12 years!

I can't believe it's already been 12 years!  It seems like so long ago and like yesterday all at the same time.  We were married and sealed for time and all eternity in the St. Louis, Missouri Temple on July 6, 2000. 

Night of the reception (July 8)

12 years later - July 6, 2012!

2 dozen roses for our anniversary

I was in charge of our anniversary plans for this year.  I arranged for my mom to come and watch the kids and decided we'd do something more adventurous than we've ever done before...

ZIPLINING!!!  We had dinner at Panera (it had to be quick & we love that they are a healthy alternative to eating out!).  Then we headed down to Branson for a night on the ziplines :)

Getting ready to go!

Isn't he handsome?  The gear you have to wear isn't all that flattering.

Weeee!!!

 They don't let you take cameras on the zipline tour, so a picture from Brad's phone is the best we could do, and it was blurry.  The night was really fun.  There were 7 ziplines on our adventure and about 3-4 rope bridges.  After we went ziplining, we went to Andy's for the best frozen custard around.  It was a fabulous anniversary date and one we won't soon forget.

Within the last 12 years, we have accomplished much together.  Brad went through 6 years of school (while married, he'd already been to some before we got married), 3 years of residency, and we have 3 beautiful children.  I am excited to see what the next 12 years will bring.  Love you Brad!  Happy Anniversary!

Celebrating

For next year, I would like to learn how to take really good fireworks pictures because our neighborhood does AWESOME fireworks, and my pictures don't do them justice.

These are just a couple of the amazing fireworks we got to watch from the comfort of our very own driveway.  One of the neighbors spends a huge sum of money on fireworks and then lights them all off.  This year we decided to contribute a little bit of money so we wouldn't feel guilty for enjoying the show for "free".

What's a 4th of July party without inviting the missionaries :)

The whole crew.  Love that my boys want to wear headphones to block the noise :)

Proof I was there too!

Eva was amazing and slept through the whole thing!  We had such a good time and the show lasted for probably 20-30 minutes.  It was great and afterward, all we had to do was pack up the lawn chairs and go inside!

The smoke from all of the fireworks!

Levi being goofy!

I love this last picture of Levi.  His personality is really starting to come out and he loves to be goofy and do silly faces.  We had a great 4th this year and look forward to next year!  Happy Independence Day America!

5 month facts

Eva turned five months the end of June!

 

 Car seat picture for comparison :)

 

Look at that crazy curly hair!

Five fun facts about Eva:

1 - Still wears size 1 diapers!  (Crazy, I know)

2 - On our home scale, Eva weighs about 12 pounds.

3 - Eva loves home made baby food.  She started eating solids this month and eats oatmeal 2 times a day and she started eating sweet potatoes and bananas recently and does great with all of them!

4 - Eva hates, hates, HATES long car trips!  We have been on a couple recently (okay, the longest one was 3 hours) and she cries most of the way.  Yeah, we won't be going on any long car trips in the near future.

5 - Eva sleeps pretty well now.  She takes two 2-3 hours naps a day and then sleeps for 8-10 hours at night before waking up to eat.  

Can't wait to see what happens with Eva in the next month!  She's trying to get up on all fours into the crawling position, so we'll see, we may have a crawler by my next post about Eva :)