Kaia went cross country skiing in her chariot for the first time this past weekend. We went up the Mirror Lake Highway with our friends Dan and Christy. She was fully outfitted in Patagonia gear thanks to Ayme and her grandparents. Can we say spoiled?! Hopefully it's just a sign of a lifetime of awesome outdoor adventures. Oh, and she doesn't go anywhere without the penguin aunt Judy gave her.

The chariot was remarkably stable.

The dogs always have a good time.


She loved the snow and almost reached her way right out of the chariot to get more of it!The end of an awesome ski.


Here is a video clip of Kaia's first downhill experience in the chariot.

Kaia Sees the Ocean for the First Time!

I think this is one of my favorite pictures of all time. Kaia LOVED the ocean. She was so cute and so much fun. She loved when the water would receed and her feet would sink into the sand. She would just giggle. It was so cute. We had a hard time keeping her out of the water. That is, until she discovered the sand. She thought it was so wonderful she couldn't help sharing it with us. Thanks again uncle Brian for an amazing Christmas.

Christmas

Here is Kaia on her actual birthday (we had the party early) in the birthday dress her godparents Jessica and Stephen gave her. Thanks again! She doesn't sit still for very long anymore making it hard to get posed pictures.


Here she is sitting on the camp chair she got early for Christmas. Paul couldn't wait to give it to her. I think she likes it!We went to California to celebrate Christmas with my family. Kaia's uncle Brian gave her a Radio Flyer trike that she put quite a few miles on even though she can just barely reach the floor!


She also got a tepee and tunnel from her grandparents. It took her a minute to go into the tunnel at first, but now she loves it.

Here she is in her fancy Christmas dress on Christmas day. So pretty.

Kaia Turned 1!

Happy 1st Birthday Kaia!

Kaia turned one on December 10th. We had a small get-together to celebrate the day. Really it was an excuse to allow her grandparents to feed her cake and homemade ice cream. She loved them both. Here she is eating the carrot cake cupcake that her grandma Celeste made for her. She refused to remove it from her face until it was ALL gone. Celeste does make the best carrot cake. Now I guess grandpa Rich and I will have to share with Kaia too!It's funny that Kaia's grandmas are feeding her ice cream when it was both her grandpa Mike and her grandpa Steve who couldn't wait to give her ice cream. There must have been some ice cream sneaks before her birthday. Hmmmm...

Kaia was spoiled with many cute clothes. Thank you all for outfitting our daughter. We really appreciate it because she finally grew before her birthday and we were down to about three outfits that still fit her. Now she has room to grow!

She also got a stuffed frog that ribits from the Kanes that she absolutely loves. Thanks you guys!

New Skills

Kaia is walking. She has been kind of walking for a while now, but we've been waiting to post a video until she could stop and start without lunging at things. I could not figure out how to rotate the video.



This was a new one as well. Kaia can now climb on a nd off her rocking moose!
Thanks again Becca and Chris

Thanksgiving at the cabin

We spent thanksgiving at the cabin in wyoming with friends Todd and Michelle.


We were excited to try out Jenny's new stove. It was a huge upgrade from the cute antique stove with a 14" wide oven. The new stove had plenty of room for our turkey day feast.


Amanda said it was her favorite turkey ever. It was roasted with a pancetta sage butter rub.

Kaia getting ready for a chilly hike.


The following are pictures of the buffalo hides and heads that Mike & Jenny brought up on sat. They organized a grass fed, hormone free, buffalo purchase from a local ranch.
They did this two years ago and we got 1/8 of a buffalo, it was delicious. We stepped up to 1/4 this year and enough other folks were interested they were able to get three.
Last time they had the skull bleached and the hide tanned, but it was quite expensive. This time they are trying to do some it themselves. They are salting and scraping the fat off the hide before taking it to a local tanner.
They placed the heads in the aspen grove about 50 yards from the cabin to see if the local critters will clean them up. Amanda didn't like that the heads were still bleeding, but Haus and Otis were very interested.

Nov Deso

These are some pictures from a Nov. 1st 6 day Desolation Canyon trip with Mike and Todd. All things considered we had great weather for a deso trip in November. I never had to shake snow off the tent and I spent some time in shorts and t-shirt. The trip was intended to be a scouting trip to see if we could find any elk along the river. We saw quite a few big horn sheep, some deer, but no elk.


The cottonwoods still had some leaves, but they were dropping quick.

This is an old moonshiners cabin/cave/house thing.


This is the debris flow that recently changed "cow swim rapid". It forced most of the water to river-left making the best wave train on the river. The debris flow moved truck sized rocks hundreds of yards, it was very impressive. We spent several hours hiking up to try and find the source.



hello

So we've realized that Kaia is learning so much, so fast, that we MUST do a better job of updating the blog. Kaia is almost walking! She stands, takes steps, but just hasn't totally taken off. She is so close though! I think she realizes that at the moment crawling is just faster and easier for her. So here are some pictures of her that I just couldn't resist taking. I had been waiting to update the blog because I wanted to include her cute Halloween costume, but the pictures aren't on our camera so that cuteness will have to come later.

Here she is "helping" Paul with the paper. As soon as he would put a piece down, she would take it and throw it on the floor.


She found herself very funny!

Unlike her cousin Stella, Kaia LOVES food. She still has about three bottles a day, but otherwise she eats almost anything we do. She loves food she can pick up and eat all by herself. And check out those chompers!

homemade obama ad

Fall Fun

Fall has been gorgeous here this year and we had a great time playing in the leaves last weekend. Paul finished building our porch while Kaia and I played and watched from below.

Camping in the rain

It has been a long time since we posted, but we'll try to be more consistent.
Since the last post Amanda has started a new job, 6th grade at Lincoln Elementary. It has been quite the challenge. Kaia has started daycare, which has been great. The down side has been catching all of the various colds from the rest of the kids and passing them on to us. She's our little petri dish. Last week we started getting better and decided to go camping in the desert. The forecast was for rain, but we thought we'd give it a shot anyway. It was rainy, but a great weekend with our friends Todd & Michelle.

We got in late and set up camp in the dark. Kaia slept well and woke up ready for the day. The weather didn't cooperate and it rained all day.
Otis likes the rain just fine.


We set up a little tarp city and made the best of a rainy day.




After awhile Kaia needed some snuggles with mom.

Finally on Sunday the sun came out. We dried out and went for a hike. Kaia had fun with aunt Michelle.

Tahoe

In mid July we zipped across the great green state of Nevada and up the hill to Lake Tahoe for the Welsh family reunion. We had a great time with the Portland, CA, New York, Dallas, Denver, and Salt Lake wings of the Welsh clan. Kaia LOVED meeting all of her family and received so much love and play time. We wish we all lived closer so we could be together more often.

Kaia enjoyed some pool time.
Amanda's team (below) won the scavenger hunt and kick ball game. I made her ride in the roof box on the way home to get some revenge.

Kaia had such a great time we rewarded her by wrapping her in rusty metal when we got home.
For other great pictures visit our siblings' flicker sites: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25432617@N02/sets/72157606339459580/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisandbecca/sets/72157606344662165/

Cabin

I've realized that I've updated so much that you will actually have to go to older blogs to see everything I've just added. We better not get this far behind again!

We went to the cabin for the 4th of July and celebrated our aunt Sarah's 50th birthday. It was awesome.


We were able to boat the Green River above Warren Bridge. Here we are at our lunch stop so Paul and I could swap out.


I love this picture of Rockin' Willy!


Kaia drove us back in to the cabin. Look at the look of concentration on her face!

Colin enjoying the hot tub and Harry Potter.


Daddy-daughter bottle time.