Our fault, bad planning, but we were nuts that week. Chad’s mom was flying out of SLC to go to Canada and we asked her to come down early to babysit for us so we could do our annual new temple trip. Since we picked Ogden as our new temple we decided to do her party up in Bountiful on March 29 so family wouldn’t have to drive. We went to a playplace and decorated a table with a sick amount of pink. Only to have our sick girl sit there and be sad for the first 45 minutes and Chad totally embarrassed. I had a great picture of her looking pathetic, but Chad deleted it on accident. I’m still telling myself it isn’t a big deal.

She finally decided that a pink princess party at a playplace was pretty fun. Tangled and a giant pink dog improved her spirits too.

On her real birthday, Chad was in Canada and I was tired. I ended up making funny face pancakes after a very long day. Hopefully next year she won’t be sick and we will all be home.

She is growing up way too fast. Did she turn 3 or 13? I can’t remember. She gets a satisfied cute face at the end of a good love story; I did NOT teach her that. She would love to wear  a dress 24/7, can wear 10 accessories at one time, run in high heels and tells us how to dress. Chad had a shirt that had a big graphic on the back and she kept insisting that is was on backwards. I wore a polka-dot dress for Easter and she was certain it wasn’t pretty enough. And soon after her birthday and a lot of Tangled watching, I caught her kissing a little boy!!!  She lights up our lives in unexpected ways. We love her so much.

Auretta kept asking if it was time to go every 2 minutes. And right before it was time, we heard a knock on the door and it was our friends, Heather and Alice, ready to leave early. The girls were just too excited to wait any more.

An hour before the ballet they had a met and greet with the ballerinas. Auretta was just quiet, taking it all in and then getting shy when one of them would talk to her. After 40 minutes or so she got brave enough to touch the tutu’s while they weren’t looking. All the beautiful princesses combined with the sucker, and it was wonderful (that is Auretta’s new word and it is so dang cute when she says, “That is so wonderful.”)

We sat down 20 minutes early and she would not leave her seat in fear that we  would miss something. She sat the whole hour and a half, with a little butting wiggling at the end. She wanted to dance too. There were two intermissions so it worked out perfect. When we got in the car to go home she said, “That was so beautiful!” We had an amazing time. I love my little girl so much; it was great to spend the night with her.

3 days old

1st Birthday

Now

We had a fun birthday party full of April Fool’s decorations including the table settings stuck to the ceiling. Patrick was very worried. “If we eat up there, we will fall” “Water will spill out of the cups.” But after a few pictures we all stood on our chairs and took them down.

The cake, oh the cake, was so much fun! Spaghetti and meat balls. It looked real. But alas, the strawberry topping did something funny to the otherwise yummy cake, and it didn’t taste near as good as it looked. Probably a good thing since we got our Easter baskets the next day. It was fun to make for one year, but I would rather go with the funny looking cake that tastes amazing.

Really, it is a cake

She is a happy light in our home. It is amazing that she has only been here for 2 years. After holding that sweet baby for 10 minutes, it was as if she had been a part of me for an eternity She is Patrick’s best friend and Chad’s baby girl. We love her so much!

And in closing, here is a picture of the black eye she got in Texas.

3 days after the fact.