1st "parking" experience

I don't know about you, but we've certainly been taking advantage of and soaking in the awesome spring weather we've been having. Aurora and I have been LOVING going outside to play in the sun everyday!

She was too little last year to really play outside much, but I think she'll get the hang of it this year. Last Friday we met up with our best Aussie friends and played at a couple of parks/playgrounds close by. It was Aurora's first experience trying to play on a playground (and mostly unsuccessful - she just wanted to play with and eat the wood chips) and to swing on a swing by herself outside!! She didn't like the swing at first and cried the first time I gave her a push, but she got used to it after a bit, and even enjoyed it by the end. We'll have to give the slide another chance though.

Bring on more warm weather!! We're more than ready for it!

I promise that's not a scared face--she's singing to herself :)

Enjoying the swing

A teeny smile :)

More singing

Our serious, studious baby.

Dar came and joined in the fun when he got home from work!

And she seriously LOVED the bouncy horse! We'll definitely have to give that one another go.

Beautiful, happy baby!

Dress-Up

I can't believe we're almost half way through March and I haven't done a post yet! Wow. Well, here we go :)

Our little lady is very much just that: a lady. She LOVES to play dress-up and play with baby dolls already, at 14 months, and she has been doing it for a while. I have random dress-up things stashed around the house for her, and she loves to go find them and put things on, or bring them to me for me to put them on her. It's so adorable, and I love that she's such a girl! This is one proud Momma. Here are just a couple of her dress-up pictures (in jammies both times) because I don't take pictures every time she gets dressed up.

The Apple of Our Eyes

This was too cute. I just had to share it :)

She only wanted to eat the apple out of Dar's mouth. Silly girl.

Angel Friends

(Sneaking in a quick snooze before heading out to run errands yesterday morning)

My mom used to sing a special lullaby to my siblings and me when we were kids at bed time. Now I sing it to my sweet Aurora. It's still comforting to me, even when I sing it, and I hope she feels comforted by it too. It hit me tonight while we were snuggling in the rocking chair, and I was singing to her as she drank her bottle to go to sleep, that time has flown by way too quickly since she joined our family 13.5 months ago. She is so precious. I've been trying to savor and capture in my memory every little tender moment I get to have with this beautiful angel our Heavenly Father has blessed our home with. I love you, Aurora Nicole! Please, stay little!

Angel Friends

You came from a world where all is light
To a world half day and a world half night.
To guide you by day, you have my love
And to guard you by night your friends from above.

Chorus:
So sleep, sleep till the darkness ends
Guarded by your angel friends.
So sleep, sleep till the darkness ends
Guarded by your angel friends.

There is one treading softly at the foot of your bed
And another sits close with a hand on your head.
There is one at the window watching for the dawn
And one waits to wake you when the night is gone.

Chorus:
So sleep, sleep till the darkness ends
Guarded by your angel friends.
So sleep, sleep till the darkness ends
Guarded by your angel friends.

Buds

My best friend, Tracee, has a little boy who's just 2 months older than Aurora. They're buds. We tease that they're betrothed to each other and I'm sure they're going to hate us for it when they get older. They sure are cuties together though! They already get into trouble and teach each other naughty things: Aurora taught P how to stick his finger in his nose, and P taught Aurora how to climb up on our coffee table. Silly kids.

Here are some recent pictures Dar took of Aurora & P hanging out in the office together.
(Please excuse our messy office. It's seriously the only room in our house that never stays organized for some reason.)

And here are a couple more of them riding off into the sunset together ;)

Happy Loves Day!

Despite not feeling well, and Dar being at work all day, Rori and I had a pretty good Valentine's day together. Unfortunately we didn't get to spend as much time with Dar as we both wanted to because he was being great and working on trying to fix a problem with our car so he could drive it to work today. But, we still had fun and spent as much time together as we could!

Morning ritual: snuggling, watching Disney Jr.
I love that you can just barely see her eyes peeking out over Minnie's ears

Rori & I ate mini heart pancakes for breakfast. Of course I didn't think of getting up early enough to make breakfast for Dar. Sorry babe!

Maybe I'm a bad mom for giving her syrup this young. What can I say? She loves to dip!
(And she got to use the Valentine's bib Dad got for her last year, but it obviously didn't fit her then.)

Love's in the bathtub too :)

I made some yummy spaghetti, salad, and homemade rolls for dinner. We had Turtle brownies for dessert! Yum! Aurora LOVES to slurp the noodles. I told her to get all the slurping in that she can while we allow it, because we're not going to let her do it forever!
Love that spaghetti sauce face! :)
And needless to say, she got 2 baths yesterday. Happy girl!

