Preston is 1

oh wow. i have 1 year old. there is a chance that i am still in denial of this. certainly not sure how it happened so quickly, but i am so certainly sure that this little boy has brought us more happiness and smiles in the last year than anything ever before. he makes us giggle everyday. and even though he is hands down the busiest little body that i have ever seen in my entire life, i love every second of him! He seems like such a big boy to me, and has started to show a very humorous side to him that keeps us laughing. hands down the greatest year thus far in our lives.

Here is review in pictures of what went down on his birthday:

starting with his absolutely adorable birthday invite created by my ever so talented little sister, Mckell.

Next up: A trip to the zoo with our good friends, the obergs, who came to visit for the weekend. sadly no pictures of cute sammy. but their little girl violet is the sweetest thing you've ever seen. It was a rather HOT afternoon at the zoo, but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. Do notice Prestons very cheesy grin in this next picture...it is becoming a regular face in our house. he is silly.

and lastly: The party. His party was so very last minute planned. None of our family members could come to his party so i debated for a long while whether or not to even have a party, and on tuesday i decided to throw something together and we just invited a few friends over and it turned out just perfect. It was small and simple and perfect for preston because he had absolutely no idea what was going on. He was slightly disappointing when it came to eating his cake, I thought for sure he would go crazy with it, but i think the bright green frosting threw him off, i should have given him some of the chocolate cake i made for everyone else. but it was a great day.

We sure do love you Preston.

Backpacking

A week ago chase and i were trying to decide how we wanted to spend our last few weekends together before Chase starts hunting season. We knew we wanted to go backpacking since we had just bought our new packs. So we quickly made plans for Preston, bought last minute items and took off at 5 am Friday morn. We went to a place called the Bighorn Crags. We had such a fabulous time and it was so beautiful. We hiked 9.5 miles the first day,and then just hung around the lake the next morning and then did the same route back. quite to workout, backpacking is hard, but we had so much fun together and were so happy we quickly decided to go. Can't wait till next summer. chase and i before take-off

W

This lake is called the Crater, it was our favorite lake. we camped at a small lake right behind this one, and had this entire valley all to ourselves.

we stayed in a one-man tent. I was quite worried that we would suffocate because it looked so small, but suprisingly we both slept really well.

such a fun, beautiful trip!!

Driving....

this kid has a slight obsession with driving things...pretending of course. When we walk out into our garage and i want to go play on the grass or something, he turns right around and heads straight for the lawn mower. He really just likes to turn the knobs on it. He does the same with our car, when we are bored in the house, we can go spend a good 20 minutes or so sitting in the car, listening to the radio, which preston LOVES to experiment with varying volumes...and push all other buttons in sight. easy entertainment if ya ask me.

Family Reunion

We had our annual Garrard Family Reunion over this last weekend, and as usual it did not disappoint, i however, did on my picture taking. hopefully i can snag some of someone else s when they post them. You will notice our fun family shirts, we sported these on the last day when all we did was take naps, and play lots of out door games...hence the sick hair and no makeup and sunburned nose. not too attractive, but i didn't care. Preston was having a fabulous time running around with all the cousins...he just wanted to keep up so badly. He's cute. I do however think he is going through a bit of stranger-anxiety...or maybe it is just that he missed his parents since we hadn't seen him the 4 days prior to our family reunion. you'll notice he got a darling little haircut, which although he is adorable, I haven't decided if i like because he looks like a big boy now. he is 11 months old today!!! i really do love my family, and am so grateful for all the memories i have with them. Everytime i leave any Garrard Family function, i always tell Chase that that is how i want my family to be when we are older...you can just tell that there is no one else they would rather be with, and we always have so much fun together. already marking my calendar out for next year's reunion. hope you all had a happy fourth too!

Wasatch Back 2011

Whoa, i think i might finally be recovered from The Wasatch Back last weekend. I ran on my aunts team and we had so much fun. Our team name was "Speedy Spuds"....and we were pretty speedy ;) actually, we placed 34 out of about 90 all womens teams!! We had a really fun group of girls in our car! We got approximately 2 hours of sleep in the 32 hours in took us to run the race. serious exhaustion. you'll notice the nasty/ridiculously hilarious "spud" outfits that we were given to wear....needless to say they didn't get too much wear out of our car. I didn't train quite as well as last year, but it was still fun and i did ok. my first leg was 3.4 miles UP the first part of SNOW BASIN road. killer butt workout! but i was very happy that no one passed me while running that leg. my second leg took place at about 2 a.m and was 5.5 miles, i love the night run. and my last killer leg was 7.7 miles DOWN DOWN DOWN into park city, i ran through Deer Valley resort and while it was much harder than expected to run straight down the mountain it was fun. On my last leg BYU Mens team passed me...they finished the race in 18 hours. that's ridiculous. anyways, it was oce again so much fun, and i can't wait till next year.
V

can you believe all the snow that was still there. brrr.

yeah for the speedy spuds

until next year.