Welcome to Camp William

And so it was your birthday and we partied, of course! This year I went with a camping themed party for Will.....Welcome to Camp William!!! I am so laughing at myself now because the only picture I got of the ceiling was on my dang phone. I spent like 2 hours (how lame am I?) cutting out stars and hanging them from strings on our ceiling!

My sister was in town on Friday for one of my nephews doctor appointments so we had them over that night for dinner with my mom and other sister Katie. We got to hang out and have presents. Then on Saturday we threw a party and Steve's family came over. Not that we planned on having separate "parties" but it worked out because we don't have a ton of extra space in our house to gather.

Will just had the biggest smile on his face while we were singing to him. He even got a little shy, a rarity for this kid. 

I also made my famous dirt cake for party favors in mason jars for everyone to take home with them. Nice work on the pictures of the details right?

As a one year old there isn't much you need or even know you want so we went over to the store on his birthday and let him pick out his own present. We were thinking a big dump truck would be a big hit, but when we got there he promptly made Steve get the Sully stuffed animal from Monsters Inc. and give it to him. It's BIGGER than him. He was sold and so we bought it for him. He has slept with it every night since and insists on bringing it down the stairs every morning! All in all I would say this birthday was a success.

cake smash | will's first taste of sweets

This boy melts my heart. If he could only talk I would probably give him whatever he asked for! I wanted to do cake smash pictures, just like we did for Katy. He was not such a big fan of them though. Luckily I still got some cute ones. These were actually taken on his birthday.

Side note: This is when his runny nose started. Since his birthday he has been SICK and we have been to the doctor multiple times. Each time he has something different, and this week he is super stuffy. Hopefully he can get better soon because I felt awful taking these when he was obviously feeling not at the top of his game. The reason being, I still need to take some one year pictures (and he is 13 months!!!) Hopefully I can get some in the next week or two.

Happy Birthday Katy!

Happy Birthday to my favorite girl in the world. Wow, it's hard to believe I am the owner of a 4 year old little lady. Still didn't figure out how to freeze time (still working on that one). We opted to go with a weather themed party this year. The theme? Cloudy with a chance of snowballs. Wow stringing up those cotton balls took a bit of time, but when she saw the finished product...she said "great job mom"

I've said it before and I'll say it again, birthdays are National Holidays around these parts, so you have to go all out! We even let you celebrate before and after your birthday. This year Katy got her ears pierced for her big gift (which Steve let her do a whole week early!!!). She was SO beyond brave, so impressed by this little girl. Yup, she showed me up...still no earrings dangling from these ears!

We had Roger, Joanne, RaNae, Ken and cousin Jenni over for presents and cake and ice cream.
From mom and dad she got a dream light, some legos and an iPad pen and some apps.

We made a cloud cake (which she loved), and she found her birthday hat from last year, she insisted on wearing it again this year.

Group number one party. What a great time!

Katie got off later from work so her and my mom came over later that evening. It just so happened that Britney was in town so her and the girls came over too! So so fun to have everyone over that day.

Thank you all to coming and for your sweet gifts for Katy! Love you all so much!
Happy National Holiday Katy!

Amy + one year

Do you ever wonder if you will wake up one day and not recognize the person staring back at you? Do you think one day you will wake up and be "old"? It's hard to see it all happening before our own eyes because we get to see the change every day. You may not notice the extra grey hair...but before you know it you have a whole patch of grey hairs.

I decided, since last year (see here), that I would take a self portrait of myself on my birthday (even though last year was technically not on my birthday but before). I still don't have a remote for this bad boy....which makes taking a self portrait of yourself in manuel mode kind of hard when you are trying to focus. I, again, took a ton of pictures and this is what I came up with. Technically I have been taking a picture of myself every week for my Baby B series. When I got all up in my own grill, the baggy tired eyes were pretty apparent. I am quite certain that is due to my lack of sleep lately with little buddy getting so big. Regardless I went with this beaut....kind of fun. Also sister Katie cut my bangs the day before and I was still trying to get used to them.

