my little walker

look at all those teeth! she is such a cutie:) showing us her claps, and double chin.

paisley took her first step at grandma and grandpa jensen's house on sunday august 30th. Later in that week we took this video of her. now she is walking everywhere and especially loves to walk outside. we love this baby!

dancing through life

at the end of august, andrea and i decided to try our luck with the wicked lottery. it was the last weekend that the show was going to be in town and we both wanted to see it again. for those of you who don' t know how the lotto works, you go down to the venue 2 hours before the show starts and put your name in the drawing. i think it depends ont he day/show how many tickets they have for the lotto. we went to saturday matinee and they had 20 tickets to give away, each person that won could take 2. on the second name in the drawing, the lady was something like this "is it devEE--n-i-e, deveenie jensen??" i said that's me! we were both so pumped, there were probably about 100 people there so chances were slim of winning and i won! you have to go right into the office and pay $25 cash for the ticket, we had no idea where the seats were.

sue (andrea's awesome mom) came too, but sadly neither andrea nor her won. of course andrea got my second ticket.

this is how close we were: [yes you can actually read the backdrop]

i might have snapped just a few shots at the end...we were in the second row!!

crazy close i know. the show was fabulous as expected. i loved it a lot more the second time, was able to take it in more, and being on the second row really helped!

with our "i won the wicked lottery buttons," and andrea's niece toni who was here with her parents for her birthday. check out her sweet new shirt, love it!

not the best picture of us, we had so much fun, i am so glad that andrea came with and that i won! whoot!

we were pretty excited. and don't worry we were so close that during intermission i got dared[yea like fifth grade style] to go get the cuteish conductor's signature for andrea. don't you worry your pretty little head, i did it. he was very nice and it was cool to see the pit.

wonderful afternoon. wonderful show. wonderful friend.

del mar races

at the end of august, swinerton did a day at the races, where they host a free suite at the del mar races with yummy food. even though we don't gamble, we thought it would be fun to go see some of the races, and mingle with some of chris's work friends. the tasty mexican salad was enough to make me happy:)

paisley showing off her big girl seat that she just loves.

eating while paisley destroys some napkins. or cups. yes she is holding a knife. it was super dull and kept her happy. don't judge me:)

momma and daughter.

outside the suite waiting for the race to start. some of chris's friends made a good chunk of money in a race or two-it was fun cheering for who they had bet on.

our happy family. (paisley is too interested in the track to be bothered with a picture.)

one of the many gorgeous horses there, i love horses! i seriously did horse back riding as my birthday present several times growing up. i also did horse back riding camp for a week at a time in the summer-loved it! (other then the sweaty shared helmets)

isn't the background beautiful?? i am so blessed to live in san diego:) thanks for the fun afternoon swinerton!

pantry fun

paisley really likes to help in the kitchen. she especially loves to stand in the pantry and get things off the shelf for me.

occasionally she helps me open things. like these granola bars...apparently she has super strong/sharp teeth.

chew. chomp. chew.

this pose reminds me of the spice girls.

i love my baby, even when i have more work rather then less when she helps me.

fort building with dad

one night while i was out, paisley and chris made a fort. she loved it. here are a few pics that chris snapped of it.

inside the fort.

loving it.

not loving it.

paisley and daddy: my two favorites!

i'm back

well, it has been a while. a lot has been going on for me and my family..maybe sometime i will share, but for now i am trying to get back into the swing of things and get caught up on my blog. i have so many cute pictures of paisley to share! so here goes.

this video is from driving to lake powell( i know, forever ago!) paisley shows off a few of her skills in her big girl car seat. yes, we really traveled all packed up like that-its takes a bunch of stuff to travel with a baby!

my baby is one year old today

today my little baby is 1 year old. i am kid of freaking out about it, it just seems like it is not possible that it has been one whole year since she looked like this:

i miss her tiny little body and her sleep anywhere skills. i love the big girl that she is now, walking, saying momma and dadda, feeding herself, clapping, snapping, pointing out my nose, pointing out fingers, clicking her tongue. i love all her new tricks! paisley has been such a blessing and such a light in our lives, we cherish her and can't really remember what life was like without her. i know it sounds silly, but i don't want her to get bigger, i am dreading that day that she goes in to nursery and i don't get to be with her at church. she is so much work, but so worth all of it and more.

my birthday princess. she is wonderful, she is precious, she is loved beyond measure.

happy first birthday to my little sweetie.

