Happy Anniversary!!

It's hard to believe it's been four years! It has flown by. I'm so lucky to be married to the most patient, loving and sweet man in the whole world. It's been the greatest four years of my life and I'm looking forward to many more!


We celebrated our anniversary by going to dinner and a movie, which may not sound that exciting--but for us it was!! I am really into Top Chef this season and Fabio has a restaurant in Moorpark called Firenze, just about 10 minutes away. So we went and he was totally there! It was awesome, we has a great time! The food was great and the atmosphere was really cool. Our upstairs neighbors Dan & Lori watched Teddy (they own the dogs in my previous blog entry) and he had a great time too.

They call it puppy love...

I don't know why this is underlined...but this post is dedicated to Teddy and the four-legged friends he loves so much...

Halloween...

This update is overdue, yes, but is it 6 months overdue? That's all I'm saying. We had a great Halloween, we went to Irvine and went trick or treating with the Bollard gang. I hardly took any picture though, I always default to Bill when we are all together. These are from our ward trunk-or-treat. It was such an ordeal getting Teddy's costume on, I never noticed it was on backwards... And the only way we could get him to keep his hat on was to keep stuffing his wet sticky fists full of skittles. We had a lot of fun.






Ben and I dressed up for a Halloween party...we went as polygamists. I wish I had a better picture of it, oh well. It was 99% fun 1% humiliating considering we had never me the majority of the people there...but we won most original costume, so at least we got something in return for the surrender of our personal vanity.

Punkins

Saturday we went to Underwood Farm for the Harvest Festival and had a great time. We'd never been there before and I was totally blown away. It is a fully functioning farm where you can pick your own produce (typically not my thing, but maybe it could be...), they have a petting zoo, hay rides...and a punkin patch. There were doggies and horsies for Teddy, free refills on sno-cones for Ben, and ginormous sunflowers for me. We even met up with my cousin Elise and her fam, it was great to catch up.

yeah yeah yeah...it's about time. i get it.

So I'm a blogger failure, what else is new? I will try and be better, but honestly, who knows. Geez, there is so much to catch up on! We had an awesome summer where we stayed cute and cool. We went on several great trips to Utah--including one where my little brother Taylor got married. We went to Lake Powell and, most recently, on a cruise to Mexico. My sister Amy & her family came to visit from Pennsylvania, as well as my cousin and best friend Patricia came for a visit from NYC and we had a ton of fun. Then, about two weeks ago, I ran away to San Diego for a couple days with my mother-in-law and the Wells girls where amidst a bunch of shopping and delicious food, I remembered all about the art of conversation and ketchup-free clothing.

Oh, also in September we moved from Northridge to Simi Valley and we are loving it!! It is the perfect situation for us right now, we love our apartment and Simi is much more neighborhood-ish and homey feeling. Plus we have been practically adopted by Ben's family out here (love you Juli & Shane, Wendy & Vince, Cassaundra & Dylan). So life is pretty great.

Teddy is as crazy as ever, he is totally into "car cars" (also called "doot-doot's") and train's, a.k.a "choo-choo's". He LOVES dogs and usually calls them "pike" in honor of our neighbor's dog Spike. He is a soda fiend (bad news) and he calls all food "ahbee". We are not sure why. Even though sometimes my head is stinging by the end of the day, I am so in love with him I could just explode! I wish I was the best mother in the world because he deserves it, oh well...one day at a time, right?

Before you get all cheesed out by this blog entry, let me say--there are still bumps in the road, mostly caused by me, but we are grateful for the life we've got. Here are some highlights from the past few months:

Birthday Boy!

Well our baby boy turned 1 on May 7th--we still cannot believe it. On his actual birthday we went to Toys R Us and then the Souplantation for dinner, where Teddy feasted on his favorites: Mac n' cheese, peas, and strawberries. He also had his first ice cream cone (see the video clip).



Then we had a birthday party for him that Sunday at his Grandma and Papa Bollard's house. My dad refers to this practice of stringing out the b-day celebrations as the 12 days of birthday, but it's pretty hard not to spoil him, we love him so much! So here are some pics, enjoy!

Kissing Cousins!

We took this video of Teddy and Max last week..it's pretty funny. (we think)

Katie and Troy Came to Visit!

Last weekend my sister Katie and her husband Troy came to visit us--and we had soooo much fun! They came in on Friday night and stayed until Tuesday morning. In just a couple days we packed in a ton of fun. We went to the Santa Monica pier and ate hot dogs on the beach, we went to the pier in Redondo Beach and had fresh steamed crabs, and spent a full day at Disneyland.
We felt so lucky to have them come visit and had a ton of fun.





As we were leaving Disneyland Teddy fell asleep on Troy, and we were all saying how we felt so jealous--he looked so snuggy and comfortable, and Ben said "yeah, I wish I had a giant to fall asleep on." Exactly. Here is Teddy with his giant.

I've got a bad feeling about this...

I think these pictures speak for themselves...

Good Times

This is Teddy's new "surprised" expression, he does it whenever something unexpected, fun or loud happens. I think it is hilarious! The things he does never cease to amaze me, he seems so small to do the things he does. He is my little buddy and I love him so much! Teddy and I took a trip to Utah and we just got back on Valentine's day. Ben couldn't take time away from work, so we made the trek mother-and-son style with my friend Morgan and her little boy Henry. We had such a great time! We stayed with my brother Will and just had so much fun.

Playing Catch Up...

I realize I have totally neglected our blog, but if you'll recall I did warn everyone up front that I tend to procrastinate things... So, after Christmas by incredible brother Will and his darling, fun family came to visit. We had such a great time!! Here are just a few of the highlights, it was seriously so much dang fun.