What does this self portrait have to do with my birthday? Well it made me think of those baggy eyes, and that growing patch of grey hairs (I love my dark hair, but sometimes I wish I was a natural blonde because it would be easier to hide things like that), and how Amy + one year is staring back at me in the mirror....and not Amy + one day, and not noticing that extra grey hair. I know I have a long way to go yet, but I am thinking that I can probably pull off that extra year and those extra grey hairs.....I have a feeling that 29 is going to be a great year for me.

If you don't already know your birthday is your own personal national holiday around here at the Beardshall house. One of the many things I LOVE about Steve is that he introduced me to the idea of your own national holiday.

I can honestly say that I have had the BEST birthday yet.....I can only imagine what next year and the big 3-0 will have in store for me.

Steve did it up big for me...my national holiday birthday week celebration started last Saturday on our special date. Steve asked me if I wanted to go out as a couple or a family. I told him that since I feel that we have been so fortunate to be able to go on so many dates lately that it would be fun to bring Katy along. He agreed and planned the whole thing. Katy kept calling it my special party day.

We started off going somewhere I have been craving for A WHILE now!!! Porcupine grill and the BEST chicken noodle soup you could ever imagine. Now I am a story exaggerator for sure but I really mean it when I say this is the best chicken noodle you will EVER eat, EVER!!!!

Pictures just don't do it justice....

Afterwards we went to color me mine. Steve said he tried to think of something that I would love and this is what he came up with...he was right. We had a blast. I painted some knobs for misters dresser and Katy painted a peace sign bowl with dad. Did I mention that she gave me a "blinged" out cell phone case for my birthday with peace signs all over it? Steve said it was all her own idea....I'm sensing a theme here!

I'll have to post pictures of the finished project.

Sunday mom and Katie came over for dinner and bought dirt cake...YUM. Katie cut my bangs, I needed a change.

Monday we went and saw all of Steve's family at Grandpa Beardshall's birthday bash.

Tuesday (my actual birthday) we met up with Steve for dinner.

Thursday Katy and I went to Disney on Ice...which she loved and clapped the whole time.

and Saturday I went with my mom up to Britney's where she treated Katy and I to tickets to the play Cinderella (this is my march 10th picture that won't load...it is so CUTE of Brynn and Katy dressed as Cinderella).

Yup all in all a fantastic birthday national holiday celebration week!

Thank you to Steve and all of my family for making it the best yet! Can't wait to see what this year has in store for me.

Party Time Excellent!

Another year gone by and another national holiday celebrated! Katy had a great birthday. It was on Thursday this year.

She has an account at America First Credit Union, they mailed her a post card wishing her a happy birthday and giving her a free kids meal from Chick-fil-a. We told her we could go there for her birthday. So that is what we did. We opened presents earlier of course. She was so happy it was her birthday. She kept saying things all day like "I love you mom" or "this is the best birthday ever!!!" She knows how to make you feel good!

A few months leading up to her birthday we kept asking her what she wanted to ask for. She would name things but then add that she wanted them for Christmas. We had to remind her several times that she gets presents for her birthday too!

She really wanted a friend party, but I am going to try to hold off until she is 5. I may have to do one next year, we'll see. We opted for a little family party with grandparents and such instead. I told her we could have a rainbow party. She was excited about that idea.

Katy helped me make a wedding cake...I mean a birthday cake! Ha, this thing was huge! She just kept saying, that is a humongous cake mom! I had her help me frost the layers. We put chocolate frosting in the middle. I didn't notice but we didn't get them all on quite straight and the cake was a little crooked. *Note to self, make sure they are straight next time. I think that will make it much easier to frost the outside!* I couldn't find a cake stand I liked that wasn't a fortune so I opted to make this one out of a Michaels 40% coupon candle holder and a DI dollar plate. The plate was already blue so I only spray painted the bottom. Technically you can't actually place food on it if you spray paint the surface. I worked out nice I can still use the plate with no problems.

It was pretty delicious! We were all laughing when we cut the cake we had to cut the slices in half so everyone only had 3 layers...otherwise we'd not have been able to finish the piece!

