1 Family x 12 (August)

This month's picture was a no-brainer!

Some little lady we know turned big 1(!) yesterday.  A family picture is a requirement.

We're heading camping for the next 10 days so it will be pretty quiet around here, but I'll be back with tons of pictures and stories of our trip.

Cake!

I figured the perfect way to celebrate Abby's actual birthday was to share the pictures and videos of her getting her cake on!!!

Ellyn got the cutest little cupcake from a local bakery for Abby.  I'd been saying that I wanted a cupcake since the whole smash cake idea is sort of lost on me.  You want me to spend $30-$40 bucks on a cake that noone else can eat and she can't finish herself?  No thank you!  A cupcake though, that's perfect.  To be fair, this is actually a muffin sized cupcake, so it's slightly bigger.  Is the decoration cute?  I wish I had a clear picture of it without the candle already stuck in, but they came out blurry for some reason.  Since it's hard to see, it says simply "Abby is 1".  It was vanilla bean flavor since this was her first taste of cake, but Ellyn's already promised that she's going to make a birthday cupcake a tradition from here on out (secretly, I can't wait to taste them all myself).

It didn't take her long to dig right in.  After she tipped it over, there was no stopping her.

She loved to smush the cake and frosting between her little fingers.  She got a bath directly after this!

I just can't resist that face!  And, you can see her two little bottom teeth poking out.

Sugar coma!

Abby turns 1!

Well, I was going to start this blog post out by saying "Guess who turns 1 on Wednesday" but the title of the post pretty much gives that one away.  So...here we are just a few days short of a year after Abby was born.  This morning while I was feeding her I was telling her all about what Mommy and Daddy were doing in these last few days before she was born.  I remember it like it was yesterday!

 I know that all parents say "I can't believe how fast it goes" and my parents are probably STILL saying that now about my sister and I, but you don't really understand until you live it.  So here goes nothing, "I can't believe how fast is goes".  I mean seriously...what happened to my little 5 and a half pound peanut that slept the day away and kept me up at night?  What happened to the little baby that I could snuggle to sleep at night and would stay exactly where I put her down?  Or to the little gummy grin that I will most most of all.  What happened to her skinny little legs and her jerky little newborn movements?  I miss them all!  But, before I really start crying here I need to move onto all the things that I love about my still little, independent toddler.

I think you can call them babies until they turn one, then they are officially toddlers right?  My little peanut is the happiest little girl. She smiles at everyone and isn't afraid to sit in anyone's lap.  She has her own little independent personality and doesn't want to be snuggled, not even for a minute.  She's too busy!  She's got people and toys to play with Mom!  Don't hold her down.  She's curious and smart.  She walking and Ryan and I both SWEAR she said Rooster two times last night, repeating an app on the iPhone.  I am so glad Ry was there to hear it too because if I tried to tell him she said it, he'd never believe me.  I'm not sure I'm going to count it as a first word though (I not so secretly want it to be "Momma" but I'd settle for "Dadda").

Ok, enough of that, let's get to the party!!  We couldn't have asked for a nicer day.  It was 75 and sunny all day.  We had about 70 people at the house for Abby's party.  It was crazy and I never could have done it without my Mom and Ellyn's help.  They helped with food, prep and cleanup.  Who knew Abby had 75 people that loved her enough to drive "all the way to Iowa" as Aunt Terri called it :O)  We had the pool open and the kids swam, followed by the adults later in the day.  The sun was shining, the music was going and the beer was flowing!  Ryan and I had such a great time having everyone over to hang out, and for some, to see our new house.  We've not quite been there a full year yet and we sort of did this as a combo housewarming/birthday party.

We had friends from Naperville, Indiana, Freeport and everywhere in between make the long trek.  We got tons of compliments on our yard (it's big enough to host 75 people and not feel crowded at all!), and the changes we'd made to the house.  People loved the pool and Ryan's most proud of the number of people that asked how we got the lawn so nice.  It is one of his prides and joys....course fixing the ever broken lawn mower is NOT!

Grandma Ellyn made these fun giant bubbles for the kids.  I was pretty sure that Abby wouldn't be interested much in it, but I was officially wrong!!  She loved those things.  So much so that the older kids finally asked if we could take her away because she was bothering them :O)  I think she liked sitting and splashing in the trays for the bubbles most.  Oh, and carrying around that wand...she loved that too.

The dogs were great too.  We had 5 dogs at the max in the back yard and it went pretty much perfectly.  That is to say until Staley thought Ashley was holding a plate of fruit for her to eat from.  In her defense, it was right at her nose height.  Ashley was scared for a second, but a quick sweep into my arms and a few minute later she was fine and laughing about the silly doggie.  A few of the other kids weren't such a fan of the dogs but for the most part there were plenty of people for them to bother so it was fine.

