Spring has sprung!

Spring is one of my favorite times of year. I love the order of spring flowers that bloom each year and look forward to the first daffodils, then tulips, then irises that pop up. Usually, this happens around late February/early March in Portland. This is our first full spring in Bend, and I was a little surprised to see that the season starts a little later than on the westside of the mountains. (Maybe it was because of the April blizzard we had??) The flowers just appeared on the trees and the daffodils are just now starting to make an appearance here. By this time each year on the westside, all of the flowers are already on the trees and we are moving beyond the tulips. Late or not, I still love the season of spring! Here are some of the fun outdoor activities we are finally starting to do!

We usually take the BOB and Tristan's bike each time we go to the park, but on this day for some reason, neither child wanted to ride that mode of transportation and decided to walk with me instead...at a snail's pace. Here, Tristan is trying to encourage Talia to be a bit faster :)

Chalk drawings is always a favorite. (And yikes, please ignore the bare grass in the background - not only an eyesore but also a pain to try and fix with three dogs who make the outside their bathroom...)

Another reason to love Bend - all of the bike trails and bridges along the Deschutes River. This was our first time on this specific trail and loved how beautiful it was!

As you can see, we spend most of our time at the park these days :)

Or, we have our own playground fun at home.

Portland trip - Uncle T & Talia's birthdays!

This past weekend, we went to Portland so that we could celebrate Uncle T and Talia's birthdays with my family. Just another excuse to "go over the big mountains where Lincoln lives!" as Tristan says :)

We started the weekend by going to the Children's Museum to celebrate Talia's birthday. We also went there on Tristan's first birthday, so thought it would be fun to do the same for Talia. Along with Uncle T, Lincoln and Grama, we were so excited to have Ali & Aubrey join us as well - one of Tristan's BFFs!

Tristan's favorite part of the Children's Museum - music playing!

Our birthday spread - little hard to set up on tables where space to sit down was like gold :)

Wow, someone was a little messy/drooly!

And then the celebrating continued back at the Danners with a celebration for Uncle T and Talia! And of course I baked for days to get ready for the event. You only have one 1st birthday, right??

Happy first birthday to little miss Talia!!

I can hardly believe that today we celebrate Talia's birthday! So much has changed in our lives in the past year, especially with the addition of our sweet little Talia. She has brought so much more energy and laughter to our home; we love her more and more each day! Here are some highlights of our smart, loving and full-of-life one year old!
*She loves to dance to music!
*She also loves to be chased
*When she answers to someone, it sounds like she says the words, "ya, good, all done", but not entirely sure if those are her words, even though others have also made comments that she has said that.
*She is really trying hard to say, "dad" for both Brian and I. It comes out more as a long, drawn-out, "daaaaa" in a sing-songy way, but I know what she's trying to say :)
*She loves to give hugs, loves and snuggles :)
*She has mastered climbing the stairs for quite awhile (and is pretty fast!) and now she is starting to back up to go down the stairs on her own
*If you ask her to bring something to one of us or her brother, she will! She really seems to have a good understanding of what we are saying to her.
*She loves to play cars with her brother, although some of the time it's taking the ones he plays with and walking away with them which is frustrating for a big brother. But a lot of the time, she just picks them up and hands them to Tristan or makes "ooooo" zooming sounds as she rolls them on the ground. Pretty cute :)
*She loves the dog bowls, especially for splashing. We've now had to put their bowl in the bathroom and shut it so she doesn't go in there. But the second it's left open, she makes a bee-line for the bowl and will splash or pick it up and dump it all over herself. Awesome.
*But she also doesn't just like the dog bowl. She loves any kind of water. Even water in a glass. She'll stick her hand in and then try to drink what's in her hand. And she still loves to splash in the bathtub. I have a feeling it's going to be a fun summer when we set up a kiddie pool outside, although I hope she doesn't drink more than she swims :)
*She loves to chase her brother and cousin around and tries to do whatever they are doing. Sometimes they love it, sometimes they'd rather her stay away. It's hard being the third wheel sometimes :)
*Since Tristan loves pushing around his lawnmower, Talia has now started pushing around her baby stroller with him. They'll laugh and giggle loudly as they try and go as fast as they can with their push toys :)
*She's definitely becoming less and less into her baby toys and wanting to play with whatever her older brother is doing, which would be okay with me but she still puts everything into her mouth.
*Even though she's not completely off the bottle, she eats "big girl" food with us at the table three times a day and sometimes even more with snacks! Right now she likes Cheerios, bananas, cucumbers, black beans, bread, plain shell macaroni and most fruits, although she doesn't like blueberries at the moment. Can't wait to introduce more foods!
*She also likes to mimic things she has seen us do, like brushing her hair with my brush, talk on a phone, brush her teeth (and in fact has her own toothbrush now because she would throw a fit if she wasn't brushing hers when we were brushing ours!), etc.
*It's so funny to see the differences between siblings because there are so many between Tristan & Talia! For one, she is much more outgoing and loves to make friends wherever we go, whereas Tristan was much more shy at this age. She is also much more adventurous, already having so many scraped knees, bruises, etc. than Tristan ever had at this age. And I have a feeling she's going to be the one who will test her/my limits much more than her rule-following brother. I hope she proves me wrong on that one!

