Kaiya's 1 year old pictures

Here are a few pictures of our cute girl. My friend Jen took these pictures and she did a great job. Kaiya kills me with her little cheesy grin, she was being a real cheese the whole time. My absolute favorite it the one on the bottom right of this first group, I laugh every time I see it.

Family Pictures

We had family pictures taken a couple weeks ago and here are a few of our favorites.
This is my second favorite one.

This is my favorite one!

Five years and still going strong!

So I can hardly believe it but Matt and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on the 20th of August. It has been a fun ride so far and I couldn't have chosen anyone better to take it with.
Here are just a few highlights of the past five years together.

This was a hike we went on in Ogden at Waterfall Canyon.

As you can tell this is when Kaiya was born.

Floating the river at Lava Hot Springs.

This picture was taken at Christmas time at Temple Square about a month after Matt and I started dating.

This was Our wedding announcement picture.

This was a couple of years ago at the fair when we got brave enough to hold a snake.

This picture was about a year after we were married at my sister Andrea's wedding reception, Matt was working for the BLM at the time.

This picture was taken about a year ago when Kaiya was just a few weeks old.

This is one of my favorite wedding pictures. I Love You Matt! You will always be my sweetheart.

Kaiya Turns One!!

I can't believe how fast the last year has gone by. On one hand it seems like Kaiya was just born last week and on the other hand it is hard to imagine what life was like without her. She is such a blessing in our lives and we love her so much. We took her to her 12 month Dr. appointment and she weighed in at 19 pounds 1 ounce. She started out at 7 pounds 10 ounces.
These are some pictures we took in the first few weeks after she was born and below are some pictures from Kaiya's first birthday party.

She was really cute when we gave her her cake, she started by eating it one sprinkle at a time but after a few minutes she finally got into it. I like the one where she is sucking on the fondant monkey. I think she is the only one who actually liked the way it tasted. I made her cake and as long as you don't look too close at the details it turned out pretty cute.

South Dakota Summer Vacation

I know I haven't posted for a long time, so I figured it was about time to do a little catch up.
We drove to South Dakota a few weeks ago with Matt's brother Mike & his family. On our journey we had fun collecting stickers to put on our cargo carrier for all the places we visited.

Sorry the pictures are in reverse order, but these are a couple of pictures of our drive home coming down through Montana near Yellowstone.

We stopped at Devil's Tower early in the morning on our way home.

When we were in South Dakota we went on a tour of a gold mine in the Black Hills. I had to do the gold panning like a little kid but it was fun.

This picture was taken in Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickock was killed.

When we went to Mt. Rushmore we went to Sylvan Lake where National Treasure 2 was filmed it was very beautiful.

This is Matt sticking his hand in the rock from the movie.

Kaiya was very excited by the time we got to Mt. Rushmore!

We had a lot of fun at Mt. Rushmore, it really is amazing to see in person.

These next few pictures were taken when we went to the cosmos. It is supposedly this place where water can run uphill and has vortexes that suck you to certain spots but I'm still convinced its just the way they built the house on the hill. Regardless it was kinda weird.

When we were in Rapid City, Matt and his brother did a little reminiscing, this was where Matt used to play little league.

We stopped at Independence Rock on our way to South Dakota.

We had a really fun trip, hopefully I'll get some time to post again soon.

Happy Birthday Grandma Hope!!

We just wanted to dedicate this post to my mom, we hope you had a great birthday! We Love you, and miss you. Thanks for being such a good mom and grandma! Hope this face brightens your day a little!

Water Baby

We went to Downata Hot Springs with Matt's Family over Memorial Day and camped and swam at the pool. It was a lot of fun, we all enjoyed playing at the pool.

Kaiya learned in her swim class how to go under the water without crying, I guess babies instinctively hold their breath.

We tried to get a family picture under the water but you just had to guess where to shoot and aim so I was cut off in all the family pics but we got some really cute pics of Matt and Kaiya under the water!

I believe this is Bridger but its hard to tell under the water, it could be Conner, the twins seemed to love the water as much as Kaiya once they got used to it, it was like one big bath tub.

This is Kaiya trying to swim to her Daddy while he took the picture.

Mommy and Kaiya enjoying the sunshine.

Kaiya, Matt and I took a Mommy and Me swim class a month or so ago and she learned how to 'jump' to us off the side. It was funny she would get all excited and leap for you from the side.

Her facial expressions crack me up!

Kaiya loves the water as much as her Mommy does.

Matt and Kaiya having fun at the pool.