Stephen's First Birthday

Stephen celebrated his first birthday on September 27th! We invited the Quist family as well as the Smith family over to eat cake and watch Stephen open presents. It was very entertaining to watch Steve open each gift because as soon as he saw what was inside he would let out a little gasp or squeal. He got a great assortment of toy cars, books, and clothes as well as a new “push and ride” car from Grandma and Grandpa Smith. He even has a new cell phone and car keys from Grandma and Grandpa Quist.

Yes, there is a theme here – Stephen loves cars and everything to do with them. All you have to say is “go” or “car” and he says “bbbrrrruumm brruuummm.” Sometimes Scott lets him “drive” the car in our neighborhood and he is now a pro at turning on the windshield wipers, bright headlights, and blinkers.

After opening all of his gifts we gave Stephen his tiger cake to enjoy in the way that only one-year-olds get to . . . yummy!

Fun Old Stuff

I thought it might be fun to start off sharing a few pictures of Stephen from his first year. These are some of my favorite ones. Stephen is such a happy, smiley little guy and is so much fun to have around. He crawls everywhere and gets into everything. He is also very good at pulling himself up on chairs, couches, walls, table legs, and mommy and daddy legs. His interests right now are cars (brrrumm brrrrumm), cows (mmmmu mmmu), and dogs (panting sound). He also enjoys reading books with mommy and daddy. He is now a really "big boy" because he no longer uses a pacifier. (I think we are through the worst...) No, Krispy Kreme did not pay us. This picture was taken in Provo when Steve was about 6 months old. He really liked tasting doughnuts.

Here is Stephen helping Daddy open his birthday present in July. Steve was 10 months old at the time. He loved playing with the paper and box after the gift was open as I am sure he will enjoy at his own birthday. Scott is a great dad and I love this picture of the two of them together.

Here is Steve is in his walker on Easter Sunday. He has lost interest in the walker recently (he found that crawling gets him to more interesting and hands-on places) but for about 3 months or so he spent many hours in his walker running all around the house. It was really entertaining to watch him try to catch Kloie, our beagle. (He never did.) It was also fun to run from him and hide behind the corners to jump out and surprise him. He could run really fast in that thing and giggled the whole time he was running.

Meet the Smiths

Here is our adorable family - Cami, Scott, and Stephen. While we are stunningly attractive in this picture we actually look better in person! This picture was taken in August 2007 at Val Vista Lakes (in case you didn’t already recognize it). We are very excited to begin this blog so that we can share all of the fun we are having! Stephen’s first birthday is on Thursday, the 27th. I am looking forward to a lot of fun and a lot of cute pictures!