January Miscellaneous

It's been a really fun interesting month!  Joe and I got to take a mini vacation to Prescott with Henry, which was really nice.  We all got the flu and were sick for a couple of weeks, which really sucked.  We celebrated Henry's first birthday, which was wonderful.  Evie got freaked out and stopped sleeping for a couple of weeks, which was just terrible.  And Joe, whose company had the contract for all of the large format signage and graphics for the Super Bowl, had a pretty crazy and stressful month at work.  While taking photos downtown for work, Joe happened to find a crazy amount of money laying on the sidewalk, (which no one has claimed, yay!).  And finally, we had some light rain for a couple of days, our roof leaked and was dripping water from the ceiling in our living room.  (Thankfully, it was an inexpensive repair).  But we also had several fun outings with the kids this month.  Whew!  So here are some photos of our cute kiddos:

The Zoo!

For Christmas this year, my awesome aunts gave us a membership to the Phoenix Zoo!  We are so excited!!  I got to take Evie & Henry this morning after their doctor's appointments, and they had so much fun!  I opted to rent one of their double strollers since it would be a bit easier than the wagon, and exploring the zoo requires a good amount of walking (for me).  Henry really enjoyed the ride in the stroller and sharing Evie's giant pretzel.  Evie really enjoyed seeing all of the animals, yelling at the lions to wake up, watching the monkeys play, watching one of the monkeys pee mid-swing, and playing on the tractor at the kid's farm area.  She had so much fun on the tractor, in fact, that she wet her pants, thus ending our trip to the zoo this time.  We'll be back soon!!!  

Dinner at Syl & Steve's

Another great dinner and super fun evening with Syl, Steve & Sophia!

Hot Air Balloon Festival

A few weeks ago, I saw a Groupon for admission to a hot air balloon festival, and thought it sounded like fun.  We got to try out our new wagon, which worked out really great and both kids really enjoyed it.  The balloons were really beautiful, we ate a pizza picnic dinner on the grass, and Evie got to play in the kids area.  We decided to skip the fireworks this time because it was getting late, but it was a fun evening!

Henry's First Cupcake

For Henry, I thought that angel food sounded like a good first birthday cake.  And for some reason, I thought I should try to make angel food cupcakes from scratch (without realizing how delicate angel food cake is).  I will probably just grab a box mix next time, but Henry's first birthday was an occasion worthy of this effort.  And the homemade whipped cream topping was very yummy.  Anyway, Henry sure seemed to enjoy his first birthday cake (although his standards are pretty low.  We haven't given him much as far as sugary treats thus far).  Here are some super cute photos of him eating his first cake.

Henry's 1st Birthday!!

Henry turned 1 today!!  We are amazed that a whole year has passed since we first held this little guy in our arms at the hospital.  It has been such a fun and sweet year watching our little man grow and change from an infant to a baby to almost a toddler.  Henry has been such a blessing to us and truly completes our family (truly and literally, we're not having another one).  And while Evie is still not so crazy about him most days, we look forward to them growing up together and becoming good friends and playmates.
For his rather low-key birthday this year, we invited Joe's family over for dinner and cupcakes.  Since this kid already has all the toys he could possibly want (he plays with Evie's toys more than she does), we opted to just buy him one big gift this year.  A folding wagon!  It's actually a gift to be used by both of our kiddos, and they both love it.  They were so excited to open the box and hop in the wagon, and get a few rides around the living room.  We hope to get many, many uses out of it.

A Puppet Show!

In downtown Phoenix, we have this wonderful, little puppet theater called The Great Arizona Puppet Theater.  (It's actually a fabulous historic building that used to be a Mormon church).  We've been waiting and waiting for Evie to be old enough to attend a show, and have the attention span to watch it.  Joe took her to her very first live puppet show this afternoon, A Cinderella Story.  Evie loved it and Joe said that she did really great with sitting and paying attention.  After the show, she got to interact with the puppeteers and their puppets.  She's told me several times since about how fun it was and how she wants to do it again.  So cute, she calls them all muppets, since most of her other exposure has been with the Muppet Show and Muppet movies.