the murrays: Not a baby anymore!

I really need time to freeze so I can enjoy my kids while they are still young! This adorable girl started walking right before she was 11 months old, and is now a pro. She loves books and stuffed animals, and she only has 3 teeth. She loves playing with her siblings and going OUTSIDE! She recently learned how to go down the stairs. She is a hilarious dancer. She goes down to naps and bedtime really easily. She doesn't want anyone to touch her besides family. She is usually pretty low-drama, perhaps the most easy-going one-year-old daughter I've had.

Here she is on her birthday morning with her first present, the little pushcar we gave to Whitney for her first birthday. And Owen for his first Christmas! In fact all of her presents but one were toys we already had. :)

Whitney bought her this little dog for Maris with her own money! And this is the hilarious face she makes, along with a little "ooh-ooh-ooh" noise, when she hugs a stuffed animal! So precious.

Those lips.

opening presents!

Fun musical toys from Grammy.

And the only thing we bought her: a big stuffed tiger she picked out at Target! She hugged it for a half hour in Target and it looks just like Owen's tiny tiger that she also loves, so we bought it and hid it until her birthday. :)

Hugging both her new animals! She also gives them kisses, basically smashing their face into hers.

For her party we invited all my Northern Utah siblings to Salem Pond Park for lunch, swimming and cake! (None of the Murrays could make it that day, we celebrated with them later!)

Here she is with her rainbow cake. It had 3 little ducks on it because ducks/birds are her favorite animal.

She felt pretty special to be sitting on a table with so many people singing to her.

And just for fun, here are all 4 kids on their first birthday! Little cuties.

We did look for some ducks, but couldn't find many, sadly!

So mostly she played in the sand

While the big kids swam, and the aunts and uncles waded. Melissa, Allison and Kent were also there.

And for lunch Maris mostly ate Cheetos. And I let her! I love this picture because she's looking at ME in it. :)

The inside of her rainbow cake:

Maris loving her rainbow cake and rainbow ice cream:

And swinging with Dad. It was a fun party!

We had a chill afternoon, and then after naps we headed to Provo for the Payson Temple Cultural Celebration! We had gone through great hassle to get tickets (you could only get them if your teenager was in the program so Eric had to beg extras off people in his Young Mens), so when it started raining an hour before the performance, we decided to try and wait it out and see if it would still happen. We ate our pizza picnic dinner under an overhang by Macey's where we used to live! We didn't want to try to find a park with a pavilion because we thought traffic would be bad trying to get back towards the stadium, plus it was POURING rain and we didn't want to go more than 2 steps out of our car! A fun memory.

So it kept raining and raining and raining, so hard! Giant sheets of rain! usually those kind of storms last about 20 minutes max around here, but it kept going 30 minutes, 40 minutes.....we drove and parked as close as we could to the stadium, where we could hear that they kept making an announcement that the Celebration was temporarily suspended. It was cool though, because I was sure that all the Youth would be praying for the rain to stop (and the lightning, that was the biggest problem); they had practiced for 2 months, for many hours at Mutual and for several Saturdays for this and I knew their prayers would be answered!! So at about 6:50 (it started raining at 6 and the performance was supposed to start at 7) we were still sitting in our car and finally we could tell the rain was lightening up a little! By 7 it had stopped, and we had been checking on facebook and my friend posted that the youth were told they could go back out to their seats, so we hurried, along with many others, to the Stadium so excited the performance was still going to happen! It was definitely a miracle. I think it had to rain so hard so the storm could get over quicker, in time for the Celebration! It ended up starting a half-hour late.

And it was just as awesome as I had hoped! One of the coolest parts was when President Eyring and several other apostles who were attending came into the Stadium; all the youth just started cheering for them like they were rock stars! The cameras were on them so their faces were up on the big screen, and they were smiling and waving, so even though it felt a little weird and irreverent, we all cheered too! Katelyn and Whitney got all into it, clapping and yelling as each one came in, it was pretty cool actually. It felt nice to be able to honor our dear apostles in that way-- the way the Youth show their love for people who are important to them.

Here are the youth all in white shirts cheering (some were already on the field)

And then we got to sing an opening song, in the stadium! So cool. I was talking to Melissa about this, how any large group of people singing brings tears to my eyes. :) So these are the words to I Love to See the Temple on the big screen!

And my girls singing out loud and proud.

Owen and Eric enjoying the show.

Each couple/few stakes (there are 20-something total in our new temple district) did a dance number, sometimes divided up boys and girls. Our Santaquin girls were in a flowering orchard dance, I didn't even get a picture because right before it I SAW and talked to them all-- I had gone out with Maris to get a drink and I ran into our old ward young women! So My Maris got to see the big Maris on her birthday! Anyway then I knew where they would be, so during the song I was too busy watching them/pointing them out to Eric and the kids to take a picture. :)

These were some guys dressed up as Presidents/Book Of Mormon heroes who talked about freedom:

These were our Salem young men (and many others) dressed as the stripling warriors, singing with staffs in hand! You can also see the next group of kids running onto the sideline, they were so well-organized! It was impressive. That group coming on did a baseball dance, and then there was a rodeo one.

This was one of our favorite dances, with big pieces of fabric. The kids ran under them and made cool shapes--they were supposed to be storm clouds.

Then at the end of the song they put up a big temple replica and it chased all the storm clouds away one by one- very cool!

Then there was a big sunshine song with girls with yellow ribbons doing a ribbon dance, and more girls doing sign language on the side.

Then when that last group was up in their seats all the kids stood up in white and were singing about filling the world with love and light- very cool.

and then, one section at a time, they took off their button-up white shirts to show colored shirts underneath! it was so smoothly done, very impressive! You can see in this picture the very last section on the right is still changing to purple!

The rainbow was supposed to represent their promise to fill the world with love- through the gospel. Just think of all the future missionaries in those stands!

And the finale was a ton of balloons let off. It was way cool and a great way to spend Maris' birthday evening! She and all the kids loved it. I SO wish they were old enough to be IN it, what a cool experience for all those youth. But at least we got to see it!