My cute little Kadenbug

For my little photography business, I've been running a "Winter Mini Sessions Special" so I needed a model for my advertisement. Naturally I chose Kaden so I didn't have to recruit someone else to help me out. He's very wiggly and often hard to photograph, but he can be coerced with silly words and Swedish fish to smile. :) And man, is he a handsome little guy! I just love his little personality and how it comes through in these pictures. I took these pictures in Mueller Park Canyon in Bountiful, which is about 10 minutes from our house. It's such a pretty canyon!

Ha, ha, I love this cheesy two year old smile! 

Kaden makes some of the cutest faces

The best part about taking his pictures is that once I can get him to laugh, he is the best photo subject. He loves when I say silly things. The way I got him to smile was by saying, "You are a Diaper Man." So ridiculous, but if it works, we go with it. :)

The laughter leads to this gem. I am in love with this handsome little man!

Of course I had to throw in this picture because he kept doing this with every stick he'd pick up. So funny!

Martin Luther King Weekend

We spent the weekend at my parent's cabin up near Bear Lake. Missy really wanted us to meet Tanner's parents, so Shawn and Charisse Orton came up, as well as Missy and Tanner, us and my parents.

We haven't had any snow this winter at all, except for on Christmas Day in Logan, so we were really excited to go sledding.  We had a blast just being outside, being dragged around on sleds behind the Can-Am, sledding with Kaden and just hanging out with everyone.

On Monday my parents rented a snowmobile for a few hours and we went to this really big hill in Logan Canyon. We'd sled down and my dad would pick us up at the bottom and bring us back up. I could only do 2 runs before it was too jarring to my stomach and I got nervous because of the icy snow that I'd get hurt, so I played photographer while everyone else sledded and played.

Kaden honestly loved playing in the snow or being pulled in a sled on a flat surface more than he liked the sledding. The hill was really big and fast and I think it scared him pretty badly. I'll admit, it was even a little bit intense as an adult since the snow was so icy you got a lot of speed going down, so I could see how that would be scary to a two year old.

Bump Pics

We are so thrilled about our twins that will be debuting in June 2015. I have been feeling pretty good now that I'm out of the first trimester. I was super nauseas all day long for a few months. I felt like all I did was eat to try and keep the nausea under control, which was interesting for me since I don't remember being nauseas ever when I was pregnant with Kaden. I guess having the added hormones will do that to a person.

I feel like everyone says you show faster with your second child, but I think the twins are speeding that process up.  I'm way bigger than I was with Kaden, and way faster. I'm not sure how much of that is just from my skin already being stretched out vs. the twin factor, but I'm excited and happy nonetheless.

14.5 weeks

17 weeks with Kaden (aka Couldn't Tell AT ALL) vs. 17 weeks with the Twins (definite bump)

 

18 weeks

We will find out the twin's gender on Feb. 2nd (Groundhog's Day) and consequently we'll also know if it'll be a long winter or not. :) I can't wait!!! We are so excited.

New Year's Eve 2014

I swear we spend the whole month of December making plans and preparations for Christmas and Christmas Eve and forget all about New Year's Eve. At least I do. So as usual, we realized about two days before that we hadn't bothered to make any plans until the last minute. We decided to throw a little "monitor" party (aka, invited people whose baby monitor range stretches to our house so they could come after the kiddos were in bed and listen for them on their monitors)  and invited a bunch of our neighbors. We only ended up having 2 couples show up of the ones that said they'd come, Zach and Elise Page and Brian and Jessica Seal, but we had a blast anyway! We were going to play games, but were having so much fun that we just chatted the whole night and laughed our heads off.  We are lucky to have some fun friends here in Bountiful.

Here's our New Year's Toast with our "Mormon Bubbly" aka sparkling cider in two varieties. :)

Zach & Elise

Brian & Jessica (who did NOT want me to take a picture, just for the record, but I told her I needed the memory captured)

Yours truly

Christmas Day 2014

This was such a fun Christmas because it was the first year that Kaden sort of got the concept of Santa and presents.  He was really excited to see what Santa brought him.  We opened stockings first and he got candy, (was supposed to get a Sesame Street ABC movie that didn't come in time... thank you Target.com for losing our order that I placed on Black Friday and then Amazon.com for not getting my last minute order here by the 23rd like you promised...boo), bathtub finger paints, and a bouncy ball.

