For my "Lishy"

So, not realizing that today was even bigger than I previously thought . . . it is our 6 year anniversary (ok, ladies . . .back off. I remembered)! Dana and I got married on a cold rainy day 6 years ago in the Salt Lake City temple. We have enjoyed both fun and difficult times in our marriage. Dana has done a lot in her time as my wife. She got her associates and bachelors degrees from BYUI and BYU. She has become quite the successful fitness instructor for Lifetime fitness (thus, the hot bod!). She has become a great mom and wife. Our relationship is quite funny, as Netti may attest to. Living with us, she must think that we either are madly in love or at each others' throats with no in between. We both have our cranky moments, but have a great time teasing each other and just hanging out.

I love Dana's humor, her beautiful features, her motivation, her caring heart, etc. She is still the love of my life and I can't wait to spend the rest of it together. Love you lish!

P.S. For those of you that are unfamiliar, here is where "Lish" came from. We started out calling each other "honey" like everyone does. That grew into honey-licious, of which, I do not know the origins of. Now it is just "Lish" and it has stuck. :)

Mother's Day Pictures

For Mother's Day my mom and aunt patiently photographed my children. I have to say I am very surprised at the number of smiles they got out of them.


The mischevious grin!

Finally, permission to pick up Camryn.
Any hair growing tips??

Cam will love this when she is older!

Thanks mom, Sherry, Hailee and Camryn for making me smile.

Pictures...

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Camryn's Room

Hailee's Room

Family Room

Kitchen

Update about our home...

We closed on our house on February 26. I think I will always remember that date because of the excessive number of times we had to sign and date the closing documents.

We were all settled in and ready to start leading normal lives, but then we decided to put new carpet in a lot of the rooms, so we are back to mess and chaos. John has decided that tearing out carpet is not really a good career path for him. I think it is pretty safe to say that he'll stick to his office job. Hailee is terrified of the tack strips and insists we carry her across them. Cam could care less; dirt, carpet sheddings, and staples, just makes her life of living a foot off the floor more interesting. I am a little bugged by the amount of stuff that sticks to the bottom of my feet no matter how many times I sweep. The good news is my uncle Jerry is helping us out and Shane is putting in our carpet on Saturday.

So, once carpet is in and the rooms are in their proper order again I promise to post more pictures.

A Place to Call Home!

So if you have followed our moving saga, we had some rough times looking for the perfect home. We wanted a big yard, a finished basement, near schools, a big master bedroom and bath, good size kitchen, and relatively new (nothing 80's or earlier).

Well, after many months of looking, we finally found our home on the AF / Highland border. It is not our "dream home", but is very much what we want. It was built in 1994, so it has some updating to do, but we are excited to personalize it to our tastes.

The last couple of weekends have comprised of painting and updating, and getting ready for the big move. Dana has picked our cute colors for the girls rooms and they are about 95% done with painting and updating. Cam's has a green accent wall (think Tinkerbell) and will have purple curtains and accents. Hailee's is (of course) pink and will have lots and lots of pink swag.

We will update with more pics later, but here are a few to give you just a taste.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It has been a busy year at the Anderson home. We are now living in a new home, wishing it were ours, but we will be leaving this one around the beginning of the year and hopefully buying a home so we don’t have to move for many years to come. We have only moved four times in the past 14 months, so what’s another one!?! We currently live in Lehi, Utah and crossing our fingers that a home in American Fork that we love with soon be our home. Hailee is getting into the spirit of moving too, the other day she asked when we were going to live in a different house because she was bored of this one.

John is now a CPA. He is doing really well at his new job as was recently promoted. He is looking forward to hitting the slopes with his snowboard within the next week or two, he has yet to convince me that the fun factor outweighs the cold factor, so he will be going with some buddies and not me. He is looking forward to owning a home so he can have a lawn to mow, trees to trim and most importantly so he can put nails in the walls to hang pictures without worrying about what the owner would think.

Dana has adjusted to life with two kids, but every day still wonders how people handle more than two. This year she worked on her certification to become ACE Certified Group Fitness Instructor and passed her test in October. She is really enjoying her job teaching exercise classes at Life Time Fitness, The Lehi Legacy Center, and Gold’s Gym.

We were recently called to teach the Sunbeams, Hailee’s primary class. At first we were a little hesitant, but then we realized this is the best calling in the church. We get to do it together and spend some quality time as a family. John made a puppet out of a paper bag, he calls him Max, and the kids love him. They ask every week when Max is coming. Although Max is often times the “bad example” and the kids tell their parents . . . maybe they will release us!?!

Hailee turns four years old on Christmas Day and every day we as parents wonder what the heck we are doing and if we will ever get it right. She is a huge fan of Dora the Explorer, consider yourself lucky if you don’t know who that is. She will have her first birthday party with friends on Saturday. She has recently become a fan of Tinkerbelle, so that is the theme of her party. She loves playing in the snow, which makes me even more convinced that she is more her dad’s child than mine!

The most excited event that happened this year occurred on March 23 when Camryn joined our family. She has been a huge blessing to our family and it is hard to remember life without her. Until recently we referred to her as our “calming influence”. Over the past couple weeks she has decided that she wants to “walk” around instead of playing on the floor, so now anytime she is on the floor she will yell at us until someone holds her hands to let her walk around the room. She refuses to crawl so when she is on the floor and content there she will roll.

Some of the fun things that our family has been up to this year included the Anderson Family Reunion in June. A trip to Arizona for John to do some CPA training (okay not so fun for him) and for Dana and Cam to catch up with friends. We traveled to Couer d’ Alene for Thanksgiving to visit Grandma and Grandpa Anderson and both concluded that a trip there once a year is not nearly enough. On the way to Northern Idaho we stopped to visit our friends Ryan and Andrea in Caldwell, Idaho. Now that we are back in Utah we have been able to see Grandma and Grandpa Maxfield a lot more which has been great.

So, there is a quick update. We are still getting into the spirit of blogging, but if you want to keep up to date on our family throughout the year just go to our blog @ johnandersonfamilyblog.blogspot.com. We won’t promise that we will update it regularly, but we’ll do the best we can to post the important events in our lives.