Spoiled by Lala and Poppa

Matt's parents came to stay with us for over a week and they completely spoiled us rotten...yes, all of us!  They were here the last full week of June (and my mom just told me it's mid-July now, how has the time gotten away from me?!?  I swear I never know what day it is anymore...) and we were really sad when it came time for them to leave.  We always enjoy their company and they were a huge, huge help.  While here, they:

• helped cook dinner
• cleaned up after dinner
• fed baby bottles
• did the morning bottle shift (so I could sleep in!)
• changed baby diapers
• changed toddler diapers
• gave baby baths in the sink
• gave toddler baths in the tub
• dressed the baby and the toddler
• carted the toddler back and forth to daycare
• entertained the toddler
• cuddled the baby
• fed the toddler
• kept the baby while the toddler and I went on two outings
• treated me to a mani/pedi
• babysat both kids so we could go out to dinner

And on and on!  In addition to that, they showed up with new clothes for Thomas and toys for Katie Wynn and even a gift for me!  I've told them they're welcome to come back every other week and do it all again.  :)  

Seriously, they were awesome and a tremendous help while we were sleep deprived and I don't think we'll ever be able to adequately repay them.  Thank you, Lala and Poppa!!

I seemed to have only taken pictures sporadically during their visit so they aren't really a full representation of all the fun we had.  I'll try to let them mostly speak for themselves with limited commentary.  :)  (Oh, and some pics are from Lala's camera so she gets credit for them.)

Who sits down to grill?!  Apparently Katie Wynn does.

Same hair color!

One morning Katie Wynn needed to read to her dolls before school.  These pictures illustrate why she has a bow in her hair everyday.  She looks like she's wearing a wig!

Katie Wynn found a new hiding spot while Lala and Poppa were here.  Sometimes she sat in there with the door closed for so long that I almost forgot she was in there.

After spending the week spoiling the four of us, Lala and Poppa left here with the big kids in their back seat so they could spend a week spoiling them at their house.  Are they great grandparents or what??  I don't know everything they did but I know they went on a big canoe trip and visited with their great grandfather and had a big family gathering for the 4th of July.  I kinda hate we missed out on it all!  I stole pictures from that week from Lala's camera...

After a fun week, Lala and Poppa drove them all the way back home.  They stayed at our house again for a very short visit before heading home.  I bet they were exhausted after two weeks of lots of grandkids!  :)

Thank you again, Lala and Poppa, for visiting and for loving our kids (and us!) like you do!

Memorial Day

This year my parents were out of town for Memorial Day, but my brothers and I still got our families together to celebrate!  Mom insisted that I take lots of pictures for her since she was going to be absent.  I didn't even have my real camera with me but I did manage to get a few decent ones on my phone.  

My brother Ben and his wife Erin have a pool at their house so we've started making it a tradition to spend the holiday cooking out and splashing around there.  Their pool gets lots of shade so the water is always COLD early in the summer!  Doesn't seem to bother the kids and the boys though!

Katie Wynn fell asleep in the car on our way there so we had to wake her up for the festivities.  It took her a few minutes to shake off her sleepiness.

After being there just a few minutes and warming up in the sun, it was definitely time to change into our swimsuits!  I packed our patriotic ones so that we'd match Erin's flag decorations.  :)

My goals for the day were to stay hydrated, stay un-sunburned, and stay pregnant.  I found a seat in the shade and parked it so Matt was on full-time duty in the pool with Katie Wynn.  She didn't want to swim in her float...why would she when Daddy could hold her?!

K-dubs and her cousin Ramer were King and Queen of the shallow-end ladder.  They rarely strayed from it unless it was to go in the water for a few minutes at a time.  

We took a break from swimming to enjoy a delicious spread that Erin had prepared.  Chip and dip, slider burgers, barbecue chicken, baked beans, fruit, and homemade ice cream had all of our guts sticking out a little further than usual.  :)

Before everyone could get away that afternoon, I took some group pictures to send to our parents.  It's hard to get 5 kids to sit still for a picture when there's a pool and water guns right in front of them!

There was a family picture taken of us too but bad hair plus no makeup plus nine months pregnant plus a polka dot swimsuit equals no chance in hell it's getting posted here!  I try not to be too vain but I don't want to scare any readers away.  I'll just post the one without me in its place.  :)

That was our last family get-together with Katie Wynn being the youngest grandchild.  Next time there will be one more wiggly boy to try to get a smile out of in the group picture!

Five Years!

Today's our fifth wedding anniversary!

I was scrolling through our wedding pictures to find one to post, when I got caught up in all the pictures from the parties and events we had.  It was such a fun and exciting time and we got to celebrate with so many of our friends and family! 