Talia's first birthday display. I guess I sort of started a tradition with Tristan's bday when I put together a collage of pictures for his first birthday. And wanted to do the same (plus add some girly features!) for Talia's special day :)

Brian found a Strawberry Shortcake piñata and couldn't pass it up since it went with her strawberry shortcake cupcakes I made. I thought it a little gaudy, but liked the effort!

Talia's first birthday crown that I searched high and low for. It barely arrived through snail mail on time, getting here on her birthday, thank goodness! Even though it was a bit too big and she couldn't handle it on her head, we had to get at least one picture with it!

I was feeling a little craftsy and made this sign for her bday. Again, needed some pics to document her first birthday sign!

I love her tulle bday dress! Although not the greatest dress to wear for eating a messy cupcake, it had to be worn for her special day!

Singing happy birthday!

Clothes off because we're getting messy!

Attempt at a photo with the birthday girl :)

Opening presents!

We love you, Sissy!! You make our lives so much more complete!!

Happy Easter weekend!!

Today we said goodbye to my parents and Trav & family who came over for Easter weekend. It's funny to think that a year ago, Easter was a little different as both sets of grandparents were in town to welcome Talia's arrival. Although we were hoping for an Easter arrival (April 8th-my grandma's birthday), we already had her birthday planned for the 10th of April.

Fast forward a year and Easter was a little busier this time! We had 8 adults, 5 kids and 4 dogs all under one roof (more on that later :). Good thing our house is (almost!) big enough to house everyone pretty comfortably! It was a packed and exciting weekend. It's always fun with fam in town!

Easter weekend started with happy hour at one of the many great breweries in Bend with Grama and Papa as we waited for the Danners to arrive. Talia once again loved making friends at the restaurant. I'm noticing that she loves the attention and tries to make eye contact and do her shy smile at anyone who is around her. She is little miss social for sure!


Yes, Tristan is back to wearing beanie hats when we go out. He is in desperate need of a haircut.

And then on Saturday, we went to a large Easter carnival put on by a local church. Coincidentally, my mom found out that the pastor of this church was someone she grew up with. They hadn't seen each other in close to 30 years so it was fun to see them reconnect!

All the kids ready to go!

Easter outfit #1 :) Cannot believe how big she is getting!

Sharing his cone with Grama :)


All the kids making a run for the candy. Tristan didn't want to go in his age group since none of his cousins would be with him. Love how Lincoln helped him out as all the big kids were fighting for candy around him.



Since we were blessed with such beautiful weather Easter weekend, we were able to play outside most of the day. The boys set up corn hole outside as the rest of us soaked up some much-needed Vitamin D.

Love this pic of Talia & Stella watching all the action

Trying to get a sibling pic is hard work. I had to settle for this one.

And trying to get all three boys in one place, looking at me...also a challenge. I did my best with this one.

Yes, we look a little WT here, but we are still in the middle of fertilizing our backyard to get it ready for the summer. And, honestly, most of our neighbors also hang out in their front yards whenever the temperature climbs above 60 degrees so that they can watch their kids cruise up and down the street. What a difference from our last neighborhood when no one came outside and we had only seen some of our neighbors a few times in six+ years!!


Decorating Easter eggs!



And then on Easter, we woke up to find our Easter baskets from the Easter bunny and then had an outdoor egg hunt after church. Since the fam was all leaving in the early afternoon, we had to cram in as much as possible before they left. No surprises there :)


I SO love Talia's Easter dress!! When you think Easter, you think flapper girl, right?

Trying to spy on the location of all the Easter eggs :)

All the boys ready to go!


An attempt at a pic of Grama with her little ones. Not sure giving Tristan a blue sucker while trying to take Easter pics was such a great idea. All the pics I have of him either have blue teeth or chocolate stuck in them. Next year, pics will come before candy!



Yes, I have a lot of pics of mostly Talia, but my mom and I were trying to capture the perfect picture of her in all her Easter flapper glory. A little hard to do with a moving little one, but we got some pretty good ones!


And then after all our guests left, we went out for an Easter dinner at St. Francis. Such a great ending to our fun weekend!