HAWAII!!!!!!!!

Don't you wish you were here right now?!

Me too!

Nate and I packed our bags, sent Abby to the grandparents and went to Hawaii for a week!! It was wonderful and amazing. We stayed with Chelsea and Lamar, and that made it so much fun!

Can you tell I'm excited?! Me and Chelsea on the beach, I looked like such a dork... every time a wave came I was knocked over, so I was holding on to her for support. ha!

The first day Nate went surfing and we just played in the ocean. Since Chels and I are both pregnant, and we had to even out our tan..... I dug out a hole in the sand so we could lay on our stomach. It was HEAVEN, but we fell asleep from being so comfortable and I got super burned! The awesome part is I had strings from my swimsuit accross my back, so I have the most awful design on my back! Nate burnt his legs real good too!


He didn't get to surf as much as he would have liked, due to weather, but he did get up a couple times. I wasn't very good at being a photographer, but I did get one with him up.... he's just on his way down. :)



On monday we went kayaking. It was super rainy this day but we still had tons of fun... until Nate and Lamar almost got us killed!!!! We were kayaking in the ocean out to a little island and us being the dorks we are took the short path and cut straight through the ocean where all the coral was. We didn't have any trouble getting to the island, but on the way back (despite the fact that Chelsea and I were telling the boys to go the long/safe way) we went the coral route again. But this time waves were a factor. (Keep in mind Lamar is on a stand up paddle board, a huge surfboard that you standup on and use a paddle to move, and the 3 of us are on the 2-person kayak.... I was the lucky person in the middle without a seat!) So we were trying to maneuver the waves but we inevitably got knocked out. It was hillarious watching us scramble to get back into the kayak before the next wave came..... especailly considering Chelsea and I are both pregnant. At this point I was yelling at Nate and Chelsea to turn the kayak, and this was a stupid idea, we are all going to die, etc. I'm sure they will have a good memory of my mouth that day! :) So we turned perpendicular to the wave and caught it, so we are now soaring through the water toward a huge mass of coral! As soon as the wave died out we found ourselves stuck on top of the coral, great! But we were pushed off with the next wave, and those two paddled like crazy people and we were home free. It was still a long ways to the beach but it was a nice and calm and safe. It gave me lots of time to switch Chelsea and take a paddle (poor girl was so tired), appologize for my mouth, and continue to yell at Nate for that stupid idea. :) Luckily Lamar was safe too, he stayed on his board the whole time. We didn't get any pictures of the beautiful island we were on because we were worried about ruining our cameras with the rain, they would have gotten ruined in the ocean anyway!

Here we are at the Hukilau Cafe, we ate there twice, yum!



Dole Pineapple Plantation. Pineapple in Hawaii is sooooooooo good!

Loved the pineapple icecream





Hale'iwa sign. Great place for shopping!


Of course the Polynesian Culture Center was amazing! I have been before, but it was Nate's first time. Definetly one of our favorite things on the trip. It was neat for Nate to see all these cultures that he already loves.


This is at our luau dinner. The food was yummy!

We had a million pictures from the different islands, here is Samoa.

Thursday we went to the temple. I forgot my temple reccomend, but luckily Nate is in good with the bishop these days and he called and got me in!

The flowers are as big as your head!

Beautiful temple

Nate and Lamar went golfing a few times at the Turtle Bay Resort (where Lamar works).

We also went to the famous swap meet and spent lots of money. Relaxed on the beach. Chelsea colored my hair for me. Ate lots of good food. And just hung out.
Thank you so much Chels and Lamar for the fun week. I wish we were still in Hawaii with you!!!

I was super excited to come home and see my Abby! Poor girl was sick most of the time, ear infections, teething, and homesickness. But it was so nice for Nate and I to get away and spend quality time together.

Christmas

Christmas was wonderful in 2010. We saw lots of family, and had lots of fun. Abby was spoiled rotten, and we had fun spoiling her! Here are some pictures of our good times.

Abby with Santa at our ward Christmas party.

playing the drums at the Christmas Eve party.

Here's Abby with 2 of her cousins, Perry and Daniel

She had AWESOME hair Christmas morning!! She got a magnadoodle, which she loved. She refused to open any more presents after she got it. So Nate opened her baby/stroller gift........

This is her face when she saw the baby.....

And, see you all later, I have a baby to push. She loves babies (real or fake) so she had a fun time with this gift.

But who needs presents when you have boxes?! Kanela and Abby

Long Overdue Post!

