Idaho and cousin Khloe

After celebrating Easter at home, Sunday night Mia and I went to Idaho because my brother, his wife, and their daughter Khloe were there from Wyoming.  We stayed until Sunday afternoon and had a great time.  Mia and Khloe are 10 months apart.  They did pretty well together for the most part.  Khloe is so quiet and well mannered that she really made Mia look like a wild and crazy girl.

This picture was actually from the weekend before when we were up there.  Mia got to sit in the hot tub for the first time.  She enjoyed it and grandma let her take the rubber ducks in which made it even more fun.

 Grandma and her grand babies.  My mom was so excited to have her grand kids there.

 We took the girls to see the horses by my parents house.  They thought they were pretty neat.  Mia kept saying "arf arf."  Guess we need to work on what the horse says.

 Mia even was brave enough to pet one of them.

 While we were in Idaho Grandpa sold his lawn mower but not before Mia got to try it out.

 The girls loved bouncing on the tramp.  I think they wore Uncle Steve out.

 Whenever they'd stop bouncing Mia would start bobbing up and down trying to bounce herself.

 Khloe absolutely loved the tramp.

 We went to play on the neighbors swing set and since Mia is the big cousin, she got to use the big girl swing.  She did pretty good holding on but we didn't let her go too high.

 We tried to get some pictures of the girls together.  That was a joke.  A 9 month and 19 month old are not up for picture time.
We tried getting them laying down...

 Mia's face says it all...she was not a fan.

About the best we could get and it turned out a bit blurry. :-(

We had a great time in Idaho and can't wait until we get to play with cousin Khloe again.  Hopefully someday they'll live closer.

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter with Mia this year.  Coloring eggs proved to be a bad idea but she somewhat got into the idea of hunting Easter eggs.  Once she realized there was something in them she just wanted to open the ones she'd found and needed a lot of encouragement to keep hunting but eventually she got them all.Coloring eggs started out OK.  But then all she wanted to do was stick her hands in the dye cups.

 We had to put some distance between her and the colors.

 This year instead of a basket the Easter Bunny brought Mia a bucket.  Now she has her own bucket and shovel to play in the dirt and gravel at the neighbors. (She definitely doesn't mind getting dirty).

She also got a color book, a new bunny (the old one met a sad fate that is a poopy story...literally), sidewalk chalk, and bubbles.

 Hunting eggs.

 The Easter Bunny did a good job hiding them.

 The girls all ready for church.

So Easter night Mia and I went up to Idaho because my brother from Wyoming and his family were there.  Monty couldn't go because of work.  We had a great time (I'll post that in a bit).  My little brother Shawn has a wonderful talent as a photographer.  I wanted to get some pictures of Mia in her Easter dress while we were there but he was really busy with school and work.  Our last night there right at bed time he said, "OK, lets go do pictures."  I stripped Mia's PJ's off and threw her dress on.  We were out taking pictures for all of about 4 minutes but Shawn worked his magic and we got some beautiful shots.

 Great work Shawn!  Thanks again!

A day at the park

On Monday I had a conference so Aunt Trina came to spend the day playing with Mia.  They went to the park and had a blast!  Apparently Mia screamed the whole way home in protest.  Trina sent me some fun pics and videos of their adventures so I figured I'd post a few.

 Gotta love that smile

 The swing wasn't her favorite now that she's a girl on the go.

We took her to the park a couple times last summer and even once this spring, but this was the first time she got to just cruise and play on her own.  (Last time there were too many big kids everywhere that were trying to run her over).  We'll have to go play again in the middle of the day when everyone else is at school. 
She loved being able to play on the slide all by herself.

It's crazy how fast she's grown.  She is no longer a baby but my little girl on the run.

Thanks Aunt Trina for a great day!

West Yellowstone

Last weekend Monty and I decided to take a little get away.  We took Mia to Grandma's for her first official sleepover without mom and dad (Grandma was SOOO excited) and headed up to West Yellowstone for the weekend.  We have had it planned for a couple months and figured we'd go up and spend the day snowmobiling and just enjoy the outdoors, but unfortunately no one told the weather.  We stayed at a great resort in a nice little condo.  It was only a studio so I wouldn't have wanted to stay there for a week but it was great for the weekend.  It had a nice rustic feel and fit in great with the area. 

The drive up on Friday was great, but Saturday morning the snow started.  When we left to go snowmobiling it wasn't too bad yet.

 We just rented clothes and gear there.  We got all bundled up and ready to go.



 Monty looks excited don't ya think?

Well, after we were out about 2 hours, we ended up in a total white out with wind whipping everywhere so we had to head back in.
We got a couple pictures before we headed back in.  Seeing as we were by ourselves, we had to take turns taking pictures.

 You can kind of see the snow storm whirling behind us.

