3!!!

My baby girl is now 3! I can't believe that 3 years ago little Lexie came into the world and made me a Mom. It has been the best experience to watch her grow and I look forward to many more years of us growing together. Her birthday was the day after we got home from CA, so we decided to stay at my parent's house one more night so we could celebrate with the entire family the next day. Here is the little birthday girl all ready for church.

Hoyt kept trying to climb the outside of the stairs, so my dad finally just let him sit up there and he thought he was pretty cool. Lexie then had to join in and sit up there too.

Our birthday parties are simple, but fun. We had a tasty Papa Murphy's pizza dinner after church. Lexie wanted Rapunzel cupcakes for her cake this year. I needed to do something simple since I just got back from vacation and I thought it all turned out way cute.

I loved the cupcake stand I found and Lexie enjoyed eating cupcakes and playing with the Rapunzel rings.

Happy Birthday to you...

The gifts...she loves her Rapunzel dress from Grandpa & Grandma!

She opened her big gift when we got home that night.

Both kids have enjoyed that gift.

At 3 years old Lexie has grown up so much. She loves life and enjoys so many things. Her favorite color is pink, and she is really into Princesses right now. I love how her imagination has grown; listening to her conversations with her toys and animals is always entertaining. She is constantly trying to use big words she has heard and thinks she is a really big kid. Potty training took a while with the 2 moves in less than a year, but once we were back and settled in our house she just starting going on her own and has done great since even at night! Lexie has know her alphabet and sounds of all the letters, colors, shapes and much more for quite a while and is starting to learn to write her name. She loves to have books read to her and then she will sit and "read" them to herself and knows some of her favorites by heart. She also loves going to the library to get new books, then playing at the park that is next to the library. She constantly begs to go ride her new trike outside. Her favorite show is Clifford the Big Red Dog and we often have a little Lexie dog in our house running around; the other day she even told me she had an appointment at the groomers. Her favorite food is pizza and she loves milk, apples, ice cream cones and chocolate; but she has recently started asking for vegetables so she can grow big and strong! Lexie loves going to nursery and singing "I Love to See the Temple" and many other fun songs she learns there. She always reminds us to read scriptures at night, and her prayers are really sweet and sometimes even funny because if she wants something she will pray to get it: like the night she prayed we could eat cookies and go to bed. She also makes me laugh because she tries to imitate me by taking her purse everywhere and has to put her credit cards and coupons in so she can be like Mommy. She is a great big sister and Hoyt just loves her so much and enjoys playing with her--even though she occasionally likes to steal toys and tackle him.

We love our sweet, bubbly Lexie Lou...Happy Birthday!!!

Anniversary Trip Days 3 & 4

Day 3 we were able to sleep in a little bit with no kids to wake us up. We did have to be up in time to get our complimentary breakfast, but that was worth it! We finished getting ready and our first destination was the gorgeous San Deigo Temple. There were tons of weddings going on that day, but we were able to find a parking spot eventually and we were able to do a session. For me it was the best part of the trip! We found a nice guy to take some pictures for us.

After the temple, we grabbed some lunch and headed to Legoland. Bryan really wanted to see it since he loved Legos as a kid. It was cool to see everything made of Legos and Bryan had fun taking a trip back to his childhood, but that park is really intended more for little kids so we didn't ride many rides or anything, but had a good time.

Loved the restroom sign!

The Lego store was really awesome and my brother would have gone crazy in there.

I had to get a picture with the buffalo!

Bryan with one of his hero's.

We did a little shopping at an outlet near Legoland, then we headed back south toward San Deigo and we were driving not far from the ocean. We stopped at the beach and it was the first time for Bryan to see and touch the ocean and he thought it was really cool. I was excited because I hadn't been to the ocean in 12 years!

Bryan seeing and touching the ocean for the first time!

Our names in the sand.

Enjoying the beautiful beach together. It was the perfect end to another wonderful day on our trip.

After the beach we drove around to look for somewhere to eat, but it got dark and we were tired so we headed back to our hotel and just got Chile's to go since it was right next to our hotel and we ate in our room and went to bed early since we had to be up and on the road early the next morning. We were going to go to one attraction Saturday morning, but a few days before our trip we found out my cousin was having his reception Saturday evening so we had to just get up and hit the road by 7 a.m. to get back in time to get our kids and go to that. We got up and got ready to go, grabbed some complimentary breakfast and were on the road at 7:30 a.m. Besides stopping for gas and a couple stores, we drove straight back and passed my parents heading to the reception just outside of town. We unpacked everything, changed, then headed to the reception. I didn't get many pictures but these were cute of Lexie & my cousin's daughter Ta'Kara and Hoyt love the fountain.

