Kinsey's 1 Year Photos

Eric and I took Kinsey out for her 1 year photo shoot on Labor Day. I was hoping to leave the house early enough that the sun would still be kind of low, but NOPE! The sun was VERY bright which doesn't make for great pics. I told myself I'd edit all my favorites but I just love too many pictures and I don't have enough time. So here are a million pictures of my beautiful baby girl at 1 YEAR OLD!!

Total model pose.

My gorgeous girl.

This one is just funny because she sticks her tongue out when she focuses.

Cute little bootie. 

I could look at this face all day! Oh wait, I already do. 

Quick outfit change and family pic.

 And yes, I let her eat far too much cake in the name of photography.

Argghhhh, I'm a pirate. 

A little ribbon never hurt anyone haha.

Food coma?

Kinsey was not so happy we took the cake away from her. 

Special thanks to Blake and Kim for the red outfit!!

Boating on Smithville Lake

Labor Day week Eric was still on break so we went with my cousins Julie and Aubrey (and Aubrey's friend--totally forgot her name) to Smithville to go boating. It was a Wednesday so the lake was almost completely empty, and the weather was PERFECT. 

Kinsey got to see a million nasty carps fighting for food. It was a first for me as well.  

 Once on the boat we put safety first. Unfortunately, Kinsey absolutely hated her life jacket. It was so fatty she couldn't move her head from side to side.

I'm terrible, but I couldn't stop laughing.

 Making it to our first stop, Eric jumped in with Kinsey hoping she'd like the life jacket a little more in the water. WRONG. We had to take it off and use it as a floaty instead. 

 Here are the girls!! And yes, they are all clothed despite what it looks like :)

 Eric thought our little Kinsey-bear might want to take a stab at driving this beast (not for real because we were parked).

It didn't take long before she wanted to be the only captain on board. 

A little Titanic action with the wind blowing in her hair.

We have one more boating trip planned this year when Kinsey and I head out to Florida. She was able to swim so it was a total success (once the life jacket was off). 

Kinsey at 13 Months

I originally wasn't going to do monthly updates for Kinsey after 12 months and then I realized that I only got to do 2!! I was just going to space out the updates a little more, but Kinsey changes so much each month and I love talking about her so here it goes :)

Kinsey gives hugs and kisses...but only when she's in the mood. If not, she'll shake her head "no" at you. They are still open-mouthed, slobbery kisses. She likes to lift up my shirt and kiss my growing belly, and has the tendency of doing this in front of company!!

At the Amish store. She didn't know how to take the long beards and really tall men.

 She likes pushing doors closed. She can only open them if they aren't shut all the way. Kinsey has only trapped herself in a room once and she immediately yelled for me to save her.

Sleeping at the hotel.

 Now my little stinker gets into all the cupboards. I'm grateful and pretty surprised it hasn't been an issue before now, but it's pretty irritating having more than her toys to clean up (especially when it's clean tupperware). She pulls EVERYTHING out of drawers and takes any item off flat surfaces. I may have mentioned this before, but it makes for a messy house because Eric has a habit of putting junk down on any clean, flat surface.

 She loves to go shopping and people watch as much as ever. She especially loves watching little kids that are older than her. 

Not loving the pink cowboy boots I wanted to buy her.

I've started teaching her body parts and the two she remembers every time is, "Kinsey, where's your tongue?" (she sticks out her tongue and puts her finger on it) and, "Kinsey, where's your belly button?" (she lifts up her shirt and pokes it). Whenever we get into eyes, ears, or nose she touches her ear every time and then loses interest. Her attention span is pretty short these days.  

We've started putting her to bed earlier (normally starting the routine at 6:30-7) and it makes for a much happier baby. Especially bath time. When she's tired, it's never an enjoyable experience.

Daddy thinks her plumber's crack is hilarious. 

 Kinsey brings me books to read to her all morning long. She loves loves LOVES the animal books. Maybe it's because she's actually seen some of them at the zoo! 

She has four teeth now. The same two on the bottom and two on top--the left front (which is ginormous now but she never wants to show us) and the tooth to the left of the front. It's pretty hard getting in there for teeth-brushing time because she'd rather suck off the tooth paste and bite the tooth brush. 

Toothy grin.

 It's no secret Kinsey is a mama's girl, but these past couple weeks...MAN does she love her daddy!! She is so happy when he gets home and she loves playing with him (games like chase or peek-a-boo). She says dada more than mama now. She'll always go to him when he reaches for her (unless she's super cranky). She just loves him!! 

 As for talking, Kinsey started the 24/7 babbling 4 days before turning 13 months. You can't understand a thing she says, but it's adorable!! Her words are still pretty limited and few and far between. The most common, of course, are mama and dada. When she wants to she can say banana (nana-cutest thing ever!), hi, thank you, and hello. I'm pretty sure I've caught her saying "you're welcome" but it's really hard to tell.

She fell asleep for the one and only time in her high chair the day after her birthday. She was exhausted from all the excitement. 

 Kinsey loves walking. The fastest I've seen her move is chasing after a 3 or 4 year old boy who was ignoring her. She also runs away from her daddy when they are playing the chasing game. You can tell how tired she is by how often she falls down haha. 

