Anna's Birthday Video

I finally have uploaded the highlights of Anna's birthday party. Enjoy!

Halloween 2009

Here they are! Finally pictures of our Little Red Riding Hood. Her costume turned out great! Anna didn't mind walking around with her cloak. It was perfect that she has started walking because she looks so cute walking around in her costume.

It was fun trick-or-treating. It was perfect weather. We ended up just stopping and talking with our friends. Devin got a lot of great candy. Anna really enjoyed herself.

Saturday Sampler #4

I know I should be blogging about Halloween and posting Birthday Party pictures, but there is a slight problem....Devin has all the good pictures on HIS camera and since we have taken so much video lately all the video is on the camera in some secret place where more memory is located and I don't have the brain power to get the video off of that secret place and on to my computer. Sooo, quilt blocks is all you'll get until Devin gets home from the temple tonight and shows me how to get all that stuff.

Here are this month's quilt blocks and all the blocks so far. I am really excited to see what we'll do next.

Westmore Halloween

One of the reasons why I miss teaching so much is because I miss seeing my kids. Sure I had "students" in my class, but I never thought of them as my students, they were "my kids" my really good friends. I really did love my kids to pieces, even if they drove me bananas some days. (Truth be told Anna drives me bananas some days too.)
I got a call a while back from Jessie, one of the fourth grade teachers at Westmore, who wanted to know if I would come read a story to her class. Heck yes! The best part is that she has so many of my kids in her class.
It ended up that Friday was the day. What a fun day to go to an elementary school. I always said if you could live through Halloween teaching, all the other holidays would be a walk in the park. I got Anna all dressed up in her costume and we went over to read our story. It was SO good to see my kids. I feel bad I didn't get to talk with them more. They all look the same, just taller. Hopefully I will have more opportunities to go back and visit my friends.

The Cake

As I thought about Anna's 1st birthday party I wanted to keep things simple. I did want to have a fun cake. After spending some time with our good friend Mr. Internet, I decided that I could probably pull off a decent looking Ladybug cake. Thursday night after we put Anna to bed, we began the process of trying to be creative parents.

By the time we were done, I felt good about my first attempt at being a creative mother. Nothing compared to what my sister-in-laws do (Marthe and Kat scroll down to see their amazing cakes). Thanks to Devin for drilling out the lifesavers so our ladybug could have cool eyes. We ended up with a little ladybug for Anna to eat/destroy and a big ladybug ice cream cake for everyone else. Special thanks to whoever gave us the cool cake pans for our wedding. We can't remember who you are, but we had lots of fun using them. Last of all, thanks to my mom who let me take cake decorating classes when I was a teenager. I still had all my tips and cake decorating stuff which went to good use for this project. I think it would be fun to take a class again so I could brush up on things and learn some cool new stuff too. Funny how we put all this time into something our child is going to destroy.

Anna's First Birthday

Thursday was Anna's first birthday. It was a pretty simple day (We decided to do our little family party on Friday.) I took Anna to the doctor and she got four shots. The good news is that she is now 20lbs and 4oz which means we can turn her around in her car seat. YEAH! After all those shots she slept most of the day.

After dinner we drove up to the Mount Timpanogos temple. A while ago we decided that each year on our kid's birthday we would take them to the temple, and in a way count down the years until they would be able to go to the temple for real. 1 year down, 11 to go!

We really want to do all we can to have our kids fall in love with the temple. We hope that going each year on their birthday will help them know how special and important it is.

After our little temple trip we sang to Anna and let her dig into her little cupcake. It did not take her long to figure out how to eat it. Which made me excited for her to dig into her "real" birthday cake which we would be giving to her the next night.

More birthday pictures and video to come.

Pumpkin Carving 2009

There are a few things that the Baldwin family takes way more seriously than my family does. One of those things is pumpkin carving. They look at carving pumpkins the way my family looks at making gingerbread houses. See examples A (Henderson gingerbread houses 2009) and example B (Baldwin pumpkins 2009)
Even though we could not go to Idaho to be part of the pumpkin festivities, we still took the time to carve pumpkins.
I helped carve a simple pumpkin for Anna.

Devin took things to a different level. He used his dremel tool to carve his pumpkin. Good thing he used his safety goggles. Who knows what a sliver of pumpkin would do if it flew into your eye.

When he was finished he had a nice ghost that said boo. Which many people thought was a fancy "D" or a slug.

Maybe next year we will get more creative.