When we pulled into town, we couldn't even figure out where we were in order to make our way back to the condo.  It took a long time to navigate the 7 whole streets they even have in West Yellowstone.  We took very few pictures because it was just too cold and windy to take gloves off to take the camera out of a pocket to take pictures.
This is the snow built up along the river.

Once we finally made it back to the condo we had lunch and hung out for about two hours before we ventured back out.  It was still snowing a little bit and the wind wasn't blowing quite as hard.  Our afternoon ride we were able to see better but was more adventurous.  We rolled the snowmobile once when we ended up in some unpacked powder.  Luckily right as we rolled it a group showed up and helped us get it upright (snowmobiles are heavier than I thought).  A short time after that we tried turning around on a trail and ended up off the groomed trail and buried the front end of the snowmobile in the snow.  The snow we were in was up to my thighs and it was only by divine intervention that we managed to get the snowmobile back out.

Just before we turned the snowmobile back in we got someone to take a picture of us together.

Monty did most the driving, I drove a little bit out on the trails and then as we came back into town the second time I drove it.  I preferred driving on the flat non-winding areas.

They ended up getting about a foot and a half of snow while we were there.  We were just amazed by just how much snow there was everywhere.  On Sunday we went to church.  The church did not have a very big parking lot but this was just one of about 4 massive mounds of snow that had been plowed from the little lot.

On Sunday when we left, this was the view from our 2nd floor balcony.  Some places looked like you could step right off into the snow.

It was a fun little get away and Mia had a blast at Grandma's.  My brother took some pictures while Mia was there so if I can get some from him I'll post them.

Life goes on

I realized I handn't updated our blog in awhile so figured may I should do so.  I guess I haven't updated it because there isn't much going on.  We've settle back into our post-holiday schedule and life.  Monty had a birthday and turned a big 3-1.  We just had a little family party and then had some friends over for ice cream cake.

Don't mind the runny writing

That's the only real exciting thing going on lately.  Mia is still growing like a weed and growing more and more into her sassy pants personality.  She definitely knows what she wants and is willing to do about anything to get it.  She's loves making messes, climbing on things, eating, shoes, books, and just going a million miles an hour.

For Christmas Nana made her a pillowcase.  Aunt Trina and I were clowning around the other day and decided to put her in it.  She had a blast running around.

Mia does great feeding herself with finger food but we're still working on using utensils.

One of her favorite messes to make is the pots and pans.  She pulls them all out and then tries to stand on them.

She's definitely enjoys having a chair that's just her size.

Like I said, just boring regular life at our house right now but it's kind of the theory no news is good news.

The story of Violet

This is Violet. 

Mia got Violet for her first Christmas.  Violet knows Mia's name, favorite food, favorite color, favorite animal, and much more.  Violet has traveled to Salt Lake, Idaho, Colorado, even Hawaii with Mia.  Everywhere Mia goes so does Violet.  For about 10 months Violet sang Mia to sleep every night and it wasn't uncommon if Mia woke up in the middle of the night for her to play with violet and they'd have their own little conversations in her bed (It's true I've heard it in the middle of the night).  Around October Violet's batteries died.  It took me a couple weeks to replace them but sadly the batteries lasted less than 2 weeks.  A week or so later I replaced them again and the same thing happened.  I came to the conclusion it was Violet and not the batteries (they were from 2 different packages and 2 different brands).  I had determined Mia's friend would now just have to be a silent stuffed animal.  However Violet still went everywhere Mia did.

When we went to Idaho for Christmas of course Violet came along.  On the morning of the 26th we woke to a sad sight.  Mia had thrown up in the middle of the night and as you can see Violet was one of the targets.

It wasn't that much and it was already dry because Mia sadly slept in her own vomit (I promise I'm not a bad mom she just didn't let us know there was a problem).  That morning Mia clearly didn't feel good and was carrying Violet around with her.  As gross as I thought it was I didn't have the heart to take her dog away to clean it.  I figured I'd clean it up at nap time.  Like I said it was all dry.  Mia climbed up on Monty's lap with Violet and started grabbing at her paws.  Clearly she was trying to get her friend to talk to her.  It was kind of sad to watch but I was also impressed that she remembered the days when Violet talked since it'd been a couple months.  She started to grow frustrated and then grabbed Monty's hand, put it on Violet's paw, squeezed again and then looked at Monty with the look of "Daddy help me."  That was all it took.  Monty looked at me and immediately said, "We need a new Violet."  After she was spoiled for Christmas we head out the day after Christmas to get her a new dog.  Sadly, we couldn't find one in Pocatello.  We checked 3 different stores and they were all sold out.  However, the first thing we did when we got home the next day was go to Walmart and get a new Violet. 

 In the past year Violet apparently got a little bit of a makeover.  It took a few days for Mia to take a liking to the new Violet but eventually all the singing and fun times took over and she realized she had her old friend back.

The old Violet quietly slipped away never to be seen again and Mia once again has a friend to sing her to sleep and talk to in the middle of the night.