And finally a little bit of a smile from our sick baby. Get better soon, Princess!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!

P.S. Congratulations to our friends, the Cox's, who after almost 10 years of marriage welcomed a new baby girl, Delilah Jane, into their family last night. We're so happy for you guys! What a great Valentine's gift!!

It's {mostly} good news.

Remember how our dishwasher quit working a few weeks before Christmas? We finally got a new one!! It's installed and being put to good use. Woot! Woot! Hopefully the chapped skin on my poor hands will finally start healing!

We went in on Friday to sign papers for refinancing on our condo! Woot! Woot! again :) We'll be saving almost $150 a month on our new mortgage payment. We are a couple of happy people!

We celebrated our half-anniversary yesterday. 6.5 years and still going strong. Happy half-anniversary, lovey!

And for the not-so-good news...our refinance comes at a great time because this is the first year we have to pay taxes. To say I'm a little bugged might be an understatement. I was pretty furious and extremely irritated when we filed our taxes and found out we'd be paying. Thanks to UVU not taking any taxes out of Dar's paychecks we're paying way more back in federal than I ever want to again and hardly getting anything back from state. (I'm sure other people end up paying a lot more than we have to this year, but I'm still going to complain about it.) I was seriously expecting to get a good return this year with finally being able to claim a baby and stuff, but no. We get to pay the government even more money. Thrilled? Absolutely not!!

Some of Rori's fav's

I realize that the vast majority of my posts for the last year have been about Aurora. I think it pretty much goes without saying though because this beautiful little princess consumes the bulk of my day-to-day life. She's so much fun and I love being able to hang out with her every day. She is the light of our lives and brings so many smiles and so much laughter into our home. She's starting to walk all over the place now and gains more confidence every day. She's also starting to show some attitude, especially when we tell her "no." Her vocabulary has nearly doubled in just the last week, and she seems to have mostly skipped over single-syllable words.

Rori's Vocab:
Mom (also Momma)
Dad (also Daddy)
Bottle: Baba
Hi
Bye: Ba
No-no-no!: She even gets the finger point going with it :)
Aurora: very clearly most of the time
Cousins: she says it straight out
Amen: also very clearly
Banana: sometimes the full word but mostly "nanas"
Minnie: In-Nay or Nay-nay

And here are a few things that Mrs. Boss loves right now:

Rocking Bear
She loves that she can get on and off it, and rock all by herself!

Mickey & Minnie
We got these for her with some money my grandparents sent for her. Buy one get one free at the Disney store. Boo-ya!

Cool shades.
Need I say more? :)

Dusting
Is 12.5 months too young to start a chore list? ;)

The car she got for her birthday. She's even getting some road rage already. Look out!!

Looking at some of Mom & Dad's anniversary pictures, and more dusting.

Love you, Babs! Thanks for constantly keeping us on our toes!

Guacamole

This girl loves it!! She says "Mmm!" every time she gets a bite. And the guacamole goatee just makes it THAT much better :)

Playing Catch-Up

Make sure you scroll down to see our latest 3 posts :)

*Remember these?

*Cousins (i.e. family photos)

*Oh, what would YOU do for a Klondike bar?

Remember these?

We made these onesies to tell our parents we were expecting Aurora. I finally got pictures of her in all of them...so here they are!

For my parents

I took these back in September

For Dar's parents

I took these yesterday :)
(P.S. These are 6-9 mo. size onesies, and our one year old can still wear them just fine!)

Cousins (i.e. family photos)

Just after Christmas we went up north to have a whole bunch of pictures taken. We did our family pictures, Aurora's 1st year pictures, cousin pictures, Dakoda's 2nd year pictures, and my goofy siblings pictures. (I've posted some of them already, but they're all going up again in this post.)

Us :)

Our beautiful 1 year old Aurora!!

Cousins :)
(minus a few)

A little background on this one: since getting the "cousins" picture and hanging it up in our living room, Aurora LOVES to look at it. When she does, I always say "cousins" to her. Last Friday she was looking at it and I kept saying, "cousins" and she totally said it back!! TWICE!! Clear as a bell. This is significant because the only other words she really has down are Momma, Daddy, and baba. I was SHOCKED! She hasn't said it again since, but I am still amazed she even said it at all. Way to go, baby girl!

This one cracks us up
2 year old Dakoda!
My goofy younger sibs
And last but not least, Skylar :)