The Tangrens

Well it's almost June so I figured I should do Hyrum's first year post. And tell you the 12 things I love most about our little man

His CURLS!!!










His BEAUTIFUL blue eyes.

He makes me laugh every day.


He's even cute when he's upset


He still loves to snuggle


His laugh! He laughs so hard when he's walking sometimes that he falls down!! ( Sadly this is not a video of him laughing himself silly but it does show him giggling as he walks then stopping to get his groove on)

For some reason he thinks "Da Da Da I don't love you, you don't love me" by Trio is the best dance hit EVER!!!

He's starting to dance

He's just a really cool kid

He loves the garden as much as me...


But he also loves his electronics!










He loves to read books










He helps me to see the wonder in ordinary things.

I love to watch seeds sprout. It is one of my all time favorite things about gardening watching life pop out of the ground in cute little seedlings. It's nice to have instant garden with buying plants especially with our relatively short growing season but there really is something to be said for planting the seeds yourself.

We went up to the garden at the beginning of this week to water since our hosts were on a much needed vacation to Hawaii so we decided to take pictures of the garden while we were there. I was watering the tomatoes and asked Derek to take some pictures of the lettuce. His pictures make our lettuce look huge and lush. Kinda makes it look like we'll be having garden salads next week.
Amazing huh!! These are from the seeds I planted on my birthday. They really are only about an inch tall...if that.
These are from the seeds we planted about a week later. I've never done lettuce before. I'm excited that they are doing so well. I just hope they don't fry before they ever get going. It was in the 90's here at the beginning of the week. Of course now it's in the 50's. There may be some hope for them yet.

Sadly our peas have not fared as well. Out of the 55 seeds we planted only 15 came up. The seeds were older ( from my single years ) and I think they had been damaged (there was a big black mark on the package and a hole as well). We'll just have to plant some more in the fall.

I was so excited to see my new friends sprouting that I ran off to buy more seeds. Even though I vowed to never condemn plants to swelter and scorch on my blazing south facing concrete porch I planted arugula and basil, I just couldn't contain myself. They are doing beautifully! So far anyway.

When we started the garden our gracious hosts insisted that they needed to put up the baby swing for the swing set they had getting dusty in their garage. We persisted that they didn't need to do that but they did anyway and Hyrum LOVES IT!!! We didn't get a baby swing when Hyrum was born figureing we had a bouncy chair and that would be enough so this swinging was some of the first swinging he's ever done in his life...He's a fan! He was tired when we went up so he's not as excited as he usually is. This swing has been a life saver because it's in the shade and facing the garden so he can swing in shaded coolness as I do my puttering in the garden. He lets me know when he needs a push. He especially loves it when you pull the swing up towards you and let it go. He loves the anticipation.
Until next time... Happy gardening! How does your garden grow?

On Friday the 16th I went to a book signing for Stephenie Meyer's The Host with my cousin Hillary who got us the tickets. It was a ticketed event that included a copy of the book. The day before she brought the book over to me and I tried like crazy to finish it but with a very active trying-to-run one year old I was only able to get half way through it. I wanted to finish it because they were going to have a question and answer section to the evening ( before she signed all the books ) and I didn't want to hear any spoilers and I was hoping to make some intelligent questions. I'd never been to a book signing much less a ticketed discussion and book signing so I didn't know how it all worked. But I found out pretty quick. There were a thousand tickets available for this event and they sold out in 45 minutes. It started at 7 so I figured "Derek gets home at 6 so I'll head on down oh say 6:45 ish" Oh no! People were waiting in line to get in at 10 in the morning and earlier. One person who was in our group was one of the few waiting from 10 in the morning saving our place in line. So when I wised up and got there around 4 we were one of the first in line. Some of you may be thinking..." What's the big deal about this author? " Well she was the one who wrote the Twilight series. Some of you are probably thinking "Um, still what's the big deal?" Well that series has taken young adult genre by storm. People are calling her the next J.K. Rowling. She was voted one of the 100 most influential people in America by Time magazine. All of the books thus far in the Twilight series have been number one on the New York Times best sellers list. And The Host just went number one this last week. There are probably hundreds of fan sites dedicated to her Twilight series in NINE different languages. She started writing Twilight in the summer of 2003 and come December of this year it will be a major motion picture. And she's a lowly BYU grad and mother of three. So you know that the folks here in Utah claim her as their own and support her as such. Thus long lines and crazy fans.

