Happy Birthday Emma

I hate to be so ordinary with my words, but it's so hard to believe it's been a whole year. Our little princess is growing so quickly. I can't even keep up.
She's saying Dada, Mama, Moooo (I know, what a strange one to pick up, but she loves her farm animals puzzle), and she STILL has no teeth. She's crawling very quickly (I can't keep up), cruising now from furniture to furniture, and she LOVES music. She claps and bobs her head to the beat and belly laughs with the same raspy voice as her brother.
What a girl.
This precious little butter bean has had one wonderful first year. We are so proud of her.



Stay tuned for birthday party updates!

The Goldilocks Effect

Poor Uncle Jeff.

He had one request for the grocery list.... steel cut oatmeal.

Well, apparently my kids, and everyone else love it too.

We fixed some oatmeal for Jeff for breakfast, but by the time Jeff got out to the kitchen to have some, all he could say was, "someone's been eating all of my porridge."

Well, apparently I've lost the pictures of Jeff's sorrowful look over his pot of oatmeal, so on a brighter note, I decided to include this photo that Nana took of Jeff finally getting some food.

Walking in a Winter Wonder Land

This year, Christmas has taken us to the Great White North.... Canada.

On our first day here, we went out with Uncle Peter for a sleigh ride.

Daddy and Uncle Peter took Drew on his first sled rid

Drew and Uncle Peter had a great time dashing through the snow.e

We took Drew out in hopes of running off some of his energy.... I think it was Peter that slept so well that night.

Snow angels came in all sizes this year.

Little Man had the time of his life.

Santa's Coming to Town

Today was the big "Santa Picture Day." All things considered, it went pretty well. Emma and Drew are at the ages where Santa could have been almost impossible. Drew is now 2 1/2 and Emma is 11 months. That's pretty tricky.
Before we met Santa, we had dinner with Melinda, Michael, and Sadie. The original plan was to take the kids outdoors for pictures, but by the time that I had them dressed and ready, it was already 5:15 and the light was just about gone. So I opted for Plan B. Melinda had said that she was going to have Sadie's picture taken with Santa tonight, so we crashed their party and showed up for them too since the kids were dressed in their Christmas Cuties.
We ate dinner first and Drew did EVERYTHING Sadie did (as usual). He would walk to the end of the world with her, I swany!
Then off to take pictures.
When we got up there, the kids started to cry, and I thought, "Oh no! This can't be!" But after a few raisins and some Ho Ho Ho's, they were at least not screaming anymore.
This was the best that we could do (which was better than I thought we were going to get when they first sat down).
Santa was so good to the kids. Drew told him he wanted "presents" (in a whisper) and then got a lollipop for being such a good boy.
Emma got lots of attention for being such a cutie patutie.
So here they are.....
(drumroll please)

Celebrate

What better topic to blog about for my 300th post (I know.... crazy!) than Melinda's 30th birthday celebration!

For those of you that know Melinda, you know she doesn't particularly want to be the center of attention, but Michael, Mary and I decided that's just tough! So we planned a surprise party for her.

Happy Birthday Melinda!!!

Drew helped me make the Italian Cream Cake for the party. Mama Horton made a carrot cake and Mary made the pumpkin cake. They were de-licious!

Emma settling in with some snacks getting ready for the party to begin. (I just realized that it looks like she's eating the chips and drinking the ice tea... that's not the case folks... don't worry. She had her own stuff.

There's the birthday girl... this is the moment that she's starting to figure out that this is her birthday party. Her first statement was "so it was all a lie!?!" Not "wow, what a surprise!" hahaha. She couldn't believe that she was left out of planning.

Sadie is enjoying some food at her Mama's birthday party.

Melinda's worst nightmare. Mary had told the staff that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES were they to sing to Melinda. She has always been VERY adamant about that. However, some way or another, they still did.

You can see it all in "the look." Melinda knows who's to blame for this.

Jill got Melinda random 30's for her 30th.

Michael is counting to check that there were 30 post it's

By the end of the night Sadie looked like a wild woman. Even still, isn't she adorable!?!

Renaissance Festival

Last weekend we had some gorgeous weather, so we took advantage of it and went to the Renaissance Festival. I had no idea that it was going to be so much to do there. There literally is no way that you can see it all in one day, but here are some of the things that we saw the day that we went.

Some scenes from the Renaissance Festival. They really do a great job of making you feel like you are taking a stroll around during the Renaissance era.

Yet another time when our wagon has come to save the day. The kids loved being pulled by Daddy and seeing all of the sites from their wagon.

Drew and I decided to go pet a goose. She was dressed up just for the occasion, but I think she was getting a bit hungry by the time we saw her.

Drew and Daddy are my knights in shining armor! Drew, you did a great job slaying that dragon!

Notice the guy in the background. All of the rides were man-powered. For this one, there were four guys making the whole ride spin. How very "Renaissance" of them.

Of course Drew and Daddy got the "flying machine" with the sign.

Drew and Daddy in Leonardo's Flying Machine

I love this picture. Drew looks up to his Daddy so much. I know he loves doing stuff with his Daddy.

Daddy is trying to make it up Jacob's Ladder to ring the bell without putting a foot down.

Window shopping Renaissance style.

Interesting to see people with things like this just walking around.

These singing nuns were hilarious. They gave us the perfect reason to stop and relax while we grabbed a bite to eat.

Hey, anybody up for throwing tomatoes at a heckler?

This guy was relentless! He would even keep heckling you while catching the tomato that you threw at him.

Daddy and Drew really enjoyed the show.

That's a lot of tomatoes. He must have made a lot of people really mad!

After walking a bit further, we saw this guy sitting. We stopped so that Drew could see some magic tricks.

He does a neat card trick for Daddy. He was really good! We couldn't figure it out at all (and usually we can).

Colin walked away saying, "my work here is done." Did you notice all of the people that gathered

Emma and I stopped to take a picture for Daddy.

These guys were juggling fire. But it doesn't stop there! They were actually passing the juggled fire back and forth to each other without missing a beat!

This drunkard was just laying there, with his ale, begging for money. If you think about it, this was his business plan. He went to the Renaissance Festival people and said, "I'll be the begging drunkard." and they said yes! This is what he had to offer and it really is what he does to make money. Crazy!

The next event was "jousting to the death!" Here are the king and queen greeting the crowd.

These were "the bad guys.

Before the jousting begins.

The jousting is on!

After jousting, we walked around some more. There was still so much more to see. How classic is this!?!

After coming across some Greyhounds, Drew decided that he just had to go pet them. Colin was up for it, especially considering how many of them his family has had.


It was a great day, but now I must bid thee farewell.

Well, out of the literally hundreds of pictures that I took, this is what I decided to narrow it down to. I know, crazy. We'll definitely be going back again next year.
Huzzah!