I have a lot to catch up on! We celebrated Nate's 26th birthday in November. I got him the Kinect, and he loves it. So does Abby, she loves to play with him!

For Halloween we found whatever was in the closet for costumes. Grandma A bought Abby this cute hawaiian dress when she went a couple months ago, and it was the perfect costume! Abby loved the glowsticks, and scored tons of candy. She LOVES suckers, they are her favorite.

This little girl is growing like a weed! She's working on getting more teeth, so some days are better than others, but she's still just a sweet little girl! She loves to dance, and she is starting to talk. She says hi, hello, bye, more, please, no (which is currently her favorite), yes, momma, dada, baby and binki (but they both sound like dada), and she does a bunch of animal sounds too. I have yet to get a good video of her doing her animal sounds!

Sorry the video is sideways, but I don't know how to change it.

We also got a new tv. A little bigger than our last one. Big enough for Abby and Grandpa A to fit in the box!

We bought a fresh Christmas tree this year, love the smell! And Abby had a blast decorating it. She was super helpful..... all the decorations she put on the tree ended up in the same spot, it was pretty funny.

Last weekend we had all the Williams side of the family up. We had way too much fun, going to see the Mesa Temple lights, taking family pictures for the first time since I've been in the family, eating lots of yummy food, a gift exchange and just enjoying having everyone together. Unfortunatly the only pictures I did take were of my little family! Abby loved the temple lights, she would have stayed there all night long.

Life is crazy these days. Nate has a new calling. He was a young mens advisor, but now he is the 2nd counselor in the Bishopric. Crazy right?! It has been good so far, we don't see Nate as much as we would like, but we are being blessed in other ways! Until next time!

Photos!!!

Tania has done it again! Here are just a few pictures from Abby's 1 year photo shoot! There are so many more I wanted to post... but it would take me forever to get them all uploaded.

Abby has this cute scrunchy face smile.... for the longest time we couldn't figure out where she got it from. Apparently that is how Nate and I smile!

This is a classic Abby face!

Tania, they turned out beautiful! Thank you so much... now the hard part is figuring out which one to hang on our wall!!!!

Birthday!

For Abby's birthday we went down to Tucson to share it with family. Here are some pictures of the day:

We started it off with a photo shoot at the crack of dawn to beat the heat! Surprisingly Abby was in good spirits about it. More pictures of that to come!
Waiting for her cake

It took her a minute to dig in, but once she did, she didn't hold back!

Nate helped her eat it.

She enjoyed feeding Daddy more than she liked to eat it herself.

She got pleanty spoiled!

It was a fun day, but by the end Abby was sooooo ready for bed!

1 year!!

What??!?!?! Really?!?!!? Already!?!??!? I am so not read for this milestone in Abby's life. It is very bittersweet. All I keep thinking about is what I was doing a year ago today. At 8:45 sitting in the hospital waiting for my sweet baby girl. At 3:08 I'm pretty sure I'll be crying! Abby has been the sweetest blessing in our life, I don't know how we were happy before she came along!

• She is very sober. Smiles and laughs have to be worked for, Abby doesn't just hand them out, unless you are under 3 feet!! She loves kids, and I mean loves them! When Abby was 6 or 7 months we had only gotten her to laugh a handful of times, when she got around her cousin Daniel she laughed at every little move he made! There's a little 6 month old girl in our ward that Abby loves! One night she sat and hugged and kissed this baby for an hour (of course her kisses are more like an opened mouth slobber).
• Abby never cries, unless she needed something. She was the best newborn, at the hospital the first time she cried was 30 min after she was born, when she was getting her bath. She doesn't cry when she falls or hits her head. She is tough! Except maybe when she gave herself a black eye, that was pretty bad! (She is starting to throw tantrums these days though, and she lets me know what she thinks!)
• She's a mama's girl. Don't get me wrong, she loves when Nate comes home from work, and cries when he leaves. She loves her Daddy, but she's still a mama's girl!
• She does things on her own terms. There is no getting her to preform! She can wave "bye", she says uh-oh, she claps, she can give kisses, she just started taking 4 steps at a time, but good luck seeing any of these things. She will not do them in front of a stranger (she just stares them down!), and she will not preform for the camera.
• She is in big trouble! I just discovered that she erased a bunch of pictures off of my camera... she's lucky it's her birthday!! :)
  Here are some of my favorite pictures that I had already saved to my computer

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABBY!!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!!!