Since I wasn't blogging back then, I figured we could take a walk down memory lane today and relive some of the fun moments leading up to our wedding.  The first shower we had was hosted by my mom's church circle.  The ladies outdid themselves, as usual, on the food and flowers and we received SO many gifts.  In fact, I think we received nearly all of our dishes at this party, and we still eat on them every single night!

Some of my parents' friends threw us a couples' shower, complete with karaoke!  Most of my pictures from that night are dark and blurry, which might speak to how much fun we had!  :) 

My coworkers hosted a nice shower for us too!  The picture below is one of my favorites...I was so dang excited when I opened the pan to make giant cupcakes in!  Still love it and use it all the time.  :) 

There was another shower, too, with all of my girlfriends at an awesome restaurant, but somehow I don't have any pictures of it!?  So sad, because it was another really fun day.  (Update: my sweet friend Dana sent me a picture to include!  I shared this shower with my good friend, Darbie, who got married two months after me and we were both spoiled by some of our best friends from college!)

For my bachelorette party, we had a girls weekend in New Orleans.  Man, I could write a whole post just on that trip!  It was so much fun and I was so grateful to my friends for giving up a whole weekend to hang out with me! 

Matt had a full guys day where they played golf, cooked out, and ended the night at the dog track betting on the races.  The weather that weekend was unusually cold and rainy but they didn't let it get them down!

Finally, the evening of our rehearsal dinner came and we were given the opportunity to thank so many people that had spoiled us and helped us celebrate along the way.  Clicking through the pictures reminded me how hot it was that night!  We suffered through the outside rehearsal and then went to our favorite Mexican restaurant for food and margaritas. 

The next morning started with rain.  Lots of rain.  When you've planned an outdoor wedding, rain is not what you want!  There was no time to panic or stress, though, because we had a busy day with too much to do!  My day was spent with my girls at the beauty salon getting ready for the evening, and then taking pictures in the late afternoon.  The hard rain stopped but it sprinkled on and off throughout the day.  Thankfully, it went away for good just in time for our ceremony and we ended up having the most perfect weather ever.  Not too hot, not too cold, and definitely not rainy! 

I know I'm biased, but it was the best night ever.  The ceremony went smoothly, with lovely music, great scripture readings, and a perfectly-delivered sermon.  Matt and I even made it through our vows without stumbling too!  Afterwards it was time to party!  The food was delicious, we had music from an awesome band, and two bars kept the drinks flowing (and the people dancing!).  Man, really makes me want to do it all over again!

As if we hadn't already had the best weekend ever, we got to follow it up with a week on the beach in St. Lucia!  I'd like to do that part again too!

Happy five years, Matt!  Here's to many, many more!

Easter Sunday

On the evening of Easter Sunday, I told myself that I would blog about the day before the next Sunday rolled around.  Obviously, I failed at that goal.  Ugh.  Now my goal is to crank this out before another Sunday passes us by!  Edited to add:  Oops, missed that deadline too.  I've been typing this thing for days!

Katie Wynn woke up Easter morning to a visit from the Easter bunny.  No, she had no idea what that was about.  As I scrolled through Facebook later that day, I saw that the Easter bunny rivals Santa Claus at a lot of my friends' houses.  Not so much the case at our house.  Katie Wynn got a coupe car (I wanted to get her one anyway so this was a good excuse for it), an inflatable pool for this summer (a $5 score from Bargain Hunt that I'd already bought for her anyway), and 7 empty eggs.  Yep, like the tomb, they were empty.  She brought them home from her hunt at daycare and I immediately ate all the candy out of them before realizing I didn't really have anything to fill them back up with.  She didn't seem to notice or care.  :)

She loved the coupe car so much that she insisted on eating her breakfast in it.  

I LOVE Easter Sunday...definitely my favorite Sunday of the year.  But this year, I was stressed about how it would all work out.  Matt and I were playing handbells during the service which meant we had to be at church early for a practice.  Someone (my dad) would need to watch her during that and then she'd have to make it through a long (and crowded) church service, lunch, and an egg hunt before nap time.  It really could've been a disastrous day with a cranky toddler, but it ended up being great!  My dad managed to get her to go down for a mini nap before church which was a HUGE help.  We just had to quickly get her dressed before heading back for the service.

There is one major rule after church on Easter Sunday: everyone has to pose for pictures in their Easter best before running off and changing clothes.  My big, fat, pregnant self included.

It doesn't seem right that one person should be allowed to have so many chins.  It's not fair for me to keep so many to myself when some people don't have one at all.

