Gretel's Birthday, Daniel and Olivia Welch Visit, March 2015

Hurray!! Gretel turned 1 year old on March 6th! She has brought our family so much joy! She is the first girl grandchild for Sue and Greg Stapp after 9 boys! I really wanted a girl so badly! Nearly every night I sneak into her room to take a little peak at her while she is sleeping! I get giddy every

To sum up our little Gretel goes like this. Her favorite foods are salty crackers, bacon, sausage, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, spaghetti. She is barely figuring out the sippy cup, and still would rather have the bottle. Drinks milk with baby oatmeal in it. She crawls everywhere. She also does this little walking on her knees move.

time!

Moses and Heber have effectively kept her away from our stairs so we do not have gates. She rarely even goes near them. She walks along furniture, but will not attempt much more than that. She loves to wrestle and often crawls right over Zak's face while he is resting. She has this scratchy grunt/scream that she does when she is unhappy. Gretel is just learning sign language. She does the sign for cookie when she wants 'more' 'please'. She also signs milk.

She naps twice a day--but is starting to fight it. She used to just roll over and zonk out.. but now she's gotta scream for at least one-ten minutes. Her hair now long enough for me to put it in little pig tails! I love to dress her in the mornings and do her little hair! It makes me so happy. Sadly the hair style only lasts about half the day..

We decided to celebrate Gretel's birthday the week later because Daniel and Olivia and Lincoln we coming out to Wisconsin to visit us! We feel so blessed and lucky when family come out to be with us. We really loved having DandOandL with us! They made it just in time to enjoy the VERY FIRST WEEK that the weather was over 30 degrees all winter! We enjoyed 50 degrees with them!

We did the Union Star Cheese Factory, which is SUCH a great place to take guests. They show you right up close how they make cheese!! It is awesome. We then had Gretel's Official Birthday Party out in the shop! We have been working all winter to heat and insulate the shop and we heated it up to 90 and put hot water in the pools so we could have a pool party in March! It worked! The water was warm, but the floor was FREEZING! So it was a fun combo! Moses and Heber LOVED IT!

The Green Bay Packer's Stadium was a real treat! The tour is really amazing-it makes you an automatic Packer's fan! My favorite part is when the let you run out onto the field using the same tunnel as the players.

St. Patrick's Day is a funny holiday to me. But, this year, Grandma Sue sent us tattoos and mustaches for the occasion. We went to GREEN bay to see the GREEN bay packers stadium, we wore the GREEN mustaches, GREEN shirts, GREEN tattoos (some of us), and we went to GREENville's own ice cream parlor-The Twist. That is the most I have ever celebrated St. Patrick's Day-we loved it!

It was such a perfect week with Daniel and Olivia and Lincoln. We are so glad they made the sacrifice to come out and see us!

Wisconsin Dells February 2015

Last winter was BRUTAL.  I know that we were under the freezing point for more than three months straight. And for most of those cold days, we were below ZERO! We didn't go outside ever from the moment we came home from utah, to the middle of March.

We learned a lot about ourselves while being indoors so many days/weeks/months in a row--That we need to MOVE and WIGGLE and PLAY. We got a gym membership, and that was nice, but that didn't seem to be enough.

SO this year we got smart!! WE planned a trip with our dear friends, Lucy and Cody Bowman, and headed to the Wisconsin Dells! We picked the Wilderness Lodge and stayed in a condo in the Glacier Lodge portion. After we booked it, I already felt so much better. Zak did give us a scare of needing to move the date for a work thing... but, we got that all settled.. And then it was finally time to go!! I was ultra ready. I packed WAY early and I was so glad I did!

We had such a great time!!! The drive was only 2 hours and our room was as close as you can get to the sky walk over to the water parks. There were 4 different water parks and there were slides and pools for all ages. We took turns watching the babies so that all of the adults got to go out and play! Our favorite water park was the Wild Waterdome. We had the perfect day! The sun was shinning right into the dome and we all got a bit of sun. It honestly felt like Summer!! The Wave pool was awesome! Gretel fell asleep with Zak during the soft waves, but was rudely awakened during the rougher waves that came 15 min later!! Little Heber begged me to take him on water slides the whole time we were there. There were super big raft rides that the whole family could go on and both Heber and Moses loved them. Heber said he wanted to go on it 5 hundred million more times!!

I really couldn't have asked for a more perfect mid-winter trip! I felt like I had gone to Florida and it only cost us 250 dollars plus food! (and I got us all new flip flops! )