From Bubble to non-stop UNCLE BOBBY!

I can't believe my last post was about Afton saying her first word.......which ended up being her only word for a good 4 months, but now she has LOADS of words and as I'm sure you all know, she really likes to chat it up. Of course she has favorites and what she talks about more than anything else is "Uncle Bobby". It's so funny because for the longest time her obsession with Uncle Bobby was in words only as she was not very nice to him in person, but now she's decided he's the BEST EVER! It helps that when Bob and Kristin watched her for our wedding anniversary (yep, that happened too, 4 years!) we came to get her and she was in heaving in the back yard playing ring around the rosey's and many other darling "Uncle Bobby" games that she talks about wants to play all the time.

Afton has figured out all sorts of amazing and adorable things. Here are just a few examples since it's been much too long to go into much detail on her amazing skyrocket of development over the last 5 months or so.

1. She closed a book a few weeks ago and looked up and said.."AMEN"
2. She calls Justin's parents "Baka Baka" and my Mom just "Baka" but it's warping to sound more like "Chewbaka" - so darling
3. She's heavy into cars, but interestingly she notices the make of cars rather than the variety. For example, whenever she sees a Mazda logo she says "DADA CAR!" and points to it, even if it looks NOTHING like Justin's car, she just notices the Mazda emblem, so our car rides are full of announcements about "Dada Car, Cousin Car, Baka Baka Car, Momma Car!!"
4. She sings her bedtime songs with us.......it might just be the cutest thing that's ever happened
5. Her sweet friend Finley bought her a book for her b-day called "The Pigeon Want's a Puppy" - she is IN LOVE with this book, and we read it multiple times a day - she reads it with us...i.e...she has it memorized!
6. SPARKLE SHOES!! - They have almost taken over bunny's place for best item in the world. I had to pay a grip to find them in her next size because she seriously asks for them right when she wakes up in the morning.
7. She is great at inventive play and loves to get anyone who is willing to play with her....favorite games....."ready set go!" followed by a race but Afton for some unknown reason says "bucket..set..GO!", she loves coloring on her new table (literally on the table), bubbles are still tops, anything involving water, and number one is cousins, she just can't get enough of those kids.
8. Picture explanations - Afton has insanely gorgeous huge brown eyes, she sometimes get mad when Mom tries to take her picture so I had to post a pic of her angry face, she LOVES sucker's - and only gets one a week if she's lucky, which usually ends up EVERYWHERE as displayed in the above photo. She's had a rash on her face that comes and goes but doesn't stop her from looking adorable in that little black polka dot dress. Stace (who she talks about all the time) got her the most incredible Nike's ever made and she wore them this one time in the picture to my dismay. Had to put in a picture of the yellow dress of love and dreams from Aunt Care and some pics from her lightly attended but super fun birthday party where we had a doggy theme with real live dogs invited and she had a BLAST, and got a cute table and chairs (yea, so I sat on one of the chairs as she frequently instructs me to and it's broken now, but she enjoyed it for a good week or so before that happened).

I'm starting to realize this list could go on for days so let me get to the good stuff that you really want and post some pictures and videos and tell you all how much we love you, miss you, and want to kiss you!

(I downloaded a few videos but it takes too long to do them on the blog so check my youtube channel where I downloaded LOADS of adorable videos for you all to get your Afton fix)

http://www.youtube.com/user/carolinesrad#p/a

and the word is.....BUBBLE!

Afton loves to play "photo-booth"
Afton playing with Ethan's amazing limited edition super lego set, and below with her incredibly gorgeous cousin Atticus who by the end of the trip would just say "cousin NO!" when she got to close to him because he knew she was going to push him, pull his hair or maybe take his hand and try to bite it. Not sure why she is in this mean to babies phase, but we're hoping she grows out of it quickly!

Below we are at this incredible museum in Portland called the OMSI - Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. It was so fun and the kids had a blast raging around - we loved it!


Sunday mornings are always so manic I forget to take pictures of Afton in her cute stuff. When we get home it's eating time and we change her quickly and get her to bed, I am determined to get more pictures of her all churched out. Especially because she's usually wearing one of the unbelievable items from her Aunt Care's shop-a-thon that we absolutely cherish - as you can see with the skirt below, she wears it well.


I had to take this one because it was just cracking me up how short and small this dress is now - she's getting so big and TALL!!




