Easter 2015 (and some more random pictures)

 I realized after looking through my last post that I totally forgot to put in the information about Easter.

But that's ok....because now I can put in way more pictures without it feeling like overload! ;)

Before the Easter madness though, a few other pictures I forgot to put in that I love. :) 

She loves playing the piano at my parents house. She likes to turn pages in the music books, bang on the keys, and then gently press them to make sound. She's a natural already. ;)

She also loves helping me get the mail. She has her own set of keys that we got (at Lowe's they let us go through the box of messed up keys and pick out some to put on a ring for her since she always wants to hold our keys) and she'll go to every single mailbox and try to use her keys to open it up. We can spend, easily, 10 minutes at the mailbox.

Now, Easter.

 She had a lot of fun Easter egg hunting. We went to the Easter egg hunt in Karin's neighborhood with Karin, David, and Luke and she had so much fun running around and finding eggs. She got quite a few and was really excited about it. She still loves to "hide" eggs around the house, say "Where go?", and then go searching for them. She would barely hold still when I wanted pictures because she was so focused on finding eggs. Even when there weren't anymore to find, she was running around trying to find more. It was really cute to see how excited she was bout it all.












On Easter Sunday, we had a small Easter egg hunt at our house for her, since she had so much fun the day before, and had a lot of fun watching her go around the house looking for them. I have a video of her going around our house, but it's apparently too big to put on the blog. Just know that she was running all over looking for eggs saying, "OH!" whenever she found one, and throwing it in her basket triumphantly, grinning the whole time.

After looking for eggs, we sat down, read the story of Christ's resurrection, and then watched General Conference. I felt like it was the perfect way to spend Easter with our little family. It was quite, low-key, and focused on what we believe Easter is all about, with a little fun thrown in. :)

It was a great holiday and I loved that she was old enough to enjoy it, and even slightly understand what was going on. :) We were glad we got to spend it with our little family, and with some of our extended family as well.

April 2015: REAL Monarchs, Videos, and Baby Friends

This month was eventful for sure. The first two weeks of April David was super busy with school. He had three tests the first week, and the next week he had his big Intex project. He and his group had to design a working website in 5 days. They got the info on Monday and turned it in at noon on Friday, then presented Friday afternoon. That week of his big project, Kollyn and I went up to my parents house so we didn't distract him. He spent over 50 hours that week on the project, but it was definitely worth it. :) Kollyn got to hang out with her grandparents (even if it was only for one of the days we were there since they got home from vacation a couple days after we went up) and David did a great job on his project! I'm so proud of him and the dedication he puts to things!

And we had been invited to the REAL Monarchs soccer game that Saturday, April 11, by Kaylan and her fiance Tim (Thanks for inviting us!) and it was a lot of fun! It was a great way to blow off the steam from the week and my parents got to play with Kollyn and put her to bed at their house, which they love doing.  We went to dinner, Buffalo Wild Wings, and my contact ripped in half while in my eye, but it was such a fun night, that didn't even matter! We were really glad that things worked out so we could go and have some fun! (Even though the Monarchs lost)

The classic Dynes picture pose. ;) I love it.

Kollyn LOVES the outside. Going on a walk in her stroller, running around at the park, gathering sticks or rocks (she really loves rocks and will say "rock, rock, rock" really clearly whenever she sees one); it doesn't matter what it is, if we're outside, she's totally content. And she sleeps better so we make it a priority to have her run out all her energy outside. :) And she loves it! Some days it's kind of cold so we wrap her up like a burrito and she cracks up about it.

We are so lucky to live close to a lot of family. We have the Pass of All Passes and have fun going to the Trafalga in Lehi with my sister Melissa and her girls. Kollyn adores her cousins and loves to chase them around, give them hugs and kisses, play with them, and try to be like them. The last time we went, we rode on the carousal a bunch. She wasn't sure about it for the first minute of the first ride, but after that, she was all over it, saying "Wheeeeeeee!" as the horse went up and down. She wanted to ride it all afternoon. She's too small to ride any of the other rides there, so we ride on the carousal a lot and she loves it every time. :)

This was a hard one for me. I hate reptiles....they creep me out, scare the living daylights out of me, and just overall make me uncomfortable and scared. But, I try to put aside my fears and expose Kollyn to all kinds of things. She loved seeing all the snakes and lizards and turtles. She hissed like a snake and stuck her tongue out like a lizard whenever she saw one. I almost had a panic attack being so close to snakes, but it was worth it seeing how excited she got seeing the animals. The picture doesn't do it justice. She just laughed and shrieked and tried to touch them all, but never actually wanted to touch any of the ones that the keepers were holding.

This little girl really loves to stand on the balcony and watch and wait for Daddy to come home. And when she sees the garage door open, she gets so excited. It's definitely one of the best times of the day for her, having her Daddy come home to play with her.

She is just a curious little girl. She loves putting on people's shoes (these shoes belong to our friend Mark) and then walking around in them. And she walks really well in big shoes. She also loves that children's laptop. It plays quite a few songs and she knows exactly how to get it to play the songs she loves.

This is one thing I love. I've been rewatching all the episodes of The Big Bang Theory and this is what happens whenever hears the theme song come on, no matter what else she's doing. :) She loves to dance and bounce when she hears music. It's so cute and I love it.

David has indoctrinated her well. She'll bring me her Batman shirt, her Batman toy, or her Batman books and say, "Bama". She very much knows who he is, she sees him a lot (we have a big poster of Batman in our front room) and is a big fan. She pointed to him on each page of this book and said, "Bama" at each one.

We were lucky enough to be able to go to the Payson temple open house last week. It was so beautiful and I am excited for it to be dedicated. We were a little nervous that Kollyn would be upset or cry while we were there, but she didn't make any noise. She didn't fuss when they put the covers on her shoes, she held our hand while she walked, and didn't squirm or anything when we held her. I'm sure she knew how special this place was and what it is going to be and I love that we were able to experience this with her.

Kollyn really enjoys playing with other kids. This was her new friend that she made in Relief Society last week. They played on the floor and on the chairs next to us and kept themselves entertained most of the hour. It was awesome to be able to pay attention to the lesson and know she was occupied. This week they're going to let us start getting her use to nursery and we're really excited about that. She's so social I think she'll love being able to play with the other kids for a couple hours instead of having to sit with us in our classes.

Currently, she is obsessed with babies. Whenever she sees one she goes crazy saying, "Baby, baby, baby" and pointing until I acknowledge it and even that usually doesn't stop her incessant chattering about babies. Our friends have a little six month old baby girl and when they come over, Kollyn goes nuts. She likes to hold the baby's hand, "help" the baby play with her toys, and try and feed the baby the food from her tray.  She loves to jabber to the baby, smile at her, and laugh like they have some private jokes that no one else knows about. I love that she is really into babies, hopefully that means that when we do have another baby, she'll be more excited than jealous. I'm sure we'll go through the jealousy stage, but I hope that her love of babies and smaller kids helps make that phase shorter.

I have a bunch more videos of her doing super cute stuff like welcoming Daddy home, going through her list of animal sounds (She knows so many animal sounds and so many words that it's getting so much easier to communicate with her and I love that!!!!), and going down the slides by herself. Sadly, they're too big of files for the blog. But just know that they're super cute and I may or may not (but definitely do) watch them at least once a day to remind myself just how lucky I am to be this girl's mom. Some days it's hard to remember, like this last week she's been getting her molars and not sleeping as well as she's use to, and I need to be reminded that she's such an amazing kid and that we are beyond lucky to have her in our family. :) We love this little girl.

And that's pretty much the month. :)