Happy Birthday, Penny!

Our little Penny is one year old!!!  It seems like she just came to us, but at the same time, I don't really remember what life was like without her.

We celebrated last night with the Winns, whose little boy Rhett turned one on Friday.  We had dinner and then cupcakes, which the birthday babies demolished in minutes.  When they were nice and covered in frosting and cake, they held hands and smiled and tried their best to scrape as much frosting off their hands with their teeth as possible.  Then they had a coed bath (I don't have those pictures yet) to clean up.  It was a fun night with great friends.

Some things about Penny right now:
She loves to eat bread, crackers, and Nutrigrain bars, but will eat baby food jars of fruits and vegetables and yogurt if I beg.
She loves to wrestle with her dad and brothers.
Every day when Brody gets on the bus, she waves bye-bye to the bus.
She has a 6th sense of when the stairway gate is open and will bolt to the stairs and climb up before anyone notices.
She is terrified of going back down the stairs.
She is usually happy and usually a good sleeper.
We love her so bad.

 

It wouldn't be a party without the dads trying to stuff whole cupcakes into their mouths.  Oh wait- it would still be a party.  It would just be civilized.  Right guys?

Penny Learns to walk and talk and balk

So, I understand that many of those who may read our blog have not been privileged to see sweet little Penny using her new found ability to carry herself to trouble on her own to feet! This video should remedy that. Its a little long at 4 minutes, but it starts Feb 6th and finishes yesterday. It was less than a week between her first couple steps and her walking all over the place. I hope you all enjoy!

(oh, and it was filmed using our awesome Flip HD Ultra, so you can make it bigger and see her snotty nose up close and personal!)

Best. Birthday. Ever.

I turned 28 last week.  That's kind of old, right?  27 seems so much younger than 28.  I'm not afraid of getting older, though.  I think it's fun to look back on my life and see all of the experiences and choices that have brought me to where I am today.

I am so lucky to have a good husband and good friends.  It's something that is very important to me- having people around me who I can count on and trust with anything- especially since I am so far away from family.  I have met such good people in my life who have made my life richer and more enjoyable.  On my birthday, I was reminded of how blessed I am to have people who love me.

I woke up on my birthday to balloons filled with messages, streamers all over the house, and a pan of brownies, all of which Adam had woken up at 4:30 to prepare.  Then I got to go to lunch with my friends Cari and Shalynn, which was SO FUN!!  I love adult conversation!  They're so nice.  When I got home, Adam was home from work early and had cleaned the house while I was at lunch.  I was thinking what a great birthday I was having.  Then it got better!  Adam said we were running to Walmart so we loaded the kids in the car and took off.  Then we saw Cari's van going to our house so we turned around and Adam ran to "see what was going on".  He called me inside and the biggest surprise was on my couch.  My friend Hannah, who moved away 15 months ago and who I haven't seen since was in my house!  She had flown in from Texas to surprise me.  It was SOOOOOOOO COOL!

So we spent the weekend together having fun and talking and getting pedicures.  Then on Friday, my friend Rachel from Atlanta showed up at the door and surprised me.  So many fun surprises!

Adam pretty much took over household/parenting responsibilities for the weekend so I could enjoy it.  He also put together a surprise slumber party with a bunch of my friends so Friday night he took the kids to a friend's house for the night and we had the house to ourselves.  We played dance games on the Wii, talked, ate junk, laughed, and finally fell asleep around 3:30.  It was so fun!

 Just Dance 2- Rachel was such a cute little pregnant good sport.  And Megan pretended like she didn't like it but now she secretly plays in her own living room.  =)

 Kelly made me a YUMMY strawberry cheesecake that we ate at MIDNIGHT. 

 This is my favorite picture! Sarah and Harrison snuggled together sleeping.  SO CUTE!

 Cari and April- love these girls!

Hannah, me and Rachel

So pretty much what I'm saying is that my 28th birthday ended up being the best birthday I've ever had.  I have nice friends and a nice husband and a nice family who bombarded me with nice phone calls all day.  I'm telling you- I'm blessed.

A little catching up to do...

For those of you who are devout fans of our blog this is about to be very exciting for you, because we have a load of pics to show you. For those of you who aren't devout fans you must not know us - get out!
In the last few months a lot has happened that we haven't gotten around to blogging about so I'm going to try and do some catching up; mostly with pictures, but with a few choice words as well.
Below we have our first specimen. As a Christmas season tradition Jess and I hold a white elephant gift party at our house with a bunch of friends. As in times past this years (or last years now...) was a riot. Some of the great gifts included ancient cheese balls, half eaten chocolates, ladies heals, a cheese hat, a sad Santa, and this years favorite pictured below. Unknown to Cari Winn, she gave an autographed photo to Ben Davis; the reaction was hilarious.

For some stupid reason I decided to go fishing with some guys from work in the middle of December. The boat we were on drove us 50 mph across the lake and I just about turned magically into Frosty the Snowman. And to top it off, all I caught was this one lame fish.