Cute, even though Katie Wynn has weird, comb-over bangs.  Darn wind!

Katie Wynn is definitely to the point where she's not a fan of my camera.  She doesn't want to look and she sure as heck doesn't want to smile!  I absolutely love the pouty picture below on the left.  Matt was just trying to coax that snack cup out of her hand but she didn't really wanna do that.  He managed to get her laughing, though!

One of my favorites from the day.  And you should be thankful that I cropped it the way I did...nothing about the position I'm in was flattering.  :)

The flowers were my (brilliant, if I say so myself) idea to get rid of the snack cup.  Added bonus: they made for such a pretty prop!  My mom made her Easter dress so I tried hard to get some good pictures of it.  I hate that I didn't get a close up of all the shadow-work embroidery she did.  I have about 50 photos from this five minutes to choose from, so here are my favorite 6.  So hard to narrow it down!

Just like last Easter, we invited the Thompson family to join us for lunch and the big egg hunt.  They're practically family anyway.  I don't think the twins, Anna Charlotte and Stuart, made it into any of my pictures last year since they were still so new and tiny and slept the afternoon away.  This year, though, they're walking and talking and into all the fun!

I'm sure my niece and nephews dread seeing my camera out!  :)  Here are my oldest brother's (Nick's) kids.  Jett is just days shy of turning 9 and Bren is 5.

And these two giggle worms belong to my other brother, Ben.  Parker is 5 and Ramer is 2 and a half.

We tried really hard for a picture of all five of the grandkids, but my moody toddler wasn't really up for taking pictures with her cousins.  The oldest four were about done with me and my smile requests, so I tried my old standby trick of having them scream as loud as they could.  The thinking behind this is that as the screams die down, their faces fall into real smiles as they're laughing and that's the prime time to snap the pic.  (Click here to see how this trick actually worked for our Christmas cards!)  After going back through all of these outtakes, though, I realize that I should have told the 5-year-olds that they had to hold still while screaming, no moving out of position!  Instead, I ended up with a lot of crazy pictures like the one below on the right.

This time they all stopped screaming and put their arms down at different times, so the picture below on the left is the best I could get.  Matt had the brilliant idea to just hold Katie Wynn into the picture while he hid behind them.  Uh huh.  See how well that worked out?  There's your Easter pic, Mom.  :)

We lined up for a full family pic too, sans our parents since Dad seemed to be MIA.  Poor Katie Wynn... #squished

We tried to do the scream trick again too.  This time, in addition to telling the five-year-olds to stay still, I also failed to tell the photographer (ahem, Emily...) to keep snapping after the screams stopped.  I don't think she got that memo so all I have are a bunch of screaming outtakes.  To be fair, this is probably much more representative of all of us together though.  Also, I so wish Nick (coral shirt) was on social media because I'd totally crop this to be his profile pic.

After that group photo, I just gave up.  No more trying for posed pictures!  With that out of the way, we could finally enjoy the awesome spread of food that (mostly) Mom had prepared.  Oh my goodness, we had enough food for the whole neighborhood! The kids all ate quickly and ran outside to play, which left plenty of room for fatties like me to go back for more! 

After lunch was cleaned up, it was time for the egg hunts!  I think Mom had stuffed about a thousand eggs.  At least that's what it looked like; I could be off by a few.

This year the first hunt was for the tiny kids - Katie Wynn and the twins.  We hid their eggs on the screened in porch and, as expected, all three walked in, sat down in the middle of the floor, and played with the first eggs they got their hands on.  Obviously they didn't know the game was to get as many into their baskets as possible.  #amateurs 

Thank goodness for the older kids who came in to "help" and get the show on the road.  They did a great job of filling up the baskets while the babies (I can still call them that, right?) just sat and shook eggs.  Katie Wynn did eventually put some in her basket herself thanks to some help from Mimi.

The BIG hunt was out in the front yard.  Since this is the first time Ramer and Alice got to go with the bigger kids, we gave them a minute head start.

Then we unleashed the others and they were off!  

The two pictures below totally crack me up.  Bren's basket got too full midway through the hunt, so she poured her eggs out into a pile so she could keep going.  Katie Wynn finally caught on to the point of this game and decided to capitalize on Bren's unsupervised pile-o-eggs.  Ha!  Look how innocent she looks.  "Finders keepers," she says.

As the oldest, it's no surprise that Jett found the golden egg.  Folding money for the win!  Alice's method of counting her eggs was my favorite...open the egg, eat all the contents, and then move on to the next one.  :)

After counting eggs, it was time for my very favorite part of the day...confetti eggs!  If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know cascarones are a staple for our Easeter Sunday so that we can all have good luck.  It doesn't hurt that they're also fun and colorful and really add to the celebration of the day!

