1 year!!

Well it has been a fast and crazy past couple months and I can't believe I have a little toddler now! That is right, Madison turned 1 last month! I feel like I have SOO much to blog about, so expect a lot of catch ups in the next few weeks!

The main thing that has kept us busy the last few months has been MOVING!! After many long months of looking for houses and waiting on short sales, we finally heard back on a house we really liked and we closed on it the end of April. We were busy the next month and a half painting and doing some projects in the house so that we wouldn't have to do much when we moved in. Like most of you, packing and moving and unpacking is not my favorite thing to do... haha but it has consumed most of my time over the last few months (thus the no blogging or looking at anyone else's blogs!) But we have finally settled down a bit and hopefully I will have some more time to post because I have lots to post about and hope you don't get sick of me!

So I will shortly be posting some vacation pics, house pics and some new pics of Maddie, since she has changed quite a bit from my last post...

A little update on my girlie... Like I said she is now 13 months old. At her year appt she weighed 19.29 lbs (20%), was 30.31 inches long (80%) with a head circumference of 17.9 inches (62%). Madison is finally walking like a champ! She started taking steps on her own around 11 months and now finds great satisfaction in being able to walk around everywhere without help. Madison continues to amaze me by how quickly she learns. She started signing at 5 1/2 months and said her 1st word at 7 1/2 months... and I just counted them up today, but now at 13 months she knows

53 signs and 107 words!!!!!

No joke! She has such an eagerness to communicate and learn! She watches and listens carefully so now we have to be careful what we say and teach her because she picks things up so fast (for instance, the word NO!... haha... wish she hadn't learned that word yet but oh well, guess it woulda happened sooner or later... :) haha But really, every stage gets more and more fun and i absolutely love being a mom!! :)

Here are a few recent random pictures of my little (or, not so little anymore) :( girl...

I LOVE this picture of Maddie and Daddy!! Look at that adorable profile! :)



The little climber...

Her new thing is coloring! She'll see markers or crayons and yell "La-lure, la-lure!!" (color) If there's a pen or pencil laying around, she'll grab it and pretend to draw. She loves it :)

Aquarium

Nick and I decided to buy season passes to the Living Planet Aquarium right after they got the penguins. We've gone twice and both times it was so packed! But we still had a good time and Maddie loved all the fish and other moving creatures. Here are a bunch of pictures we took of our trip to the aquarium...

The penguins were sooo cute!

Maddie clapping for herself in the canoe!

The first time she went with mommy and daddy and the second time we went with Grandma, her two aunties and 2 cousins...

Maddie and Auntie Dani

She pointed to everything! Here are just 4 pictures of probably 20 or more of her pointing to all the cool stuff at the aquarium

The girls and the kids

Trying to get one kid and 2 babies to sit still for a picture is pretty much impossible. This is the stillest picture we got...

It lasted like 1 second and then Maddie was on the move...

She's smiling so I guess she thought it was pretty funny to crawl away from the picture taking

Like I said there's no way to get 3 kids to all smile at the same time in a picture... at least not in my experience! Look at the cousins... they all have different funny faces!

Grandma and her cute grandkids!

Nathan's got a straight face in both of the pictures and Josh and Maddie are apparently making some kind of noise... :)

At least Auntie Dani's looking at the camera :)

Fun activities..

Well I'm so glad the weather is getting warmer and I can take my daughter out to see and do more things! We've done some fun new things this past month, and I get just as excited as Madison when she explores and sees new things.

She absolutely loves animals (what kid doesn't I guess?), especially horses (she has a favorite stuffed horse named Trotter). My sister-in-law was house sitting for some people that had 2 horses, so we went out there twice to show her and I think she really liked them!

Feeding the horses

One of the first things she wants to do when she wakes up in the mornings or from naps is go see her rocking horse or her stuffed animals. She will point to them and do her famous "oooooh" mouth...it's so cute!

**More animals!

We went to a play group at Gardner Village a few weeks ago. It was such a nice day and there were ducks and birds everywhere... Madison loved it! She is getting so good at finding birds in the sky and pointing to them and doing the sign for bird. She is so observant!

Look how close this goose let us get

Our friends Whitney and Ezra

**We started baby aquatics a few weeks ago. It's an 11 week parent-tot class. Madison LOVES baths so I figured she'd have fun swimming too! She has done really good so far, except when she gets dunked and especially when the instructor does it! Poor thing, but she is catching on and I'm sure it won't bother her after another few times. She goes with little Ezra, who has taken the course already and he is a pro! They have lots of fun together!

Working on her floating

She's a little fish! She will be all ready once summer comes!

**Madison's first time at the playground! She loved the slide and swings as you can tell!

**My sister and I have started doing a monthly play date with the kids (I'm sure we'd do it more often if we lived closer!) We switch off houses and this time we were up at her house in Farmington. They have some cool walking trails nearby so this is us on a walk...

**The annual Spring Gruv up at the Canyons.

We went up this year with Nick's brother, Patrick, and my sister, Danielle. They have free concerts and pond skimming (which we missed). People go crazy and come dressed in all sorts of weird outfits. The best part is probably the people-watching... it's very entertaining! haha

On the gondala