Birthday Girl

Our sweet girl turned ONE today. We can't believe it. We celebrated with a butterfly cake we shared with Grandpa & Grandma Taylor and my niece. Abby LOVED eating the cake as you can see from the pictures and videos below.

At age one, she's standing alone but hasn't taken her first step yet. She crawls about 50 mph. She gives me huge hugs with her head on my shoulder and sloppy open mouth kisses. She tries to mimic all the sounds she hears, even "kick it" at soccer games. She has 5 teeth and her favorite food is strawberries, although she's a very good eater and will eat just about anything. Her favorite person is her big brother, and she lights up every time she sees him. They crawl around on the floor chasing each other or wrestling. She also likes to crawl and chase our dog, but Toffee will have none of it and runs away when Abby gets near. She loves to flirt with people at church. She is such a happy girl and gets a smile from everyone who sees her. Abby brings all of us pure joy with her sweetness and smiles.

Not a second to waste!

Finger lickin' good!

She polished that big piece off pretty well

Kokopelli

Yesterday Tige ran his second sprint triathlon, the Kokopelli at Sand Hollow. There were about 450 participants. Tige did a great job and I was so proud of him. She shaved 33 minutes off the time from his first triathlon (although the 1st one was a longer bike ride and the both the bike and run were full of hills). He said the entire swim was crazy with bodies on top of each other, kicking and trying to get position in the water. Someone actually grabbed his ankle and pulled him backwards. What I thought was the most amazing is that he ran his 5k portion faster than he's ever run a 5k before, and that was after swimming and biking. Guess that Garmin heart rate monitor he bought himself is paying off.

Good thing he waved or I'd have never found him.
Bike transition

Coming in on his blue bike

What a beautiful backdrop for a race

The final stretch of the run

A big thanks for my mom and dad for staying here Friday night and watching our kids Saturday morning and hauling them to Kason's soccer game so I could go to the triathlon and support Tige without my kids in tow. And since Tige was so fast, we even made it home for Kason's soccer game! My husband is awesome, what can I say?


A little video of the swim start. (And this was just one of 5 heats)

Standing Unassisted

Abby can stand up unassisted now, although she's still very wobbly. She turns 1 year old in 3 days. We can't believe it. How long do you think it will be before she can walk?

3 New Nephews and a Holiday Weekend

For Labor Day weekend, we traveled up to Afton, Wyoming for the baby blessing of Andy's baby. On the way, we stopped by Kamas to meet our other new nephew, David's baby boy. David's baby, 2 weeks old
Abby found a horse to ride at David's house, which she loved.

We stopped to ride the Alpine slides in Park City.

Kason's exact words after his first ride were "that was wicked awesome!"

When we arrived in Afton, we met nephew #2. Andy's baby, 9 weeks old.

Andy & Rachel were fabulous hosts and we all had fun. Andy took everyone for a hike and we got to watch that awesome BYU game Saturday night.

The kids enjoyed the park. Jeff's son is growing little blonde curls in back like Jeff had when he was a baby. So cute.

The boys found a new way of playing with the bocce balls.

Nephew #3 was a surprise to us all. Clark's wife was due on October 17, but on Saturday night, she went into labor 6 weeks early. Afton is a little town with a small hospital, and they don't like babies who come 6 weeks early. So Char was life-flighted to Salt Lake where she had a baby boy on Sunday. He's in the NICU in Salt Lake for a little while, but they're both doing ok. We hope we get to meet him soon.

On the way home yesterday we stopped off at the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum to break up the long drive home.

We caught the IMAX movie and saw lots of dinosaur fossils. It was a great museum and we all enj0yed it.

Kason's favorite part was, of course, the sharks!

Thanks Andy & Rach for a great weekend filled with family, good food, and tons of fun.

Grandma Great

We got to spend the day today with Great Grandma Taylor who is visiting from California. Tige kept the kids while Grandma & I went out to lunch and visited her friends. I had to post this adorable picture since they all 3 have such cute smiles.

Abby 11 months

Kason 5.75

Great Grandma 86