And here are just a few more snapshots I took while we all hung out outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Just as everyone was getting ready to load up their cars and head home, I yelled at Matt to run inside and get the dessert I made.  Phew!  Close call!  I was gonna be really mad if everyone got away without eating the egg-shaped rice krispie treats I'd slaved over the night before.  :)

With everyone properly sugared up, then we could head out for afternoon naps.

Once again, it was another perfect Easter Sunday.  I really do think this is my favorite holiday.  Christ is risen!  Christ is risen, indeed! 

Trivia question: how many times did you spot Katie Wynn's shoes on the wrong feet?

Weekend Visitors

The weekend before Easter, our very favorite houseguests came to spend the weekend with us...Lala and Poppa!  (Or "Matt's Parents, Bill and Pat" to those of you that aren't their grandchildren.)

Lala and Poppa hadn't seen Katie Wynn since December, so you can imagine how much she'd grown to them!  Since the last time they'd seen her in person, she's become a high-fivin', fist bump givin', kiss blowin' little girl.  She had all kinds of new tricks up her size 18 month sleeves to show them.

They arrived on Friday afternoon right around the time she was waking up from a nap.  As expected, she was pretty shy at first but they knew just the way to win her over...presents!  She wasn't as excited as I was about the first one - a hand-knit sweater by her Lala - but she was super excited about the second one - Lego ice cream cones!

As you can see, Bill and Pat were really good sports and sat at her tiny table with her to play.

Outside, Lala continued to find ways to win over Katie Wynn's affection.  Like, when Katie Wynn showed her how to use the Cherry Blossom petals as confetti...

...but then Lala showed her how she could put a pile of them in her hand and then blow them off her palm instead of throwing them in the air!

I wish I could tell you how many times a day Katie Wynn has to sit down and inspect the bottom of her feet, but I probably can't count that high!  She hates to have dirt on them (or her hands, for that matter) but it doesn't stop her from constantly taking off her shoes.  Silly girl!  Thankfully, Lala was able to help scrape off whatever fleck of dirt was bothering her.

With her feet clean, it was back to doing fun things with Lala!  

Poppa came out to join in on the fun so Katie Wynn was able to show him her newly-learned trick of blowing the petals.  And, as anyone with a toddler knows, applauding afterwards is required.

The whole weekend that Lala and Poppa were in town, we had the most spectacular weather!  It was so nice that we spent most of every day outside.  And the best part was that we didn't have to swat any mosquitoes since they hadn't arrived yet.  

Saturday morning started out on the porch after breakfast (where Katie Wynn was wrapped up like a cocoon)...

...and we were back out there that afternoon for a snack.  I don't know why but I always think Katie Wynn looks so grown up when she uses utensils to feed herself.

Speaking of grown up, this girl opens doors like its nothing these days.  We have to keep them deadbolted or she'll escape!

Lolli.  Oh, poor Lolli.  She was just sitting there minding her own business, enjoying the nice weather...

...when I told Katie Wynn to give her a hug.  Oh dear!  Lolli never saw it coming.

Later that afternoon, us girls left the boys to grocery shop and cook dinner while we went to the park.  Katie Wynn has a little bit of scaredy cat in her and will not go down a slide - even tiny ones - by herself.  She had a blast sliding down with Lala though!

Eventually, Lala had her sorta going down by herself.  As long as she could have a death grip on Lala's shirt.  

I tried to give Lala a break and take Katie Wynn down a few times.  Y'all, Shakira is right.  Hips don't lie and mine were screaming, "What are you, crazy?! You're nearly 8 months pregnant!" It's a miracle we didn't get stuck.

Before church on Sunday, Katie Wynn played in her box of balls.  She loved diving down into it and pulling out two balls for me to tell her the colors of.  Then, of course, those two had to be thrown out so that she could go down for two more.  Not exactly the most fun game ever for me since I had to corral all the thrown balls.

I've been racking my brain trying to remember what we did Sunday afternoon, but I just remembered that Katie Wynn and I both took pretty long naps.  No wonder I couldn't remember!  The best part is that while we napped, Matt and his parents planted a whole bunch of new hastas that they had brought to us from their flower beds.  Free plants + free labor = major win for me! 

It was a quick visit for Bill and Pat since they'll be back soon to meet the newest member of the family.  They dropped Katie Wynn off at daycare Monday morning so they could see where she spends her days and then they hit the road for home.  I know Katie Wynn loved being spoiled by them so she'll be thrilled when they come back.  Not too much longer!