Memorial Day Weekend in Utah

For Memorial Day weekend we went to Utah to visit Wesley's parents. The last time we had seen them was in Disney World (I guess only 2 months ago) but a visit was long overdue. Jake warmed up to them rather quickly, perhaps to make up for not warming up to them in Florida and we all had a great time. We were also able to see 2 of Wesley's sisters since they live nearby. One of them, Sherri, has a cute dog named Mandy and Jake just loved her (most of the time). Here's Wesley and Jake on Sherri's trampoline:

Mom and Dad Edwards took us to dinner one night to a place called Jeremiah's for some really good steak. Here's Jake with grandma and grandpa on the way into the restaurant. He was matching perfectly with grandma, so cute!
Jake has been giving grandpa a hard time and not warming up to him so well, but as soon as grandpa showed Jacob his sand box, Jake had a new best friend. Here they are reading a book together, one of Jake's favorite things:
Here's Jake and cousin Karli (Sherri's daughter) in the sand box. They played so well together, Karli is a sweetheart.
Jake and daddy on the swing in the yard

Daddy showing Jake grandpa's boat. He found the horn real fast
Aunt Lisa (Wesley's sister) holding Jake.
We went to the Treehouse one day and it has all sorts of fun activities for kids
This is an oversized chair with a granny face (which was chopped off in the picture). Jake was really bored with this part, he just wanted to move on to the fun stuff

Grandma showing Jake the farm animals. Doesn't he look like such a fun student sitting in that chair?

Jake loves to read. This was the Mexico room so it was fitting for Wesley to read a book in Spanish to Jake. That didn't last long, Jake wanted to move on
We went to play with the legos and all of a sudden we looked over and Jake was climing into the wheel barrow, it was so cute. (by the way, I had to double check the spelling of wheel barrow and boy are there a lot of mixed feelings on that word on the web)
Jake sitting on his throne

Cute chess set, especially because it's just Jake's size. I went online thinking we could get one and put it in our basement, fun right? But for $400 just for the chess pieces, I think a mini version will have to do
Future president of the United States... well if he wants to that's fine, but I certainly will not push him in that direction

And my final and favorite picture of my sweet baby - who is definitely not a baby anymore - sitting on a rocking chair reading a book, how precious is that?

Trip to California

We got back a week or so ago from California where my sisters and I threw a baby shower for my other sister, Amanda, whom is expecting her first baby in June. Wesley was able to make a business trip out of it, he had to be there anyway for part of the week so he extended his stay. We decided to just stay through Mother's Day so we were there for a week and a half and it was great to be there for that time. Lea and her kids came from St. Louis and Sam made it for the weekend and that was great! Aside from the baby shower which is posted below, we went to the park one night. Here's our little family at the park: Felecia and Logan on the way to the park:

Jacob can't get enough of the slide. Wesley pushes him up and lets go and Jake just slides down and gets the biggest kick out of that, as you can see below:

Jake and Daddy on the swings Lea and Taylor on the swings, isn't Taylor just the cutest?

Us four girls on the swings together
Mom and Dad Vick at the park
Us girls after church



Mason and Abby hugging, they are so sweetWe went to Claim Jumper for dinner one night. Can you believe that this is just 1/2 of the Vick family? This is only the girls, none of the Vick boys were there.
Mom Vick always has delicious desserts. Logan loves food. Here he is with strawberry shortcake - a loaded one at that, and this is his second helping!

Wesley and I love San Francisco. There are lots of fun memories there, and it's just so fun to be in the city. Denver isn't quite the same when it comes to going downtown, so we try to make a trip when we go to San Francisco to visit my family. Now that my parents are moving soon, we probably won't make it hardly at all, how sad! So, we've never walked across Golden Gate Bridge, I've lived in California for over 15 years and never done it. We went to San Francisco, ate lunch at Lori's 50's diner, then walked across the bridge, which was so much fun, I can't believe I've never done it. Then we drove over to Sausalito and browsed the shops there. It was a great day.
I just think this is the sweetest picture. My friend Becki was able to come for a visit while I was at my mom's house and brought her daughter that I've not seen for over a year now. She's (Maya) 18 months old and such a sweet, cute girl. I had to post this picture of the two of them.

Amanda's Shower

My sisters, mom and I threw a shower for Amanda (my sister, obviously) in California at my mom's clubhouse. Lea and I along with our families were able to go with and we all had a great time. I thought I would post some of the pictures of the decorations, we had a lot of fun putting it all together. Amanda loves Gerber daisies so we used that flower to decorate and wrapped ribbon around each bundle. In this picture, there are some block letters of Simon (the name of Amanda's baby-t0-be) that were made by Lea herself! She did an amazing job, if you can zoom in the picture, you should because the letters look great! This is a diaper cake that Felecia and I made. Amanda's colors are brown and green with a frog theme, thus the green and brown you see continuously.
Amanda wanted some mommy advice from her guests so we made a 'Penny for your Thoughts' table. There was a lot of great advice given.