As always we went to Lights of the South, but this year's fun was marred by a 45 minute wait to get in to the place. "Really? You're gonna have a thousand people and two registers? Really? How bout you ask Santa for a few more registers and some brains."
On the plus side, we cheered up the World as a whole by showcasing Penny in this outfit.

Our good friends the Woodwards had us and others over for a Murder Mystery dinner. It was a lot of fun. You may not be able to tell, but my character was a highly intelligent, very attractive, absolutely funny studmuffin. Jessica's character was not. She was an old maid.

The night before Christmas we dressed up with some friends and did a nativity play with the kids. It went miraculously smoothly, and the kids may have even figured out what we were doing.

My new camera has a setting that we take auto shots 10 at a time. We took advantage with quick funny faces. All below are actual funny faces, except for Bridger's - he really looks like that.

For Christmas this year the boys got a lot of good stuff and were pretty (obligatorily) grateful for all of it for about an hour. It was fun to see their excitement opening the gifts and helping us and Penny open ours as well. I think the star of the show this year was that they both got Leapsters, which have provided some very pleasant trips shopping. For those who don't have leapsters, here is what you do. 1) buy leapsters 2) go shopping with kids 3) put kids in cart with leapsters 4) enjoy shopping without crazy kids running all over the place and asking you to buy everything they see. Its awesome.

Oh, and I got an electric shaver that has converted my face to a baby face. (assuming your baby shaves very closely)

Penny is an animal; a very, very, extremely cute animal. Oh, and she is also a little "Emo" - Rockstars are jealous, Zebra's are confused.

Jess and I got some gift cards to go out to Outback steakhouse. We took advantage of them just this last friday night. We left the house with a babysitter in charge and zoomed off to eat at 5:30. It was only 3 hours later that we were finally seated and eating!! Our names were on the list for an hour and a half! What is going on here, people? Food was good, the company was awesome. I love my wife.

After Christmas we took advantage of the half off sales to get a kit for gingerbread houses and let the boys make their own. They really enjoyed it and did pretty well at putting them together. However, I think the part that Bridger liked best was putting it in his mouth. He licked that house clean.

This is the scrunchy, squinty version of Penny. We looooove her face! (and so do you of course.)

Our boys are pretty fantastic too. They are both very smart and mostly well behaved. Brody's reading skills are amazing, and Bridger's ability to make Penny laugh is too. How did we get by without these three little people to make us so happy and crazy?

We rang in the New Year with a Wii dance party. Our rad friends, the Galans, have the game "Just Dance" - and boy, did we! It was a lot of fun, and a lot of exercise. In case any of you are confused, the picture above is actually me, not just my face on a 12 year old's body. Also, I dance just as well as you might imagine a skinny white boy would. I have a video of the girls doing the dance, but I think they would all threaten my life if I were to post it for all to see! Let's just say I never knew Jess could move like that.

We also did some karaoke in which Jess and I were able to showcase our fabulous singing voices. For those who don't know, I sound like Josh Groban (in my head) and Jessica sounds like Lady GaGa (in my head).

Bridger turned 4, as noted in the previous post. We had a little birthday for him at our house. In the backyard we played "Red light, green light" and he got to be the sign holder - hence the look of pure enjoyment below. Its the power. Bridger loves to have the power! Unfortunately for Jessica, it was too much for her. The children mobbed her.

What Bridger doesn't like is... well, pretty much everything else about his party. That kid's face looked like the below depiction 95% of the time. This particular shot is right after the no-hit, lame pinata emptied its candy at his feet. Wouldn't you be upset if a bunch of candy landed on your foot?

This year we got a little snow again, only this time it quickly turned to ice. The boys learned its a little difficult to do ice angels, but that in the excited words of Bridger: "its real ice! it tastes just like what comes out of the freezer! its really real!"

And, I will leave you with this adorable shot. Penny standing, and clapping with pigtails and shoes. Seriously, I have to hand it to Jess and I - we make really, really cute kids.

Happy Birthday, Bridger!

I love this boy.  He has so much personality. He is always thinking of others and always has a compliment for you.  ("I really like your dress, Mom.  You look like a princess!")  He loves to sing and dance, but not in front of other people.  He tries really hard to remember to say thank you and to show appreciation for what others do for him.  He loves Lightning McQueen and Curious George and peanut butter and honey sandwiches.  He is such a good big brother to Penny.  His eyes light up when he sees her and he can make her laugh more than anyone else.  He is such a blessing to us and we're so grateful he's ours.

P.S. Thanks to my friend Heather, we decided to put balloons in his room so when he woke up he could see all the balloons and be so happy!  Well, maybe it's not such a good idea when he wakes up before the sun.  He came out confused saying, "Mom, there are so many balloons in my room...I won't be able to get out of my room when it's time to wake up." (He was already awake AND out of his room).  We went and turned the light on and then he was happy and excited about the balloons.  It was a little anti-climactic for me.

Happy 4th Birthday, Bridger!