| halloween '09 |

Yes, I know it is like a month late, but I figured I better post the few pics I have before thanksgiving hits.

Kayla HATED the whole dress up idea. She didn't like much of her costume except the tutu. That is all I could get her to to keep on. I even tried to do a formal halloween photoshoot with her and all we had were tears, so this is it 3 whole photos from halloween.

I let her paint her own pumpkin that morning and she loved it. I need to pull out the painting supplies more often!

| family pictures |

well, we finally got around to getting some family pictures done this year. I wish we would have done them BEFORE I was pregnant, but luckily we took them just in the nick of time and I wasn't really showing yet.

Kayla hated every moment of it. Lovely. She used to be really good with pictures, not so much anymore.

I have been trying to retouch them for a while now, and haven't made much progress yet, but here are a few of my favorites for now. Hopefully there will be more to come very soon! In fact, I have already uploaded 3 more in the middle of writing this!

Thanks Amy for taking your saturday morning to do this!

| pregnant |

Yep. I am.

| Disneyland |

Yes I know I have been MIA for a while, but sometimes ya just need a break! I was there.

This year for our family vacation we decided to go to Disneyland, simply the happiest place on earth right?! Well, not so much for Kayla. She LOVED riding the tram that took us to Disneyland, and couldn't stop cheering for all of the waterfalls outside of the entrance, but once we entered the park and hopped on our first ride, Kayla quickly became frightened by all things! The rides that were for kids were still really scary for her, they were dark and things kept popping out of the walls, oh and it was REALLY loud. No wonder she was scared. So, we had to make sure all the rides that we rode were outdoor ones. She had no problems with those!

So I will start from the beginning. There are A TON of pics. And we had fun, I am glad we went, but we will save Disneyland for a time when Kayla is older.

Here is a picture of Kayla waiting at the airport. Why on the floor, I don't know, but she was happy!


Here are some pics of us waiting to get into the park, we got there about 10 minutes early and there was hardly anyone there, it turned out to be a perfect day to go.



Kayla saw goofy from afar and really wanted to go see the "doggy", she was all excited and cheering and could hardly wait in line. Once we got up to him though, SHE HATED HIM. She sobbed, as you can see. It was kind of funny.


Luckily for us, she happily took a nap while there. It gave us all a good break, and Bryan and I sat and ate chocolate covered bananas. Yum.


Bryan also went and rode Splash Mountain while she was napping. He said this is his favorite ride and couldn't imagine coming here without riding it. He was one happy camper, especially since the wait was only 15 min. He is the one in the back with his arms up.


Kayla did love the Tiki Room, but I don't have pics, they don't allow them in there. She had fun climbing this tree though. I was exhausted by this point. My legs ached from hiking all the steps. I don't know how she did it! There were A TON of stairs.


We also visited the petting zoo, which Kayla loved. She likes to poke the animals though not pet. She kept trying to poke them in the eye. What's up with that?!



Kayla's favorite ride in Disneyland...DUMBO! She loved it. She would let me jerk him all around and just giggle the whole time. I am glad she liked something while we were there.

The next day we spent our time at California Adventure. We all really liked it here. There were a lot of little kid rides Kayla really liked. We rode plenty of rides over and over again. This is our only family picture we got. Lame, we didn't ever dare ask people to take one, but someone offered for this one.


And as you can see by this shot, Bryan enjoyed the kiddy rides!


Bryan also rode the roller coaster while we were there. Kayla and I rode the carousel 7 times! She loved it. She loved getting to pick a different sea animal each time, and was very particular about which one. I actually really thought it was fun to see how happy she was.



Our last day there we spent at the beach. I love, love, love the beach. It was fun going. We spent quite a while there, until we realized we packed no food and were all starving.

It was pretty windy so there were a lot of waves, and surfers, but also a lot of DOLPHINS. It was so cool, there were so close to the beach. I don't think I have ever seen that before. I know that they are hard to see in this shot, but there are dolphins there I promise! They just swam amongst the surfers.


We would dig Kayla a hole and then fill it up with water, she is pointing for Bryan so he knows right where the water goes. So funny.




We of course found plenty of sea shells. Which Kayla loved to watch wash away in the waves.


She also had to chase the birds, she loves birds. But just couldn't quite get her hands on them.


Love this face.


We had tons of fun, and it was a nice an needed break. Maybe next time we try for Disneyland Kayla will like it...we will see!

| keaton & emily | august.15.2009

So. I am behind. Very behind. I have SO many other things to blog about, but I just wanted to post some fun pics from the lasted wedding from the Ahlberg family.

Keaton and Emily got married on Saturday, in Richland, Washington. We were able to drive down there and attend. And I am so glad we did! We had fun, and Kayla even survived all 24 hours we spent in the car!!

I have some fun pics from the driving, but here are just a few off of my camera from the wedding.

Emily's back yard was AMAZING!!!! I could hardly hold myself back from jumping for joy. The only problem was, I had very LITTLE time with the bride and groom. I feel like I want to drive back there and make them get all dressed up again just so I can shoot some more pics. The light was perfect, the backdrop couldn't have been more amazing, and I only got to take a few little pics!

I took a ton of the other family's though so I will post those soon!

| sand between our toes |

Little did we know, that we could go right across the road to a sandy beach. Daybreak has a beach at the North Shore Lake, and it was tons of fun!

The girlies loved to splash and Addelyn especially loved to go as deep as she possibly could into the water.

Kayla loved every minute of it. The water was a little cool so she would play in it for a minute and then run back and want to be wrapped in a towel to warm back up.

It was tons of fun! And we will definitely be going back soon!

| july.04.2009 |

We had a fun filled holiday WEEK this year. We made sure to pack in plenty of events and see how mad we could make Kayla :) She was a pretty good trooper through most of it. (until 8pm hit)

On Wednesday we visited the {City of Fun}, rode the rides, ate 2 corn dogs each (I loved every bite), had some funnel cake, and watched the carnies. Kayla didn't love all the creepy men helping her get buckled in on the rides and she would just start crying the moment they came near her. She seemed to enjoy some of the rides, but not many! 

On Saturday I started out the morning with a run. I did the Riverton 10K. Which was quite an accomplishment for me. I can't really say I have been training for it, but for the past 3 weeks I have at least tried to go running. I haven't run for over 4 years now, so it was really fun to be able to run the 10K. I was glad to have family along side me to keep me going. Hopefully the next time I run another one it will be faster, but I don't think I did too bad for my first time ever. 

We spent the afternoon at my parents, and I forgot to take pics of the water balloon war! Maybe we will have to have another one so I can get pics :)

We then went to Bryan's parents to watch fireworks. We always have our yearly tradition of taking pics of all the grandkids together. I did get some good ones, but this one is by far my favorite...only because this whole "tradition" of taking the picture is always quite entertaining. It isn't too easy to get all the kids to cooperate at once. But as you can see, Kayla had her cheeser ready wether or not everyone else was ready. Silly little girl.