Baby (rain) Shower

A couple weeks ago I was able to throw a baby shower for my good friend Nicki!  It's always fun chatting with her and I had fun planning the shower.  I can't wait to meet little Hudson!!
 

   Here are pictures from that day

We had fruit pizzas and the "sauce" was a whipped cream - cream cheese mixture! 
It was really yummy!

It says:
Hudson
Jordan Gilbert
Come on with the rain
I've a smile on my face

                                  The favors say:
                                      thanks for
                                    dropping by!
                         Oh what a rain that will be
        (so that is why its lemon drops and gum drops)

All our Halloween fun

This year was all about celebrating things for the first time!

We went to Cornbelly's this year for the first time and happened to meet up with my sister Anna there.  It was actually pretty fun and we'll have to go again when Dani's a little older and the weather is still a little warmer.  It was FREEZING by the time we left.

 I forgot to bring my camera, but luckily my sister used her phone to snap some pics.

They had some tire swings shaped like different animals and things and a tractor ride.

We celebrated Halloween on Saturday, the 29, and Monday the 31st.

Saturday we went to our ward's trunk or treat.  It was the first one we've been to and we were pretty excited.  We decorated our car with things we had already in our house.  It was fun to have my sister and her family join us as well.

 

 we added dry ice to the cauldron on the right 

                              

                                      my sister's kids

Tinkerbell and a bum

I dressed up as Juno.

Saturday evening we went to our friends, the Gilberts, for a Halloween party! 
It was a lot of fun, there was yummy food and Tyler won the Best Costume award!

On Halloween, we went to Tyler's work were they have an annual Halloween trick-or-treating for the employees' children.  Danica loved it!.  Dani and I dressed up like Tinkerbell and Juno again.
 

Tyler works in the Tax Department with all women
so he and his co workers dressed up as a polygamist family.

On Monday we passed out candy for the first time ever.  Dani actually went out trick-or-treating and we had lots of trick-or-treaters!

Tyler passing out the candy

Here were some of the things we had going on around our house leading up to Halloween

I didn't take a picture of it, but I traced Dani's hands and feet

and made spiders and ghosts like this and hung them on the wall and ceiling.

image

We also made some mummy English muffin pizzas

We made some new decorations this year.  When I say we, I mean Tyler. 

I got the idea, but Tyler definitely executed and made it great!

When buying these birdhouses, I wasn't sure how the idea would turn out or if I could convince Tyler they might look cool, but we both really ended up liking them.

Our snake wreath

Gender Reveal Pics

Life has been a little crazy in the last week or so... an almost 2 year old thrown into the mix of anything makes things a little crazy anyway, but, between Tyler and me, any free time has been spent working on planning two parties (well, one of them, Dani's bday party, I haven't even started on... and it's next Saturday), 15 minute talks for sacrament meeting in a couple days, a Visiting Teaching lesson, a Home Teaching lesson, several meetings for both of our callings, following up on things discussed in those meetings, planning and organizing an upcoming RS Retreat, meeting with the Elders Quorum Presidency, going on family visits as part of the Elders Quorum Presidency,... oh and going golfing and eating lots of marshmallows.

So, I probably don't need to say that our Gender Reveal party was kind of thrown together quickly.... even though we had been planning to have it for a couple weeks.  Luckily I have my awesome cricket to make some things look cool.
We invited some friends and family over to surprise them with the news we're having a boy.  Since people didn't know what we were having, we decorated in pinks and blues.
Here are some pictures:

pink and blue mobile and tissue paper balls

a clothesline hanging above the pink and blue punches, a station set up for you to fill out.....

 once the baby is born we'll give a little prize for the people that guessed the closest

 

 hanging in our little peek-a-boo window from the kitchen to the living room

 a shot of the mostly eaten food

the food was kind of random... it was all my cravings.
grapes, cherries, peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, chicken nuggets, 

pasta (remember this post), chili and cream cheese dip, and marshmallows

 People who thought we were having a girl picked the pink cupcakes
L to R: Dylan, Marie, Reagan, Eileen, Becky, Drew, and Nicki

 Aunt Ann also thought we were having a girl

I guess most people thought we were having a boy
Top Row, L to R: Brett, Jordan
Bottom Row, L to R: Kyle, Candice, Larry, Brent,
(sorry I forget her name... she was Krisia friend, a little help anyone?), Krisia, and Natalie

the cupcakes

 

Blue filling! 
Surprise... it's a boy!

Friends

California Love

At the end of May/beginning of June we spent
a little vacation in CA visiting my family.

We went to a wedding, baby shower, and mission farewell.  We also saw the play Wicked, spent some time trying to find my mom's twin brothers' graves, visited with friends, became parents to a 10 month old,
and ate a whole heck of a lot !  

Our days were packed with fun and I loved seeing most of my family and all my nieces and nephews together!  I love going to my hometown.

I never seem to remember to take pictures. But here are the ones I did take.

 Some of the nieces and a nephew

...this is the best one we could take.  haha

And what's behind curtain #1? ......

The DOGS!  Danica loved watching Ella and Sisco

A visit/dinner with Sarah, Jacob, and Nick

Bet you didn't know a bowl could be so fascinating! 

Wicked!

I've had Wicked songs stuck in my head ever since we saw the play!

(Well, actually I've been doing better lately...until we went to Walmart today.  In the baking aisle a girl was singing, "Wonderful.  They call me Wonderful..." Singing is a term used very loosely here.  It was awful!  I thought she was just speaking at first.  It made me laugh, but my ears still hurt!)

The AWESOME stage.  I loved the play!

Tyler got us private balcony seats.  So cool!

Hi mom!

I'm not tired!

Is that drool running down my chin?? 

Such a lady... pinky up and all!

Dani turned 10 months old on June 2nd!

What a crazy, happy girl!

This girl is learning more and more each day!

Words she says in her Danica language:

*Dad *Mom *Baby *Bottle *More (in ASL) *Hi *Bye Bye 

*(and for the first time last Wed.) Peek-a-boo

Danica is understanding a lot more too:

*She knows the word "no"....luckily that word isn't on the list above *She'll hold whatever up to her ear (or the back of her head) when you say, "Do you want to talk on the phone?" *She knows where to look when we say "outside." *She waves hi *She turns off the lights when asked, "Do you want to turn off the lights?" *She does the spider movements for "Itsy Bitsy Spider" *She loves to copy us

Dani's got talent:

*She's started singing (I'm pretty sure that's what she's doing... it's different than her talking) *She'll pull herself onto ANYTHING and start walking all around *She can stand on her own for a few seconds *She took 3 steps on Tuesday (granted it was basically her falling to the ground, but she's on her way) *She eats all sorts of food and loves to do it by herself! Earlier this month she even had the garlic sirloin at Tucanos and loved it!

Danica laughs at the most random things:
*dropping a pencil (or similar) on our coffee table *Tyler fake hurting himself *The beginning of my workout video... I think it's because she knows what's coming and thinks, "haha!  mom think she's going to look like them?... she looks so silly!"

Danica loves:

*Babies/kids.  She gets super excited and screams.  She scares my neighbor's daughter and makes her cry... it's sad.  *Shoes (still) *To watch... she's a people watcher and she loves watching the cars drive by *To be outside *Baths...she gets so excited when I turn the water on.  She even tried to lift her little bath tub into the big tub the other day.*To be a social butterfly *To smile :)

There's a whole lot more I could share... it's just fun to see her learning more and more and being proud of herself for understanding... but I'll stop here!