january happenings

the month january has been a busy one.

but it was one of those wonderfully busy kind of months.

excuse me while i play some catch up...

we rang in the new year at our house with a few friends and their kids. we sat around a fire while the kids enjoyed a movie outside and just relaxed, laughed and enjoyed the nice weather, fireworks, food and company. it was just the right way to start out the new year, and hopefully a precursor to the rest of 2012.

in the middle of the month, we gained a new family member by means of a marriage.

i love the energy that surrounds weddings. love is in the air and certainly contagious.

it was a beautiful day and wedding and i could not have been more happy for my sweet brother (in-law) and his new bride. their story is such a sweet one and i can't help but feel like they were meant for each other.

on facebook i posted:

a little over 2 years ago, i asked sarah to go on a date with my brother in law when he came home from his mission a year and a half later. she wrote him, and he her 211 times over the next 18 months, and when he returned, he took her on a date, and then another, and another.... today, they were married. welcome to the family, sarah, you've felt like family since day one.

and she really has.

one of my most favorite things about weddings is family togetherness and unity. i had a wonderful time with bryce's family, spending time and working together with wedding preparations and activities. admittedly, i was a little down once it was all over. but i didn't really have time to be down for long because the very next day, my ava babe turned 6.

i wanted her to feel special and avoid her birthday being overshadowed by the wedding happenings preceding her birthday. especially since she had been talking about her birthday for the past 364 days. we had a small family party with my side of the family on her actual birthday.

that in itself was enough for her to feel special. she loves being with her family, and her simple cake and presents met her six year old expectations perfectly... see?

her big gift from us was a purple hello kitty cruiser, complete with a basket, bell and no training wheels in sight.

we have to be the worst parents in the world because two weeks later, we still haven't had a chance to take her out and teach her how to ride it! i love that face of hers in this picture.

the day after her birthday we let her choose 3 friends to take with her to the movies and lunch. she had the hardest time narrowing down to just 3 friends... she kept switching back and forth between friends, i finally had to intervene and allow 1 school friend, 1 church friend and 1 old neighborhood friend. even that was hard for her, but she finally decided. she had the best time with these girls.

but our fun month was still not over! we had yet one more thing we were planning on squeezing in, our annual family trip to disneyland.

i will spare you all the details interesting to me and boring to you, but i will say that we had the best time. the weather was perfect, hardly crowded and lots of fun.

we spent two days between both parks and managed to squeeze in so much, partly because we opted to leave adele at home with my parents. part of me felt bad for leaving her out, and the other part was happy to have a little time to give all my attention to ava and emaline, who, for the past year, have had to take the backseat for a bit while newborn delly joined our family. what made this easy was knowing that adele would be well taken care of and given lots of love and attention from her grandparents. besides, she already went to disneyland last year and wasn't that impressed.

needless to say, the girls had a great time.

and so did we.

and adele? well, she had a good time too, but certainly let me know how mad she was at me for leaving her out as soon as we got home, she wouldn't let me go but cried furiously at me for a good five minutes.

tomorrow is february 1st and i have not one bit of plans... a perfect start to a new month, if you ask me. we could definitely use some down time.