merry christmas!

kids compared

have been meaning to see what my kids looked like at the same age. here it is:

photoshoot of my kids

famous for a moment

oh just running in the park and stopped to let zuri play and i was totally scouted out by the news...kind of a big deal...i hope you can sense the sarcasm. check out this clip and jenga and i make an appearance at the end.

don't kiss your dog on the mouth.

end.

some pics to inspire me to start blogging/journaling again

moab may

for nicks 31st birthday i got him tandem skydiving in moab, so that is what we did this last weekend. my bestie ashli lives down there and just recently had a baby (so we had to make a trip down to see him) as well as the solar eclipse that happened on sunday in southern utah (bonus). it made for a perfect weekend.

zuri sang for an hour and a half on our way down and it was one song..."happy birthday to bob". it was nicks dads bday and we had her call to wish him a happy birthday and she kept it going until it almost got annoying. she is a pretty adorable singer.

we got to moab and checked out the newly remodeled (still in progress) house of ash and todds and it was awesome. they have a cool flavor for design and the house looked so good. plus i liked the small touch of delicious chocolate bars on our pillows in the guest bedroom.

 our first night (saturday), we picked up some pizza and headed to a beautiful beach on the colorado river. got to catch up on each others lives and enjoy the two dogs becoming friends with each other as well as anyone that came around.

sunday we took a beautiful hike to an arch where we would cross lots of streams. on our way back, it got super hot and jenga couldn't take the heat on her paws, so ash took it for the team and carried jenga down the long sun stretches. there was one time that jenga was following nick down, and ash and i trailed a ways behind, and suddenly jenga go too hot that she booked it back up the trail, passed me and went straight to ashli. what a baby. thanks ash.

we got home from the hike and nick and i fell asleep and ashli and todd was forced to watch zuri. we're really good friends.

that night we made the pilgrimage to arches national park to check out the solar eclipse and greet the spaceships/aliens...lets just say that nick, todd and ash weren't as careful as i was to not look at the sun directly. the eclipse was pretty cool. i think the next one is in 20 years. can't wait for that moab reunion. hope that ash and todd are find fitting our 10 kids in their house.

monday was nicks big jump. we ate breakfast at an adorable local muffin place and then said our final goodbyes to nick. i did get to see nick one more time before he took off in the plane. it was so cute. he came and gave me a big kiss and then did the whole "i love you" hand sign while they took off. i seriously had tears in my eyes and almost started to weep, but there was an employee of canyonlands skydive sitting by me and i am pretty sure he would have laughed, so i held it together and said one final prayer that nick would survive. he did. they took nick on a 20 minute flight over arches national park and then made the drop. he loved it. we watched him and zuri kept saying "oooh pretty" and pointing to nicks parachute.

in summation: ash and todd were the best hosts. jonah is adorable. tuk (zuri says toot) is now jenga's bff. nick finally got to skydive. my nerves can finally relax. good times.

unfortunately i didn't get any photos or videos of nicks drop...so now he says he gets to do it again. i think swiper the fox said it best, "ah man".

happy birthday zuri

hurray! zuri turned two. she was so excited. we celebrated kennedy's birthday on friday and she was totally jealous. for the next 2 days, we got her pumped up that it was "zuri's birthday" and we sang the happy birthday song and showed her the big box that had her present in it. she was so excited. that morning when i woke her up, i sang happy birthday and she immediately said "big present." luckily, i had a small gift and let her open that. she went into the family area and looked at the streamers i had handmade and kept repeating "pretty" and singing happy birthday to herself.

we spent the day together shopping for her big party and when she went down for her nap it was crunch time. with 15 minutes left i decorated her "pink" teddy bear cake, which nick called a creepy zombie that had weird ph issues. funny cause it is true, but we got it all packed up and headed for liberty park.

zuri loved it. jackie and ryan and kids were already there playing at rotary park in the water and zuri stripped down and joined them. we had to pull her away from the water when everyone had arrived and were ready to eat.

nick cooked some mean hot dogs and hamburgers and it was a blast. we really appreciate all the love from family and friends. we ate, played more in the park, all the kids demolished zuri's cake (luckily i made a separate one for the adults), zuri opened up all her adorable gifts and she finally got to open the "big big gift", which was a wiggle scooter, and she freaked out and her cousins caroline and rexy helped show her how to work it...which was adorable. we finished off the party by doing a teddy bear picnic parade (all the kids paraded around to the song with their stuffed animals-we brought nicks old teddy bear for zuri and she fell in love) and played "duck, duck, bear" and then zuri was off to the water while the rest of the kids played red rover.

happy birthday zuri. it was so much fun to see how much she understood and how excited she was that it was her birthday.

the next 3 days we kept celebrating cause her birthday balloons were floating around the house.