A Year Already! Happy Birthday James

I cannot believe that our little baby is a year already!  It seems like just the other day that he was born.  The time has really flown by so fast with #2.  He is such an adorable little guy and soooo happy to be around.  He is a really good sleeper, eater, walker... we just love him.  He is starting to be able to communicate more and absolutely adores his big brother.  On his birthday, we just hung out around here, but tried to do lots of things that he loves. Here are some pictures from James's special day!

Opening presents first thing in the morning.

James really enjoyed it; almost as much as Alan did. :)

Trying out his new toys.

Alan has these same flip flops.  When we were at the store, he was pretty insistent that James should get some for his birthday as well.  They are a little big, but oh well. :)

Our new little kiddie pool that we tried out for the first time on James' birthday.

And he loved it

We also busted out the ball park for a little birthday fun!

Daddy cooked up some burgers and we had a BBQ that evening

Michael, Sarah, and Anne came to join in on the party

Lollipop cupcakes.  If you ever need the easiest idea possible... there you go.

Thankfully there were no tears shed at this 1st birthday party!  Alan even sang "Happy Birthday" to James all day long.

Starting to dig in

He would do these face plants in his cupcake, but then when he saw we were tying to take a picture of him doing it, he would get about this close and pick his head up and laugh at us.  It was pretty funny.

Here's the "I got you!" face

And these

are the happy faces

of our sweet little

one year old. 

We sure do love you sweet baby James!

Swimming at Grandma's

We wanted to go and visit my parents in NJ sometime this summer to take advantage of their swimming pool and have some fun.  So even though we had just seen my family at the Tucker reunion, we took a trip to NJ in mid July to swim and play.  We had a blast!  Here are some pics from our time there.

The boys LOVED swinging in the backyard

We got to visit Lindsay, my best friend from high school, and see her new house!

It was so fun to see her place and catch up a little bit! 

Of course there was plenty of swimming every day.  I love Evan's face in the back of this one.

The boys became a little more familiar with the water and loved playing in the pool!

We also got to visit my Aunt Tracey's farm

Alan has recently had a truck obsession, so he was thrilled to get to drive the tractor!

James still loved the horses and got to take little rides with everyone.

And Alan is just starting to look like a little professional!

Summer Fun!

Ahhhh! we have been having so much fun this summer that I am way behind on blog posts!  Here are a couple of pictures from earlier on in the summer.

On the 4th of July we had a super fun BBQ at our place.  We invited some friends from our old ward up to our new place to hang out.  It was great to see everyone and catch up.

The girls had fun eating and catching up

And the guys played bocce ball

And the kids had fun in the water

Ok, so I actually didn't get that great of pictures, but thankfully my friend Janet took some great ones!

Alan and Violet

Jamesy

Lucia and James

Then a little later we went with some friends to the zoo!

It was a kind of crazy day at the zoo, as it was free the day we went!

Violet and Alan were sooooo interested in this bear skull

And despite the craziness, we had a super fun day.

And here are just some random photos

Alan loved this growing turtle that he got for his birthday

This was our super cool pioneer day craft. :)

And we LOVED watching the Olympics!  We even had our own games that we participated in for Family Home Evening. Everyone had a great time and here we are with our medals.