lake powell

last month we went to lake powell again with chris's family for 10 days of bliss on the house boat. we had a great time with the jensen, monroe, gunnerson, and aguiar(or just andrea) families! paisley did really well, better then expected, she of course was fussy by the end of the car rides, and didn't hardly sleep the first night, but after that she slept through the night most of the time. she got her own room, which really helped and she learned to sleep in just a onesie-because of the insane heat. she took her 2 naps in the day, and depending on the noise/heat she did pretty dang good-yeah! here is a sampling of photos from the trip, there are entirely too many and they are in no particular order.

chris at the end of the trip-mountain man style. robin, our trusty captain!

it was REALLY hot, luckily, you just jump in the water and you feel fine. notice that the outside temp says HH.H, pretty sure that means hot, hot, hot!

paisley showing off her big girl h&m swimsuit. shes so cute!

there was lots of wake boarding, not chris's favorite, but of course he is naturally good at it.

andrea and i both remembered how to get up, and were able to master going in and out the wake-we're so rad!

there are lots of rocks to climb, but apparently they get pretty hot in the afternoon-after about 15 minutes of exploring, i jumped in the water and found this lovely on the bottom of my foot:

yeah, its a blood blister, burned from the rocks.

being the type of gals that we are, we almost never do anything without a photo shoot, so here a a few select pics from miss andrea and i. [have i mentioned that i am SO happy that andrea could come with us, it was great to have her!]

paisley caught her first fish. she was pumped. she was a bit thrown off by how the fish felt though.

reelin it in!

paisley got lots of quality time with dad, and loved spending more time with uncle jason-especially when he had a book on his lap.

lots of cards, lots of games, lots of sudoku, lots of fun.

chris did some fishing research before we left, it paid off. we had grilled fish and fish tacos-yum! [josh came back from fishing with a hook in his knee-ouch!]

big cat fish off the boat--my man loves him some fishing!

paisley started crossing her ankles when she ate, so lady like! love that smile:)

so the funny story is, that my bud andrea actually grew up coming to this exact house boat as a kid. my in-laws bought a time share from the family that her family use to come to lake powell with. so tradition was to have all the kiddos line up according to height, it was just andrea, but we had to carry out tradition.

the lake water was perfectly refreshing for the adults, but just a bit to chilly for a little baby body. paisley was a good sport and got in several times-plus check out her sweet floaty.

she is the cutest!

this was a regular activity. first we have mike, jason, and josh back flipping it. and then keith and robin[check out that form!].

chris showing his back flip. too bad no one got a shot of andrea and i doing ours. dang.

the whole crew. what a fun bunch!

paisley's favorite time of day, bath time! we filled up one of the over sized coolers and she would just play and play-she loved it and it helped to cool her off before bed.

more fish, isn't he handsome!

pais with grandpa and aunt annie.

paisley loves uncle al!

our little piece of heaven. these three boys are too funny. jason looks like he is standing on the rock, followed by mike and josh.

it got pretty adventurous, first is an attempted pyramid-they got so close and then mike and jason criss crossing one another.

bev monroe=my hero. she is rad! she is a great healthy cook. i am hoping to be like her one day and learn how to make her bread-so fabulous! can't say enough about this lady:)

once mike left we subbed in chris and tried the pyramid again. josh and chris are skiing on the outside, while jason knee boards on the inside.

boo-ya.

i think the fact the josh and chris are identical in size really helped. it only took 2 tries for this to happen:

too funny! we were dying laughing, we had to go get the knee board so we threw them the flag!

wonderful vacation! i think it was be harder in years to come as the family has more and more babies, but hopefully we can still manage it becuase it was blissfull.

chris's habitat house

the week before we were heading to lake powell chris was in charge of a habitat for humanity home. swinerton was participating in a blitz, completing the home in 5 days, it was pretty busy for him to say the least. at the end of the week, was the ribbon cutting ceremony in oceanside. paisley, andrea, and i attended so we could leave staight to lake powell and so we could support chris of course!

chris, in the house with the future home owner.

the outside of the home, paisley was proud of her daddy.

chris getting recognized for all of his hard work.

we love swinerton! chris has had a good time working for them and has learned a lot of new things. swinerton totally kicked some booty building their house, they were the only builders that stayed on schedule and finished on time. yahoo, nice work babe!

getting ready to cut the ribbon.

waiting for the mayor.

picture perfect:)

we are so proud of how hard chris worked and how well he did on this project.

'helping'

paisley is so thoughtful, she loves to help me. especially in the kitchen, i think she thinks that i am un-organized, so often times she offers her services to negate the problem.

not sure why her face looks like she was caught doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing....

she know how to melt hearts, she turns on her smile.

how can i not be happy with a face like this??

i am not sure how many more years i will have such a willing helper, so i am happy to have it. i love my baby, she is a bright light in my life:)