Spring Fun!

Spring is my favorite. Spring to me means Easter, birthdays, flowers, green, warmth,and blue skies. It means time with family and friends, hiking, fishing, long walks, baby animals, and saying goodbye to long dreary days of winter. Also, is it just me or are there always a million weddings to attend and babies being born in the spring? So many joy-filled family gatherings and events. I love it! It's so happy and cheerful and full of new life.

I love spring.

We celebrated the first day of my favorite season with a long walk and some play in the park. Emma is all about being outside. She loves to grab the grass in fistfuls or touch it with her bare feet and is always curiously watching the other children play. (I'm certain she would love to run and join them.) She has an adventurers heart for sure.

A couple of days later I got to get together with some good friends of mine that I met while working at the ranch. The three of us were all pregnant right around the same time. Baby Swayze is only a week younger than Emma and Baby Luke is only a few months behind the two of them. The waitress had a time figuring out where to put three moms and three babies but we had a great time together and boy those three are some CUTE babies. We went out to visit the old stomping grounds and had to snap a few pictures of the babes together. I think these three are going to the best of friends like their moms. 

The Easter bunny always came to our house on Saturday growing up and-what do you know, he does the same thing for Emma! She woke up early Saturday morning to a basket full of fun surprises. I think her favorites were the My Little Pony dolls (which is so great because, I used to play with them too!) and her new books. Emma LOVES to read. The Easter bunny brought some fun ones; Jane Eyre, The Secret Garden, and Alice in Wonderland (all in baby boardbook version of course.) She also got a beautiful new Easter dress that mom was way more excited about than she was. 

The Easter bunny didn't forget Sam either. I have too much fun with these holidays. 

Emma was excited about everything in her basket right down to the grass! She had her hands full of fun toys and at one point, there was a toy she wanted to pick up but didn't have enough hands for it. Solution? She stuck one of the toys in her mouth to free up a hand. Oh how I love my funny girl.

After the baskets, we headed down to St. George for one of my favorite family get-togethers of  the year; the annual Easter party. Emma quietly read her new books in the back seat for almost the entire drive.

Grandpa's famous pancakes and other yummy breakfast foods, Easter themed minute to win it games, a super fun Easter Egg white elephant "Eggschange", and plenty of visiting with the family. It's always a good time! 

After the Easter party was a visit to grandpa's work AKA Kong's Jungle AKA Sandhollow Aquatic Center. If you haven't had a chance to visit Sandhollow Aquatic Center lately, DO! It has been made over to look like a jungle complete with a giant alligator, a snake, an elephant with water blowing out of it's trunk, gorillas, monkeys, a "pelican pond", and more! I have it under good authority that there will be a tiger living there soon as well. It's so neat and such a fun place for kids! They can climb on and play with many of the animals and if that isn't fun enough, there are now squirt hoses attached to some of the walls that the kid's can use to sneakily spray their friends! What fun!

Our little water baby had a blast in the pool. She loves the water! She  splashed and played and looked all around-even climbed onto the back of the giant floating turtle! 

Oh how I love Easter Sunday. What a wonderful occasion to celebrate the resurrection of the savior and His atonement. It is such a happy day-there is nothing more wonderful to celebrate than eternal life with our forever families. It is my favorite day of the year. We got all dressed up and made it to church right on time. It felt like an even more special Sunday because we had Sam's dad and his sister and her children there with us. I got to sit next to my nephews-they are such sweet boys. I felt a wonderful spirit even through Emma's constant babbles and wiggling. Sam and I had a nice lesson with our class and then I got to listen to the next ward's sacrament meeting in the mother's lounge while Emma slept through third hour. 

To wrap up the day, we headed to Sam sister, Katy's house for their annual Easter dinner. We enjoyed a delicious dinner with even better company. Sam helped Katy hide some eggs for the boys to hunt. As they hunted, they noticed that some of the eggs were empty and open! We thought it was odd but thought it might have been due to the wind. It took a minute for us to notice that their Golden Retriever, Oakley was a step ahead of the boys, happily opening and eating the contents of each of the eggs! We had a good laugh and banished Oakley to the back yard for the remainder of the hunt.

 Cousin Cooper had been taking a nap for the first part of our visit and we were excited when he woke up because we wanted to get the two of them together for some pictures. Poor Cooper was a bit nervous over Emma's super outgoing personality and lack of respect for his personal space. Haha! She immediately poked him and tried to hold his hand. I think it's safe to say that she isn't going to be shy.

We had fun playing with Cooper and the other boys for the rest of the evening. Emma was excited to play with all of their toys. She especially loved his crocodile walking toy and we had so much watching her walk back and forth behind it! She got going pretty fast. So fast that the only picture I could get of her was super blurry but I included it anyway.

We even took a few minutes to try out the cousin's trampoline before heading home! It was Emma's first trampoline experience but she caught on pretty quickly. She bounced up and down excitedly. 

Emma was so tired after all of the excitement that we wound down with a movie (Frozen) on the couch. She is usually way too busy to sit and watch a movie so that tells you how exhausted she was. It was so sweet to watch her snuggle up on Sam's lap. 

Today Emma turned 11 months old! Can't believe she'll be one next month! I wish the time would slow down. She is changing from a baby in to a little girl and I am so not ready! She took her first step on Saturday and I know she'll be running around in no time. I am trying to cherish every moment.

At 11 months, Emma loves yogurt, peanut butter, eggs (with pepper!), arrowroot cookies, applesauce, cream of wheat....I could go on and on because the girl loves food. She stands all the time and does "squats", she says mama, dada, and Daisy (that's our dog's name). She is outgoing, loves to be outside and on the go, and always loves the water. She is really in to dolls and books and is just SO MUCH FUN.

She is getting harder and harder to capture in a picture that isn't blurry but, I managed this one:

I'm so excited for spring and all the adventures it is sure to bring!