Happy Birthday Dutch!!

My BEAUTIFUL, baby girl turned 1!!! I can't even believe she is already a year old. Though it's hard to think of my life before she was in it. She is such a joy! We are so in love with her!

STATS

height-29.8in-74.5%

weight-21.23lbs-54.41%

head-18.5in-93.28%

She is walking now. She started taking good steps a little before Christmas and she has taken off. It is her first choice but she doesn't usually make it to where she is going before she falls and then crawls the rest of the way. When she does make it she is very PROUD of herself but not as proud as Jackson is of her. He praises her with every step that she takes. He gets very excited and wants to make sure that nobody misses it.

Here are some of the words she is saying

hi

mama

dad

bye bye

uh oh

ow

pampa (grandpa)

ba-ba ba-ba (♫ backpack ♫ backpack)(from Dora)

nana (banana or any food)

tane tyou (thank you)

two - tee (two and three) one time I yelled ONE at Jackson and she finished for me

I'm pretty sure she says Jackson but it sounds nothing like Jackson she just mimics our inflection when she calls for him

This was her adorable cake that my neighbor Drie made for her

Playing patty cake in her birthday dress
(she is marking herself with a D)

Sitting on her presents and eating the wrapping paper

(just like a one year old)

Her first taste of cake

Don't worry she got the hang of it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DUTCH GIRL!!

New Years Eve!!!

We rang in the New Year with an AWESOME Vegas style masquerade party. It was super fun making the masks. We made like 10 and there were only 4 girls. We used the extras for decor. We played games all night and ate really, really, good food. It was a GREAT night. How did you ring in the new year?

Ben wore his grandpas tux
I have to say my husband is a handsome man!

My camera died right after these pictures I don't have any of the group. I am going to try and get some from someone else and then I will post them. It was a good lookin group!

The Babes First Christmas

Dutch LOVED her new care bear!

On Christmas Eve we had a party with some of our neighbors and Miss Kallie's boyfriend. In the tradition of my family we made chili and sugans (aka fried bread...other people know them as scones and they were called anything from scogies to scooners at our party by people who just couldn't remember what we call them). We also had a white elephant gift exchange where I received glasses that say BLING on them. They are AWESOME! And in the tradition of Ben's family we opened PJ's and spent the rest of the night and the whole next day in them.

Look at how cute my babes hair is!
(Christmas morning)

Jackson's reaction to everything was "What the......Where did this come from?". And then he would literally hold every present over his head so that I could take a picture of it and then he would go ask his dad to open it so that he could play with it. I have about 10 more pictures just like the ones below!

Jack got Ben "Starwars Monockoly". They were both very excited about it! Jackson was so excited that from the time we bought it he asked Ben where it was everyday. Which sort of ruined the surprise. Good thing he was so cute about it!

This Christmas really turned out wonderful! We even had a chance to teach Jackson about giving and about what Jesus would want him to do. Kallie's singles ward last minute adopted a little family that was going to tell there 5 year old twin boys that there was no Santa because they didn't have enough money for Christmas. They announced it at church on the Sunday before Christmas and were collecting things that night at ward prayer. So Ben being the GREAT guy that he is dug into his unopened Starwars collection (which is bigger then even I knew) and found two storm troopers that he was willing to part with. We decided to let Jackson in on it. Luckily the day before we had read an article in the Friend about a secret giver. When we first showed Jackson the toys he really wanted them!!!! We explained what we were going to do with them and why and reminded him of the story. After about 5 minutes he was ready to give up one of the toys........." How about this one stays here and you can take this one." big smile"...and you can take this one too." It was so sweet when he decided to let us take them both. Kallie and I then went to our neighbors who gave away an amazing amount of food and gifts to the family! Apparently Jackson thought that we went to give the little boys the storm troopers because when we got home he was jumping around asking what they said about them. He really is a GREAT kid! Thank you to everyone who helped make this Christmas so special. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!