Three Years

Three years ago our world was rocked in the best possible way. He has kept us on our toes since day one (turning purple because he wasn’t breathing and getting rushed out of our hospital room), but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Kenny’s birthday is today even though he is sick with the flu 👎. That’s 2 out of 3 of his birthdays he has been sick… perks of having a winter birthday.

Even though he isn’t feeling 100%, he is loving the extra attention and has randomly been saying “wish me a Happy Birthday on Sunday!” (Ha because we have been telling him for weeks that “no his birthday wasn’t today but on a Sunday”.)

I made a birthday shirt for him and let him pick out the fabric at the fabric store. He went from cars, to dinosaurs, to pirates, but then he saw this M&M’s fabric, and he had to have it. Kid has got a sweet tooth, that’s for sure. I thought for sure he would change his mind once he saw the Mario fabric, but no. He wanted the “candy kind.”

And here’s his birthday cake. He chose Legos as the theme and helped decorate it.

Two days ago he told me he wanted to change his cake theme to a tree. I asked him what he meant thinking that I maybe misunderstood and he was saying “treat” rather than “tree”. But no. He wanted just a tree. After some probing (and maybe a little persuading) he went back to wanting a Lego cake. Phew.

And he specifically requested blue swirl cake, green frosting, blue writing, orange sprinkles, and pink candles. I just decided to go with it and not worry about the aesthetics.

And here Kenny is about to blow out the candles. He was quite concerned that we were going to be putting “real fire” on his cake instead of “special fire” like the fires we have in our backyard and in our fireplace. Not quite sure what he meant by that.

The Happy Birthday sign hanging on the wall behind him was made by Ken’s mom. She’s legit.

Anyway, we think you are great Kenny! You are smart, kind, fun, caring, and loving. You are so sweet and helpful with your younger brother, and Reed is lucky to have such an adoring older brother. He looks up to you and wants to be just like you. You are such a good example and try hard every day to do good. I love that you enjoy saying prayers and going to church. You are learning well to sit still and be reverent, and we couldn’t be prouder. We love you more than you will ever know!

 

Santa 2014

Kenny got to see Santa again this year at our church’s Christmas party! He was so excited about it until it was time to sit on his lap.

A small (very small) improvement from last year because last year he wouldn’t even let Santa touch him. :)

Halloween 2013

Can you tell who we dressed up as?

Kenny is Pikachu, Ken is Ash, and I am Misty.

I am pretty sure that only our generation even had a clue as to what we were, and even then people couldn’t really tell. Everyone thought Kenny was a bee. It didn’t really help that there were two other babies at the party dressed as bees. Oh well, at least we did the obligatory first Halloween pics with the babe. Kenny, sorry we are lame parents and dressed you up in something you will never understand.

Baby Shower

You know what’s awesome? When your sister is willing to drive four hours to throw you a baby shower. Now that’s a good sister. Plus, she had the cutest decorations!

You know what else is awesome? That Stacy made all of the food and was willing to let us use her place.

Tracey also organized some fun games. I only got a couple of the games documented, though.

We did pin the mustache on the baby-

And guess what candy bar is melted into the diaper-

And as always, it was good to see friends!

Best picture of the day, though?

Nothing out of the ordinary.

My 11/12 Birthday

So I decided to throw a surprise 11/12 Birthday party for myself. Okay, not really. It was for Stacy, which just happens to be my 11/12 Birthday, and we all know that is way  more important.

So Stacy didn’t know about the party, but I swear she was trying to give me as many heart attacks as she could. First, she told me that she was going to be in Sandy the day of her party and wouldn’t get back to Provo until 9 pm, and her party was starting at 8 pm. I had to lie to her and tell her that I bought tickets to something, so we had to be seated at 8:15. We then realized that she was thinking it was a different Friday than the day of her party. Geeze o’ Petes (Kenneth just pointed out to me that I say that all the time, and the first time I said this he had no idea what I was saying. Then i realized that I didn’t really know what I was saying either. Pretty sure that my mom says that.)

Then, on the day of her party, she went to take a test at 3:30 in the afternoon. I told her that our date, which she thought was paying her back for the recent date she took me on, was going to start at 7. She didn’t get out of her test until like 7:45, so I was pretty nervous about that situation as well because the guests were going to start arriving at her apartment at 8. Everything worked out, though.

That’s a pic of Stacy running away from the silly string attack.

And then a great pic of Stacy posing, but more importantly a great pic of Katie in the background.

Tracey’s Baby Shower

I love my internship! I was able to go up to Rexburg for a business trip, which is where my sister and brother-in-law live. What was awesome was that I just happened to go to Rexburg the week of Tracey’s birthday and baby shower! It was a lot of fun. Here are a few pictures from Tracey’s baby shower. She is due December 3.

What a cute cake, right? If only I could decorate cakes half as well as this one. Oh, and Tracey is having a baby girl named Marli.

Here are the “mommy” dogs. After we started making them we realized that we should have bought mini hot dogs and put it in the “stomach” of the “mommy” dogs.

Sorry, I found this picture on pinterest, so that’s why there is writing on the top. We made these pretzel bites as well. Holy cow are they good! I ate . . . well, I’m not going to tell you how many. Waaaay more than any normal person should. You can just put salt on them, or you can get crazy and put icing on them, cinnamon and sugar, or garlic. So good.

So I recently got an offer to stay at my internship’s office for the rest of my time at BYU. It was a hard choice for me because I love the people that I worked with at my old job, but it was too good of an offer to turn down, so I accepted. So come winter semester, my new title will be Rachel Alford, Rep Assistant. Sorta professional, right?

Anyway, because of this new job, they sent me to Idaho again because I am taking on a project that BYU-Idaho has done for the last several years. It was awesome to see Tracey and Jacob again. Tracey always has the funniest stories about her preschool students, and she tells so many of them that she can never finish her food at the dinner table. “Tracey, you have to take three more bites until you can tell another story.” :)

Love you guys! Hope to see you (and Marli) in January!