My Best Trip to the Dentist

Now that my brother-in-law Stephen is officially a dentist, a trip to the dentist means a trip to Oregon!  I went with my mom and Brigham to visit Julia and family in Albany, Oregon.  We had plenty of time to enjoy some of our favorite activities...eating, shopping, and taking pictures.

We flew into Portland and spent the day there.  We went to the first Original Pancake House, one of our favorite breakfast restaurants.

Then we went to one of my favorite Portland spots, Powell's Books.  It is the largest bookstore in the United States and takes up an entire city block.  There are maps and even a free iphone app to guide you around the store because it is so big.

The next day we got a small tour of Albany and nearby Corvallis and enjoyed the Oregon rain.

We wore our BYU clothes to watch BYU play in the sweet sixteen.  We saw lots of Pepsi distributers in Oregon and had to take a picture for Aaron of a few of his favorite things.

On Friday I went to the dentist (my excuse for making the trip).  It was fun to see Stephen as a real dentist and hear everyone call him Dr. Davis.  I came home with cleaner, whiter, and hopefully soon-to-be-straighter teeth.

Then we decided to head off to Tillamook for the afternoon.  The first place we went to visit was the cheese factory.  I am sort of fascinated with factories and seeing how things are made, and what could be better than seeing how cheese and ice cream are made, and then getting to sample them.  As you can see below,  Brigham got a bit jealous of all the good eating we were doing and decided to do some of his own.  After the factory tour we made a quick trip to the coast before the sunset.

The next day we had breakfast at a Hungarian restaurant then spent the afternoon in Woodburn, Albany, and Corvallis shopping at the outlets, Goodwill, and an antique store.  Sunday we spent a nice relaxing day at the Davis home and finally had time to play some games.

Monday we had one last photo shoot with the boys in their matching PJs before we headed back up to Portland.  It is so fun to watch the two of them together.  Jacob loves being around "baby" and always wants to play with him.  It will be so fun to watch them play together as they grow up.

We had such a great time.  We loved visiting the Davis family and visiting new places in Oregon as well as some old favorites.  We also thought of so many things that we want to do on our next trip including waterfalls, lighthouses, museums, the ocean, trains, berry-picking, more books, more cheese and the 38 flavor ice cream sampler.  Can't wait for my next trip to the dentist!

5 Months

My baby is already 5 months old, well almost 6 by the time I got around to writing this.  I can't believe how fast he is growing and learning new things.  He is rolling onto his stomach from his back all the time now, which sometimes makes him mad because he doesn't particularly like being on his stomach but he can't figure out how to get back.  He is super smiley and will pretty much give anyone a smile that will look at him or talk to him.  He loves to put everything into his mouth, including his feet when he is feeling super flexible.

He is so much fun and he makes it difficult for us to get anything done because we love holding him and playing with him so much.  Here are a few of his favorite things lately:

Most of the items above were gifted or on loan, so thanks to all of you who knew so much better than me what kinds of things babies like.

Willy Wonka and the Farm

We went to Hughson in February to visit the Barth family. Aaron got to show Brigham around the farm. We went on a drive through the orchards and enjoyed the warm weather and the first signs of Spring (while it was 7 degrees back home).


We saw old friends.


Played with grandparents.


And got to see Willy Wonka.


It's always fun to visit Aaron's old stomping grounds. We visited his old High School and favorite spots in Hughson, played cards and chess, and got to show off the little man. It was a great trip and we loved seeing family.  We only wish it could happen more often.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I know it's late, but we did have such a wonderful Christmas this year and I wanted to mention a few highlights.

To celebrate Christmas and my mom's birthday, we created 30 ceramic photo ornaments from every year since I was born to give to my mom.


She now has a special tree just for those ornaments along with her grandkids' handprint ornaments.  We started out making a few from some of our favorite Christmas photos, but then Artscow had a really great sale on the ornaments in early November so we decided to fill in the rest of the years that we hadn't done before.  But apparently it was so popular, we didn't actually get the rest of the ornaments until mid January.  I had some requests to see them, so here is a picture in case I don't get to show you the real things.


We loved celebrating with this little guy.


We were so lucky this year that we got to spend time with both of our families on Christmas day.  Christmas morning we spent with the Barths.


Then we spent the afternoon with the Hicks family and we got to talk to Johnny (serving mission in New Jersey).




We celebrated the New Year at midnight eastern time, watched the ball drop live on CNN, and were home in bed by midnight Mountain time.  It was a great way to celebrate especially when you are feeling a bit sleep deprived.


We are so grateful for the many blessings that came in 2010, especially Brigham and Aaron's new job, and are excited to see what adventures we will have in 2011.