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!

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!

Happy Holidays!

We had the BEST time celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years!  The best part of it is the extra time we get to spend together and with family!

Happy Halloween

Thanksgiving

Merry Christmas

Happy New Year

Happy Easter!

We hope everyone had a happy Easter!  We spent the our Easter Eve putting our mad-skills to work decorating eggs!

On Easter Sunday we went to Mom & Dad's and had a delicious Easter Dinner, celebrated my nieces birthday, made resurrection rolls, and my mom put on her annual awesome Easter hunt for the kids!

Our Easter Baskets filled with Easter treats - glad the Easter Bunny stopped by!

The kids ready to get the Easter Hunt started!

Our Resurrection Rolls - See the empty roll?  Our marshmallow Jesus is gone!
Great and yummy way to teach the kids about the meaning of the holiday. 

Waffle Love

As you may or may not know, we love finding fun places to visit close to home!  Well, Brandon took me on a fun little adventure to a new place this morning!  

He took me to a super fun food truck  - Waffle Love!

I've been wanting to go for a bit, but we've never made it until today.  It was incredibly rich and delicious!  And ... I loved every single bite! ;-)

I'm glad we showed up just after they opened - by the time we got our waffles there were easily (at least) 20 people in line.  It's pretty darn popular!

Oh! ... and check out the fun cartoons of us! LOL!

I made them on this fun app called iMadeFace - it's a fun one to play around with ... if you're interested! ;-)

Have a great weekend!  

Day on the town!

I love family time with my man!  Brandon planned a nice date for us this weekend ... I sure do love when he plans stuff for us to do!  I really should do more of the planning myself, but he's so good at it ... and we always have so much fun together!

First, to the movies!  We LOVE going to the movies!  I love getting movie popcorn too, and yes, I drown it in butter, LOL!  I also only eat a little bit too -- sometimes I think I'm going to eat more of it (like yesterday), so we got a medium, and after a few handfuls I'm done.  I feel bad throwing all of that extra away ... but it sure is good! ;-)

Then, to a late lunch at Red Lobster.  I haven't been there in a while! Good food, great company, and a fun time looking at the little lobsters in the tank too!

The Love Day

We hope you had a fun loving Valentine's Day!  

We had a great Valentine's day - which actually started the night before Valentine's with two fun visits!

Our first visitor was an anonymous one who left hearts on our door and goodies on our doorstep!  What a fun surprise!

Our second visitors were my cousin and his adorable girlfriend  (I set them up by-the-way)!  They brought us delicious cupcakes and we had a great visit!

Then, the LOVE DAY itself!  The night before I wait until Brandon hops in the shower and I get to work hiding treats and surprises with cheezy love notes around the house and in his car.

Some of Brandon's surprises - I love hearing him laugh as he finds each one in the morning.

And he sent me a dozen long stem roses and balloons!  So sweet!  He sure does spoil me, and I love every bit of it!

I've gotten to be quite the pro at bringing home a huge vase of flowers over the years, thanks to Brandon!

Me, my flowers, and yes holiday hair clips - my preschool kids love it. :-)

My valentine decorations - a "Love" sign I already had and my flowers!

Last year we started the tradition of making chocolate fondue on Valentine's Day - and I continued the tradition last night!  We wanted to start a fun tradition that we can carry on when we have kids some day!

Happy LOVE Day to you!  I hope you had a fun day!