Happy New Year ~ 2010

image

We rang in the New Year (as we do every year!) at the Richards family casa along side our good friends, the Gaston's and Wallander's. The children (all seven of them!) LOVE getting together to create chaos play. This year the Richards also hosted our "Friends Christmas Party" that same night and we enjoyed a yummy soup and salad buffet. It was scrumptious! After dinner, we let the children open their gifts from their "aunties and uncles"...

Here is sweet Jaylin opening her gifts. She is obsessed with shoes and purses...such a girly girl and her "aunties" love it!

The three musketeers (Ryan, Owen and Caleb) getting ready to dig into their gifts!

Ryan loves his K'Nex. Mommy is not a fan of stepping on them.

He got the game Hullabaloo this year and it is so much FUN to play!

Kara opening her princess blocks.

Crazy-hair Kara feeding her water baby.

After opening the gifts we got the kiddies into their pajamas and worked on a special craft.

I had heard about these cool 2010 glasses from a fellow blogger, Tara who has the most amazing blog named KIDZ. We decided to give them a try and here are a few pictures of our creative creations!

Ryan thought his glasses were too "pick-rrr-ly" and refused to put them on his nose.

Kara didn't mind and modeled them for us!

Of course Mommy had to join in the fun...

...and Daddy was a good sport and tried on the bigger pair! (this picture cracks me up!)

Here we have Jimmy (aka Mr. Wallander) giving us his best impression of "being gangsta while sporting a knock-off Ed Hardy tee and looking cool in 2010"...this guy is hysterical!

The rest of the evening...into the early morning hours of 2010 was spent doing this...

...we actually missed the ball drop this year because the girls (and Ryan) couldn't get enough of this game! I think we might ask Santa for a Wii next Christmas. (this coming from the one person in this house who said we would NEVER own a game system...ever!)

As Chris and I say good bye to the last decade, we are reminded how many wonderful things happened in our lives since Y2K. We met. We married. We bought our first home. We were blessed with our adorable son and then our beautiful daughter. To sum it up, the past 10 years have been a blessing. We can't wait to see what the next 10 bring us!

Our wish for everyone in 2010 is hope. Hope for a brighter and better future. Hope for Peace...and may you always
LIVE. LOVE. LAUGH.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. ~Edith Pierce

Singing, Dancing and Celebration!

This morning Kara had an appointment at GenSpan. As we drove down the highway, Ryan said, "Mama, turn it up. This is Ryan's song!"

This is Ryan's song.

Catchy tune, huh? Well now that you have it stuck in you head...watch Ryan sing it below! Sadly, the sound on the video is crappy so you can't hear much. Just watch his lips...he is hysterical!! (sorry it's sideways)

We were pretty excited about visiting GenSpan today! My good friend and fellow blogger (she is the main reason I got into blogging), Christy D'Angelo works there and she celebrates her birthday today! Happy Birthday, Christy! We came bearing gifts to surprise her with and from her smile below...we think she liked them!

Christy D. is one crafty and extremely talented lady. She created Kara's Birth Announcements and her Baptism Invitations for us and we loved how they turned out!

After years of making custom invitations, announcements and favors for her family and friends, Christy decided to expand her hobby into a business and created BRIDES to BOOTIES! Click on the link below to view her samples!

Don't forget to leave her some comment love and let her know you heard about Brides to Booties from me!

And in conclusion, here's Mr. Ryan (this is your final surprise for the day Ms. Christy!) showing us his signature moves in the middle of Toys R Us today! ENJOY!!

Happy 1st Birthday, Kara! (part two)

We celebrated Kara's 1st birthday on her actual birthday! Sunday, June 14th. It couldn't have been a more perfect day. The weather was gorgeous (after a week of nothing but rain) and our home was filled with our closest family and friends, all here to celebrate Kara's special day!

It's hard to believe that an entire year has passed by already. It truly feels like it was just yesterday that we bundled Kara up in her car seat and brought her home from the hospital. Now she is a walking, teething, babbling petite toddler!

Before I get to all the pictures and descriptions of Kara's big day, I thought I would give a quick update on her growth. We had Kara's one year wellness visit the Friday following her party, June 19th. We were extremely happy to find out that she has grown a lot since her last visit three months ago!!

Stats for 12 months:

Length: 28 inches (40%) - grew 2 inches!

Weight: 17.1 lbs (still 3%) - gained over 3 lbs!

She is still a peanut but has remained on her "curve" and she doesn't have the doctors worried. They once again gave her a clean bill of health! We find it funny that Kara has always done the complete opposite of what other children normally do. She is just starting to experience growth spurts now while other toddlers her age are starting to slow down. We've noticed her appetite has increased immensely over the past few months and her sleep patterns as well. She takes 2 naps a day and has been sleeping through the night for months now...sometimes over 12 hours straight! Yes, we know just how lucky we are...for now! :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok, now for your viewing pleasure. May I present to you- the birthday cake!

