Surprise Visit to Utah

Since Dan had to go out of town for 4 days, Drew and I decided to surprise my family in Utah. I love surprises. I'm not so sure Drew does. :) I thought it would be funny to put Drew on my parent's porch in his carseat by himself. So I did that and had my sister, Steph, call my mom and ask her to come outside to help her with some stuff. So my poor mother opens the door, sees Drew, screams out of excitement (which I knew she would do because she usually does), and poor little Drew just cried and cried (which I knew he would - am I horrible for wanting the surprise at everyone's expense??). Drew recovered quickly and absolutely loves my mom. :) I had Steph record the surprise:

We were able to see one of my best friends, Angie, and her mom and sister, which was so fun!
Someone in my family cough*mom*cough took my phone and took random pictures. (I love my family!)
Gavin, Drew, and Ranen are 4 months apart. Drew was born in December, Ranen in February, and Gavin in April. So I thought it'd be fun to get a picture of them together. Gavin and Ranen cooperated. Drew just tried grabbing the other babies (poor Gavin's bracing himself), tried standing up when my mom tried holding his hands down (sorry, Mom), and tried scooting away.

We finally got a decent one with Gavin and Drew smiling. I'm not sure Ranen was thrilled about the whole idea. :)
My dad took our family to Incredible Pizza, which was so fun. Drew got to ride in this car that goes around on a track and he loved playing with the steering wheel.

Thanks, everyone, for a wonderful visit!

Utah

I was able to go to Utah a couple of weeks ago. I had so much fun! It had been a little while since I had been there - okay, only since July, but who's keeping track? Anyway, it was my neice, Rachel's, birthday so I actually didn't tell her I was coming at all and surprised her. Jodi's family picked me up from the airport on her birthday and kept her totally oblivious the whole ride. She didn't even realize they were at the airport until they opened the door and I was standing there. Oh how I love surprises! I took a video of it of course. :)



Yes, at the end, Tysen says "Hi Jenny!" It took a few days of me reminding him that my name is Ang and not Jenny, but he's got it now. It was such a fun week - Disney On Ice: Princess Classics (I LOVE Disney On Ice - sometimes I forget how much), Jump On It! (this really cool place filled with tons of trampolines all connected to each other), November Potluck (for celebrating the November birthdays), lots of family time, time to see friends, and much more that I can't think of right now. Anyway, I took a lot of pictures (I can't help it - I have too many cute people in my life that I love), so I had to put them in a slideshow again. Enjoy!

Family Visit

We were lucky enough to have some of my family visit recently. They came up for the Oregon-Utah game. They all had a great time at the game (okay...maybe not the Utah fans - which is everyone but Dan) and my mom and I had so much fun watching all the kids! It was a little crazy, but they're just so dang cute and funny that we had a great time. And then we rewarded ourselves with dinner and a movie. :) The rest of the trip was full of relaxing, shopping, and just having a good time being together. I'm so blessed to have such a great family!!

{These kids sure do love their grandma!}
{Isn't Annalee adorable??}

{The boys loved watching Cars!}

{Tanner is so sweet!}

{I just adore Aaron}

{Looks like someone found some stickers...}

Utah...Again

I went to Utah...again. It's a good thing I'm married to such a cool man. He's so awesome to let me go to Utah this often. I went with my brother, Rob, his wife, Kristi, and their two boys. I was actually going to cancel this trip since I went in March and will be going again in July for my youngest brother, Jamie's, wedding. But I really wanted to be a part of the wedding process and his fiance, TaNeil, was having a shower with my family that weekend, so...I just shortened my trip instead. I had so much fun - as I always do with my family. There was so much going on - it really was a great weekend to go. Although, I must say it is nice to be home and relax after having two really fun back-to-back trips in one week.

{Will and Kyanna at Will's soccer game}

{TaNeil's Shower}

{Tanner at the potluck}

{Rachel and Tysen}

{Singing Happy Birthday to all the May Birthdays}

{Still Singing...}

{Celebrating Mother's Day a week late}

{Rachel and Dallin playing outside}

Looks like I've been slacking on the pictures - normally when I go anywhere, it seems like I take a million pictures, but not this time. Guess I better step up my game.

Hancey's Visit

My sister, Jodi, and her kids Braden(11, almost 12), Rachel (6), and Tysen (16 months) came to visit us a couple weeks ago and we had so much fun! I was so sad to see them leave. It was Braden's first time in Oregon, so we had fun showing him around. John wasn't going to come, but decided on Sunday morning to fly out later that morning, so he told Dan and I and we had to keep it a secret until later that afternoon when he showed up. I told Braden and Rachel to go outside (Jodi and Tysen were napping - I tried to do a video of Jodi's reaction but it was too dark in the room and she was whispering so Tysen wouldn't wake up) and I was just pointing the camera at them without saying anything so I could get their reaction. Braden kept looking at me like I was nuts and Rachel just looks like she's happy to have a camera pointed at her.



