Anniversary date

As per usual our date started with dessert first. Apple pie...yum!

I know, you are blown away by my food photography skills.

We went to an awesome restaurant called Casa La Femme. There was a belly dancer (normally I love them) but well, she had no belly which means that she was just a little bit too sexy for this mama with a little too much belly.

 This was only like the 47th shot. The food was pretty good but for the price I guess we were expecting to be blown away. But as seen below the atmosphere was tops!

Obviously our server really cared about getting a good shot...grr. It was a fun night and nice enough to ride the scooter...yay! We had a great time reminiscing about our 11 years together. PS tonight (New Years Eve) marks our 12th anniversary of being together. Dang dude that is a long time.

Happy Anniversary!

Today is our 11th anniversary! How the frack did I get so old??

Here is our story in pictures and words ;) I am copying text from a post I did 3 (gah) years ago on our 8th anniversary. You can see the post here

When Cannon turned 19 he chose to serve a mission for our church. He got called to the Washington DC South Mission.

(this is the face that I fell in love with...seriously how cute was/is he? And yes my man loves the color purple) Also shout out to Sarah M don't our hubbies look SO young??


I was fifteen and he was twenty. He came to our house for dinner as a missionary almost every week for the six months that he was in our ward. He thought I was a brat, and I thought he was dead sexy. He was very quiet....but I thought he was hot and you know as a fifteen year old that equals love...sigh. He changed areas and I saw him a time or two after that and each time my heart skipped a beat. I told my sister and Jody Pease, (who actually wrote about it in her journal) that I would marry Elder Anderson one day, so because my sister is the best she snagged a picture of him from his birthday party that my mom had for him (my parents are converts and adore the missionaries...lucky for me!!) I quickly put it in my journal so that no one would find it. (I found that picture after we were married when I was going through old stuff...hah!)

(We have so few pictures from the year that we dated, but these are some of my favorites. The top picture is horrible quality because I had it hanging at work and someone decided to poke holes all over our faces...sheesh! And then a friend fixed it and that's what was left of it. The bottom right was our engagement photo)

So fast forward almost 2 years (in my old post I said 3, but it was really 2) I am at the ripe old age of 17 3/4 and I moved to SLC. I ended up at SLC's New Year's celebration called First Night. I hadn't wanted to go but because I didn't have many friends my options were very limited. Cannon was supposed to meet up with a friend earlier that night but decided to go with another group of friends to first night instead.

We always talk about what if we hadn't gone or what if this or that...would we have found eachother? Who knows....

Anyways, I was standing talking to a friend (Sarah Mabey who is now a mom and married and beautiful...but thats beside the point) We had just finished eating some nasty cheese fries from the Cowboy Grub where I unfortunately worked, when this hot guy catches my eye. Well, he apparently liked the way I looked because we couldn't take our eyes off each other. I realized that I knew him from somewhere and said to Sarah "I know I know him...I'm going to talk to him" He had stopped as well because he wanted to talk to me.

So I went up to him as he was kind of standing around deciding if he should come up to me or not haha! I said "are you Elder Anderson?" and he's like "yeah are you a Stevens*?" *(name has been changed to protect the innocent....wink wink)

Man was I excited! We spent the rest of the night together and had a magical kiss at midnight that seriously, no joke produced a spark! (that was definitely produced by static electricity, but we like to think otherwise)

We literally spent everyday together and got married one year later (AFTER I graduated) I don't know what we were thinking, getting married so young, but I am grateful that we did, because he has been perfect for me and I hope I for him :) 

(Please forgive the quality but these are all scanned in. I included the top left picture because I love how young all my sisters and brother  looked, and because it has Laura in it and I don't have too many pictures of her on the blog. The top right picture is to illustrate just how fracking cold it was on the day of the wedding. It sucked and needless to say it was hard to smile in many of the pictures. The bottom picture is one I just recently came across of our first couch! It cost $25 at a thrift store and it was so comfy. Simple beginnings :) )

Happy Anniversary babe! I love you! Thanks for being sweet and awesome and a grrreat dad! I could say a bunch of cheesy lovey stuff but I already said it 3 years ago, so you know....you can click here and read it. 

Ev Man

The most consistent comment that I get about Evan is "wow, he looks like a little man!" People will literally stop me on the street and tell me this. It has been happening since he was born.

I didn't really see the resemblance to a "little" man or really any type of man at all, until one day as I was disrobing to nurse, I took a good look at him and realized that he did indeed look like a little man!

As you can imagine it made the next 20 minutes incredibly awkward. 

The blessing of Evan August

We blessed our sweet little boy last month!

Thankfully this was the last family photo shoot with the old camera.

Seriously how cute is he??

Photo shoot of Ev man aka Mr August

Really buying the camera was a necessity because this poor kid had NO pictures of him!

I LOVE my new camera!!

I cannot express how much I love my new camera!!

This was the first day that I had it. NY has been incredibly warm until this past weekend which has just been lovely.....sadly my days of loving the city are over until Aprilish.

No blinking...yay!

Thanksgiving

Oops I guess I should have posted this before the Christmas post :)

What a beautiful bird! It was a heritage bird and it was amazing if I do say so m'self.

Anne Marie our lovely neighbor made this A-mazing chocolate tart.

