Owen’s First Birthday Party

Well our little man is one and we had a great party for him on Saturday, December 21st. We did a Polar Express theme and it was really fun!

I made this cute banner and hung it in the entry way so everyone saw it when they walked in. Our house was already decorated with Christmas stuff so that worked out.

Most of our families were able to make it, so there were 13 kids (5 were missing), and about 10 adults. It was pretty crazy but always fun. Grandma Hill read the Polar Express book to the kids and most of them sat still and listened, including Owen. He growled at the picture of the wolves. Cutest.

Danny handed out silver bells to all the kids after the story and they were a huge hit.

Mia was making sure she could hear the bell.

We sang Happy Birthday to Owen and he tried to touch his candle. He wasn’t sure what was going on and seemed a little nervous that everyone was singing loud and watching him, but he did great and didn’t cry or get upset. P.S. Dan has a huge beard. Luckily I still love him and think he looks great with or without the beard.

I tried to make Owen wear this cute birthday hat I made him but he wasn’t having it. Obviously.

He wasn’t very interested in the cupcake and as soon as he touched the frosting, he didn’t want to eat any. But when I fed it to him on a spoon, he ate most of it. Silly kid.

The treat table! I made cupcakes and cute toppers for them. We had a hot chocolate bar with toppings and we also had a few different cookies and some veggies.

Cutest picture of my mom and Owen!

Everyone really enjoyed the treats! Brioney needs to teach Owen how to eat treats. Wild child.

My cute sissy just loves Owen and is the best auntie ever. She took most of these great pictures from the party!

I have been taking a picture of Owen every week in a white onesie and I photoshopped the week onto it. We displayed all the weekly photos on the fridge and it was so fun to see how much he changed and all the adorable pictures we took through the weeks.

After dessert we opened presents with the help of some cousins. Owen got lots of fun gifts and he was really happy with all of them!

He got a rocking chair from Grandma and Grandpa Hill and started rocking as soon as we sat him in it. He loved it! We turned on the Polar Express movie for the kids and just relaxed. Owen finally got a nap and he was a happy camper. We sure love this little guy and can’t wait for another year with him! Some people get sad thinking about not having their baby anymore, and while I love remembering those sweet times, I am so excited to watch Owen grow up and see him learn and change and get bigger. Being a mom is the best and Owen has brought us (and our families) more joy in the past year than we ever could have imagined!

November

Another month down and now only a few weeks until Christmas and only a few weeks until Owen turns ONE! It’s so very exciting! We had family pictures taken with my family at the beginning of the month at Memory Grove and they turned out really great. It was really sad to do them without my dad but I just love my little family and I’m so grateful we are so close.

I really love this guy. He is everything to me and makes me the happiest girl on earth. And he put up with getting pictures because he knows it was important to me. I love our life together.

I really love these pics of my mom and sissy! They mean so much to me and are my bestest friends! Isn’t my sister beautiful?

We got to see Owen’s girlfriend Reese again and they hit it off. Owen was terribly scared of Dustin for some reason and cried a lot when Dustin was anywhere near him. Kind of hilarious.

Who doesn’t love a picture of a sleeping baby? Seriously melts my heart. And he looks adorable in his church outfit. I can’t get enough of his cuteness.

Owen finally started crawling at the end of October and now he is unstoppable. He is into everything and loves to explore. His favorite thing is opening the drawers in the kitchen and out bathroom and pulling out everything. I had to move the razors and other dangerous things for him to play.

My tupperware drawers are very well organized in the kitchen. I’m a bit obsessive…but that is Owen’s favorite drawer so we have just piled a bunch of crap in there for him to pull out and throw all over the kitchen. Then we throw it back in for next time. I will wait to re-organize it when he is past this phase!

I got him this camelback water bottle and he LOVES it. He was drinking out of mine all the time so I got him this and it is his favorite. He loves water and will drink it all if I let him.

We put up our tree the week before Thanksgiving and it made me really happy. I really want to get a bigger tree and refresh our decorations so hopefully next year! We watched Home Alone and drank hot chocolate and it was so Christmasy and cozy!

Thanksgiving was really fun and I didn’t really get any pictures except below! We had dinner with Dan’s family. There was about 50 of us and it was quite the zoo. Owen did great and ate tons of food. Dan also ate tons of food and won the weight gain contest by gaining 9.5 pounds in the hour or two before and after eating. Sexy. We went to see my family for pie that evening and had a lot of fun. We have a lot to be thankful for, that’s for sure.

On Saturday we went to Smith and Edwards (a huge army/navy surplus store) and there was an awesome Santa there! There was no line to see him and they let us take pictures with our phones for free! It was pretty much perfect! Plus Owen didn’t cry and loved it!

These pictures are pretty sweet. I just wish I knew and I would have put him in a cuter outfit…we might try to see another Santa soon but this was a success!

I don’t have a picture, but we also got another niece in our family! Annabelle (not sure of the spelling) was born a few weeks ago and she is a doll. She is the 18th grandchild and I’m sure there will be many more to come!

We can’t wait for December, Christmas lights, parties and Owen’s big day! I’m planning a Polar Express birthday party so hopefully I can pull it off without too much stress during this crazy time of year!