The doors opened at 5 and we got seats in the second row! So when she came out we were pretty up close and personal. :)
They told us no posed pictures or pictures taken on the stage so we had to work things out to get pictures of ourselves getting our books signed.

Don' t look too close because I have a crazy look on my face for some reason. I hope I didn't look that crazy when I met her. Hillary gave her a thank you card for her family thanking them for sharing their wife and mother with us. She was missing her sons kindergarten graduation for his book signing tour.
This gives you a little visual of the rock star status Stephenie Meyer has in Utah. It was a fun time and now I have my very first book signed "To Sunny" and signed by the author.

* The title of this post refers to characters in the book called "Souls" that are aliens that take over human bodies. Don't get a headache Holly. But it's more about a love triangle ( actually more a love square) than aliens. It's a slower starting book the Twilight series It took me longer to get so sucked in to the point that I felt like I couldn't breathe until I finished it. But it did suck me in.

Well today is my mom's birthday and I really have been thinking about the post I wanted to do for a long time and now here it is at 10:00 and I don't have much time to do it justice but a sub spectacular post is better than none at all so here we go...

This time I will do 14 things I love and admire about my mom because it's the 14th of May.

1. I love how she just connects with people. She can talk to anyone and really get to the essence of who they are. They really feel her love and interest in them and they respond accordingly. I love that about her and I wish I could be more like that.

2. I love the way she is an eternal cheerleader. I remember growing up how she would instantly become an expert on whatever you were interested in and coached you the best she could and cheered you on when you did whatever you were doing. I really try to cheer everyone I can.

3. I love the fact that she gets so into the holidays. I remember growing up that she would always bring home the green bread for St. Patrick's Day, and the red white and blue braided bread for the fourth of July. She was a sucker for the festive foods and now so am I.

4. I love that she is such an incredible grandma, Mema, Nana,( we haven't decided yet) to our son. Of course she's a fabulous grandma to all of the grandkids, but she doesn't forget Hyrum even though he's far away and just little.
5. I love that whatever she does she does it all of the way. She doesn't do anything half way. Every time she has a calling she seems to set a new standard for the calling. She makes everything she does her own. She does everything so well. I try every day to do likewise.

6. I love the fact that she's always pushing me to try different things. I'm a comfort zone person and I don't really like change but she was always good at bringing me the leopard print bras and convincing me to chop my hair off and try something different.

7. I'm so glad that she didn't kill me when I was younger and didn't leave me in a store either. I was a holy terror in my younger years. I'd scream bloody murder and roll around on the floor and under clothes racks and jewelry counters. I'd refuse to be punished so she'd have to put me in my room and hold the door while I screamed cried and pounded on the door. And through all of that she still claimed me and loved me. Nothing could calm me down like being hugged tight...That still works.

8. I love that she shares a bit of my passion for family history and shares her finds with me when she gets them.

9. I love that she taught me how to knit. It has become a passion of mine ( when I have time to do it) and has been the means of fun homemade Christmas gifts.

10. I love the holiday traditions she has made sure to pass down to us. It has made the holidays more meaningful and helped me to feel like I'm at home when I'm so far away.

11. I love that she always takes the time to talk to me even when I'm asking silly questions about an uncle when she's busy out of her mind at work.

12. I love that she's taught all of us girls to be strong women. But she's also shown us by example how to love your man.

13. I love that she never complains when we always seem to gather for my dad's events and seem to have her help us for her events. We owe her big for so many things but this one I've just been thinking a lot about lately because she came out to help me with my son when he was born last year during Mother's Day and her birthday. I will never forget that. Thanks mom.


14. I love that she's always in fashion. Her taste is impeccable, yet she never criticizes that I have clothes that I wore in high school. Although she keeps telling me that every shirt or sweater that I get has to replace an old one ( meaning the old one needs to go away)

15. I love that she's kept in touch with her college roommates and still gets together with them. She really is a life long friend. She is loyal and stays in touch even without a blog.

16. I love that she is so level headed. She never gets too ruffled about anything and keeps her cool.

17. I love that she always taught me to look at both sides of any situation and every decision. It would drive me crazy when I was making decisions but she has taught me the value of carefully considering both sides before walking forward. It has served me well and has helped me to make good choices throughout my life.

