Busy busy busy

It seems the summer goes faster each year. We've been so busy and it's already late August! Where has the time gone???  

I even totally missed posting a most joyous happiest of birthdays to Charlie! She turned 3 on the 6th!  I still can't believe I have a 3 year old. I'm pretty sure she should still be a baby!

Anyway this years party will be hard to top. We got a bouncy house, squirt guns, sprinkler, food, beer, cupcakes AND grandpa Gary brought a horse! A live horse. The kids went a bit nutty over it! Charlie of course was terrified of it and refused to sit on it at all. Oh well. It's the thought that counts. Thanks grandpa Gary! And thanks to all our family and friends who were there to celebrate!  As always it was a great time!

Here are some pics of her party:

Wordless Wednesday

Happy 34th birthday to the best husband and daddy we could have ever hoped for. We love you!!!

Happy birthday to my 2 favorite people!

A day late a dollar short on this one but happy late birthday to my wonderful hubby!  We celebrated by having the neighbors over for ice cream cake.  I know.  Lame.  But when you turn 33 on a Tuesday it's not that big of a deal.  I know this first hand since I just turned 33 on a Tuesday in May.  Anyway, Happy Birthday Wade!  Love you!

And today is my lil peanut's 2nd birthday!  Happy birthday, Charlie!  I can't believe she's 2 already!  Time flies when you're having fun so we've obviously been having a blast b/c it feels like I just had her yesterday!  Ah!

We celebrated a little bit the other weekend down in Des Moines w/ caterpillar cupcakes and friends.  Then this last weekend she had her big hurrah at home w/ lots of friends and family here to celebrate.  She had a blast and got even more spoiled than she already is.  Although I didn't know that was possible.  Ha!

So happy birthday to the 2 most important people in my life!  I love you both so, so much!

Xoxo~
Kel/Mama

Are you ready for some football???

So stoked football season is here!  I never used to get into the NFL.  I was more of a college football fan and could care less about the pros.  However now that I am in a fantasy league for the 2nd year in a row I get pumped for the games. 

Yesterday however was my Alma maters big rival game.  Wade and I are both Iowa State alumni and we played against University of Iowa on Saturday.  If any of you caught the game it was one helluva game!  I about had a heart attack!  TRIPLE overtime and we finally cinched the deal 44-41.  Thank God!  It was an AWESOME game.  So fun to watch.

I think one of the reasons we pulled off the win is because we have the world's cutest cheerleader! 

Don't you agree?

One more picture from this weekend I've got to share b/c it turned out so cute.  Charlie got to go to her friend Angela's 4th birthday party!  This is her right before we left.  She had a lot of fun hanging out and watching all the older kids play.  And she loved getting to meet Louie our friend's new baby boy they just brought home from Korea.  So fun!

Also, I taught Charlie how to dance today.  I have her hold onto the couch so she's stable and then I stand up and sway back and forth and then she starts to copy me.  It's so stinking adorable!  She's getting the best personality and she loves to dance. 

And now I've got to run. I'm cheering on Dez Bryant and Jason Witten even though I don't really like the Cowboys all that much. One of the fall backs to fantasy football is you sometimes have to cheer for the team you don't like b/c your players will be on it. Oh well. Come on Dez! Get me some more points!!! :)

Happy Sunday Funday!

(Not) Wordless Wednesday

We had a busy and fun filled long Labor Day weekend.  I'll get a post and some pictures up soon hopefully.  In the meantime, here is a goodie from Charlie's birthday party a month ago. 

She's 13 months old now!  She has 5 teeth (close to 6) and still butt scooting along.  I think she'll be walking in the next month.  She's taken a few steps going from one person to the other without holding onto anything but they are more like lunging/falling steps so I don't want to say that she's taken her first steps hands free just yet but she's getting there!  Her new favorite food?  Fruit Loops.  She inhales them.  :)

Kellie

Also, can someone tell me if there is something wrong w/ my comment verification?  I haven't had a single comment in over a month.  Not that I get a lot or anything but I usually get at least 1 or 2 every other post or something!  I just find it weird.

Spoiled lil Charlie

We traveled down to Galesburg last weekend so Charlie could celebrate her birthday with the rest of her family that couldn't make it up here for her party.  We took her out for her 3rd boat ride and she loved it again.  She's a water baby for sure!

Then she got another smash cake to tear into.  This time it was white cake instead of chocolate and she seemed to like it just as much.  Sugar is sugar right?  She definitely needed another bath after that!

I got to go golfing with my mother in law for the first time in 2 years and I did pretty good for not having played for so long.  It was a lot of fun to get out there!

