Onto the next adventure....

The next adventure we, the kids and I, took was a visit to Canada. My brother Brett was coming home from his mission and we wanted in on the fun. So I grabbed some courage and took the kids on a plane ride alone. We survived, and I would do it again if needed, but it was not so joyous.

Our flight took us through Toronto, which meant that we had to go through customs and security before we could board our next plane. I had come prepared and Grandma had sent a child harness for Lucy to wear. She was not a fan.....Lucy loves to run and explore and has not yet learned that sometimes she needs to stand right by Mommy. Customs was a very, very large room with rows of people waiting. There I stood with a infant in a stroller and a screaming 2 year old. Luckily, we got through quickly. It was a long day and this was the result.....

Our flight landed at 1:00AM Harrisburg time. Lucy managed to stay awake the entire trip until we started to taxi to the gate. She even stayed asleep while a kind man next to me carried her to the baggage claim where we met Carla.

We had so much fun with cousins and grandparents and getting to see Brett get off the plan that it made it all worth it. I don't have many pictures of the trip as our camera started acting funny and has now decided to completely die. The fun included an early Easter egg hunt, lots of movie parties and swimming.

After much waiting and anticipation....

I have finally decided to update the blog. Now there is too much to blog about. A quick general life update we are now officially moved back into our house. We didn't have much luck selling so we decided to move back in. We are actually quite happy to be back and to have a yard for the kids to play in. We also have a long to-do list that we are anxious to get started on.

I guess I will start where I left off and go from there. Back in March Maxwell turned 1!! The year went by so quickly and we are so glad to have this happy little guy in our home.

This guy loves to eat. We had pizza for dinner which he obviously enjoyed. We invited our good friends the Fultz's over to join in the party.

Lucy was a excellent helper opening presents and Maxwell was happy to let her help. He loved all his presents. Lots of music and noise coming from his presents.

Maxwell LOVES to talk on the phone. Anything that he can get his hands on can become a phone, he puts it to his ear and chatters away to whomever. He was very spoiled.

Here is his birthday, they are supposed to be building blocks. They are far from perfect as I am still learning the art of frosting a cake.

                                         What a great party!! We love this little monster.

The Joys of Life

This is Princess Lucy. We have fully entered the 'princess' stage. We can not walk through a store without stopping to look at anything that has a princess on it. She loves to put on 'pretty dresses' and is constantly asking 'Mommy, dance with me?' She has even started to imitate scenes from the movie. Yesterday she was Ariel from the Little Mermaid and had lost her voice.

This is Maxwell trying to push over the baby gate. He has discovered the stairs and is obsessed. If he sees a staircase there is no keeping him away. Maxwell loves to climb. His current favorite hangout is the dishwasher door. He loves to pull it open and sit there and pull all the dishes out.

This is the joy of living in Pennsylvania and living without a garage. However, this is also our new mini-van which is a joy to me every single say. I love this van! (I also love my children too)

Chad and I also just celebrated our 4-year anniversary. He is the joy in my life. He makes me laugh and helps me grow into someone better everyday. I love my man.

January has come and is almost gone. How did time go by so quickly? We filled our January with lots of fun adventures. We ended December on a low note with both of the kids sick resulting in 2 visits to the doctor one day after the other. Maxwell had a ear infection and also an infection in his throat. Lucy also had an ear infection, so we pumped them with lots of antibiotics but it still resulted in some long days.

Maxwell wouldn't settle down for his nap and so I brought him out to try and wear him out a little more. I left the room for a minute and came back to find this.

We celebrated New Year's by staying up until midnight and then we headed to Monkey Joe's, our new favorite place to play. It is a huge room filled with a bunch of air-bounces.

This is Maxwell at Monkey Joe's, he mostly just watched. This picture perfectly captures the smile he gives everyone, showing off all his teeth.

January also has finally brought us SNOW in Pennsylvania. We have waited so long to see this beautiful, white stuff. I can't tell you who was more excited about the snow, Lucy or Chad. These are pictures from the first snowfall. There have been more since, and it is snowing right now.

Throwing the snow in the air because we are so excited.

Snow Angels.

This month we also went to the PA farm show to see animals, take in the smells and eat delicious food. Chad went on a scout camp out in the snow and tried to stay warm. Maxwell turned 10 months old and is hanging onto 80% for height and officially cracked 20 lbs.

We love January!

A Pennsylvania Christmas

Here are some highlights from our Christmas adventures. The kids were well spoiled and sugared up.

Making sugar cookies. Lucy is showing you where most of the icing and toppings went...in her mouth.

Learning about the Nativity story

Christmas Eve Pajamas.

Putting out cookies for Santa. She was actually quite opinionated about what treats Santa would like to eat.

Christmas morning...Where did the cookies go?

This is where all of Maxwell's presents ended up.

Lucy delivered with her excitement for the MANY gifts she got.

Christmas Tree Hunting

We can barely recover from Thanksgiving before it's time to dive into Christmas. After sad good-byes to Grandma and Grandpa we headed home. The next day we went to a tree farm with some friends in the ward to chop our own tree down. It was lot harder than we thought and we were very indecisive, but we finally picked a beauty. Its far from perfect but I love it.

Lucy was very helpful in the cutting process.

Watching our tree get wrapped to transport home. 

We have these wonderful high vaulted ceilings in our apartment so we wanted to take advantage and get a really tall tree. We succeeded. We came home with a 10ft tree.

Look who came for a visit....

 Grandma and Grandpa Salmon!! My cousin Dahl got married in the DC Temple before Thanksgiving so we convinced Grandma and Grandpa Salmon that it would be a good time to come and visit the grandkids. Lucy has been talking about Grandpa since he helped us on our trip home from Canada in July. She was so excited to hear that they were coming on an airplane to see her. We all got to go to the wedding and then we headed down to the Baltimore Inner Harbor for a little sightseeing before the reception.

Aunt Janelle joined in the fun as well. We explored the USS Constellation that sits in the harbor, ate food and enjoyed the gorgeous fall day. After it was back to the reception to give our congrats and then we headed down to Harrisonburg to a resort condo for the week.

There was lots to do. Grandpa fit in lots of golf games, there was a huge waterpark, go-karts, mini-golf, parks and of course we ate A LOT.

Lucy also managed to make some new friends. Here she is talking to the chickens at the petting zoo. Grandpa wanted to take her on a pony ride, but after we saw that she would barely go near the animals at the zoo, we figured that there wasn't much chance she would ride a pony.

She loved these people at the park. There were statues of kids all over doing different things. She loved to hold their hands or imitate what they were doing.

Our condo also had a fireplace so we got to roast marshmallows...Lucy preferred her's raw. 

Lucy loved mini-golf. I had doubts that this would be an enjoyable experience as Lucy is a runner and has no desire to stay put very long. However she very much impressed me. She stayed close until about the 16th hole when she began to get bored. She loved helping everybody pick up their balls before they got a chance to putt and taking her own turn. Which meant placing her ball very close to the hole and putting it in.

It was a wonderful, blissful week and we are all sad it is over. Lucy is going through grandparent withdrawals and we hope some more grandparents will come to visit us soon.