Thanksgiving & Bryce Canyon

Sawyer and I kissed George goodbye on Thanksgiving day and flew back to Cedar City. All of my siblings (minus Alethea who is off playing in NZ) were gathered at my parent's home. We arrived around 4 p.m. and were so excited to see everyone and eat up the thanksgiving dinner leftovers. It felt like summer too with clear blue skies and temps in the 60's.

Mac & Steph's dog, Bug, decided to take the day and have an outing of his own. So after dinner we went out on walks trying to find him. Unfortunately we didn't have any luck, but prayers were answered and when Sara & Joe were driving home from the festivities around 9 p.m. they saw a police car in front of the doggie jail, so they pulled over and sure enough they were just bringing in Bug. That was awesome timing!

George has been working so hard (80+ hour weeks!) and we're so grateful for all he does for our family. I feel so blessed to have him as my man. I hope he knows how much we love, appreciate, and respect him! He is such a great example for Sawyer, and will be for our next little guy.

The train set provided hours of entertainment. Sawyer was unsure of the trains at first and was named 'Babyzilla' because he would come crashing through and rip the trains off the track before it could get too far. He is quite advanced now and goes for the controller instead of the train, and he says 'choo choo choo choo' over and over in a frantic tone.

On one of our many walks in Cedar - this is the sheep tunnel that goes for an amazingly long way under the streets of Cedar. I asked the group to throw signs to go along with all the graffiti...look how gangsta they all are, we got bunny ears and everything!

A couple days after Thanksgiving we headed to Bryce Canyon Nat'l Park. Somehow I've managed to never visit this park, even though it's only a 2 hour drive from Cedar. I've been missing out! It was amazing. I'll never tire of beautiful red rock. It helped that we had perfect weather.

The whole gang at Bryce - sadly David had to leave us before we went exploring.

The Grandeur!

These two are such great buds, I love it!

The trail we took was between Sunset and Sunrise Point. On this particular section there was a lot of Oregon Holly Grape Bushes - we even found three berries.

Thank you for the crossed eyes Maccy.

Awww the cute Alaskans :) Chris loves getting his picture taken.

You can see part of our group on the trail to Queens Garden.

I have SO many blessings in my life. What a neat holiday, to celebrate gratitude.

Snow Family

On Sunday afternoon (Dec 4th) we headed out to Joe and Sara's house to play in the snow.

For the most part we all had a good time.

Although there were a few tears!

Here is our snow family, complete with a snow bunny.

Our Big 1-year-old

Almost a month, late...but I'm finally getting the blog caught up.

What an adventure this past year has been with our precious Sawyer baby. We love this little guy SO much and are very thankful for him. He's already taught us so much!

Papa and Sawyer on his 1st birthday. We had to video chat with papa because he was in BC and we were in UT. We were sad we couldn't all be together, but happy we at least had video chat.

Mama and Sawyer - can't believe how fast my baby has grown!

That's my boy...devouring his dark chocolate cupcake!

For his birthday we had Kaden, Sadie, Grace, Evie, and Dean (and the adults Grandpa & Grandma Lewis, Sara, Kate, and myself) over for dinner and cupcakes. He didn't go crazy on the cupcake right off, but took his sweet time, and then got into and ended up eating the whole thing plus some. He gave me and grandpa a bite first to make sure it was edible :) All the kids helped him open up presents. Sawyer didn't mind, he had more fun looking at papa on the computer screen. Thank you all for coming and celebrating with us!

Evie always has lots of hugs ready for Sawyer :) (Dean, Grace, and Kaden playing in the background.)