Presents galore!  I tell ya, this little girl is spoiled!  It took me almost 3 hours to reclaim my living room and her bedroom from the toy explosion that happened.  She got a bunch of clothes and so many toys I've hidden some in the closet to open when she starts getting bored of the ones we opened already.

Abby made it all the way through opening presents before needing a nap, so it was a party success.  She helped me with the first few and then got distracted by the new toys, specifically this hammer toy from Aunt Laura and Uncle Mike.  Don't get me wrong, she's going to get tons of use out of everything we got, but for now, she's pretty hooked on this one.  Even this morning, when I was getting ready for work I set her down by her pile of toys and she dug all the way to the bottom to pull out this hammer.  I found her hammering on the TV stand and the other toys.  I have a feeling we've got some dented furniture in our future.

Seriously, she's been carrying around that hammer since Saturday like it's her fairy princess wand!

Personally, this gift, of Packers onesies is one of my favorites.  There is a pink one that says "I love Packers more than cupcakes".  How cute is that?  Thanks Kristina for my favorite gift of the day!

See?  Hammer Princess, right there!  Abby got tons of warm clothes for fall/winter.  She got sorting toys, wooden puzzles, her own personal couch (from Joey and Andy), wooden food, her first Kitchen aid mixer (all for a kitchen I'm making her...post on that later!), a Cozy Coupe (little yellow car), an Elephant ball popper, Oshkosh overalls, and lots of things I'm totally forgetting about right now.

Oh, and who could forget the wagon!  Isn't this thing awesome??  We took it with us to a little local fair by our house this weekend, called the Thrushing Bee.  It's a steam engine show.  Anyways, you should have heard the number of compliments we got on this baby.  It came from Grandpa and Grandma McGrath.  I did a ton of looking around at wagons and I'm so glad I picked this one.  It's got two seats, with belts, this great sun cover and a pack on the back to hold all of our stuff/diaper bag.  It's going to be perfect for races and for Trick-or-Treating.  I know we will get tons of use out of it.

All in all, we had a great time!  Thank you to everyone that came and for all of the amazing gifts.

You're probably wondering where in the world are the pictures of her with her little cake right?  I split them out into another post to keep you coming back :O)  I'm sneaky like that!  So come on back on Wednesday for those!!

First steps!

You've already seen a video or two of my little peanut walking, but I just got my hands on this series of videos from the morning she took her very first steps.  Right before these videos she's taken four teeny tiny steps towards me and all the excitement brought the rest of our camping crew down from the rocks and around the springs.  We had a regular little audience for Abby's first steps and I was so lucky that Chris caught these moments on camera.

*I apologize right now for my choice of clothes.  Remember, we'd been camping for 3 days straight in 100+ heat....that's really the only excuse I have!

Abby clearly loved it when she had an audience and everyone was clapping for her.  In fact, she loved it so much that she just wanted to clap instead of walk!

I'm so excited that we got these moments on camera.  Of course I think they are momentous but it was really cool to hear how the rest of the crew felt about it.  A few hours later Sarah commented how surprised she was that she was so excited to see her first steps.  She's got two nieces of her own, but they live in CA, so she'd only get to see them for short bursts of time.  I'm hoping the rest of the cousins are jumping on this baby bandwagon sooner rather than later!!

My favorite dress for Summer....and teeth!

My little lady has WAY more style than me these days.  The reason is two fold.  1.  She gets all new clothes for each season so it's easy to sport what's "in" and 2.  She's got two Grandma's that love her to death and can't help but buy her the cutest little outfits.  This little cherry dress though has been my favorite since day one.  First off, it's cute, but I think the reason for loving it is a little deeper than that.  When my Mom bought it for her she told me a story about how she remembers having a little dress much like this when she was younger and it was one of her favorites.  Something about dressing Abby like her grandma makes me love this dress a little bit more.  She's got so many outfits to wear that I could probably never wash a single thing, but for some reason this little outfit always makes it to the top of the pile.

Abber Dabber has TWO teeth now (both on the bottom) and a third one coming in on top.  For some reason when editing these photos at home, you could clearly see her little chompers in that first picture, but they aren't showing up well for me now.  Sorry!

In my effort to actually get in front of the camera, instead of always behind it, I had Ryan take these pictures the other night and I sort of love them.  They aren't posed and I'm clearly wearing my pj's but who cares!  That's real life and those are the pictures that end up in wedding slide shows 20+ years down the road.