What an insane couple of weeks it's been since my last post - we've had Christmas in Salt Lake, (15 hour nightmare travel day with a no nap baby, but she handled it better than the rest of us) and New Years in Washington! Super fun travels with amazing blue bird snowboarding and so much family fun in the Northwest it was insanity. Somehow I remember it was a great time even though our whole family has been crazy non-stop sick with all sorts of viruses and infections including pneumonia, chronic cough/ bronchitis and the worst of all - vertigo! So after all three of us being on antibiotics and various other crazy prescriptions we are finally coming out of the woods. Justin and I are actually feeling really good right now, and Afton seems to be feeling okay, but she has the constant runny nose she's had for a few months now. Afton has also had some issues with separating from Mom. She failed nursery the first few times and most recently barfed all over her speech therapist when she picked her up to take her for her session. She's been doing a little better this week with that stuff. The big news around here is Afton's first word...yes I know she's had mumblings of words, but this is the real one, the one that we will tell her when she's old enough to care. Her first word is BUBBLE! And it's so cute to hear her say it I don't even mind that she loves to say it all the time. They use bubbles to calm her down at her physical therapy place so I think that's where she picked it up- but as you can see from the videos below she says it well and she totally knows what it is. I will comment on the rest of what I post so you know what's up with all this stuff. Love to all of you!!




Justin plopped down on the floor and started clapping, Afton immediately did the same thing and I got it on video! So cute I can't stand it! The next one is Afton in a beautiful backyard bubble fantasy. The one after that is my gorgeous little dancer! Check out her moves! Rand and Joyce got her this brilliant "activity cube" which she is obviously a huge fan of. Her first dancing move was this kind of head shake thing that looked a little like a seizure, but so cute, as you can see below she's got all sorts of moves now. And of course the last video posted is her first word within a day or so of her saying it - you never knew "bubble" could make you melt with cuteness over-load, and she also says "Daddy" clear as day, you have to watch it to believe it!

Chocolate Christmas!! and cool stuff like that.....

Above is our beautiful Chocolate Christmas table before we dared to break into the goods, it was quite a sight and Grant snuck into the corner to strike a pose with his chocolate avocado pudding.
Me and Afton showing off all the beautiful deliciousness!
This is Afton's number one homie Finley Bee - she is such a doll. She's teaching Afton lessons on how to be nice, always coming up to hug her and share toys while Afton pushes her down, pulls her hair and steals the toy she's playing with. We love Finley and her beautiful Mommy Sarah.
Me and Sarah posed with Kyle Plummer who is sweet sweet Lucy's Dad, but he felt awkward being the only guy in the photo so we kicked him out and got Lucy's Momma Susie to be in our picture. These are friends from Burton who all had babies around the same time as me and we've stayed close. Love them loads
Mom's in effect - and I mean are those some cute babies or what???
Lucy Corey made that incredible 3 tier magic cake with home-made marshmallows on top, so insanely good, you can also see some of my coconut deliciousness and a peak of the French Mint I made which was kind of a show-stopper.
close up on cakes and the amazing "french mint" below
These are the party people who stayed late and raged to the wee hour of 9:30 with us. Love you Farrah, Jan, Chris, Lucy, Amy and Julia......oh and sweet sweet Ronin (who will be marrying Afton some time in the future)

These pictures we took before we got the rest of the red beads for our tree, so it's looking a little jank, but I had to show Afton in this dress, she's such a style star. And I'm still mourning the loss of the tree battle, but for being a fake, it's not bad right??


Justin thought my new eye-mask looked like a perfect baby bra, I told him that's crazy town so he proved his theory....and he's right, but it still makes a killer eye mask.


What a month it's been......or what a two months really since we've been super lagging on the blog train....sorry! I just wanted to let you all know that regardless of the fact that me Justin and Afton are all under the weather, we are getting through this difficult week like champs. There is just no way to stay sad too long when you're hanging out with Afton Grace King, she's non-stop comedy cuteness overload. Her new thing is bags, she must be carrying one at all times, and she fills them with all varieties of craziness, so cute you won't believe it, not as cute when she put a pregnancy test in my Cub Scouts bag that was only supposed to have a pinewood derby car and some badges, and you won't believe the places we've found tampons in this house. We finally put child proof latches on the bathroom drawers so her loot is going to be less interesting, but I'm sure she'll still find crazy stuff to tote around.

We are SO GLAD that we decided to have the 2nd Annual Chocolate Christmas Party despite all the goings on because it was super fun. Loads of people came, we went through a gallon of hot chocolate and all my treats were a raging success....not to mention the delicious goodies brought by others, so much fun and sooooo yummy. As you can see from the pictures the turnout was a little better than last year.

