Katrina's Birthday Party!

We went down to my parents' this weekend for my niece, Katrina's birthday party. Here she is opening her presents. Mom decided to help Katrina try the "teeth method"! :)


I think Katrina probably did the best job eating her 1st birthday cake of anyone I've every seen!

Dave pulled a prank on my uncle Charlie, who is a big IU fan. Usually, he gives us a hard way to go during basketball season as IU is usually much better than Purdue. This is our year, so Dave decorated his car with Purdue sayings all over during the birthday party. Charlie was surprised and didn't say much before leaving!! I think Dave got him good!

Benjamin and Anna enjoyed playing with the different toys that were at Grandma Susan's house......

Doesn't she have such pretty eyes???

Here's my cupcake, all adorable (as always)! :) And speaking of my adorable cupcake, she is doing some new fun stuff. She has started saying Zoe (our dog) - "Ohheee!", hungry - "unree", eat, and she points to her mouth now when she wants to nurse. I'm sure there are more, but that's what I can remember right now! She can point to her head, nose, and mouth. She continues to take steps between people and has occasionally taken some just on her own, but no official walking.....YET! :) My favorite new trick of her's is when I pucker my lips and make a kissing noise, she does it too! Super cute!

It was really cute......while we were there, Anna kept giving Katrina hugs!

We Fight Some Things With All We Have..........

But Every Once In A While Little Ones Give In

Dave and I have been struggling quite a bit with getting Benjamin to go to sleep. There have been sticker charts, rewards, punishments, time outs, Dave reading in the hallway for an hour while fighting him to go to sleep, you name it.....we've probably done it. Last night I put Benjamin to bed and only had to go in once more (a success these days). An hour or so later, I was in bed waiting for Dave to go to sleep. He comes in and says, "Do you know Benjamin's light is on?" I climb out of bed mildly frustrated thinking we're going to have to fight him to go to sleep for the next hour. When I walked in, this is what I found..............
Poor Guy!!! :)

And now I need a favor. I got a great new camera for Christmas and since it was so hard to get Anna's 9 month picture b/c she just wanted to crawl away...... I decided to do her 12 month pictures myself. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, but I'm having trouble picking. That's where you come in. Comment or email me (amm555@aol.com) and tell me which one(s) you like the best.

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You don't have to vote on these two. I just thought they were fun and wanted to share! :)

Thanks for the help picking. It's hard for me! :)

"So Big!!!!"

We've had a lot of fun the past few days, so buckle up! :)

We went to the zoo yesterday to enjoy the nice weather, which we are so thankful for! We packed lunch to eat in the car and since the pediatrician ok'd Anna's car seat being turned around, we decided to do it for this trip so we could watch her eat better. She absolutely loved it and it was so shocking for Dave and I to see. It was really cute to look back and see her looking like such the big girl! And speaking of big, one of her new tricks is that when you say, "Soooooo Big!" she lifts her arms up in the air to show you how big she is! :)

Some other cute things she's doing recently is pointing to her head, nose, and mouth. Something I keep forgetting to jot down here that she's been doing for a few months now is when you say, "Where's Anna?" She pats her belly! She has been saying fish - "isshhhh" and hot - ahhttt, sounds like she's whispering. She has also created a new word too. She started saying, "Meee!" when she wants something or to be held and now she says Ma-meeee, which we interpret as "Momma, me want that/hold me"! It's pretty funny!

Benjamin is very sweet and holds his DVD player so that Anna can watch it too!


Benjamin and Daddy watching the dolphins, waiting for the dolphin show to start.


Giraffes!!!

Anna had her pointer finger ready, making sure we didn't miss any animals!

These guys love their Daddy!

Benjamin skipped his nap to go to the zoo and Anna had only had one nap. We were only in the car a few minutes and they passed out on us! We went to dinner afterwards, so we hung out in the parking garage for a while so they could catch some Zzzzzzs! They both woke up happy, with hungry tummies. They ate great and were so good for us, which was super great for Mom and Dad! :)

Today we continued to soak up the great weather. I cooked up a picnic and we met Dave at the park. It is so wonderful to get to be outside in the sunshine!

Watching people walk their dogs! And of course exclaiming, "Dog!" over and over and over again!

While looking through the telescope, Benjamin declared, "Mine see the playground!!!!" with absolute joy!

Anna likes driving!

