Family Pictures - FINALLY!

Our cute little family

Westen has been making the funniest faces for the past week. So glad we caught some! 

 Westen's two mommies!

 Maybe I am biased because he's my kid...but he is so stinking cute!

 Getting Family Pictures was the perfect way to spend Birth Mother's Day & Mommy's birthday!

 Happy Birth Mother's Day Audrey!!

 We are so grateful for Audrey and what she means to our family! Our family is better because she is in it! We are so proud of her! She is smart, hard working, beautiful...and she makes really cute babies!

Birth Mother's Day & Mommy's Birthday!

 This Weekend we went to the Birth Mother's Day walk with our families and with Westen's birth mom Audrey and birth grandma Barbara. Westen had a lot of fun running around with the other kids. (Don't you just love his cute little adoption shirt)

 



We are grateful that FSA (Families Supporting Adoption) plans this walk every year to honor birth moms! We took one walk around the track and then all of the adopted children released a balloon in honor of their birth moms.

 

 Seeing all of those balloons in the sky was awesome! That represents the love of a lot of birth families and adopted children!

 



Westen thought it was cool to watch his balloon float into the sky.

 

We are so grateful for supportive family and an amazing birth family that all recognize how cool adoption is and continue to support us and hang out with us! I can't think of a better way to spend my birthday than to be surrounded by people that I love and to be celebrating adoption!

Yay, It's May!

Grandma came over on friday to help us plant our flowers.

 

Lucky for her, she had a little helper that was pretty handy with a shovel!

Then Westen shared our water soakers with his neighbor friends...and came home soaked!

Today, Branden ran his second half marathon in Provo! (yes, we need a new camera...the shutters sometimes don't open all of the way after a little Mountain Dew spilling incident with our friends)

 

We surprised daddy and came to cheer him on near the finish line.

Then after the marathon, we took Westen to his first Parent-Tot swim class.

 

We are lucky to have such an involved daddy that isn't afraid to be the only dad in the class!

Westen learned how to blow bubbles in the water, splash his hands, float on his back and kick his legs and hold onto the side of the pool.

 

He loved his swim lessons until he saw the basketball hoop. So...after a minor meltdown, we had to abandon swim class to play with the basketball hoop.

 

And now....after a super busy weekend...we are all off to bed. Good night!

Two Birthdays

We Celebrated two birthdays this month...

 

The first was Audrey's

 

We went to dinner for her birthday and then she came out on Sunday to watch conference with us.

The next birthday we celebrated was Blake's! Before his birthday party, Blake (middle) and Kade (left) came over to play for a few hours.

 

While the boys played, daddy put together Westen's new table and chairs.



When the table was all put together, Blake and Westen tested it out and shared some pretzel sticks.

 

                                      

Then later in the afternoon, we went to Blake's birthday party at the pool.

 

There was a little bit of swinging, some splashing, some sliding and lots of swimming with daddy.

 



Spring is HERE!

On the Saturday before Easter, Branden participated in a sprint triathlon.

We watched from the park and Westen had fun playing in the trees.

 

Branden has been running/biking/swimming a lot to prepare for the Triathlon and has decided he really likes it...

 

On Sunday, the Easter bunny hid eggs in our house. Westen had fun finding them. It is a good thing we found eggs before he saw his basketball hoop, because he has been inseparable from the hoop for 2 days now.

 

In Addition to the basket ball hoop, the Easter Bunny also brough Westen a basket filled with toys and treats. (Oh, and don't you just love his little Easter shirt!)

 

 

After church, we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for lunch, an Easter message about Jesus and you guessed it...another Egg Hunt! Westen totally got the concept of finding eggs and putting them in his basket, so it was really cute to watch.

Yay for families and yay for Easter!

Westen's 1st Bday!

Westen is 1!!

We had a circus themed party with lots of yummy circus type treats. We had mini corn dogs, pretzel bites, pizza bites, popcorn, chips and salsa, and cute little soda bottles with red and white striped paper straws!

Mommy even got ambitious and made a "big top" out of dollar store table cloths!

We also had some yummy cupcakes (that had blue cake "polka dots" inside the white cupcakes!)

Mommy and Grandpa Kris made a cotton candy tree.

 Westen finally got to wear his "Happy Birthday to Me" shirt.

 Westen's birth mom and her family came to the party too.

 We always love when we get to see Audrey!

We had lots of friends and family that came to spend the day with us.

Westen wasn't too sure about the cake, but he loved the fork. Happy 1st Birthday Westen!

Christmas Season

 

 For Christmas we made some ornaments from Westen's hand and feet prints.

 We also made some chocolate/caramel/peanut butter dipped pretzel rods for our friends/neighbors for Christmas....and Westen helped....by eating the broken pretzels.

 We went to the Zoo Lights with Grandma Helen and with Kevin/Amanda/Blake and Kade.

 The boys were all bundled up. They liked seeing the animals, especially the little monkeys.

 Westen called every animal "kee" (kitty) in his cute little high-pitched kitty voice. 

 Westen was also intrigued by the lights.

 When our daddy came home from his trip to Maryland, we decorated our Christmas tree.

 Westen was actually helpful....and by helpful, I mean that he didn't rip off every ornament from the tree. We gave him a few small plastic ornaments and he has played with those for the past few weeks...and left the rest of the tree intact, which I would say was a sucessful

first-Christmas-tree-experience.

We had a fun time sewing lots of Christmas gifts this year. The most special was the quilt that we made for Audrey with Westen's hand print on the back. Hope she loves it!

 Westen's birth mom and birth grandma came to bring Christmas presents.

 Westen got some fun presents from them...Audrey sewed him a little lion, he got a cabbage patch boy, a monkey, and two quiet books (which we desparately need for church!)

On Christmas Eve, we went out a little early to Grandma and Grandpa Wilson's house and we played in the snow.

 Westen did really well. We even went on a little sled ride behind the 4 wheeler and he had a good time.

 Then after yummy prime rib Christmas dinner, we opened our Christmas jammies and our presents.

 Grandma gave Westen a little piano octopus that blows bubbles and Westen has really liked playing with it.

Thanks Grandma for our Christmas Jammies!

 On Christmas morning, Westen unpacked his stocking and his favorite thing in it (that he dragged around for the rest of the morning) was the orange that our family gets in the toe of their stockings.

It was funny to watch him chew on it. When he got to the bitter part just under the skin, he made some funny sour faces. And just for the record....his little body doesn't really digest oranges...yep- they come out whole....sorry too much info, but I couldn't resist :)

Grandma Leah, Grandpa Don, and Grandma Helen came over on Christmas morning too and we went upstairs to open presents. Westen got a fun balance bike from Grandma Leah and Grandpa Don.

 Grandpa Don got Westen a real metal tonka truck. He LOVED it! He also really liked the foam football he got from Grandma Helen....and two days later, it has lots of little chunks that somebody and chewed out of it.

He also got 100+ legos from Grandma Leah too!

 Daddy got a special chevron camo blanket that Barbara and Audrey made for him :)