What happened to our baby girl??

I took some pictures today and realized that our baby girl no longer looks like a baby. She is a little girl full of personality and determination. We love her so much.



One year ago


Here are a few of our favorite things about our little sweetheart.

When Claire and I walk into Home Depot, she immediately starts looking around and calling for her daddy. I guess she has gone there so much with her daddy that she thinks he is there instead of at work.

She loves doing laundry and will start pounding on the side of the washer until I bring over a chair and a basket full of clothes for her to put in. Then she will sit on the chair and play until the load is done so that she can help me put it into the dryer.

At the grocery store, she thinks the lady behind the counter at the deli is playing peek-a-boo with her when she ducks behind the meat case to get something out.

She loves throwing away her own stinky diapers. In fact, she gets very upset if she doesn’t get to do it.

Every morning before I (Luke) leave for work I give her a bottle and tell her I love her and she waves bye.

Every time Luke and Claire walk in the back door, Claire will have her dad pick her up so she can pull on a chain that hangs there and say “toot, toot”.

When she saw Luke kissing me the other day she said really loudly, “eewww”.

She has a favorite pair of shoes and that is the only pair of shoes that she will wear.....pink and white sneakers. I will get her all dressed up for church with her sandals on and several minutes later she will walk over to me with bare feet and carrying her sneakers for me to put on her.



So this picture doesn't really have to do with anything but I LOVE the shoes. I saw them last night and just had to get them to go with her new dress. Apparently Claire likes them too. She found them earlier today in the shopping bag and brought them over so I could put them on. I love Target and the $8 shoes I got there!! Maybe I will be able to get her to wear somthing other than the pink and white sneakers.

The Happy Campers

So last week we had our annual family campout up at Mirror Lake with my brothers and sisters and their families. We normally have a blast but this year we happened to be there when Utah had record low temperatures. Lets just say we froze!!! And since we have a little girl who absolutely hates being covered up with blankets even when she is cold, we only lasted one night....and most of the night was spent in the truck with the heater on. We stayed the next day waiting for it to warm up and it never did so instead of spending another sleepless night in the truck, we headed home to our nice warm beds. Did we feel guilty about leaving...Yes and No. Yes, because we left before all the family showed up and we missed having fun with them. No, because it was windy and rainy and cold...and after we left we found out that it started hailing and there was frost on the ground the next morning.

Ron spent all day fishing and ended up catching three fish which he fried up for dinner to go along with the yummy dutch oven enchiladas we made.


Here's our happy but cold family right before we came home from Mirror Lake.


Rilynn, Claire, and Ben had lots of fun playing with each other and going on little hikes.


Luke and I didn't last long fishing but we still had fun.



Then earlier this week Luke decided that we needed to make up for our bad camping experience so saturday night we set up the tent in our backyard, made a fire in the fire pit, ate smores, roasted hot dogs (I don't even like hot dogs but I must admit that these tasted good), and had a great time watching movies all night long.
Claire even got to go fishing saturday night...so what if it was in the bathtub. She caught a red fish, a pink fish, and a orange fish.

Notice Claire's lack of clothing....lets just say the weather was alot better.


Mmmmm, look at this yummy smore.

Day at the Zoo

We went to the zoo yesterday. I wish I could say that Claire loved seeing the animals but that would be a lie. She did like looking at the fish, zebras, and monkeys but that is about it. It is funny how she could really care less about most of the animals but she couldn't take her eyes off of a little feather that she saw on the ground. She refused to touch the feather but we couldn't get her to go look at anything else. The other thing that she really liked was watching a girl get her face painted.

The best part of the day was when Claire saw this young girl sitting on the ground in front of a cage trying to take a picture of the animal inside. Claire ran up to this girl, got about a foot away from the camera and says "cheese". Then she did her fake smile. So some girl out there has a picture of Claire because refused to move until the picture was taken. It was so funny!! Why is it that the second I try to take a picture of Claire, she will turn her heard the other direction?
It was a great day!

Yes, that small black thing on the ground is the feather that had Claire so fascinated.




Rilynn and Claire thought the lion drinking fountain was pretty neat too.

Jordan is staying the weekend with us while my mom is out of town. Yesterday he looked at our blog and wondered why we don't have anything about him on it and then later that night he decided he wanted to make a post. So for those of you who know Jordan, you will totally understand what he wrote. We hope you enjoy his post.

Jordan The Runner

Hey everyone! This is Tina’s bro, Jordan, writing to you guys! The pictures you are looking at are pictures of me free running (and grabbing my official Mirror’s Edge Runner Bag). The Symbol on the corner of the bag is the mark in the popular Xbox360/PS3/PC game, Mirror’s Edge.

I have to admit that some of the pictures are a bit strange. But it was Tina that was in charge of the photos. She is still a great photographer, and I am still a great runner (even though I have never tried out for Track or the 5K in my life.)

The pictures of me on the brick wall are also pictures of me balancing while I walk toward the front porch to get my bag. The bag is great for carrying things (important, unimportant, etc.) and also for hikes.

Let me tell you how I got the bag.
To make a long story short, I came into GameStop looking for games. I came across the PC section and asked one of the cashiers if they had Mirror’s Edge for the PC. They had a copy of the game, and after I bought the game, I asked them if they had the official bags from the game, and they gave me a bag for free! THAT, my friends, is how I got the bag.

Well, I’m all out of things to say. Peace out!