BABY STEPHENS

After long weeks of anticipation, today was the day we found out the gender of our little miracle!! little baby could not sit still but we was very photogenic and cooperated the majority of the time. Of course it knew we were trying to figure out what gender it was and kept teasing us. The nurse was very sweet and took lots of pictures for us to take home. Sitting there watching the screen was amazing, to think a wee little one is inside of me...unbelievable! It did make it more real after seeing it move around.


 The picture on the side shows what gender

 Daniel and I both knew all along what it was going to be (daniel knew before we were married supposedly) I however at first thought it was a girl because 1. I could not picture myself with a boy 2. I had dreams it was girl 3. AND mainly I would get a lot of little adorable girls clothes from the girl I nanny. BUT deep down inside of me I knew it was a boy and especially through the ultra sound before we found out I knew it was and we are BOTH SUPER EXCITED!!! He can be the man of the house when daniel is gone and protect all his other future siblings, of course so Daxton can have a playmate and they'll be best of friends!!! :)

We do have a name picked out already.. It's a secret till he's Born!! Sorry but we like to keep things a surprise:)

One Year Anniversary

Sunday May 15, 2011 was Daniel's and I one year Anniversary. Yup folks we've been married for a whole year now can you believe it's been that long?? I sure can't! We have had one fun amazing year and I can't wait for years to come I get to spend with my darling Husband.

Daniel was so cute on Thursday he called me up and told me he had something to give me and that he Possibly could not wait until Sunday to give it to me. Lately I have been craving fudge and I had mentioned that to him twice in different scenarios... He told me had gotten me something that I knew I've been wanting for awhile YUP he bought me FUDGE!! To top it off he got 3 different kinds. I almost ate the entire thing in one night.

We have had some discussions about the Holy Ghost lately and how to better recognize it in our lives and then act upon those promptings so he bought me a book Called Whisperings of the Spirit by Nancy Murphy. I can't wait to read it. He then told me that there was something that he found helped him during stressful situations and then he pulled out the book As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. It is a very very short read and is quoted by many apostles and highly recommended read. Anyway I was quite surprised with these gifts because we had told each other we weren't getting each other presents because well for those who don't know....

We are going to Washington D.C. in July to see our lovely friends Steve Dent and Liz Franco get married here.....

Why not take advantage of the opportunity and include our vacation into the deal. We can not wait. Every night before I go to bed I tell daniel "WE'RE GOING TO D.C." After much persuasion throughout the year to go on a trip together We Are FINALLY going! hooray.

Okay so now my part of the Anniversary... I am a Maker.. seriously it is in my blood! I was born and raised a Maker.. I make alot of things by hand and so when it comes to gifts I make them. As a child I loved the story Love You Forever

 So I made Ticket stubs that had the lullaby the mom would sing to her baby boy

I'll Love you Forever

I'll LIke you for Always

As Long as I'm living my Babe you'll be

or

instead of Babe I also put Lover, Eternal companion, Best Friend and Cuddler.

On the back of each ticket stub it described what each ticket was good for. I have always thought it would be so fun to relive our very first Date together exactly. Our first date we ate Zupas on Trax and went to the Bee's Game. On the Best Friend Stub I told him this was good for travelling down memory lane for one date out with your best friend. Then i gave him the tickets.

 This was a fun little thing I made that described all the things I love about Daniel!

 For the Babe ticket Stub I gave him this Love Journal for us to put in any fun mementos or keepsakes we've kept, memories, and write love letters to one another.

The cuddler was good for a movie to get all snuggled up and cozy together. Daniel loves Massages so I gave him ticket stub good for one massage.

The Eternal Companion ticket stub was good for one night out on town to the Salt Lake Temple to do temple sealings together. I thought it would be fun to reflect upon our own temple sealing we had a year ago. It was such a memorable occassion for me and I am so grateful I am sealed to Daniel for time and all Eternity. It was a really fun evening and afterwards Daniel took me to Benihana's!! mmm mm delicious! We had some very entertaining high schoolers at our table and a very entertaining Asian waitress and Chef :)  

 This picture just cracks me up of Daniel.. so i had to put it up to show his silly side.

What daniel kissing in public????!!! PDA alert PDA Alert.