October

October is behind us and Dan and I are both another year older! We both had birthdays in October and we spent a lot of time with family. That what life is about! Uncle Joseph came home from his mission in Bulgaria and got to meet 4 new babies! Owen has never been very shy or upset if strangers hold him and when Joe held him, Owen just stared at him with big eyes. After a few minutes, he burst into tears. It was pretty sad but pretty hilarious. He didn’t like Joe for a while there, but he has since warmed up to him! This picture pretty much explains how Owen felt. He was very nervous about Joe.

Ben and Becky (Dan’s sister) and their cute girls also came home! They have been in Mongolia for Ben’s work for the past two years and so the entire family is back together! There are 33 of us total (17 grandchildren ages 0-12 with one coming in a few weeks!). It is insane and lots of fun. Addy and Sarah love playing with the babies. Sarah is tiny so wrangling Owen is a bit difficult for her. Addy told me she wishes she were me because “Owen is SOOOO cute!”. Seriously adorable.

Owen and Benson are only 3 months apart and they are pretty cute to watch together. Owen was jabbering to Benson and they just play together. I have a feeling they are going to cause some trouble as they get older.

This boy really loves the swing in our backyard! We try to swing as much as possible. He gets mad if we go outside and don’t swing!

Dan’s birthday was on the 5th and he got some pretty sweet presents. Owen loved playing in all the wrapping paper!

I also made my first cake ever! I love baking and cooking but I have never liked cake so I never make it! I decided to be a nice wife and make one for his birthday. It looks terrible but it tasted really good! Luckily my neighbor had all the cake supplies that I could borrow!

We took a drive up the canyon a few weeks ago to check out the beautiful colors and weather. Owen and I both got a little queasy and he ended up throwing up. I think he has inherited my terrible motion sickness. Sweet.

Cuddles after a bath! He thinks it’s so funny when we wrap him up in the towel after the bath.

We went to Black Island Farms which is only a few minutes from our house. They have a huge corn maze, pumpkins, and all sorts of fun fall activities. We picked out some pumpkins and checked out a bunch of the animals they had.

Update on Owen: he is really cute. He is still not really interested in crawling and he just rolls, scoots, and army crawls everywhere. He can get anywhere he wants so I imagine he might not ever really crawl. He jabbers a ton and can be really loud. He can say Mama, Dada and All done. He copies me and will click his tongue, growl, squint his eyes, etc if I do it. He likes to share his food with us. He is still happy 99% of the time and always smiles and laughs. He is a little clingy with me but not too bad especially if I keep out of his sight. He has very little hair still but it’s growing and it’s really light. He has no teeth and no sign of teeth! He is thinning out a lot and is still chubby but he doesn’t have as many rolls as he used to! He sleeps great (as long as we’re at home) and will take two naps about 1.5-2 hours each and he will sleep from about 7/8pm-7am. Sometimes he wakes up early and will jabber and talk to himself then go back to sleep. He is nursing 4 times a day but he is not interested in the 4:00 feeding and doesn’t eat much, so I imagine that will be gone soon. He loves to look at books and turn the pages and he loves going on walks in the stroller. He plays by himself really well while I do some work but we still get lots of time to play together. He is really starting to get a funny personality and he does a lot of things to make us laugh. He is the best!

We got family pictures a few weeks ago at Memory Grove and the colors were amazing. Owen wasn’t too impressed with the photographer or any of us trying to get him to smile so he didn’t smile much, but he didn’t cry either, so I call that a success.

I think he wanted me to pick him up here!

After pictures we met up with my aunt/uncle/cousin and his wife and little girl. My aunt and uncle are from California but we see them quite a bit since their son lives in Utah. They are great and we met at Maddox for dinner. Me and Ash were twinners with our yellow cardigans, white shirts, jeans and brown boots! So funny!

On the 24th, it marked one year since my sweet Dad left us. It was a really hard couple of days and it still is really hard to think about him not being here with our family. I feel like so much has happened since he left and I still can’t believe that he hasn’t been here while we have had Owen, but I feel like it all just happened and that he was here just last week. Grief is a weird thing and for me, it comes and goes. Sometimes I am completely fine and other times (usually at night when I’m in bed), I let myself think about him and I am overcome with sadness. We really miss him a lot.

We decided to paint our pumpkins this year and it was fun! I had ideas of letting Owen smear paint around on his, but quickly changed my mind. He was happy to roll around on the floor while we painted! I did the chevron pumpkin and Dan’s was the haunted house. I did polka dots for Owen!

We went to the zoo last week and it was really fun! We have talked about it for ages and finally did it! It seems that we do a lot more things now that we have Owen and I’m glad. We did a lot of fun stuff before him, but now we make a lot more effort to do smaller fun things.

I think his favorite thing was sitting on Dan’s shoulders. He loves that so much and I just about die when he holds on to Dan’s ears! Cutest ever. We saw a lot of animals and enjoyed the gorgeous weather at the zoo.

The boys waiting for the polar bear to dive in! We ended up seeing him up close against the glass a little later.

Halloween was really fun. I was a ghostbuster and Owen was the green slimer! It turned out pretty cute and Dan helped me make the gun and stuff. My mother in law made Owen’s green costume and I found the perfect hat and gloves at Target!

I took him to work with me for a party and we won the costume contest! He was a big hit and as cute as ever. We went trick or treating with all the cousins at my brother in law’s house (they give out good candy in their neighborhood!). It was a great day and a great birthday for me!

October was a success!