We went to the coast (which was cold and rainy, but still fun) and to the aquarium with Rob, Kristi, and the boys. We had Easter Dinner at our place and it wasn't until I was in the middle of cooking that I realized I had never hosted a major holiday dinner for more than Dan and I. After I panicked a little bit, I got over it and we had a great time! John was supposed to go home early Monday morning, but we all talked him into staying until Tuesday morning. Yea, us!! Jodi and I went baby shopping!!! I posted about this on our adoption blog, but I'll talk about it again here because it was just that much fun! We didn't get a ton of stuff, just enough to get going. It was so much fun once I calmed down and accepted that, yes, this stuff is for US. :)

Here are some of the pictures I took while they were here.

We had such a great time with them!! Thanks for coming so that we could have so much fun with you guys!!

Surprise Visit

Last Monday, Dan and I (with the help of my sister, Jodi) decided it would be fun to drive down to Utah and surprise my family. So, on Tuesday afternoon, we hopped in the car and stayed in Boise that night at our friend's house. We got to my parent's house in Eagle Mountain Wednesday afternoon and here's their reaction:



We had so much fun out there! We were able to see everyone and got to go to the New Year's party my mom had put together. I had been so bummed that I wouldn't be able to go. She has the best parties! We got to go to movies and just hang out. Jodi and John even treated us to a night at Inn on the Creek in Midway. I love Miday! It was so much fun! The only bad thing on our trip was that I got rear-ended (we were all fine), but the cop didn't give the other guy a ticket. Don't get me started on that one... We drove home all day yesterday and had pretty good weather with the exception of a couple of areas. Here are some pictures from our trip, as always. Thanks everyone for such a fun trip!!

Fun Visit with Steph and Dallin

We've been blessed with such an awesome family that comes to visit often and last week, Steph and Dallin came out and stayed with us! It was their first time to Oregon and I hope we left them with a good impression. :) We had so much fun with them!! We did so many fun things. We went to the Children's Museum in Portland, went to the park, saw some Christmas lights, went to Rob and Kristi's, went swimming, and got some GOOD hot chocolate, which I am now addicted to. :) We tried to give them some local flavor by taking them to a couple good restaurants, which they ended up loving. :) We're sad they're gone now, but we were so happy to have them here!! Thanks for the pictures, Steph!

Birthday Week

So I absolutely LOVE birthdays. I totally make a big deal about them (well, mine and Dan's). I love doing birthday weeks where we do something fun every day for the entire week. Unfortunately we were both sick for a few days out of the week, so some of our "fun" things were pretty tame. On Sunday, we invited Rob, Kristi, Aaron, and Bryan over for dinner to kick off my birthday week. They're so cute and they brought brownies and cut ANG into them. It was awesome. Monday, we got Rock Band for the Wii! Dan had to go to Coos Bay for work from Monday to Wednesday so I went with him. We had so much fun! Tuesday, we ate at my favorite restaurant there, Benetti's and then went to Sunset Bay and walked along the beach. The water was actually warm enough to walk in, so I was ecstatic! Then we went to this ocean lookout point and just watched the waves for awhile. I love being on the coast! Wednesday we were both not feeling great, so I think we just made cookies that night. Thursday was another yucky day so I think we just got take out for dinner. Friday, I had a girl's night with a bunch of girls from my ward (we do it once a month to celebrate birthdays) at my house, which was so fun. But at the end, there were just a few girls left, someone came to my door (at around 11:20 - we were a little confused...). It was Jodi, John, and Tysen!! They had come to surprise me for my birthday!!! I was SO excited! I couldn't believe it!! I screamed a little and I think I kept saying 'are you serious??' It was so fun to get to know Tysen better. He's so dang cute. He is so easy to take pictures of because he's so smiley all the time! He loves watching John sing on Rock Band. He would just stare at him! He was so fun! So they stayed for the weekend and we had tons of fun!! It was HOT HOT HOT in Eugene, so Saturday we went to the coast and it was so much nicer. We went to Depoe Bay and to the beach. Sunday, we went to the rose garden and saw some fun things unique to Eugene, like a Sailbus. It was a VW bus with a boat welded to the top. Gotta love Oregon. :) I had so much fun this week!! I love my birthday! Thanks everyone for making it such a fun week!!!

Brett and Kelly's Visit

This past week, Brett, Kelly, Will, and Kyanna came to visit and we had so much fun! We're so glad they came! We did a lot of fun stuff. We went to the coast (of course!), had fun dinners, had a graduation (way to go, Brett!), went to parks (and watched geese literally chase a couple people (who had come to feed them) down the pathway), had FHE and played A LOT of Wii. William LOVED playing Mario Kart. :) I just have to mention a couple funny things Will did that had me and Rob about dying from laughing. We were eating dinner and we looked over at Will and he had his mouth WIDE open and just sat there for a second and then finally let out a tiny burp and then sat there smiling hugely. Then, later that evening, still at dinner, he was trying to get Kelly's attention but she was in the middle of a conversation with someone else so wasn't answering right away. He kept calling her name and then finally resorted to yelling "Earth to Mommy! Earth to Mommy!" repeatedly. Finally one last yell of "EARTH! TO! MOM!" about sent Rob and me over the edge. Fun times! Brett ended up not driving all the way to his graduation, so we decided to have a ceremony for him. We dressed him up in the old graduation gear we could find and put on a whole thing for him. He was such a good sport. We're very proud of him and we're so happy they all came to visit! We had a blast!