Happy Birthday Kyle!

Sunday May 26th Kyle turned 29! His last year in his 20’s!

After church my Mom came up to watch the kids for us and we headed down to Des Moines for a little date day. First time out, just the two of us, since Avery was born! We had lunch and did a little shopping. Kyle wanted to find a few things for his triathlon training. We had a good afternoon together, but its always good to come home & see our kiddos too!

For supper Kyle chose Caseys pizza, his favorite! And no birthday is complete without a cake. I picked up a little one from the HyVee bakery {didn’t want to have it around to tempt us all week}. It was perfect for the 3 of us!

So thankful for Kyle {and our sweet family} and look forward to another year! Avery’s face cracks me in this picture! He’s ready for some cake…or in awe of the fire!

Adelyn liked her cake…can ya tell?!?

And I couldn’t resist this picture…like father like son, totally zoned out to some sporting event on TV! Love my boys!

Happy 29th Birthday Kyle!

Cousins Meet

May 24th Kyle’s sister Sarah and her family stopped by their parents’ house. They were on their way home to Colorado from Chicago. They have 2 kids, Arianna is 5 and Sophia is 8 months. Adelyn hadn’t met her cousins yet, so it was fun for them to meet. Arianna was really sweet with Adelyn, they had fun playing!

Kyle’s parents with all 4 of their grandchildren!

We hadn’t seen Arianna {and her parents!} since July 2010, she sure has changed in those almost 3 years! We had to get a 4 generation picture when they were here!

It was a quick visit, but the cousins had fun! Arianna even asked if we could stay longer!

Oh and one last picture…Adelyn wasn’t cooperating, but we tried. Adelyn has her own little photo album and she doesn’t have any with Uncle Travis or Aunt Laura so we had to try when everyone was all together.

May Storms

We’ve had quite the wet month of May here in Iowa. In fact there is a lot of flooding in the state right now. And what else comes with rain? Thunderstorms & tornados. Thankfully we haven’t had any bad storms. But one Sunday night we did have a tornado warning.

In our county if a tornado is spotted anywhere in the county the tornado sirens go off, county wide. When the tornado sirens went off, we looked outside, saw it was sunny, and went out to the front yard to scope out the situation. Parents of the year right here…tornado sirens go off and we take our kiddos out in the yard! The storm was to the west of us and we weren’t in danger, but it just made me laugh!

Oh and pants aren’t required during tornado warnings evidently! I tired to get her to put some on before we went outside to look at the sky, but she wasn’t having it. Choose your battles!

Later on that evening this is how we found Adelyn sleeping, feet crossed and her favorite book on her chest! Sweet girl!

By the way, if any of you have a little girl who is going to become a big sister to a baby brother I HIGHLY recommend the book “Penny Loves Pink”. Adelyn LOVES this book. But when we read it to her we replace Penny with Adelyn and include Avery’s name too. It’s her current favorite!

Mother’s Day Gifts

For Mother’s Day I wanted to do something homemade for our Mom’s {read: the Grandmas}. I’d seen all kinds of fun things on Pinterest and decided on the footprint butterfly!

I got out an old sheet and first gave Adelyn a go at the finger paint. She liked it for a little bit, but then wasn’t too sure of being “dirty”! Ha! She ended up loving making her footprints.

It was Avery that was the hard one to get, little man kept curling his toes! But we got it! I just used a brush to made the body, head, and antennas. Then we scanned the footprints. I used Picasa to add their names, the “Happy Mother’s Day” and their ages in the bottom corner.

And both Grandma’s loved their gift! Love doing gifts like this!

Mother’s Day Weekend

Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend we spent the evening with Kyle’s family. Sharon opened her cards & gift here at our house and then we went out for supper. {Check out Avery’s face!}

Sunday morning Kyle woke me for a delicious breakfast! We love peanut butter on our pancakes and once in a great while we will make chocolate chip pancakes with peanut butter on them. So Kyle thought, why not peanut butter cup pancakes!! They were DELICIOUS!! He even made an “M” for Mom!! Such a good guy!

Adelyn was excited for pancakes…she LOVES pancakes!