No national holiday celebration would be complete without decorations. Katy is still a bit leery when it comes to balloons (I'm trying folks!), but she was ok with these ones for the most part. I was blowing them up the night before her birthday. I had to make Chuck go into the basement he was having a break down trying to eat all of them. Colt was at work with Steve, but I can imagine he would not have been that annoying!

Katy thought it was cool when she woke up, she said the Birthday Monsters (a Sandra Boynton book) had come to decorate! It was pretty cute...even thought it took me a gaul darn hour to put them all up :) I figured I could share the credit with the monsters, seeing that they did a fabulous job!

More colors!

Her new "cheese face" is so funny to me. I tell you what I have never told her to say cheese, but for some reason kids pick up on that stuff. She is hilarious!

She thought blowing out her candles was pretty awesome. She almost got them all by herself!

One happy birthday girl. Thank you so much for mom, Katie, Roger, Joanne, RaNae and Ken for coming over to celebrate with us! We had a blast with you!

Happy Birthday Katy, you are wonderful!

Moab Birthday Bash Weekend

I honestly can't think of a better way to celebrate Steve's big 30th birthday, than to go to Moab...his favorite place in the world! And although he is still in denial that he is 30 and not 23 AGAIN, I think he had a great time.

I think Katy is starting to see why we love Moab so much....because she loves it! As you can see.

We started our whole shin dig out by taking the back road into Arches. Jordyn and Carter tagged along because Chris and Wendy went to Flordia. Jordyn ended up riding with us most of the time, but she sure liked the "jeeping" we did!

The three gossips. Arches is seriously the most beautiful place around! people come from all over the world to enjoy the beautiful scenery found here, and it's just in our back yard!

This is Katy's new "cheese face", not sure about this one...but it does make me laugh! She was having a blast with Carter at the visitors center.

We tried to find a way to tame all these wild animals!

They did a pretty good job too.

For the most part...this guy just couldn't be tamed :)

The following day we took a trail up to one of our favorite lookouts for lunch. Actually we were going to eat our picnic lunch up there but Steve locked the keys in the truck at the campground. We had to hang around for AAA (thank you Roger for being prepared, I think we use it more than he does!), so we ate our lunch at the campground!

But, as always, the view is great!

You can't tell but Katy just woke up from a cat nap. Man nothing puts her to sleep better than riding on the trail.

Ha, us in all our camping glory! No make-up baby, Steve that is :)
Our last day we headed back to Arches and hit up a few favorite spots for kids. The windows was a great start.

Katy is so funny....she just wanted to do everything by herself, including climbing up all 100 stairs! We had to help her a bit (or we'd be there all day) and she did not like that!

Roger and Joanne are always up for an adventure!

Jordyn and Carter were both great with Katy. I think she liked having them around!

Beautiful!

Sand Dune arch was a favorite place of the trip. Carter duplicated the arch in sand, not too shabby indeed!

Jordyn and Katy opted for a Rapunzel tower. Well, I think Katy was calling it that at least! Ha

Man oh man, we had SAND in places we didn't know we had! Poor shoes, those things are still bright red with sand!

Don't blink but that is a lizard in Carters hand. Ok you can blink because he is actually dead! Yuck!!! Ha, they found him on the rock. Carter really wanted to catch a lizard the whole time, with no luck. He was trying to convince Joanne that he needed to keep this guy. Also of note, they swear that he was moving when they put him back on the rock! Ha

Ok, so I was a slacker a bit on the trip with the camera because we also hit up main street in time to see a homecoming parade for the high school. We also ate out on Friday night (in celebration of Steve's birthday) at Zac....all you can eat pizza, salad and soup! Yum!!!! Man they have some dang good pizzas.

On Saturday (our last Arches day) we watched the U game against BYU. It was funny that we were all decked out in our U gear and everyone kept asking what time the game was on, or go UTES! Although Steve's actual birthday was on Sunday I think that was the icing on the cake to watch that game. At half time we made him go back to the trailer and get Katy's jammies. I had Carter and Jordyn set up some decorations and we surprised him with silly string and cake batter cookies when he came back...complete with candles! Ha! It was a great day! We love you STEVE!