I just love her little chunky monkey legs!!  She's getting longer and skinnier now that she's walking everywhere so I gotta get pictures of those thighs when I can!  She sure does love her Daddy!

Gazebo Renovation

Abby's birthday part is a little over a week away and Ryan and I are hard a work trying to finish the last big project.  At the beginning of summer we sat down and made a list of the projects we wanted finished before we had Abby's party.  Now, all this work for a 1 year old seems a little funny, I know.  But, it's more than that.  For many of the people coming, this will be the first time they've seen our house.  We moved in less than a year ago and we're sort of doing a combo birthday party/housewarming party.  Ryan wanted to do a full blown housewarming but after some convincing we decided one big party was enough for this summer.  

The other reason for the list is that we've got to have priorities right? We've found that we tend to bounce from project to project without a real direction if we don't have a list.  And we end up having half the supplies for half the project so we decided to pin down the things we wanted to accomplish this summer and gave ourselves a deadline of Abby's party.  

We've done well.  We've mulched the majority of the yard (we'll need a few more yards of much in the spring to finish up), we finished the master bathroom, power-washed the deck, got the pool up and running, and now, the very last project is the gazebo.   

I didn't talk much about the gazebo when we first moved in but we've found that we really like this space.  We aren't crazy about the arrangement of the decks/pool/gazebo, which you can see in the very first picture, but for now we aren't planning to re-deck so we're keeping what we've got and improving it.

You can see that they did a terrible job of painting the ceiling in the gazebo...I think they used spray paint...and in the worst color I could imagine.  Then, it seemed like they maybe left the windows open and it rained, ruining the walls that used to cover up area under the windows.  Who knows...that's just a guess.  This is what it looked like when we moved in.

The wiring was all wonky...as it is in the entire house so Ryan spent a few days redoing that.  We added a few switches, and a few outlets, and wiring for a TV!!  We're going to put a TV in here for Football season.  Can you see it now?  A nice cool fall day, a few friends hanging out and the Packers kicking the Bears butt on the TV in the corner?  I can already envision it!

Check out that crazy salmon pink/orange color!  Isn't it terrible?  Oh, and!  That's the fan from our master bedroom.  It's still ugly, but it's so functional here.  We love having it there to help move the air around.  

So, our plan:  

1.  Rewire and get ready for a TV - done

2.  Replace the boards under the window and between the windows - done (see picture below)

3.  Repaint - We're going to do the walls white, and the ceiling a pretty blue color.

4. Add crown molding 

5.  Repaint the fan

6.  Hang TV

7.  Furnish!

So, you can see from the above picture, that this is a work in progress.  We've got all the pre-work done and we are ready to paint this weekend!  Barring any huge disasters we should have this baby painted and maybe the molding up before the party.  Right now we've got a big 8 person outdoor table that we've been using inside here but I'm thinking of changing things up and making it more of another living space.   We've got an extra futon in the basement that I'm thinking we can re-cover and move out here.  Then maybe a little love seat, a rug and a small bistro table with two chairs.  We can use TV trays or maybe a coffee table for eating off of, but I think we can make this a comfortable, functional space really easily.

I can't wait to show you how it turns out!!

We've got a walker....and no, I'm not talking about a zombie

It's true...my baby is on the move!  I was so excited to see her first steps.  She saved them just for us when we were camping a few weeks back.  She took four little unsteady steps towards me while we were sitting by a natural spring.  Chris was close by and caught her second official steps on camera (I'll post that video/pics later).  Then we didn't really see much action for a week or so.  She'd stand up in the middle of the room, which she'd been doing for awhile now, and then plop back down thinking it was just too much work.

But, randomly on Sunday afternoon she decided it was time to start moving like Momma and Daddy and she's been perfecting the walk ever since.  Most mornings she's still too sleepy to try, and reverts back to her safe space, the crawl, but by the afternoon she's got her courage up and she's ready to roll.  

As you can see, she's still pretty unsteady, but she's determined!  And no, I can't explain why she needs Daddy's safety glasses while walking.  Have you ever noticed that no matter how many toys you have around, babies want to play with garbage or whatever it is you are trying to hold onto?

I guess I'm going to have to get her used to wearing shoes.  She's not loving them these days, because they make her even more unsteady and probably more because I never really put her in them when she was younger.  I don't know, is it just me, or does it seem silly to cram their little feet into shoes if they never touch the ground?  Besides, barefoot is best right!  That's the newest trend :O)  I know, I know...it's time for shoes.  Especially when it starts to get cooler...and when we are outside of the house.

Enjoy!