Superbowl! and Valentine's Day ;)

I forgot to take a picture of this at Christmas time, but here is one of my Christmas presents from Roger Thatcher! Isn't it pretty? I don't care if it's a gun...it's pretty and I love it! I have to say it's my favorite gun that I've shot and I'm excited, yes hunny, excited to take it hunting some day. :) Oh yeah it's a 44 magnum.
We finally finished our house projects! (For the required accessory apartment permit, we still have a million that we want to do just for us) But we're thankful to be done with these and that it wasn't too crazy expensive. I just had to show off my contribution to the effort. I decided to surprise Zac one day and had these railings almost done when he came home. I bought the wood, sanded and stained it, and then Zac gave me some tips on drilling them into the wall and I did that too. It was fun to learn new skills and make something.

We started out the Valentine festivities a week or so early by decorating valentine brownies with our friends. It was very cute and very yummy.

At first Anne just licked off the frosting but as soon as I gave her a bite of the brownie......

she went to town (as Zac would say :)

One of her buddies from kickboxing showed Anne this cool new trick and it's now one of her favorite spots.

So we were kind of slackers and didn't take many pictures of Loren's visit! We had a great time (apart from the brief episode of the stomach flu) and Anne really bonded with her crazy uncle. I wish we would've taken pictures of their playing, especially their secret handshake he taught her. But I think she will always remember him as the special person that introduced her to cheetos :)

One of the activities we did while he was here was go shooting of course, so here's a picture of what me and the kiddies were doing in the car while the guys were shooting. Michael and Anne were little angels and sat and ate snacks and watched Schoolhouse Rock. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun.

A big event at the Thatcher residence is the Super Bowl! We had a great time with our friends enjoying the game and eating some fantastic wings made by chef Zac and other yummy contributions :)

Most of the gang that was present including the Ross's and Cody,

Ben and Stephanie Clore with their son Justin and Loren.

Ryley and Mandi Enz and their son Logan.

Dad having fun with Anne while getting ready for bed.

And it wouldn't be our blog if we didn't have at least one picture of Anne eating something. So here she is with her mound of spaghetti.

We decided to celebrate Valentine's day on Monday instead of Sunday. So we started off the day with heart-shaped pancakes followed by Anne and I making Valentines for Dad and her buddies. Then I had to take some pictures of our cutie in a new outfit I got her. She's giving kisses to her valentine, her puppy.

Little heart-breaker.

Later on that night Zac and I went out to eat and Sheri babysat Anne. She's a pretty shy kid and really just likes to hang out with Mom and Dad, but she's starting to break out of her shell a little bit. When we came home they were snuggled reading a story and not crying! We're so proud of our little one. Zac gave me the Taylor Swift cd that I had been wanting for a while and I cleaned up and organized Zac's workroom for our valentines. I'm glad I have such a cool sweetheart.

So Anne used to talk when she was 5-6 months old and then at around 9-10 months she completely stopped. After all that I've read and heard it sounds like that's normal because at about that time she was concentrating on crawling and then walking so her mind was focusing on something else. But now that she's mastering those skills she's started talking again. It's so cute to hear her little quiet voice. She sings and mumbles and it sounds like a conversation. Her new first words that she uses in their correct context are "uh-huh" and she shakes her head yes and "yeah" sometimes "oh yeah" which is so darn cute. We're just so glad that she's not saying no yet. Here's Anne singing.

Anne has come a long way in her walking and is allllmost all the way there. She's still pretty hesitant to branch out onher own, we think it's because she's still too afraid she's going to fall. But she's getting there and we're really proud of the progress that she's made. We can't believe we're going to have a little toddler running around the house soon.