Morning after party - I taught him how to rub a balloon on his head and stick it on the wall. He got the rubbing it on his head part down :)

He's an active little guy and his stats prove it (He hasn't really gained weight since he started crawling and walking.):

Weight: 22 lbs. 3 oz. - 41%

Height: 32" - 96%

Head Circumference: 49 cm - 97%

He currently has 6 teeth - 4 on top 2 on bottom. In the morning he loves to eat bananas and snack on cracklin oat bran (and drink whole milk). He's been an awesome sleeper lately and usually goes to bed around 8 p.m. and gets up around 7 a.m. Plus he'll take a morning and afternoon nap for about an hour long each. He loves playing outside and is always an angel on walks in the stroller. He doesn't listen when I tell him 'no', although he does get a mischievous grin after I say no and keeps doing it and will sometimes repeat 'NO NO NO'.....hmmm. He loves doggies and will say 'ruff, ruff' whenever we see one. He'll bring me books to read to him, but will hardly sit still to read even a few pages. He's SO curious about everything. He's a pretty clean eater. If all of his food doesn't quite make it in his mouth, he's sure to clean his face off before the next bite. But he's not good at taking only one bite at a time and will usually stuff as much food in as possible. He also likes to throw his food/drinking cup off his high chair when he's all done, ugh. Why do babies do that? I love the wrinkly nose cheeser grin he does so often :) He recently stole my phone and deleted ALL my calendar events. I don't care about the doctor appointments and birthdays...I can figure those out, but I had all his milestones saved in there and hadn't written them down yet :( SO sad. It seems like he mostly is running, not walking...definitely always on the move and getting into everything. He rearranges things for us quite often and I find all sorts of things stuffed under the fridge and into the cupboards and drawers that he can reach (socks, shoes, toys, books, etc.). He hates getting his diaper changed. I keep telling him if he uses the potty we wouldn't have to change him, ha! He loves toys that play music or make sounds. He's just started to get the hang of using a fork so he prefers to feed himself, and actually does pretty good. He also has been interested in drawing/coloring lately. He got his first facial bruise this week by tripping and slamming his nose/mouth on the door jam. The bruise is right on the bridge of his nose, ouch! His vocabulary has stayed pretty much the same since last month, but lately he has started to mimic me a lot more. Just yesterday he tried to say cracker and fishy, although to the layman ear it would be hard to understand. Current words: dooog, vroom vroom, mama, papa, uh-oh, whoa, baby, night-night, bubble, no, more, bye (says it with a southern accent, more like baa), ball, banana (sometimes just nana) and some animal sounds: ruff ruff, bok bok bok, meow, rooaaar.

It's been a great year and we look forward to see what the 2nd year entails!

Sawyer 1-year-old Photo Shoot

How is it possible in just one year's time to go from this:

To this:

This is Sawyer sitting in his Great Grandpa Roy's chair.

Nicole has done it again! She took photos of Sawyer when he was a newborn and now as a 1-year-old! I LOVE how they turned out. He really broke out the fantastic Sawyer smiles when we stripped him down and let him get in to his cake. Speaking of cake...what photographer makes a personalized cake to go along with a photo shoot??! That really was so sweet of Nicole and her family, thank you thank you!! She does a great job, check out her blog here or facebook page here and book her to take your family photos (she travels to California and northern UT pretty frequently.) Thanks again Nicole!

Sawyer behaved pretty well - as well as a 1-year-old wants to sit still for any amount of time. The above two photos were his ideas for poses :)

Aren't these the BEST photos?? LOVE them!

Apple Weekend

The last Saturday in October was our annual trip to Colorado to press fresh apple cider. It was a fantastic time, as usual. We sure missed having George with us this year.

I can't get over how sweet cider tastes...no additives just all that natural sugar packed into apples. We had great weather and the sun warmed us up nicely. We got to visit Uncle Steve and our cousins Seth and Caleb, and we stayed with the wonderful Watts family.

First stop, apple picking at Uncle Steve and Uncle Brian's orchard:

Next up, eating apples:

And pressing and drinking apples (38 gallons):

And playing:

The Watts home is amazing. They have a brick oven built in to their kitchen and we got to fire it up and make delightful pizzas on Saturday night. My favorite combo was the goat cheese, pear, and blueberry pizza...more like a dessert but delicious! The pears caramelized and the combo tasted fantastic.

David shot an elk the day before so we enjoyed the tenderloin...roasted those in the brick oven as well...tender just as the name says.

Another very cool feature in their home...water!

Another fantastic fall visit to Colorado. We look forward to these trips each year.