This is Benjamin's absolute favorite slide out of every park he's ever been to! He LOVES it every time! I, however, think it hurts my bum! :)

Dave agrees, but I still guilted him into going down so Anna could! She was always smiling at the end, but they were going so fast that I could barely capture them!

"Hey you!" I thought this was a cool angle.

Fun In The Sun & a Surprise

After all the birthday posts, I have some fun Benjamin pictures to share from the last few weeks.......

Unfortunately, they're not all happy. Benjamin has been really fighting sleep (naps and night time) and sometimes it takes up to an hour to get him to go to sleep. One day last week he extended it for longer than that! He fought taking a nap from 1:00 to 4:00. Then I went at 4:10 to check on him and found him like this........

Poor guy (and poor Momma)! I was exhausted and worn from him requiring about 100 trips back into his bed for 3 hours straight and so excited he was finally asleep. Too bad he was laying like this and as he tends to roll around in his sleep, 10 minutes later he rolled over, fell off the bed, and then preceeded to cry for the next hour! We've since figured out how to keep him locked into his room and he's been doing significantly better.

Now to the fun/happy pictures! Benjamin and I were overjoyed to experience the warm weather we had recently. We're sad that it's gone, but at least we enjoyed it while it lasted and are waiting on pins and needles for it to return! While outside we enjoyed about every single outdoor activity available at our house (minus the water fun). Here he is blowing away at the bubbles!

Zoe enjoyed the warm weather too. She likes tormenting the dogs next door! :)

Chalk time!

Playground fun! Isn't he adorable???

After shooting down the slide!

Riding his bike!

And time for golf! I can't believe how much he's grown into the golf clubs my parents got him for his birthday last year. He can really swing them and hit the ball now! Growing so fast!

After playing golf for close to 20 minutes he turns to me and asks, "Where are the holes, Momma? Our not have any!" Guess we'll have to take him to a course soon!

After playing an hour and half outside, Anna's baby monitor died......so we had to come back in. We didn't want the fun to end, so we filled up the sink and played in it. This has become one of his favorite winter time activites!

Remember the birthday hat we forgot to have Anna wear at her party???

It was just as well, b/c she hates hit!!!

And now for a very happy surprise! We found out about a month ago that we're going to have another baby! It was quite the shock for us, but we feel very blessed to be pregnant again! Yesterday, we went in for an ultrasound to find out how far along I am. I'm about 9 weeks and "Little Three" (as I've begun to refer to the baby) is estimated to be due around October 17th!!!! :)

I was a little shocked to be pregnant as I mentioned, so I ended up taking three tests throughout the day. When Dave got home I told him I wanted to give him his Valentine's Day present a day early and gave him the tests!

Here's a picture of the little peanut! Little Three might look just like a peanut, but he/she is a peanut with a heartbeat growing in "Momma's tummy" (as Benjamin says)!!!! :) The picture is of the baby from top of the head to their rump!

Finally! A birthday Party!

We were able to finally celebrate (a well) Anna turning one yesterday! We had a lot of people there, great weather, and a wonderful time celebrating our cupcake (hence the cupcake theme)!


To decorate I printed out pictures of Anna from each month of this past year.......


Benjamin liked Anna's birthday hat (that we actually forgot to have her wear)!


Anna enjoyed the paper a lot more than the actual presents!

She enjoyed playing with the cards too..........

The kids enjoyed checking out the new loot!

After presents, the boys (Benjamin, cousin Jack, and friend Tyler) had a fun dance party and got wild!

Anna had a lot of fun with all her fans that were there, including Uncle Mike........

Anna enjoyed her candle and even blew on it (we've been practicing that!). Benjamin was more than happy to help her blow it all the way out though! He also did a great job singing to her!

Benjamin didn't much care for having to wait to get his piece of cake, so he decided to help Anna get to it! :)

She helped herself for a little while.......

but then realized how messy her hands were getting and decided it was better to have Momma just feed it to her!

In the end, she didn't get too messy!

This is how she plays peak-a-boo! :)

All cleaned up after her cake!

Katie and Katrina had fun out in the nice weather (as did all the kids)! Dave took this picture through the window screen and I thought it ended up being a pretty cool picture!

Jack has become quite the ham and is a lot of fun! :)

It was a wonderful day and we want to send a big thank you to everyone that came! We had so much fun sharing Anna's special day with all of you!