Addy Turns Six

Yesterday my baby girl turned 6 years old!  She came into our lives as a sweet surprise and has kept on surprising us ever since.  She is the cutest, funniest, craziest, goofiest, sweetest 6 year old I know.

This video is how we announced our surprise to our family and friends:

I woke up with a purpose the morning of  November 28th, 2006.  My purpose was to get Zac and Em off to school, take Aubrey to preschool and then get all my Christmas shopping done.  Addy was due in 4 days and I wanted to have Christmas all ready before she got here.  I had made a plan of what stores I need to hit and in what order and I had a list for each store of what I needed to buy there.  I was so busy trying to get ready to go that I failed to notice that I was in labor.  By the time I realized it I didn't have much time to get to the hospital.  There were several times in the car that I really thought Steve was going to have to deliver this baby on the side of the road.  We didn't find out with any of our kids what they were going to be in advance.  We like the surprise.  We were so happy when she was born and we added another sweet girl to our family.  Click here to read my very first blog post ever which happens to be about her birth.

A few months after she was born, she made her first of what would become many, many visits to the hospital.  She had RSV and had to spend a few days in the hospital.  Six years later, whenever something happens to her she says things like this, "*sigh* I don't want to have to go to the hospital again!" 

Addy in her blessing dress

After numerous posts on my blog like this one where she got this thing stuck on her head, people began referring to her as "Monster Baby".  The nickname stuck for a few years.  I must say, she was the sweetest little monster baby ever.

Addy has a very special bond with these two ladies.  Her Auntie La La and Grandma.  They are two of her very most favorite people in the whole world.

Happy Birthday my CRAZY Addy Girl!

BONUS Flashback Friday - Ghosts Of Thanksgivings Past

 Thanksgiving 1992

I had just graduated from High School a few months before and had just moved from Dallas Texas to Salt Lake City Utah (a move I'm sure my parents never thought would be permanent, but hey - I'm still here in Utah 20 years later!).  My dad and Farrah drove up to spend Thanksgiving in Utah with me.  On their way they got caught in a horrible snow storm and had to spend the night in a church somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  But alas, they finally made it!  We had fun together, just the three of us.  We made our own Thanksgiving feast and tried to take a picture of ourselves.  It didn't work out too well as you can see above.  That was way back when you had to buy actual film for your camera and then take your pictures to be developed and wait until you got them back to see that you took a picture of yourself with your head cut off.  We also went to see the lights at Temple Square:

Thanksgiving 1996

Steve and I had been married for about a year and a half and were living in Utah.  Farrah was going to BYU.  She had just had her wisdom teeth pulled and we literally picked her up from the dentist and drove to Idaho to spend Thanksgiving with my Great Grandma Erma Arthur and our great Aunts and Uncles and cousins.

 Thanksgiving 1998
We spent this Thanksgiving in St. Louis with Steve's family.  Zac was a year old.  In the second photo down it is funny to see how sparse our little table is.  When we get together now there are so may of us we are all crowded together.  While we were there we went to see my brother-in-law Ed play in a hockey game. 
 

Thanksgiving 2003

We spent Thanksgiving in Dallas that year.  Emily and Zac helped Papa deep fry the turkeys.  We had two sweet little babies, Aubrey and Tia, who had just been born that March.  A few years before my father, being the cunning man that he was, came up with a plan to insure that his family was always together on Thanksgiving.  He instituted a tradition of taking all the male members of the family to the Cowboys game on Thanksgiving day.  It worked up until the year he decided to up and move to Utah himself.

Thanksgiving 2004

Dallas Texas.  A dear friend of ours, George Brown, who several years before served as a missionary in our ward in Dallas, came to spend Thanksgiving with our family.  He wanted to repay my parents for the kindness they showed him as a missionary, so he bought the tickets and took all the guys to the Cowboys game that year.  We didn't know it at that time, but this was our last Thanksgiving in Dallas as my parents moved to Utah the following summer.

Thanksgiving 2005

My parents first Thanksgiving in their new house in Utah.  I didn't take any pictures of this event, I only have the pictures my sister took of our family.  As you can see in the bottom picture, we gained a child - my nephew Gabe.  Bart and Farrah and Gabe came from Dallas to spend Thanksgiving with us.

Thanksgiving 2008

Our first Thanksgiving since my dad passed away in January of that year.  We had just moved into our new house.  A few months before we had moved out of our old house and into my mother's basement while we finished up the house.  My brother Sam had just returned home from his mission in Mexico City a month before.  My mom's house was crowded and we were trying to hurry and finish our house so we could move out of my mom's house before Bart and Farrah and their boys came to stay with her for Thanksgiving.  We just barely made it and just moved in a few days before they arrived.  Click here to see the original post of that Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2009

Our first Thanksgiving to host in our new house.  It was a pretty quiet one.  Just our family and my mom and Lauren and Sam.  Click here for the original post.

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a pretty big group over to celebrate Thanksgiving with us that year.  We had our friends, who are also my mom's across the street neighbors, Curtis and Kami and their boys over.  They were smack dab in the middle of remodeling their kitchen.  Also my mom and Lauren's friends Dr. Jen and her girls.  Click here for that original post.

Thanksgiving 2011

We spent Thanksgiving in St. Louis last year.  We had a blast.  That Thanksgiving included hiking, art, history, animals, guns, arches, dancing, war games, Thanksgiving dinner at Jack-in-the-Box, Black Friday on the floor of the Troy Walmart pharmacy where I am pretty sure I contracted bronchitis, a flash mob, and tons and tons of family and fun.  Click on each day for those posts.  Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6.