Family Reunion

We had a very good time at the reunion this weekend. It was great to sit, relax a little (as much as you can at least when you have toddlers), and enjoy great company. It was so cute seeing all our little ones playing and discovering things together.
I was surprised with how much we enjoyed learning about our ancestors. Grandma put a fireside together for the whole extended family in which we talked about our ancestors' legacy of faith, sacrifice, and commitment. Each couple was supposed to share a story of one ancestor. Grandma and grandpa asked us to read some stories they had given us, and prepare to present at the fireside while they took care of our kids. At first we were all complaining a bit and being silly, but once we started reading, we became really interested in the stories. We quieted down, and every once and a while I could hear a "wow" here, or a "can you believe that" there. I was very impressed with the great ancestors we have.
We had some not so spiritual moments that were pretty interesting too. It is always funny when siblings get together and start talking about how mean one was to the other, or how crazy they were in the past. We had a pretty candid conversation on Friday night... I'll just say it was interesting... those who were there will probably agree with me :)
We missed those who couldn't be there with us. We gotta figure out a way to all get together sometime, even if we have to use webcams for that.
Well, this post is getting pretty long, so I'll stop here. I did post the pictures I took on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/upoopoo/sets/72157606407322022 so you guys who weren't there can see a little of what we did. I tried to write some descriptions of most pictures. I have to say I don't have the talent Winnow has for story telling, so the descriptions are pretty straight forward. Also, I'm a very biased parent of a very cute girl, so there are a lot of pictures of her. Here is also a little video showing how much she liked the Canyon. Enjoy!

Isabel is One!!!

Isabel turned 1 on Saturday. It's hard to believe that a whole year has gone by already. It really was a wonderful year. The Lord is so wise in giving us the chance to be parents. I feel being a parent helps us understand Him better, and hopefully it helps us become more like Him.
It is so easy to love Isabel. She is always doing something cute. She is always either smiling or talking (her giberish is awesome), or cuddling with something... she is cute even when she is being naughty (when we tell her not to do something, she says no with her head and index finger - but she keeps doing whatever she was doing... it's bad, but it's cute). Mike is just in love with her. He stops at least a couple of times a day, looks at me and says, "I love my little girl so much!". She sure loves him too. She gets all happy when he gets home from work or when I bring her into our room first thing in the morning (She looks at him and says "Papa" all smiling).
Since we're not doing her little party till the 22nd, we dicided to take her swimming on her birthday. A couple of our friends who have babies almost the same age as her came along too. Go to our flickr site to see the pictures http://www.flickr.com/photos/upoopoo/sets/72157606142705881/

The Cuddler

Isabel loves to cuddle with anything that's fuzzy now: blankets, pillows, books, Phoebe... I love it when I go check on her after I've put her to sleep and find her sleeping on top of her touch and feel books, cuddling with the fuzzy pictures. I really need to get a picture of that.
Here are some pictures of our trip to Restoration Hardware, where she found a very fuzzy pillow, and to Borders, where she found some fuzzy puppets.

House Photos

Mike bought me a camera this week (we used to take pictures with our video camera), so we went to our new house to get some pictures. Would you like a tour? www.flickr.com/photos/upoopoo/sets/72157605977321615/

That's just the first one. Go to the flickr site to see the rest!