Love you all, looking forward to Christmas and we very much appreciate the kind words, thoughts and prayers on our behalf, we have truly felt them and love you back like crazy!

Cute and Spooky...

This post is ALL ABOUT THE VIDEOS so do what you need to do, put some headphones on, take a lunch break, somehow, you MUST watch the videos below. Below are a few cute pictures from a few weeks ago including her famous angry face- and it gets even meaner and mad-doggy-er than this!






Photo credits to Uncle Bobby of this cute pic with Afton showing off her style star steeze in Ali's sunny g's


.
I had to post these pictures below from Halloween last year to show how much she's grown - it's insanity!

EXCITING TIMES! The last few weeks our crazy little lady decided walking is the word......FINALLY! She's now just raging, on a walking mission and it's so so adorable...except for the big fat lip that came after a splat on her face to the floor (let's just not talk about the mouth full of blood on Halloween because it's all just too scary, ironic, and sad). You MUST watch the video to see this girl in action, it's pretty amazing. Other cool stuff is going on too, I'm not nursing anymore (NyQuil, welcome back, I've really missed you with all my superfluous colds the last 2 years)! Which may seem to personal to share on a blog....but since when to I not share with my closest family and friends things that are much too personal? We went to NorCal for 5 whole days and had a BLAST spending time with all of Afton's living grandparents! She was loving her grams and gramps King - Rand was walking with her all over the house which she could not get enough of and since her first legit steps came the day we got home I'm convinced that his patient practice is what gave her the confidence to finally go there. My beautiful cousin Julia got married which was so fun and special and to see the Reid and family is just pure joy, they are some of the funnest people to be around on the planet. And you guys should have seen Justin's costume this year! He never ceases to out-due himself! (of course I'm joking, as you all know, he's not the costume type). October was good, but I have a feeling that November could be EPIC. Love you all!

This first video was on October 19th - the first day she took legit steps, which we have 4 videos of me and Farrah trying and failing to recreate for her Dad to see. She didn't really decide walking was the word until about a week after this which you will see below! Her first few real walks around are so insanely cute because she's just so proud of herself. Also I added in some adorable shoulder shrugging, peak-a-boo-ing and tape measure figure outing, because seriously people, I mean SERIOUSLY! Oh and I almost forgot my favorite one, Afton thought my hicups the other day were purely for her entertainment, it was really funny and super cute- CHECK IT OUT!
I thought the video of us on Halloween was so much better than the unflattering picture I posted that instead - it's a video party!!

summer......what summer??

I know I've been a really bad blogger, sorry guys! This summer was crazy and went by really fast somehow. It kind of never got hot which I loved, but I know a lot of people were not very stoked on that. One of the coolest summers on record actually. We had all sorts of adventures, went to Utah while Justin was on his annual surf trip. Afton got really sick and stayed sick for a month! But now she's on the up and up and still cruising like crazy, but this stubborn little princess refuses to walk....much less crawl. No news on why that is quite yet, but we're working on it. I finally have a minute to post some pics and videos from the last few months- I really recommend you watch those video's by the way- this girl is so good on camera it's just kind of ridiculous.

Anyone remember that awesome chair above that I had for 5 years with really ugly cushions? Well I FINALLY got it re-upolstered thanks to an enormous garage sale at Momma's house in SLC. Of course I wish Moms would have let me give her more of the profits but I'm super stoked on my chair!
Afton is now wearing a lot of her 18-24 mo. stuff which is so cute, but it's funny, she's crazy long and skinny, so King like, so what I wish I was like. Adorable!

This pic above really captures some of the magic in the way those darling curls frame that cutest face I've ever seen - such a doll!

This is Natasha's beautiful new baby girl Eliza May- she's such a little love bug - it was a treat to spend some time with them in SL
We made it to Honeyville early Sunday morning to visit Dad's grave, it was beautiful as it always is - and extra special to have my sweet baby with us. She had a thing for Daddy's grave which is kind of weird and kind of awesome.



These pictures in the crib are from when Afton somehow spilled brown, pink and blue on her white shirt, she was the most adorable mess ever!

Afton's new favorite thing to do is take a bath, when we go in the bathroom she stomps her feet enthusiastically, pointing at the tub saying "that, that, that!!" and squealing, she cries when we take her out - make sure you watch the video of her in the bath below - it's too cute for words!

I found the most darling vintage dress ever for her at this used clothing store by our house, she's such a style star, we both decided to wear vintage to church that day



.