Birthdays and Disneyland!

We decided to go big this year and celebrate both girl's birthdays at the happiest place on earth!  

In February, we celebrated Addy's FIRST birthday!

In April, we celebrated Maya's FIFTH birthday!

Disneyland - again!!

We went to Disneyland again a couple of weeks ago!  We feel so darn lucky to have gone a few times this year!

We went during Halloweentime - so awesome to see everything decorated!
We also went to Mickey's Halloween Party and Trick-or-Treating, such fun!

Happiest family at the Happiest Place on Earth!

Maya loved all of the rides in Cars Land

Our little beauty

Maya loves seeing all of the Disney Characters!

Maya's most favorite character this time was Chewbacca!

We couldn't believe Maya was tall enough to ride some of the
'big-kid rides' like Splash Mountain!  And, although her face may
say otherwise, she loved it and kept asking to go again!

Another favorite Disney Character of  Maya's right now is Baily
from 'Finding Dory'.  She was all about the Baily stuffed animal!
And it's not a Disney trip without a yummy churro!

 We don't know when our next Disney trip will be, but we sure have lived it up so far this year!

May Yay!

May was so exciting!  We had a fun end of year preschool party!  And we celebrated my (Rachael's) 40th birthday!!

Grandma and Grandpa came to the end of year preschool party too!

Brandon took us for a hotel stay in Salt Lake for my birthday!
Look at that view from our hotel - beautiful Temple Square. 

My favorite birthday gift - Brandon took me to Alex and Ani to pick out some bracelets.
I picked Maya and Brandon's birth stones- to always have them with me. 

May Yay!

May was so exciting!  We had a fun end of year preschool party!  And we celebrated my (Rachael's) 40th birthday!!

Grandma and Grandpa came to the end of year preschool party too!

Brandon took us for a hotel stay in Salt Lake for my birthday!
Look at that view from our hotel - beautiful Temple Square. 

My favorite birthday gift - Brandon took me to Alex and Ani to pick out some bracelets.
I picked Maya and Brandon's birth stones- to always have them with me. 

3 Years Old!!!

Guess who had a birthday in April ?!?  How is this girl 3 Years Old already!  We are so grateful for the amazing blessing of adoption and the incredibly difficult decision her sweet birth mom made to place Maya into our family!  Maya, we love you so much!  Maya is a fun, sassy, happy, smart, grateful, helpful, strong, independent, outgoing, and thoughtful little girl! How lucky we are to be her parents!

We had a little birthday party for May with family a couple of days early, because Brandon and I made plans for a last minute surprise!

She sure loved the decorations and loved being the star of the day!

Maya was pretty specific about her cake, she wanted a Bubble Guppy Cake!
The difficult part of that was finding a bakery that made that specific cake, I couldn't
find one anywhere nearby!  So, I ordered some fun Bubble Guppy candles online and a
local bakery made a fun beachy/underwater cake, we added the candles, and it
looked great!  Maya was so excited about it!

Opening Presents!

Look who got a strider-bike!  She loved it and picked up on the idea of how to
ride it pretty quickly -- what a girl!

And on for the big surprise ... Brandon and I decided a few days before her birthday to take a last minute trip to, of course, Disneyland!  No better place to celebrate the BIG THREE than at the Happiest Place on Earth, right?

One Happy Faimly!

We always decorate the house for birthdays, and being away is certainly
no exception!  We brought decorations to keep our fun family tradition
alive at the hotel!  She loved waking up to decorations and presents!

Birthday Breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen!

Swimming at the hotel pool!

We didn't get to see the Sound-sational parade back in February so we made
sure to get a spot to enjoy it this time!

Ready to ride Winnie the Pooh!

Happy Birthday big 3 year old!

Easter 2016

Maya was pretty excited for Easter this year, many days (unbeknownst to us) she would get her hands on some jelly beans and hide them around the house pretending to be the Easter Bunny, we were finding hidden little jelly beans around the house for weeks!

With all of her goodies from the Easter Egg Hunt at preschool!

This little artist really got into painting Easter Eggs (and her hands) this year!

We each picked one of our favorite eggs for a pic!

Easter Sunday!  So happy the Easter Bunny filled her basket and even brought
her a new swimming suit!

February Disneyland Trip

In February we took a fun-filled family vacation to our favorite place -- Disneyland! We spent 10 days visiting the Happiest Place on Earth!  The weather was perfect and we had such an exciting time, it was difficult to come home!

One of our favorite spots for a pic in California Adventure!
Maya's favorite ride is close by in this pic, The Little Mermaid ride!

This picture!  Isn't it the best?  Brandon captured it just before The World of Color.
We love it so much we printed a large copy and Brandon has it hanging in his office at work!

I had so much fun dressing Maya in casual clothing inspired by Disney Princesses!

Maya wanted to dress as Princess Jasmine for the princess lunch at Ariel's Grotto.
It was so cute to watch her when a princess would come out, Maya would become
this little star-struck nervous eater.  She was in heaven, which made us so happy!

Characters! Characters! Characters!  This trip had a lot to do with meeting characters!

Summer Lovin'

Oh, what a fun summer we've had!  It's been jam-packed full of good times!  We started the summer off by saying 'bye-bye to the binky's'.  One day they all just ended up broken.  Maya did so well with it, if she saw a 'broken' (cut) binky we encouraged her to throw it in the garbage.  She really seemed to understand that the binkys were broken and we didn't have too much trouble.  Whenever she asked where it was we reminded her it was 'broken' and she just went on with whatever she was doing.

We also spent a fun day at Lagoon with family!

More summer fun included: 

Above left to right: watching parades, bye-bye binky, swimming with cousins, potty-training, Maya's best cousins she asks about every day, nickle arcade, drive-in movie, bowling, our nephew's wedding. 

Yep, you read one of those right - Maya is potty training!  Maya was more ready to start than I was so we figured it was time to start. :)  She was already going potty in the morning, and getting out of the bath-tub to potty, plus she liked wearing panties so we went for it.  She is doing so well and has a rare accident here and there.  What a girl!

Merry Christmas!

We hope you had the best Christmas!

Our fun started on Christmas Eve!  We had some shopping to finish up at the mall, so we stopped off to say 'hi' to Santa while we were there!  Then that night we snuggled up in our warm house to open our traditional Christmas Eve presents.

This girl sure does love Santa!  Never been afraid.  

We open three presents on Christmas Eve: 1. Christmas Pajamas, 2. New books, 3. a Family Game.

Christmas was the best!  Maya got a fully-stocked kitchen!  She knew right what to do without us showing her too! 

Merry Christmas all!