A few times she has gotten a wipe and cleaned up a mess. I look forward to more of these cleaning moments!

Kinsey's level of understanding has improved a lot. We'll ask her to bring us a book or certain toy and she almost always gets it right. She's a smart little cookie, but I'm sure all the moms say that. She also knows exactly what "no" means but has chosen to ignore us when we say it lately. First step into the terrible twos!! 

Our lives are so much happier with her in it. I think she also brings peace into our home, which I love. She's a sweet and sensitive little spirit, and so full of love. 

Family Vacation 2013

When Eric took me to the Taylor Swift concert, he had to skip his board reviews. YES, they were the same night!! So the next best option was heading over to St. Louis at the end of August so he could get his review at the chiropractic school there. I thought it would be a perfect time to take a family vacation and hit up a few states with Kinsey. 

Our first stop was Nauvoo, Illinois to check out the church history sites. I've wanted to do this ever since we moved here because we're so close (closer than Utah anyway)! We made a pitstop at an Amish store because I have this weird thing about seeing Amish people in real life, and yes, it was so worth it just to see them driving on wagons instead of in cars. And those beards!! LOVE IT. 

We dedicated Tuesday for driving and then arrived at the Nauvoo Visitors' Center on Wednesday morning. 

I love that Kinsey is looking up at Jesus!

We passed up the hour long wagon ride and chose to go on a 5 minute oxen ride. Man, am I glad we made that decision!! It was almost 100 degrees the entire week. 

 Also, Kinsey was really freaked out by the oxen and especially did not like how BUMPY the ride was. I was excited to see my first ox :) I can only imagine how an hour long carriage ride would have faired with this little one. 

Scared baby needed her mama for comfort.

Next up was the Nauvoo Family Living Center to learn how the pioneers survived back in the day. The missionaries LOVED being able to talk to us. Just imagine how dull their days are after the busy summer season ends and few people come to see the sites. 

She was a little scared at first, but much happier since the sheep was fake.

Learning how to make candles. 

 My favorite part of all of Nauvoo (we didn't see everything due to it being extremely hot and us only having one day) was making rope. I just liked being able to do something with my hands.

Twisting the rope.

Daddy's little helper.

Cutting off the finished product for us to take home.

 The missionary told us an analogy of the rope and our family. He mentioned the two ends were the parents and the three loops the rope made were each of our children. I thought it was funny because I was literally carrying our three kids at the time, but then I got home and noticed there were actually FOUR loops. I guess one more is in our future...

We went to the Scovil Bakery next. It's just a tiny little building but my friends told me they give out free cookies. Of course I'm not passing that up!!

 Eric's favorite part of Nauvoo was the Jonathon Browning Home and Gun Shop. No, I think it's safe to say I wasn't aware Browning was a brand of gun, nor did I know THE Browning was LDS. But Eric got a kick out of it!

Look at those guns!

 The Browning guns were engraved with "Holiness to the Lord our Preservation."

 This was a very cool site in the Browning home backyard. They lost and buried their child in the little fenced area to the right and you can also see the Nauvoo temple in the same view. It's awesome because through temples families can be sealed together forever!

Luckily almost all the buildings were air conditioned. Yet, walking in the sun wore us out! Can you tell?

 Kinsey woke up at the Blacksmith Shop (not air conditioned might I add) to us getting our "prairie diamond" rings!

Inside the shop ready to jump in a pool of ice.

At this point we were just too hot to continue on. We plan on taking our kids back one day so we'll eventually see the rest of the sites. We drove off without taking pics of the temple, so we turned around and ventured back into the heat for a few more minutes. 

Nauvoo LDS Temple

After resting up for the evening, we drove to Carthage, Illinois on Thursday morning to see the Carthage Jail. This may have been my very favorite stop of the trip. I loved learning about Joseph Smith and all he went through in the jail. It really puts things into perspective. I'm grateful I was not born in that lifetime!

In front of Carthage Jail.

 That is an original bullet hole from the day of the martyr.

The top window is where Joseph Smith climbed out toward the mob to try to save the rest of the men inside. And of course our cute Kinsey :)

 She was such a trooper!! Having people to smile at didn't hurt either!

After Carthage we headed south to St. Louis for Eric to attend board reviews. On Friday before heading home, we went to the St. Louis Zoo.

Our first stop at the zoo was the sea lion show. Kinsey was pretty impressed for about 5 seconds...

And then she thought, "Let's go walking, Daddy!" This was about the time she perfected her walking (6 days after her birthday).

 I wouldn't recommend paying to see this show if you're at the St. Louis Zoo. It was kind of lame.

With Kinsey she can only see the animals that are close because she doesn't understand if you say, "There is a monkey on a branch way over there." Luckily, this guy was on board.

She loves monkeys...and gorillas...or is it a chimp!?

Baby and Daddy

 Although the bird building was a little stinky, Kinsey was able to see lots of birds!

And did I mention it was about 100 degrees out? Yeah, we didn't do much more than that at the zoo because we were HOOOOOTTTTT!! But we had a good vacation and loved being together as a family every second of every day.