Let's Go Fly a Kite! Let's Go Fly a Kite and send it Soaring.... Well that is exactly what Daniel and I did on Sunday. We took our never been opened kites we bought when we were dating to the park on a most Blusterious Day as Whinnie the Pooh would say. We had a lot of fun trying to get them to stay up in the air for longer than 5 secs. The wind would blow like crazy then all of sudden stop and then pick up again. It was pretty hysterical i am sure in the eyes of other beholders. At the end of our flying however we managed to get them up way high in the sky and stay up there for while.  

 You can see the tip of daniel's kite at the top of the picture..

We ended the night with a game of Phase 10 and we even tied to make it an even special occassion for us both!
We sure had a wonderful most Glorious Anniversary!



Artwork

For Christmas last year I wanted to do something special for Daniel. I thought about painting a picture from his mission but I couldn't find any picture that would be cool painted. Instead, since Daniel loved his home in Far West, UT and talks about his memories all of the time.... a brilliant idea came to my head to paint a picture of his home. I got a copy of the picture from his Mother and started plugging away at the painting. However, last semester was oober busy for me and I didn't have much time to work on it and I had to be careful for him not to see it, so it was really hard to even work on it. When I gave it to him it was not finished. Four months later and Waalaa..

I also made this frame years ago at the Quick Water Ranch up in Idaho. As you can see on the painting there are two little streak marks.. well I was glueing the canvas onto the frame and the glue had dripped down so i'm still quite not finished, since now I have to fix that and lighten up the rainbow still.

Easter Sunday

For Easter Sunday we went up to visit Dad and Shae since mom, parks, and lex were in Texas and Shelby and Brandon were in Europe. We also brought along Kelsi and our Beer..... 

We thought we might change tradition a little bit. :0

Dying eggs was such a delight writing secret messages to each other with white crayon.. After we finished decorating our eggs we went outside to find the chickens and this is what we found.. A Miracle Chicken.

 We hid the eggs for Shae to find and she had so much fun finding them.. as did Kelsi and I helping her find them. I hid this egg and it was the first one Shae found.. blimey.

 I had to capture a shot of Dad and Daniel watching us follow shae around...

After we finished the Easter Egg hunt we went outside to capture the chickens to put them back in their cage. It was Dan, Kelsi and I and so the three of us took off with determination to catch these little suckers. However, to our dismay they would not come to us nor were they very easy to catch. Two were captured and then it was the rooster. The rooster could not be caught by any of us. Dad was hysterical watching us attempt to capture him. Finally he came out and cornered him next to the steps and so Dad had the triumphal catch. It sure was a great Easter!

Yummy Treats

One Lovely Sunday Afternoon Kelsi came over for dinner... We love it when she comes. We made our favorite Calzones and Daniel made his most famous cookie recipe however, it didn't turn out because he uses shortening in his cookies and since we don't have shortening we had to use butter.. Unforbidden in his cookies. Since the recipe makes so many we decided to make jumbo size cookies.. with all sorts of ingredients on top. :) YUM

Well they turned out looking really cute and fun but they tasted more of bread than a cookie I think if we had added lots more chocolate it would have tasted GREAT!

Here They are.. Great Date idea or way to get nice and fat

So for April Fool's day I really wanted to do something to Daniel, so I got up before him to make him breakfast but I started getting a guilty feeling inside of me about doing a mean prank.. cuz dan usually takes his breakfast on his way to work so i'd feel bad having him be hungry all day. Instead I made pancakes with raisins inside of them, he doesn't really like raisins but will eat them. And I put one huge chocoloate chip in one pancake. I made some tang and added lots of salt to it. Well he didn't even eat my surprise chocolate chip pancake and he thought I was trying to make him eat healthier by putting raisins in the pancakes. sheesh. Then he asked me if i was a little tired this morning. I said why and he was like because you put salt in the Tang instead of sugar and he was worried that I'd come home and drink the tang and spit it everywhere not knowing that i had put salt instead of sugar.. Sheesh sheesh.. So my pranks didn't really work. DARN.
That night we went to Shelby and Brandon's house and brought homemade Pizza....

We gave a slice to Brandon.. he was nervous of course to try it but HE LOVED IT!! THis isn't your ordinary pizza.. we like to call it FOOL's Eye Pizza. It's actually cake for the dough with frosting for the pizza sauce, white chocolate and coconut for cheese and fruit by the foot pepporoni. Scrumdiliumcious

 Daniel eating the leftover part of the cake..