Our Sweet Girl

I don't know if this is how every parent feels about their child, but Scott and I have always loved how sweet Addie is.  Sometimes we're worried that she's too sweet.  She loves more than anything for Scott and I to be happy.  If I'm upset about something she'll say, "You fwustwated (frustrated) Mom?" and then do everything she can to make us smile.  Once she sees me smile she exclaims, "You happy Mom!"  This is sometimes the most helpful attribute she has.  She is so in tune with other people's happiness, and usually will get really emotional if other people are unhappy.  If a friend is in a timeout, she'll put herself in a timeout too because she doesn't want them to be as sad.  She is so sweet and caring and we feel so grateful to get to learn from her every day!

Here's a little movie of her singing "I am a Child of God" at family home evening the other night.  She LOVES this song and will sing it (and the ABC's) all through the grocery store.  Please don't listen to me singing, focus on the cute little girl trying to get in all the words.

Easter Time

Easter Sunday began with a visit from the Easter Bunny!

Addie found her basket hiding in the fireplace.

Counting her smarties very carefully

I've never been allowed this close to this much candy!!!!

She had a death grip on her smarties.
She wasn't going to risk us taking them away.

She went from owning 1 color of Play-Doh to getting a set of 10.
She kept on shouting out all the different colors because she couldn't believe how many there were!

She cleans up quite nicely

 After looking at the budget we decided this year to not buy her an Easter dress.  Thursday, as I was swimming laps, I just couldn't get over how sad I was that Addie wouldn't have an Easter dress.  Every little girl needs an Easter dress.  I decided we'd be making a stop at the fabric store that afternoon and I'd make her one in 3 days and for really cheap.  Crazy?  Perhaps.  But it actually came together in time!

On the way there, I asked Addie what color she wanted her dress to be and she said purple.  At the store I picked out a couple of fabrics and told her to pick her favorite one, and this is what she chose!  She was the most excited about the pink buttons and 'kept them safe' the whole time we were shopping.

My cute Reds in their Easter duds

Here's her modelesque side-profile

She was so excited about the 'fluffy' tulle underneath

 All day she could be found spinning in her dress and saying, "I'm boo-i-ful!"

She couldn't wait to show her Nursery teacher how she could spin in her boo-i-ful dress like Tiana (from Princess and the Frog).  Yes, she loves princesses.

Funny Story: I'm trying to get a video of this uploaded, but it's struggling, so we'll see if it ever works.  The Easter Bunny thought the fireplace would be the perfect hiding place for her basket.  Hidden so she'd have to look, but not so difficult to find that she'd lose her attention span or get frustrated.  He thought it'd challenge her a little bit.  What the Easter Bunny failed to take into account was how she would enter the living room.  When coming down the stairs you can see, without even trying, directly into the fireplace.  As Scott was coming down with Addie, I told them to wait for a minute so I could get the camera and get her search on film.  If the video works, you'll see her waiting on the stairs for me to get ready and pointing at the fireplace saying, "There it is!"  She didn't even have to kind of try.  She zipped straight down the stairs and to her loot.  The Easter Bunny is going to have to work on his trickery skills for future years.

Birthday Time

This year mine and Scott's birthday landed during his Spring Break!

Which meant an entire week of celebrating.

We went to a fancy steakhouse on the River Walk in San Antonio for our 'birthday dinner.'  It was one of the most fabulous meals I've ever had, hence, zero pictures!

We got home from our trip the night before our birthday and were both kind of wiped out, so we didn't really make any big plans to celebrate.

Scott got up early to go play ultimate frisbee like he loves to do on Saturday mornings.

So I thought.

He came home 20 minutes later, with groceries ready to surprise me with breakfast in bed!

Unfortunately for him, this pregnant lady doesn't sleep that well, so I was already up.  But I sure enjoyed my breakfast surprise!

One of our favorite breakfast places in Utah is Magleby's Fresh with their all you can eat French Toast. So he found the syrup recipe (amazing!) online and made french toast, bacon and chocolate milk.  The presentation of the plate was gorgeous, and I planned on taking a picture of it, but it looked way too good and I remembered my picture taking intentions several bites in.  You get the idea.

Just as I was getting ready to make dinner, we got a knock on our door with an Edible Arrangement from Scott's family.  Delicious!  Needless to say, I didn't get around to making dinner, because after about 10 minutes of having this...

...it looked like this.

 The next day we had a little get together to eat some cake.

If you can't tell, we definitely celebrate with food!

We had a great day and were seriously overwhelmed by how kind and thoughtful people were!  We have such great family and friends, so THANK YOU to everyone!

Finishing up at Sea World

Day 2 of Sea World was completely Addie day.

We tried to get her excited about all of the little kid rides, but no.

Our cautious (we try to say cautious, instead of wimp) girl was terrified of pretty much everything created for kids her age.  We took her on the ferris wheel  and she sobbed into Scott's leg for the first 2 minutes, see pic below.

Her fave ride at Disneyland was the carousel, but she said this one was too fast and she only wanted to ride once. 

We could barely convince her to get into the fountains that squirt 1 ft off the ground.
Forget about the fountains that squirt high and have buckets of water dropping.

I convinced her to splash with just her fingers and just get her fingers wet.

I tried to capture the dolphin feeding experience, but Addie throws those fishies so fast, that it was pretty tough to get on camera.  I didn't even get to see it in real life because by the time I put the camera down, Addie had already given away all our fishies!

Sea World Day 1

The whole reason we went to San Antonio, Sea World!

Which almost didn't happen...

We planned to leave Monday morning and come back Wednesday night.  On Sunday we talked to some friends that warned of Sea World's crazy hours, so we decided to check out the hours online when we got home.  Much to our dismay, we found out that Sea World was randomly closed Monday through Wednesday!  What?!  Totally didn't see that coming.  So, very last minute, Scott made a bunch of phone calls and got our hotel reservations changed and everything sorted out for us to leave Wednesday morning and come home Friday night.  Phew!  Thank goodness it worked out, because Sea World was a great time.

We fed the dolphins.

Addie threw her fish way too fast to capture on camera.  I was surprised she was brave enough to touch those nasty fish... I wasn't.

She loved the shows and was a very active participant in the audience, always clapping!

Her favorite was the Sea Lion show.

Of course, we saw Shamu

Ice Cream Break

Nap time.  Us girls were pooped.

But Dad wasn't.  He kept himself buys on this roller coaster.

The dolphin show was another fave of ours!

Stay tuned for Day 2...

Hotel Pool

Of course the best part of any vacation is swimming at the hotel!

Once Addie saw that her floaties were packed, she wouldn't take them off.

We had a pre-swim photo shoot.

 The big pool was too cold to enjoy, so we checked out the hot tub.

Thankfully they didn't really heat it up, so it was a perfect temp for a 2 year old and a pregnant lady!

If you know my child, then you know that her favorite part of the outing was the fresh chocolate chip cookies in the hotel lobby.

She's always willing to share a bite.

San Antonio: Take 2

We've attempted San Antonio before.

Epic Fail.

We let Addie eat bowls of salsa, which were way too spicy for her.

This resulted in a lot of vomit.  All night long.

Our hotel was ghetto!   Right under the freeway listening to semis engine brake all night.  Thanks priceline.

We were only in the town for less than 24 hours before we gave up and drove back home.

Sooooo, for Scott's Spring Break, we decided to give it another go.

We were much more successful this time!

First stop, the Japanese Tea Gardens.