Summer Time!

I love summers in Rexburg. This summer is crazy as they usually turn out to be. I am way behind on posting my pictures but hopefully I will get them on here soon. I figured it would be better to write about things without the pictures than do nothing at all! About a week ago we moved out of our little trailer house that has been our home for almost 3 years. We are living with Barrett's parents for about a month until we move to Arizona. Barrett's sister Jacque moved into our trailer so it was kinda funny helping her move into our old house. I'm actually not very sad to leave it though.
Since we have only had summer weather for a couple of weeks we haven't done a whole lot of summer activities yet. We did go canoeing with some friends about a week ago and had a lot of fun. Thanks Cody and Brittany! We have gone on lots of bike rides since I got a used baby bike seat for Anna. She loves to ride the "bipe"! I have been running quite a bit lately and really love it. I ran the 5k for the Teton dam marathon and just ran the 4th of July 5k. I have really enjoyed racing again after a 5 year break! I placed 3rd in the Teton dam 5k with a time of 24:04 and 3rd in my age group (7th overall) in the liberty 5k with a time of 22:10. I was pretty proud of myself because I only trained for a few weeks. I have forgotten how much I enjoy competing.
Anna is growing up so fast these days. She started walking around the first of June and hasn't stopped for a second. She loves to walk around the house carrying as many toys as she can fit in her chubby hands. She loves to climb things, especially stairs, so she really likes living at Grandma's house. Grandma also has a big back yard and a trampoline or "bouncy" as Anna calls it. She really likes to bounce. Anna talks so much that sometimes I forget she is only 14 months old. She can say over 40 words I think ( I keep losing count) and learns more all the time. It blows me away how fast she picks things up and how observant she is. She copies me all the time so I have to be really careful what I say and do!
We had a lot of birthdays in our families this past month or so. My sister Lara's was on the 17th of June, Barrett's sister in law Amy's was on the 20th, his sister Bethany's on the 29th, Barrett's on the 1st of July, and my brother Greg's on the 2nd. My niece Myah's birthday is on the 7th too. Lara Jane turned 12 this year and Greg turned 18! They make me feel so old! I've been graduated from high school 5 years now. I can't believe how much faster time goes when you are an adult. I remember being a kid thinking that it would be an eternity before I was grown up, but it went by really fast.
Anyway, we had a fun 4th of July just going to the parade and spending time with family. We are enjoying being close to family right now because we won't have anyone close when we move. It will be a big change for us, but I am excited to have a little adventure. I hope everyone's summer is going well!

Family Vacation

I have a lot of catching up to do, so here we go! May 11-18 we went on our first real family vacation. My sister Miriam and her family were living in Cleveland, Ohio so we went to visit them and see some Church history sites. She and her husband have two little girls: Hannah is 2 1/2 and Myah was 10 months. We flew into Detroit where they picked us up and then we drove into Ontario, Canada. We spent the night in London and drove to Niagara Falls the next day. It was a beautiful day! After enjoying several hours at the falls we drove to Rochester, New York and stayed the night there.
We spent the next day in Palmyra visiting all the Church sites there. We had beautiful weather and it was so wonderful to see the places where many important things happened. We were able to visit the Whitmer farm where the Church was officially organized, the hill Cumorah where the gold plates were buried, the Smith farm and the Sacred grove where Heavenly Father and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith, and EB Granden's print shop where the Book of Mormon was printed for the first time. It was a lot to see in one day, but the girls were troopers and we had a great time. I especially loved the sacred grove. It looks like any other forest in the area, but has an amazing spirit because of the special event that happened there.
We stayed the night in Rochester again and then drove to Cleveland the next day. We did a lot of driving those first few days, so we all relazed that night and enjoyed being together. We went to Kirtland the next day and once again had a wonderful experience. We were able to visit the Whitney store with the school of the prophets room upstairs, the Whitney home, saw mill, and ashery, and of course the temple. Also at the visitors center they had a bronze sculpture exhibit that a woman named Amanda Johnson did of the Savior. The sculptures were beautiful and she has never taken a sculpting class or anything. We also visited the Morley farm, which was one of 3 places we saw that day where the Savior had appeared. The other two were the temple and the school of the prophets.
The next day was saturday and we went to the John Johnson farm in Hiram, Ohio. Joseph and Emma lived there for a time. That was where they lived when they lost their twins, adopted the Murdock twins, and lost one twin when the door was left open when Joseph was tarred and feathered. It was also the place where many of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants were given, including section 76. There was a special spirit in the revelation room upstairs in the farm house where those revelations were received.
On sunday Miriam's husband, Damon, graduated from dental school at Kase Western University. Barrett and I took all 3 girls to church while Miriam and Damon went to graduation. That was an adventure! We enjoyed being together that evening and the next morning before Damon drove us back to Detroit and we flew home.
It was a long trip with lots of mile covered, but we were so happy to be able to visit family before they moved and to see so many Church history sites. Thank you Miriam and Damon for taking us everywhere! We had a wonderful trip! Here is a slide show of the trip. More updates to come!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Doing the Mogli walk!

I hope you all enjoy this video because it makes me laugh my face off!



When Anna doesn't have pants on it hurts her knees to crawl on the kitchen floor so she discovered a way to crawl with bare legs without hurting her knees. We call it the Mogli crawl because she looks like Mogli on Jungle Book when he's trying to be an elephant. It really is the funniest thing ever. She will crawl along just like normal on the carpet and as soon as she hits the hard floor she starts the Mogli crawl. Pretty smart, actually, but it is so funny. She keeps her knees all straight and sticks her little bum in the air. It is so cute!

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.