This table has a bunch of prego pictures of Amanda. They turned out so adorable. The favors are also there on the table to the right that we made and put peanut m&m's in for people to take home.

We had a bunch of these scattered around the room. This is the food table. We had a brunch with donuts, crepes with chocolate, jam and/or powdered sugar, of course, and then there was a fruit basket. We had a really yummy punch of 7up and a passion fruit juice. YUM-O (like Rachael Ray would say)!!!

We had games, they were really fun and a bit different than what I've seen before but of course, we had to do "Guess her girth" and everyone used toilet paper to guess Amanda's girth. This was the only picture we got of her pregnant, and I'm so sad that I didn't get any other pictures of her cute belly.

Family Visit

Tanya (Wesley's sister) and her family came out to visit from New York a few weeks ago. They were checking out the area to see if this might be a place they would want to move to. We hope we sold them on it, because we would love having them live closer! Here are a couple of pictures of this visit. Here's Jason and Alana (Tanya and Dan's kids) while taking a walk. They just had another boy, Tyler who is in the cousin's picture below.

The kids all gathered around and decided to do some reading. Maddie really made herself comfortable. She's the best at making a 'nest' to get comfy.
Clint and Kara's kids, Tanya and Dan's kids, and Jake together, what happy little cousins! Oh,

Tanya and Dan, Kara and Clint and Wesley and I.

Jake loves Wesley's office and loves his electronics. As you can see, he loves to play with computers. We have a computer that is just about to die and Wesley let Jake play with it one night. He prefers to play ON it. It's funny the things kids can do. He was able to turn it on and get into all sorts of programs that I'm sure would take me a while to find.

Jake loves corn, well, he loves vegetables but loves it when I give him my corn on the cob. I will eat mine and let him suck on it afterward. He went to town with this one.

My latest favorite purchase!!!!

I love this set, just love it! I wish this is how my bedroom looked, but the picture I took didn't turn out very well so I found this one. I get so excited to just pass by my room so I can look at my new bedding set! I'm the kind of person who needs things changed around pretty often so now I can trade between this and my other comforter. And by the way, it was so cheap! I love a bargain and I love not spending full price on anything so this is doubly exciting! $69.00 at Linens 'n Things, can you find a cheaper deal that looks this cute?

MY BOYS

We went out to the backyard since the weather was gorgeous and Wes and Jake played together. It was so cute to watch them. They are quite the pair, Jacob can't stand to be away from him. Any time Wesley is around, Jacob HAS to be in his arms. He's definitely a daddy's boy right now.

It's the Big One!

Happy Birthday to my baby boy, Jacob! Born on Friday, the 13th of April at 5lbs 10oz, he was just the most precious. Every stage has been our favorite and I can't believe a year has gone by already! What a joy he is to us and I can't imagine life without him.

Doesn't he look so big? Here he is after church, what a handsome little guy!

We had planned a BBQ and invited a bunch of people over, but I thought since the weather was going to be nice and we'd be outside, we'd be fine in our backyard. Well, I'm finding that the forecast in Colorado is rotten. It said it would be in the 60's , well it wasn't. He was too cold for anyone to go outside so we had 14 adults and 17 children all inside my house. Thankfully, no one seemed to care that it was a little crammed and we had a fun time and yummy food. But, then I forgot to take a picture of Jake after he'd eaten the cake, I forgot about the HUGE macaroni salad I'd stayed up until 2am making and nearly forgot about the pinata. Some had already left and the rest stayed so we could do the pinata (and mostly so I wouldn't have a nervous breakdown). Are any of you like me where you want it all to go as planned and if it doesn't, then you get so bummed that it went otherwise? I never realized I was that way until just recently.

But, we got a cute little birthday cake that they give for free if it's the first bday. He didn't do as much damage as I thought he would.

He was a little nervous with the crowd of people staring at him but loosened up after a bit.

The kids were SO anxious for Jake to open his presents and enjoyed it thoroughly, as you can see them all crowded around him. They were all so cute trying to get him to open the gifts.

David (his cousin) missed Jake's party so on Sunday during dinner at Clint and Kara's, David pulled out their gift to Jake, a orange 'n cream popsicle, which was probably his favorite gift he received.

He couldn't get enough of this popsicle. He kept fussing b/c it was too cold on his fingers and when I took it away, he nearly flipped out, well actually there was a bit of a tantrum. It was pretty emotional for him... a bit dramatic for me.

Kara made a German chocolate cake and since Jake was familiar of all the faces in the room, he went to town! This picture was taken after I wiped his mouth a bit( I just kept forgetting about the picture taking...) but we enjoyed watching him eat it!

Max put a ball in Jake's jacket making him my little hunch back boy. I'm not sure when this was but I know that either Clint, David, Max or Maddie were around because Jake has a superb mohawk going on. You'll never see Jake without one when they are around. As much as I might protest the mohawk (mostly for church), I DO think it's really cute on him.

It was a great bday for Jake, he got lots of fun toys and LOTS of sugar to last him a whole year and I can't believe he's already 1! Happy Birthday to my big boy!