Hoyt loved the "horse" swing. My aunt Merilee had fun playing with him. He started saying "Wee!"

Anniversary Trip Days 1 & 2

For our 5th Anniversary, we decided to take a much needed vacation without the kids. Our last real vacation was our honeymoon so we figured we deserved at least one trip every 5 years. Our destination this year: Sunny San Diego (although the weather wasn't quite as sunny as we thought it would be).

On the morning on August 10 we packed ourselves and the kids and drove to drop the kids off for my family to tend for the rest of the week. It lengthened our drive by about 2 hours, but well worth the awesome babysitting services! We got out about an hour later than planned so we were already behind, but as the drive progressed we had made up about an hour by the time we reached just outside Las Vegas. However, they were doing some sort of closure on the freeway all through Vegas so we moved a mile in about an hour and had to get off and drive through the city, get gas, then find our way back on to the freeway that was open. By this time we were 2 hours behind schedule. We took sandwiches and snacks to eat on the way and I'm so glad we did because if we would have had to stop and get food we would have been even more behind. We finally arrived in San Diego and found our restaurant of choice called the Studio Diner. The deal was that we bought a $25 off a purchase of $35 or more for $2 online and we thought it would be no problem to get to that amount, but the hardest part was eating it all since their portions were huge. We got an appetizer and I got the Count of Monte Cristo sandwich that was awesome and Bryan got fish & chips that had a huge filet of fish. We got dessert to go and ate that later in our hotel. Yummy food, fun atmosphere and we ate for under $20 when tip and everything was figured in...awesome for CA!

We got so far behind that our plans for that night were shot since it was dark and cold. We gassed up and went to our hotel to try and get some rest for our busy day 2.

Our hotel for our last 2 days was paid for because we bought new tires from Big-O and they were having a promotion to get a 2 night stay at a nice hotel in CA. We decided to go for 3 nights so we had to buy a hotel on Priceline for the first night. Being such a cheapskate I bid low and got a room at the Kings Inn Hotel. The rooms weren't horrible, except for a musty, cave-like smell but we knew for about 10 hours we didn't need anything fancy. The next morning we were getting ready to leave the hotel and as we were checking out I saw some kids I recognized...yes, the Bonhams were staying in the same hotel as us on the same night. We thought it was hilarious that we would run into family in San Diego. We decided to all go to the Waffle Spot restaurant and Aaron generously bought us breakfast. It was tons of fun to see them and get to hang out for a little bit.

After Breakfast, we headed to the San Diego Zoo. It was a little cold that morning and we didn't have jackets with us, but after an hour or so it warmed up and actually was perfect weather and not too hot. We first took the bus tour of the zoo which gave us an idea of what we really wanted to visit on foot. We had lots of fun!

Pretty view from the zoo skyride.

Love to sit and watch the apes...they are awesome!

Cute Panda Bear and HUGE Elephant.

After the zoo we headed to Sea World. We had planned on doing our steak dinner between, but we were 2 hour shy of the restaurant opening so we decided to eat snacks and eat dinner later that night.

I absolutely love sea turtles. Aren't they amazing creatures?!

And what would Sea World be without Shamu. Such a great show...with the exception of one thing. As the show was ending and I was taking some videos, a seagull pooped right on us getting Bryan on the arm and me all down the back of my shirt. Some nice people sitting behind us had Clorox wipes so I was able to get most of it off before we had to walk around again, but it was not my favorite moment of the trip.

Loved the sharks and penguins!

On the Sea World Skyride, the view was beautiful and you could see the ocean in the distance.

Bryan's always wanted to see a Cirque du Soleil show, but we've never been able to go. At Sea World they have Cirque De La Mer which isn't quite the same thing, but was pretty cool. Here are a few pictures.

Now these guys were super amazing and strong.

After Sea World we headed downtown to the Gaslamp district to Urban Bar & Grill for a nice steak dinner. I had Filet Mignon for the first time and it was amazing! Bryan also enjoyed his sirloin, and again using the $2 internet deal our $70 meal came in around $40! It was a great meal to end a fun day. We were exhausted and headed for a much nicer Holiday Inn Express where it smelled great and we got a wonderful night sleep!