After breakfast we went to church and then headed down to my Mom’s house for lunch with my family. My Mom had just gotten a trampoline at a garage sale {her neighbors} for $30! I think the grandkids {and maybe the big kids too!} will have lots of fun on this in the years to come!

Hayden had to show me his ups after seeing how high Uncle Kyle could jump!

Monkey see, monkey do…Hayden got his picture on the trampoline, so Adelyn had to have her picture on the trampoline too! Silly kiddos!

Its so fun to see the cousins play together! Love that they are going to have each other to grow up with…

…even in moments like this…when Hayden pushes Adelyn down the slide and Adelyn has a melt down! {she wasn’t hurt, just didn’t want Hayden’s help}

Mindi, Wendi, and I all worked together and made lunch for Mom. We grilled out, Mindi made an awesome pineapple pretzel salad, I made cheesy potatoes, and Wendi made a cheesecake desert. Delicious!

The kids had to help Grandma open her gift! And Grandma loved it!

If you know my Mom, you know this is her happy cry face!

I’m going to do another post on how we made our Mother’s Day gifts for the Grandma’s.

Love these amazing women {and the kiddos too} SO much! We are just missing 2 little ladies in this picture, Stef & Lily.

It was an overall very nice Mother’s Day, my first one as a mother of 2! Crazy! And this is how I ended my night, a toddler who wanted her Mama and a fussy baby. This is real life my friends and I love it!

So blessed to be Adelyn & Avery’s Mommy!

Adelyn’s Spring Program

May 7th Adelyn had her first “Spring Program” at daycare. I was excited to see how she would do because she loves to sing when we’re at home or driving around in the car.

They had her room {18mo-3yr old} with 3 & 4yr olds all sing together. When they brought the kids in she plopped down on the riser {we’ll have to work on being lady like in a dress!}.  Doesn’t she look thrilled?!?

They sang By and By, Bear Hunt, This Little Light of Mine, and Sing & Shout. Adelyn was more interested in watching the big kids than she was in participating. But we sure did get a sick out of some of her friends! I think this is when they were singing “This little light of mine”

And no program is complete without a picture of your kid picking their nose! Ha!

This is Adelyn with one of her head teacher’s, Miss Linda. She is always excited to see Miss Linda each morning. I just love our new daycare and am so thankful to be there!

COOKIE!

Shelby is also one of Adelyn’s teachers and Adelyn talks everyday about how she plays with Meg, Ella, and Shelby! {Meg & Ella are 2 of her little friends} We love Shelby, she’s so good with kids and we’ve known her & her family for years & years.

I wanted to get a cute picture of Adelyn after her program, but with an {almost} 2 year old that isn’t the easiest thing to do! She’s a busy little bee with better things to do than take pictures!

Meet ‘n Greet

On May 1st the girls in my office were so kind to throw a little Meet-n-Greet for Avery! {we snapped this picture afterwards, we’re missing 3 more of my staff}

Avery got lots of lovin’ from all the ladies! {we hold our office parties in a conference/storage room…hence the folders, file cabinets, boxes, etc in the background!}

And big sister helped Mommy open Avery’s gifts!

Even Jenny came for to meet Avery! We worked together for almost 7 years! Now she works with my BIL, Preston! She just can’t get away from our family!

One of the girls made yummy, cute cupcakes!

 

And Daddy even came too! He & Adelyn were a big help in load Avery’s nice gifts he got!

It was a nice little evening and fun to see the girls from work!

Avery’s Hand & Footprints

On April 23rd  {yes I’m over a month behind in blogging!} Avery and I went down to a local pottery shop, From Miry Clay Pottery, to get his hand & footprints put on a plate, a gift from my Mom & Step Dad. We did this same thing when Adelyn was a baby.

Their daughter Aubrey LOVED Avery! Such a little Mommy! I love this picture and how sweet she is looking at him!

We have to do the “Super Baby” pose to get his hand prints. Needless to say, Avery was not impressed with this pose!

And he wasn’t much happier when we did his footprints either! But he quickly calmed down when we were done…

…and now I forever have his little hands & feet on a plate! Can’t wait to see the finished product.

Afterwards Avery & I went to my Mom’s house to work on a picture project. A nice mother/daughter bonding time!