Look at that I've gone and done 17. I could do so many more but at the end of the day I love that she's my mom. She is an incredible example to me and I want to be much more like her.

I LOVE YOU MOM!!! Happy Birthday!

Saturday started with Derek's parents coming over to child proof the cupboards and watch Hyrum as Derek and I went off alone together to the ward clean up. It was fun to be together without having to worry what Hyrum was getting into. The rest of the afternoon was spent running around picking up things for Hyrum's birthday party, going to the BBQ after the clean up and planting tomatoes in our garden. Then we set up for Hyrum's party. It was an "under the sea" theme.
The invitations:
I made three and Derek made three...can you guess which ones are which?
The favor bags:

The decorations:


It was suppose to be the ocean that they would "swim" through while waiting for the other guests to arrive. I was planning to blow bubbles while they swam as well.
They were suppose to hang like this so that it would have the full affect. But mostly it looked like this instead...

Not as effective...oh well we had a TON of boys at the party and they really preferred to yank on them and tear them down. It was good in theory.

As they arrived they were to paint food coloring onto plates ( I was too cheap to get the decorated plates) for their cake later.Then they hung them to dry while we played games. This was the set up...

This was probably one of the best received activities although very few used their plates for the cake. Oh well it was good that we had a bunch. For the games we played "Jump the stream" with the older kids using a afghan that I'd made as the stream. We actually have quite a few pictures of this particular event all of the boys really got into the challenge of jumping the stream and there were some fun pictures of them jumping here is just one example...
In the background you will see my mother in law holding Hyrum. I honestly don't know what we would have done without her. With 16 crazy kids running around we were busy keeping them from running a muck. If she hadn't been there he probably would have been in the street picking eating tar off the asphalt. I apologize if you are reading this and weren't invited to the party. I started to make the list of everyone I wanted to invite and it was just getting ridiculous. Not that any of you were dying to go to a one year olds party but I would have really loved to have invited more people. Some of you might be heaving a sigh of relief that I didn't send you a sweet
little fish and if that's the case than I'm glad. :) ( but I still would have loved to have you there. )

The main event was the baby crawling race. This was for all of Hyrum's friends, the kids his age. The rules were that siblings and parents only could encourage from the sidelines and finish line. No parent or sibling could touch or push or in anyway force the baby to crawl. There is no way to really capture this scene without a ton of pictures. I should have made a video but here you go.

The starting line.
This is what the starting line looked like after about two or three minutes ( maybe more) after the race started...


And this is a picture of the finish line at the same time...
This really doesn't capture the hysteria of clapping, screaming, encouraging and cheering that was going on on this end of the race. Honestly I was impressed by the persistence of parents and siblings. Slowly one little boy would venture forward which brought even more ruckus. Then he'd stop and sit down or head off in a different direction. Then another would venture out as well. But he'd stop to eat some grass or pick a dandelion.

Ultimately it was Hyrum who was lured by mom who he sadly hadn't seen much of that day and the big Tonka truck that Grandma and Papa had gotten him for Christmas that finally brought him smiling across the finish line first. It was a blast. I want to do it at every first birthday party I throw.

Then came time for cake. I had fully intended to make Hyrum his own cake and even little cupcakes for his friends with birthdays around his but I simply ran out of time and ended up just giving him the first piece of the cake I'd gotten for the rest of the guests. Grandpa Tangren got Hyrum a "outfit" to put on his highchair so that he could be king for the day.
The cake...
Apparently I don't give Hyrum nearly enough gooey finger foods because this is his reaction to the frosting...


Then he would hold them up like "get this off". I need to let him get messy more. And that is that!

I also got an incredible suprize that day from my wonderful sister Nikki, she's planning and packing for the first romantic getaway since they've had kids and she took the time to send me this...A sister Mother's day card! What an incredible sister! When really SHE is the AMAZING mom. Thanks Nik! I love you!

Derek's parents came down on Friday so that they could be here for Hyrum's birthday. We didn't have anything planned for Friday night so we decided to head down to Provo to show Grandma and Grandpa Legacy Hall at BYU. Derek and I went there before a football game two years ago and have been meaning to get them down there ever since.