We got back late Monday night and are recuperating from all the activity! Up this weekend is our kitchen remodel! We ordered new cabinets over 2 weeks ago and they finally came in last week so now we have to tear out the old ones to put the new ones in. I can't wait! I will post pics but just so you can see how badly we need it, here is a picture of what the cabinets looked like when we moved in

And here is a pic of what it currently looks like since I painted it a couple years ago.  I swear the only thing holding these cabinets together are the thousands of layers of paint on them.  They are bad!!!  There is also NO counter top space to work with.  The cabinets we currently have are hung too low and stick out too far.  The new ones will be hung at the appropriate height and go all the way up to the ceiling so that we'll be able to use the counter space underneath them.  We also are going to relocate the sink to be at a diagonal in the corner so we'll have a long piece of counter top to be able to cook on.  (Not that I cook a lot.  Ha!)  We also ordered a tall pantry type of cabinet for next to the stove and an over the stove cabinet that we will hand a wall mounted microwave under.  So that will give our small kitchen more room as well.  I'm totally stoked to get this done.  It's way overdue!

Bring it on!!!

One Year Ago Today

God blessed us with the most beautiful, perfect baby girl.  We are so incredibly lucky.  You are the best part of every day.

We love you Charlie Monkey!

Happy 1st Birthday!!!

Love~
Mommy & Daddy

Busy as little bees

We've been crazy busy but it's a good, fun busy. Charlie turns ONE this coming Saturday and due to some scheduling conflicts we had her 1st birthday party last weekend. She had a huge group of friends and family come to celebrate her 1st year! Our old neighbors, the Bormann's, even made the drive from Iowa to party with us! We are so blessed to have such great people in our lives!

Being a 1st time mom and never having to plan a birthday party before I was a little stressed out about it. I have no idea what kids of other ages like to do so I was trying to think of anything and everything I'd need to have and what they would enjoy doing as activities. Being that it is SUPER hot here lately I went and picked up a ladybug sprinkler at the last minute so that the kids could run through it to cool off. Thank goodness I did. It was the hit of the party. The kids went nuts running through it and next thing I knew there were kids running around soaking wet from head to toe! Other than the sprinkler I bought crazy straws, squirt guns, bubbles and had coloring pages, bean bag game, hula hoops, frisbees and the ladder game out for the kids to enjoy. The squirt guns were a pretty big hit as well.

We had a lot of fun and Charlie loved watching and interacting w/ everyone. She tore into her smash cupcake like a pro which required her getting her 2nd bath of the day. :) I'd have to say it was a success, but I'm glad it's over with. Planning it was a lot of work!

This weekend she gets to celebrate all over again with Grandma B, Z-pa and the rest of the Illinois family. We're looking forward to boating and enjoying the hot weather some more!

***

In other news, we found two itty bitty baby bunnies in our yard the day after the party. We think the mama bunny may have gotten nervous with all the activity going on the day/night before and tried unsuccessfully to move them. After watching over them all day Sunday I ended up picking them up Sunday night and putting them in a shoebox in my garage for the night so that a cat or some other animal wouldn't get them. Monday over my lunch break I brought them into a wildlife rescue organization. I hope they make it. They were so cute! I'm a sucker for things with fur.

***

Some updates on Charlie's milestones:

* I finally got a picture of her top tooth! It's really come out the past few days but getting a picture of it is hard!

* She loves pasta with marinara sauce! Unfortunately this causes me to use the stain stick on a regular basis on her clothing!

* She got her 1st big girl bath in the tub w/o the ducky. She loved it! So no more gigantic blow up ducky to goose me in the mornings while I try to squeeze into our bathroom to get ready! Yay!

* She's recently started pointing at things. When I ask her where Kobe is she frantically starts looking around for him and when she finds him she gets the biggest smile on her face and points in his direction. So she knows her brother's name! :)

* Her 12 month doctor appointment is next Thursday and I can't wait to find out how much she's grown in the last 3 months. My guess is she will be around 19-20 pounds and around 29-30 inches tall. We'll see how accurate my guesses are! She's still a skinny mini.

* Recently she's been sleeping around 11 hours a night! This is amazing for her! Up until now she'd been doing 8-9 hours sometimes but never 11 hours! This means we put her down around 8:00 and she wakes up around 7:00 which is PERFECT! I hope this continues! Knock on wood.

That's about all I can think of to report on now. Things are busy and good around here. We are enjoying the summer and I'm sad it's already August! The summer is going by way too fast as always.