And this was my yummy pumpkin pie with almond crust. I also made some awesome risotto with butternut squash, garlic butter green beans, butternut squash gratin, mashed potaters and of course turkey!

Thanksgiving was lovely, my mom and Hyrum were able to come and hang out with us. It was fun to cook lots of food in my tiny kitchen. The food and company were great, we really have SO much to be grateful for.

The 2 things that I am most grateful for are the Gospel of Jesus Christ. which gives our lives meaning and direction and brings light and joy into our lives, and of course I'm grateful for my sweet family, both immediate and extended. I am so grateful for my healthy, sweet, beautiful, rambunctious free spirited kids! As hard as it is to be a mom, I have never wanted to do anything else with my life. It is fun and sad and crazy and silly and dirty and smelly and chaotic and amazingly beautiful work. I love my life and I am grateful that I get to be at home with my kids everyday!

Christmas is coming!

Thank you TJ's for saving the day since we are incapable of making gingerbread homes.

And PS if anyone has any tips on how to make non flash pictures less yellow, please let me know!

Since getting my new camera, taking pictures has been a JOY! I actually capture sweet moments between my kids. And the best part? No blinkers!!!

Thanks to the Can Man for carrying the tree from 61st and 2nd!! The trees around here are SO fracking expensive. ($240 for a 7 footer!) Thankfully we found a guy selling them for much less. Since Can came home with the tree kind of late, we put it up and then Elyse and I ran out the door to Macy's to see our friend Kelsey do a cooking class.

It was a fun little date night that ended with dinner in little Korea for some Korean BBQ.....minus the BBQ. That crap is expensive!!

The next morning we were up bright and early to decorate.

I love the Christmas season!

Christmas came early!!

Because of cyber Monday....

This is my new best friend. I am in love.

The Business of Being Born reviewed

My good friend/former client Sharon shared this review that her husband, Owen did on The Business of Being Born. Check it out!

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/11/10/the-business-of-being-born-changes-lives/#disqus_thread

Halloween

This year Elyse was an English Vampire Duchess and Levi was boring old Spiderman. As I'm sure you will all remember from a previous post (because you all cherish each and every post) Elyse had said that she was sick of homemade costumes. And since she was sick of it so was Levi. Luckily I found his costume on Craigslist for $10. (the land shark didn't work out...too big. Maybe next year) I was sad that we didn't make costumes at home but Elyse felt like a million bucks, she was SO happy to wear her costume and she felt and looked gorgeous in it!

LOVE this!

The kids had a blast carving pumpkins. Perhaps I should rephrase, the kids had a blast while we (can and I) carved pumpkins.

We got one of those kits from the store and they turned out freaking awesome! But it was hard work, glad they were small pumpkins!

We were running late to meet friends so we took what we could get. A masked man, crying puppy, a very unsexy cat (maybe next year it will be sexy cat again) a vampire duchess and spiderman.

Trick or treating in apartment buildings....it's how we roll in NYC.

Land Shark

Levi has had a small (read LARGE) fear of sharks ever since a certain someone rented Soul Surfer for them the day after Mr A was born in an attempt to keep them occupied while we recouped. Well for about 5 weeks he was OBSESSED with the idea of sharks and shark attacks and the ocean and never swimming and bloody armless teenagers. So, in an attempt to help him understand that sharks are nice and harmless and don't live in the bathroom, we had him watch this video.

We were rolling and he was crying.

In one last attempt to help him to be at least remotely ok with sharks I suggested he dress up as a land shark for Halloween. I wasn't sure how I was going to pull it off until I found this costume.

That should do the trick.

Mr August

Cannon teases me because I call August "Mr August" like he's the man of the month on a pinup calendar :) He is so cute! Sadly there aren't too many pictures of him, this one was from the beginning of October!

Jessie had a baby!

My good friend Jessie had a baby girl last week and I was lucky enough to be a part of it! She had an amazing homebirth and documented it beautifully on her blog. I know I say it a lot but I don't think I can ever say it too much...homebirth is the BEST! Jessie was a rockstar throughout and is such a strong woman. I think that we are lucky as women to be able to do such an amazing thing. Our bodies are incredible. I really can't wait to do it again in a few years!

Check it out.

http://theholders.tumblr.com/

Laughs

Mr A started laughing about a week ago and it is darling!!

PS sorry Can I lied, I'm showing a bunch of people.

PPS the laughing starts at 1:00

Our 'lil road trip

We took a roadtrip to RI, Boston and PA! Excitement central I know. We hadn't been out of the city, other than quick trips to the midwife, since June and we were dying to see some country.

Daddy and August in Providence which was a really cute little town ( I call him August now, everyone else calls him Evan, we'll see who wins in 20 years when he can choose for himself muahaha)

Bahston

PA! Of course after we went to our farmers house for a customer appreciation lunch we had to go to the Hershey factory for a tour. They never mention where the chocolate is actually made....probably China.

Oh cute little August/Ev-man. These were taken when he was 5 weeks. Hopefully I will post some more pictures of him before he goes to college.

They have a little tour that I have been going on since I was a kid and my kids love it.

Hah! He was in awe of the chocolate making process.

Dang Gina! Now that is a candy bar!

Good little workers....now gimme that chocolate!