5 months of fun

Wow - 5 months since I last blogged! I'm not sure I have a really good excuse. I certainly have more pictures than ever that I'd love to be sharing with everyone since Stephen and I got a new camera for Christmas! Since I do want to share so many of our great photos - this will surely be a long post! As Oprah says in her magazine: "Here we go!"

Wayyyyyy back in December - Annika turned 3! Three years old . . . how did that happen!? We celebrated as usual with a party in Cheyenne where lots of her little buddies were able to join in the celebration and then with a second party in Kemmerer (bottom picture). For the Kemmerer party we decided to have our little budding account begin working on her addition skills by using a 1+2 = 3 approach with the candles. . . . or maybe her mom just forgot to bring candles!

We were able to take an entire week off over Christmas and spend a lot of time in Kemmerer and Salt Lake City. It was a wonderful vacation and super nice to catch up with a lot of family members on both sides of the family. Here is a little slideshow of our Christmas Festivities.

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When we got back to Cheyenne we settled in for 7 straight weekends at home. That has to be some sort of a record for us! We were able to decorate a super girly girl room for Annika where we hope she is enjoying sweet dreams in "pink" each and every night. I am really excited with how it turned out.

We were able to take a couple of quick day/evening trips down to Fort Collins where Annika enjoyed playing at "Jump In" - an indoor jumping park with lots of inflatable toys for kids to play on.

Grandma & Grandpa Kiren visited over Valentines Day and Stephen and I went on a date to Denver, which was a great time. Annika loved decorating cookies, and talked about the pink frosting for weeks!

Annika has also been going to Dance Class once a week and really enjoying it for the most part (sometimes she just runs laps around the studio . . . we might have to try soccer or Tee Ball this spring). This is her "getting ready to take a bow" position. She has a big performance coming up on Friday April 16th. It's sure to be a treat.

After 7 weeks of being at home in Cheyenne, we were getting cabin fever. So Annika and I loaded up the car and headed to Casper where we went picked Diane and her twin 18-month old boys, Carter and Cooper. We then drove 6 hours (7 since we got lost) to our friend Natalie's house to see her, her husband (Ryan) and her 3 kiddos - Brennan, Shawn, and Alexis (the newest addition - 2 months old). This slide show shows the adventures that were had over the weekend of geting together with my college girl friends. We were pretty nervous about 6 kids under the age of 4 getting together, but all things considered the trip went remarkably smoothly!

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Since I have been such a slacker with pictures lately you are probably wondering about this ever-changing three-year old, Annik,a that we love and adore so much. Here are some pictures to let you know what she is like these days.

She is a lefty.

She has beautiful curls that are at times uncontrollable and at other times are really pretty ringlets.

She is a Rockstar in Training.

She is a snow fashion-ista!

Annika loves many people in her life SO MUCH.

We certainly love her too! And I am especially fond of this picture. . . good night!