Papa Buck and Ally’s Birthday Party (August 28th, 2010)

We spent the day visiting Papa Buck and hitting the Piñata at Cousin Ally’s birthday party. It is always fun to see my grandpa and he gets really excited to see the girls! He gets a kick out of Emma and is always measuring her up to see how big she is. He has always been pretty blunt about our looks; commenting on whether or not he likes how I am wearing my hair and how my weight is going as well! He is delighted because Emma is “starting to slim down” and says that Audrey “sure is a BIG healthy thing”! It makes me laugh to think that he would even notice such a thing at his age!

We celebrated Ally’s third birthday party complete with swimming, cake, and a Piñata. Emma was in heaven and crashed on the way home from her major sugar high!

We also got to meet our new cousin, little Eli, who was born on July 23rd. He is a little cutie!

Cute Baby Girl

Some photos of Audrey right before she peed all over our bed! Good thing she is so cute!

Stephanie's Baby Shower

The girls from my work got together to have a shower for my friend Stephanie who is expecting her first baby, little Ryan, in late September. The shower was tons of fun and the food was delicious. I brought Audrey along because I thought now I can tell her that she was at her husband’s baby shower. Won’t that be sweet? I can’t wait for Halloween 2011 when I plan on dressing them up as a prince and princess! Those will be priceless photos at their wedding!

Sisters Who Play Together

Lately the girls have been very interested in each other. Today I vacuumed the entire house while Audrey was in the Johnny Jumper and Emma was playing underneath her! They both thought it was very funny. Every day they spend a good 30 minutes rolling around on the floor together but it usually ends with Audrey pulling Emma’s hair! It is so nice that they are starting to entertain each other and that their closeness in age is starting to pay off. Can’t wait till they can go downstairs and play and I can catch up on my soaps! Just kidding (kind of)!

Emma has a headband on her head....

I don’t know if you are familiar with them or not but one of Emma’s favorite DVD’s is the Laurie Berkner Band. They sing all kinds of silly songs one of them being “My mom has an alligator on her head” and then it goes on to naming all the family members and all of the silly items on their head. Today Emma walked downstairs with this blue headband on singing “Emma’s got a headband on her head, Emma’s got a headband on her head!” You have to know the song to appreciate this but I am sure all of us who have suffered through watching it with Emma can get a chuckle from this! So here she is in her blue headband!

Michigan

I have been putting off this post because I have an overwhelming amount of pictures to sort through but it is important that I document it so I will try!

Every August, we spend a week on Lake Michigan with Adam’s IL family. This year there were around 44 people of the 72+ family there! It was crazy but tons of fun. We spent the mornings at the beach, followed by some pre lunch swimming, then headed into a lovely Chalet for lunch. After lunch we swam, napped, and ate some more. Every night ended in our cabin with a large group of people playing “Mafia”. We have decided that the family has a sick addiction to the game. Ali and her family were in for the weekend so it was nice to spend some time with them before Baby Andy arrives. Here is my best attempt to capture with week without an overload of pictures. I promise I am only using a small amount of the 300 I took!

First, the pool photos….

Then the beach photos….



Hanging around photos…

Lana and Audrey (looking forward to next year when these too little buddies can play together!)

Mafia…

And sunset photos (a tradition!)…

That’s it! Hope you made it through!

Belated Birthdays

We missed both my mom and dad’s birthdays so last Friday we had a belated birthday celebration complete with Apple Pie. Emma and Catherine had fun decorating for the party and when they were done, Emma looked at the table and said “cool man!”

Softball, Baseball, and Vacation Packing

Though there are no photos to document (Adam threatened me so I was not able to bring my camera), Adam has spent every Monday night this summer playing softball in Forest Park. He is on a team from his work and I think the girls and I showing up a few nights with the stroller, dolls, and McDonald’s was enough to embarrass him so I tried not to make it worse by photographing the ordeal! Even though his team was pretty much horrible, (sorry to any fellow players who may be reading this but it is the truth) he really looked forward to it every week. Since there were no game time photos, I did take a post game photo of the girls (Emma does not get the concept of looking at the camera as you can tell). I wish I would have taken a picture of Emma’s feet to show how filthy they were! She really loved playing in the dirt.

