Hiking the Y

Sophie, Jake, some of our family and I all hiked the Y last week. I've hiked all over but this was my first time hiking the Y. It was also Jake and Sophie's first time so we all enjoyed ourselves and it was great to be outside. Sophie loved every second and has talked about our hike every day since then. She gets excited and says "Y" whenever she sees the Y on the mountain. She had fun riding in her backpack most of the way and even fell asleep on the way down. We are excited to take Sophie hiking and camping a lot this summer so it was just the first of many more adventures to come.

Sophie and her cousin, Ellie, had fun hiking together

Sophie looked extremely cute with her hat and ponytail sticking through.

Sweet Home Alabama

Congratulations to Jake!! He has been accepted to the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Doctorate of Physical Therapy program! We are still waiting to hear from a couple of other schools but we will most likely be moving to Alabama in January 2010. I always thought it would be cool to live in the south and now I may have that chance. We are excited for our next adventure, wherever that may be.

Go Cougs

I am a BYU fan and Jake is a U of U fan, so he claims that I am brainwashing Sophie. I wouldn't call it brainwashing when it is so cute. Jake even wants to join in the cheer when Sophie does it. Go Cougars!

Christmas Update

Sophie thought Christmas was great. She enjoyed opening presents and playing with everyone's toys, she said "ho ho ho" whenever she saw Santa and loved undecorating the lower half of our tree. Christmas was a hit with Sophie. We had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed many festivities with our families in Salt Lake and Provo.

Sophie is 16 months old now and is so much fun. She talks all the time and loves to sing, dance, read books, play, watch Sesame Street, be outside, and help mom and dad. She says hello to everyone at the store and makes friends wherever we go. Lately she's thought it is so funny to say "boo" to everyone. She yells our name until she gets our attention and then yells "boo" at us and laughs like crazy. She is quite a character and we love life with Sophie.

Enjoying the lights at Temple Square.

Sophie and Jake decorating our Christmas tree that we went into the forest and cut down for only $5. We had to cut off about 5 feet to fit it in the house and it was still about 8 feet tall. It was a spectacular Christmas tree.

Christmas Tree hunting

Sophers

Here are some of Sophie's 1-year-old pictures. She is a character and so much fun. She is a talker and says new words every day. I am very grateful to be her mom.

Summer Update

This has once again been an eventful summer for the McKays. Jake worked his 4th summer river guiding on the Salmon River in Idaho. My river guiding days are on hold for awhile so Sophie and I had a fun summer hanging out with family and exploring small towns in Idaho. We also moved out of our house at the end of July and just recently bought a cute, old house in Provo.

Sophie now has enough hair for pigtails which we are having a lot of fun with. She knows her animal noises and likes to blow kisses and show everyone her belly button.

Our new home

Happy Independence Day!

We celebrated the 4th of July at the McKay's cabin outside of Oakley. We had a family reunion with Jake's immediate family. We went to the Oakley Rodeo, which was rootin' tootin', barbequed, took family pictures, and just had fun hanging out together.

Sophie enjoyed her first 4th of July

She also thought the rodeo was pretty cool.
She liked the bull riding and calf roping the best.

The McKay family. There are now 6 grandkids in the McKay family
and it was fun to see them all together.