2012: part 1

I will never forget 2012. It was the hardest, yet most wonderful time of my life. I sat down today to look at pictures from this last year and forgot that even though we lost our dear Scarlett, we still made a lot of fun memories together as a family. It's so fun to see how my family has grown! 

There were so many pictures, though, that I'm going to have to divide this into two posts!

January:

Grey got potty trained!

Hunter was learning to write his sight words for Kindergarten.

 The kids really started getting into card games

 We celebrated the Chinese New Year by parading around our house to the music of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (a CD Jon got me before we got married)

We had this much snow at the time. A small little clump it was.

February:

Jaina was learning to write the alphabet. She's a pro now!

We found out we were having a baby girl! We were SO excited!

Hunter celebrated his 6th birthday! He had a birthday party with 20 friends over... 

never again.

Jon and I celebrated our 8th Valentine's Day together. He left me this little love note!

Jaina really got into beading. She loved making jewelry.

 Jon built shelves in our garage. They were so needed. We filled them right up with plastic bins.

I made the yearly trip to the neighborhood grocers to buy our food storage.

I passed this once ugly brown dresser about 5 times in the DI before I decided to haul it home. This was my first pinterest project! (wow, i just realized this is sideways- sorry!)

Hunter got a reputation at school for having very nice handwriting. That's a reputation I can handle! And he really got into drawing jets, helicopters and tanks.

Jon found this old warehouse cart on KSL ads. It took me about a day to be on board, but then we went and got it. I totally thought it would be an easy fixer upper... I was so wrong, but we were super happy with the results after 10 hours of hard labor. We call it... the TANK.

This is one of my favorite things to do with Jon- making ugly things look, well... not so ugly! I think we make a pretty good team!

 Jon also found this dresser at the DI for $15. 

And here are the finished projects

March:

 We celebrated St. Patrick's Day in style.

Hunter gave Grey his first piggy back ride. 

We took a lot of walks in the Spring. We loved walking up the road to the new shopping center to get gelato at Harmons.

 Jaina loved finding Grey potato bugs on our walks.

 April:

We celebrated Easter and had a big hunt with my sister and her cute boys!

This was around the time that Hunter decided green was his favorite color, Grey decided blue and Jaina, pink!

Hunter performed in his first opera, "Tigers and Cheetahs"

 I sold off a lot of our mid century modern furniture that we had collected over the year. With the money we headed to Ikea and bought all this stuff for the kids play room. Best. decision. ever!

The weather started to warm up again in April so we started walking to school again. This is going to be one of my favorite memories when I'm old and gray.

Jon built our grapevine fence. That man can build anything!

I always wanted to learn how to make felt cupcakes, so I ordered a cupcake kit online. It was a lot of work for me, but I love them! 

We visited Grandma Pearson. I will always have happy memories of going to her house almost every weekend when Hunter was a baby and watching old movies with her.

Jon can spot any animal even if it's totally camouflaged in a sea of long dead grass. This was our little friend, a muskrat, that lived in the wet lands next to our house.

May:

We celebrated my 6th Mother's Day! I am so blessed!!!

We visited mine and Jon's mom for Mother's Day. I'm so grateful for such wise and beautiful women in my life!

We put up the rest of our fence along our backyard. Jon and our neighbors did it themselves.

 We took the kids miniature golfing. They loved it!

Hunter did really good in Kindergarten. Mrs. Yardley was an awesome teacher!

Grey celebrated his 3rd birthday! He wanted a Buzz Lightyear birthday!

And I celebrated my 31st birthday the same day! Jon took me out to dinner the next night, because the day after that was...

Jaina's 5th birthday! She's a spunky little gal and we love her!

The kids swam and played in the sprinklers a lot!

June:

We went to the Uintah's for our big family vacation. We had THE best time!

Jon took us to the salamander ponds while we were there and he didn't give up finding salamanders until all three of our kids had one. 

Now that's love!

We took them home and the kids had SO much fun with there first pets, that is, until Grey's salamander died. We had a little funeral and buried him in our backyard. 

We made lots of delicious grilled meals!

We celebrated my dad's 70th birthday! My dad is so great. Funniest guy in the world!

The last project of the Summer-  a play kitchen for Jaina. Painted it pink with red knobs.

Coming up next: July-Dec!