Opening presents with the little boys actually took a long time since every present they opened, they wanted to play with immediately. By 9:00 am no one had opened more than their stockings and the little boys had opened a few presents. At 9:00 we paused our presents for an hour while we got to Skype with Kyle, who's on a mission in London, England.  That was fun to talk to him. He's going to be home in June, which seems crazy!

Around 10 am we resumed our present opening, one person at a time, which takes awhile when you have as many people as we did: Dana, Marv, me, Curtis, Kaden, Brad, Nicki, Jackson, Jace, Jason & Evan. It was fun to see what everyone else got though. We finished opening gifts about 11 am and then just played for the rest of the day. 

Kaden loved his giant bear that he named "Teddy"

Kaden absolutely loves to push things, so a shopping cart to go with his kitchen and play food was perfect.

Kaden loved giving Teddy rides in his cart, even though he was way too big.  In the background of this picture you can see some bunk beds. That was Jackson and Jace's Christmas present from their parents and the boys sure had fun playing on that most of the day, climbing up and down the ladder, sitting on the top and playing with their toys and just relaxing on it.

And by far Kaden's favorite present of the entire Christmas came from his cousin, Jackson from the family gift exchange. He got a musical instruments set and I don't think he's set the triangle down since he got it on Christmas Eve. 

On the 26th of December we headed to SoJo to hang out with my family for two days. Since we were having so much fun on Christmas and stayed in our pjs for most of the day, I totally spaced ever getting a picture, so I got one a day late at my parent's house. 

We celebrated Tyler's birthday a few days late on Dec. 27th by going to lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse and just hung out and opened presents. 

Christmas Eve 2014

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with the Fairbourns. We went snowmobiling and sledding in the morning. It was fun. The little boys didn't really want to sled and Kaden thought the snowmobile was "dary" (scary) so he didn't want to do that either. We spent most of the morning in the lodge because Kaden was hungry and by the time we got him full of food, he and Jackson and Jace were having so much fun running around and playing with each other, that they didn't feel like going back out.

That afternoon we went to see the movie "Annie." Kaden isn't that great at sitting through movies, so Curtis and I bought him his own popcorn and a big box of Skittles to try and keep him in his seat. It worked for the first hour until his food was gone. It was good that the theatre wasn't that full because Kaden spent the rest of the movie climbing on and off his seat, climbing over the row in front of us, running up and down our row, and playing on the stairs. Ha ha. The end of the movie was by far the best. I guess Jackson always dances to the credits at home whenever they watch movies, so he immediately ran down to the front of the theatre and started dancing and insisted that everyone join him. It was an awesome sight!

That evening was our "Shepherd's dinner" where we dress up like shepherds, eat on blankets on the floor and have our whole meal of finger food- bread, turkey, fruit, veggies and of course some sparkling cider. It was delicious as always! It's one of my favorite holiday traditions.

Dana had the lights out and all these candles everywhere for mood lighting and Kaden was ever so helpful to go around and blow them out one at a time! We kept re-lighting them and we tried to stop him, but gave up after about 5 minutes and just let him blow out all of them so we could enjoy our dinner without policing him.

Next, we all got in our pajamas. Curtis got this hilarious full body Ninja Turtle fleece outfit from Ty and Ashley for his birthday and he needed an occasion to debut it. He came in with the song "Lookin' for some hot stuff baby this evening" playing... ha ha! Everyone loved his pjs.

We all received light up/glowing elf hats from Dana and we wore them while we did a Christmas sing along with bells and everything.

The little boys each got to open a present from Nana before bed.  They got new kid-sized aprons. So cute!

They headed upstairs to frost cookies for Santa. Jackson was a pretty dedicated cookie decorator, while Kaden and Jace just kept eating everything that they frosted, or sometimes even before that point. Once the cookies were set out, it was off to bed for the little boys.

After the boys went to bed we played the Tommy Wright (right/left) present passing game.  Curtis won that and won money. Next we played the "present" game where you roll the dice and have to get doubles in order to start opening the present. There's a catch though, because you have to first put on a hat, scarf, and gloves before you can start unwrapping. Curtis won that game too and got more money. He's just good, what can I say?