her. It turned out that she really only wanted the candle though! When we let her get the cake she just took little pieces out of one corner and was really dainty about the whole thing. Grandpa Gibson tried to show her how it was done, but she liked doing it her way (big suprise). Here's a slideshow of her party:

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I just wanted to include some things about Anna in this post. She is a really happy girl most of the time and loves to make us laugh. She recently discovered how to fake laugh and knows it's really funny! Anna says quite a few words including daddy, momma, hot, hi, hat, and out. She is working on learning a few more, but mostly she just says daddy to everything. It is really funny. It usually goes something like this:

Me: Anna, do you want a cracker? Can you say cracker?
Anna: Daddy!
Me: Not daddy, cracker.
Anna: Daddy!
Me: close enough. Can you say thank you?
Anna: Daddy!

Me: Anna, that is a doggy. Can you say doggy?
Anna: Daddy!
Me: that's close! Do you want to go visit Grammy?
Anna: Daddy!
Me: I give up!

She cracks me up! Anna is a really good eater and loves almost everything I give her. Some of her favorites are pasta, cheese, hot dogs (really great, I know.), crackers, and bananas. She loves to feed herself and I have to be careful because she stuffs everything into her mouth at once! Anna had her 12 month doctor's appointment on Monday. She still weighs 21 lbs (she hasn't gained weight for almost 6 months) and is about 30 inches tall, so she is getting tall and skinny! She still has some baby chub but she has thinned out a lot. The doctor said she is healthy and doing great. She had to get 6 shots, though, so that was sad.

Anna is a little busybody and gets into anything she can. She still won't walk on her own because she is so scared of falling down, but she is a really fast crawler! She is really good to play on her own while I am busy and loves looking at her books. She also likes to dance and is learning the actions to songs. It amazes me how quickly children pick things up! Anna loves to be outside and loves to climb things. She enjoys riding in the stroller when we go walking or running. She has the cutest little voice and is very expressive. She is always noticing things and making little voice inflections to express herself.

Well I've made this post really long already, so I'll stop here. I'm just adding one more thing: here are pictures of Anna a year ago and one now. She has grown so much! We love our sweet little girl!

Easter and stuff

Yes I have been slacking off in my posting. Anna has been sick quite a bit in the past few weeks and she requires a lot more attention when she doesn't feel well. Barrett graduated last week (congrats honey!) so that has been a big relief for all of us. It is nice to see him a little more often and to have him be able to spend time with us at home instead of doing homework. We're still waiting for the weather to warm up so we can do some fun outdoor stuff. We are looking for a baby bike seat so we can go on bike rides with Anna so if you hear of anyone selling one let us know!

Conference weekend was fun to spend time with family. We watched most of the sessions at Barrett's parents' house and had fun spending time with his family. My sister-in-law Amy was up from Utah so we had all 5 grandkids on that side together. They were really fun to watch together. back: Cameron (7), Hailey (3)
front: Katelyn (8 mos), Carson (2 mos), Anna (11 mos)

It's amazing how much watching conference changes when you have little ones. I'm definitely going to have to read the talks over again since I missed bits and pieces of most of them. I still really enjoyed conference weekend and seeing our wonderful leaders.

We had a fun Easter weekend last week. My mom did an egg hunt for us on Saturday and then we had a nice dinner at my parents' on Sunday. Anna was so cute looking for eggs on Saturday and in her Easter dress on Sunday.

Showing off the eggs in her Easter basket



Modeling her cute Easter dress. It's size 24 months!

Anna loves to walk around holding someone's hand. She will take a few steps on her own if we make her walk in between us, but is still too scared to try walking by herself. I'm not in any big hurry to have her walk though. She gets into enough stuff already! She is such a happy baby and makes me smile. She has figured out that everyone thinks it's really funny when she does a fake laugh (it is really funny!) so she does that quite often. She will be a year old on Sunday the 19th so I will do another post after that for her birthday.