BYU sports is a place where Derek and his dad truly connect and it was fun to watch them mill around together looking at all the memorabilia. Grandma, Hy and I walked around taking pictures of Hyrum with the biggest shoes, tallest BYU athlete, shortest BYU athlete, highest vertical, biggest hands etc. Look how Hyrum compares to Shawn Bradley...


Or how about how his foot measures up to the BYU athlete with the biggest shoes...
That's the best we could do...he wouldn't cooperate.

As you walk in there is a big bronze statue of a cougar running. Grandma was holding Hyrum and she walked up and pet the "kitty". Then she'd take Hyrum's hand and try to lead him to do the same. Hyrum is no fool and didn't want to pet the big "kitty's" mouth. He did later give the "kitty" five on his back paw.


But as we were leaving I wanted to get a picture with Hyrum Derek and the "Kitty". So they stood in front of it and Derek too tried to get Hyrum to pet the kitty. I guess it takes a dad to give boys courage because he reached right up and put his hand in the kitty's MOUTH. What perfect trust he has in us. It is humbling.

We thought about going to the creamery or to the bookstore for fudge but we were all full and went to the Provo library which used to be BYU academy. It was actually the place where Derek's dad attended elementary school. It was where the BYU education college students would do their student teaching. Derek's dad hadn't been in there since they remodeled it so it was fun to look around and see how much had changed. Fun day and the start of a long crazy weekend.
I couldn't resist the urge to snap a picture of a famous place for my sister in Provo.
It's not the best picture of the grass in front of the resteraunt but there you go!
I still can't pass there without thinking of you Holly.

Hyrum has been able to walk on his own for a few feet for close to two months (with LOTS of encouragement and outstretched arms) but once he learned how to crawl normally he had to master that and found that he could get places faster that way. He started to let go of things to walk a few steps awhile ago but he has gotten MUCH more confident with walking in the last couple days. He doesn't walk along things too much anymore. We were able to finally get some footage of the toddle the other day. Here it is!!



We need a bigger space! He's going to be running by the end of the summer, I just know it! We'll just have to take him outside so he can master walking on grass next I guess!

I was sitting on the couch the other day and Hyrum was standing beside it (after he had dumped all of his books and anything else he could find on the floor) I noticed he was doing something and looked over to see this.

I watched him for awhile and he just kept playing with his tongue. I guess if you think about it the tongue is a really weird thing and it does feel pretty funny.
I don't know why I didn't grab the video camera because pictures really don't do it complete justice. One good thing about the fact that I grabbed the camera instead of the video camera is that I may have gotten a glimpse into his future.
Remind you of anyone? Perhaps...

On our walk this morning I was invited to go to the farm...ok ok Farm country at Thanksgiving Point. (Basically a zoo for farm animals) I felt like such a city slicker to think we were "going to the farm" which was really not a farm at all and I was so excited to take Hyrum so he could have that experience. Silly sad city slicker! Regardless I dressed Hyrum up in his overalls and off we went.

It was a really windy and on the chilly side but it didn't blow enough of the smell away I guess. Not the greatest first impression, but before long he got more into it.

This is what he's looking at...

We walked around to all the animals and they came up and said hello in their own ways. I didn't let Hyrum out of the stroller ( I know I'm a mean mom) but I was so afraid of little fingers getting eaten. We had one little girl in our group did get a finger bitten by a leghorn rooster. So this is how he saw the farm.


I love this hat! Derek thinks it looks like a cowboy hat and I guess I can see that ( I don't think it looks THAT much like a cowboy hat though)but I just think it is so cute! And most of all I love it because it stays on! He loves to pull hats off his head and I like him to wear hats to shade his eyes and face. If he can't get it off or has his hands occupied he forgets about it and we're both happy.
With our purchase of a ticket for farm country came a free pony ride or hay wagon ride. To be honest this was almost my entire motivation for going. I couldn't wait to get Hyrum on a pony! He was ready to go down for a nap right before we left so he was a little "eh" about the whole thing but it was incredible for me. It totally brought back my first experience riding a horse. The gentle rocking gait of the horse, the feeling of almost floating as you walked along. I seriously couldn't wipe the smile off my face the whole time!
Ok, so he kinda does look like a cowboy here but he was about to ride his first horse. I think that's a must. :)



I don't know why the color looks so weird on this video but there you have it...Hyrum's first pony ride! So fun!