Now onto baseball. We got all ready one evening to go to a Cardinal game only to have it rain like crazy. This would have been Emma’s 3rd (we have taken her to one a year) and Audrey’s 1st. Since it was raining so hard, we decided not to take them but we did grab one photo of the girls though it is not the greatest. Emma has also been really into feeding Audrey. It would be helpful if she was interested in doing it for more than 20 seconds!

And here they are while I was trying to pack for our vacation. I thought I might lose my mind. Emma took things out of the suitcase as fast as I could put them in. And then when it came time to load the car, I thought I might die from a heat stroke. Thankfully we left for vacation during the hottest week of the year. Unfortunately, so did the lawn watering, which turned our grass completely brown while we were gone!

Notice Audrey’s hand in Emma’s hair. Recent hair pulling has been causing some drama in our house as of late. Emma screams and Audrey belly laughs. It reminds me of the youtube video “Charlie bit my finger”. And like the video, Emma keeps coming back for more!

And two more photos of my little ladies…..

Cousins and Trains

Way back in July (things were busy so the blog got behind!), we got to spend some time with some of our IL cousins.

To start with, we spent a week at Grammy’s house swimming with the Blair’s. Can you tell that Annetta’s kids are used to having their photo taken?

Then after that, Debby, Jackie, Ava, Elise and Lana, all came to our house to spend the weekend. We did a little swimming, watched some Dora, played in the tent, and wrapped things up with a train ride.

The train ride was pretty neat. It had a real steam engine and the ride went along side the river and through the woods. We will probably going back in the fall when all the leaves are changing colors! By the way, I can’t wait for fall! It is my favorite time of year!

5 Months

Audrey was five months old on the 26th. I love waking up to her smiling face every morning (and recently at 1 and 5 am). She is always happy, recently accomplished rolling from her back to her belly, enjoys playing with her toes, and loves watching her big sister Emma. She is so precious and I couldn’t love her more!

The Things Emma Says.....

Emma is a ball of energy. Sometimes this is a good thing; sometimes it is not so good! The other day Adam and I were talking about the little sweetie and he said “If we just listened to Emma talk for an hour we would probably be laughing the entire time.” It made me realize that I should probably document some of the things she has said recently because I know I will forget them. Here are a few I can remember…..

1. Recently, when we put Emma in her crib, she has been requesting for us to sing some random made up song to her. It is usually about her room, her shoes, her tent, her “people” or her fan. The other night when I was putting her to sleep she said “Mom sing me a song about when the Lord baptized Audi.” For some reason, Audrey’s baptism was a very memorable event for Emma which she talks about often. It always makes me smile when she talks about it.

2. Someone was discussing what Emma and Audrey could be for Halloween that would go together. They were going through all kinds of pairs like Dora and Boots, Ariel and Flounder, Belle and Mrs. Potts, etc. Emma chimed in and said “or poop and turd”. Some days, I think she should have been a boy .

3. Audrey was in her swing awake and being pleasant when Emma went over to her and said “No Audrey, please don’t wake up, mommy will spank me!” She must be remembering one of the thousand times Audrey was sleeping pleasantly and Emma would scream in her ear “AUDI WAKE UP!” then look at us and say “Audi just wake up!”

4. During the second day of potting training I was rushing around to get ready for work before Grammy got to our house. Emma was naked and running around refusing to get on the potty chair. I grabbed her and started to put a diaper on her when she put her hands in my face and sternly said “I don’t like diapers. Grandma Cathy told me that I don’t like diapers so I am not going to wear them, ok? Ok mom?”

5. Emma recently found my stethoscope and has been lugging it everywhere listening to our “heartbeats”. This morning she was playing doctor and came over with a box lid, pulled my feet up on the lid and said “Mom, I need you to step up here so I can get your weight!”