Let it be known that we did not make this cake. We ordered it from our favorite cake lady at Unique Desserts. BUT, we think an intern created this one because it is WAY too busy to be a Ann Louise creation!! It was cute though and of course oh so YUMMY.

As you can somewhat tell by looking at the cake, we decided to do a Flower Theme for Kara's big day! It wasn't hard to come up with this theme because it just screams summer and girly!

Everyone's favorite table at birthday parties! The DESSERT table!

This would be our pathetic attempt at Sunflower Cupcakes. We got this cute idea from the Hello, Cupcake! book. They have some amazing cupcake ideas! Click HERE to view their blog. I think they turned out cute but wish it hadn't taken us all night to create them! We mixed up four different icings trying to get the right texture. Lesson learned: practice at least once before attempting something new the night before the party!! (just for the record, I begged Chris to practice and he insisted that it wouldn't be hard at all...HA!) I think the adorable ladybugs came out great and best of all, they weren't that hard to make.

Our flower favors! (thanks again Jess for helping me create these!)

I originally wanted to have the children create their own birthday hats inside but they were having so much fun outside, we decided to just bring the craft items out to them. As you can see, this fun and creative project was enjoyed by children and adults alike!

Ryan working hard on his birthday hat!

Kara will have a ton of little girlfriends to play with as she grows up. Especially little Ava (who is only 3 weeks older) and her sister, Evelyn! Ava and Evelyn also have two more sisters (not pictured), Kianah and Ceceila...yes, 4 girls! Candi and Khalil have their hands full and we don't know how they survive with that many girls, we think ONE little girl is enough...for now anyway!

We decided that a summer birthday party wouldn't be complete without WATER FUN, so we blew up the kiddie pools and filled them up! It didn't take long for the little ones to find their way into the pools and boy did they have fun once they did! Alyssa (in pink) didn't even need a suit...she walked right up and climbed in, shoes and all! Watching all the children enjoy the water play was really neat and we were so glad the weather was nice enough for them to enjoy the pools!

Grandma High brought a slip and slide for the older children to use...it immediately became a huge hit...and a nice swampy yard soon followed!

Here my niece, Madison demonstrates for us the perfect technique for sliding! I believe shortly after this picture was taken, someone hit the "bump" too hard and broke it. So sadly, this slip and slide lived a short life...

This is pretty much what our son did ALL day! Run Ryan Run! At one point he thought taking his pants off and streaking in front of all our guests would be a good idea. No we did not get a picture of that, in case you were wondering. His reason when we asked him why: well the boy on the slip-n-slide box was NAKED! (I guess when you have your shirt off, you are considered naked in the eyes of a three year old!).

Mommy's good friend Jen posing with Ryan's good friend (and Jen's daughter) Lily!

Oh Ella, how we love thee and your matching swimsuit and hat! Thanks again for giving Kara her very own cute matching suit & hat too! We love it!!

Eleanor and her cutie patootie granddaughter, Sabina! (love her name!)

Kara has had stranger anxiety for hmmm... all her life! No lie, she wouldn't even let her grandparents hold her until just recently. So we were a little surprised when she let Tina (mommy's old HS buddy) hold her. Especially since it was Tina's first time meeting Kara! I guess we now know who to call when we need a babysitter.

Caleb and Jaylin taking a break from all the water fun to enjoy some yummy bar-b-que food. I love this picture not only because they look so cute sharing a chair, but because I keep thinking this is what our two little ones will look like in 2 years!

Then is was time to sing to the birthday girl!
She wasn't sure about the hat at first, but kept it on while we sang to her.

Kara grabbed the cake as soon as I put it in front of her and then licked her fingers! Ryan was the complete opposite on his first birthday, we had to stick his hand in the cake!

Happy Birthday dear Kara....

We gave her a cupcake to try and she really LOVED it!

May I have some more? (she devoured it within minutes!)

Peek-A-Boo!

Birthday Girl walking and clapping!

At the end of the day, we didn't know who was more tired...

...the sleepy birthday girl or her exhausted mama?

Happy 1st Birthday, Kara!

Mommy, Daddy and Ryan love you very much!

HAIL! ~ part two

I received an email this morning from our good friends, The Gaston Family.

They live about 15 minutes from our house and felt the affects of the crazy hail storm yesterday in a much different way!

Check out the photos Sean sent me:

Sean was home alone (Jamye and the kids were actually on our side of town visiting family, I think) and getting ready to watch the UNC game when the storm started. He said the house started to moan and then the golf size hail came fast hitting the house so hard it caused the damage you see in the above photo to their siding and roof!

We also heard many accounts that a tornado did indeed touchdown in the surrounding areas where we live, doing a lot of damage to homes and barns. It's crazy to think we experienced such weather in Pennsylvania...it's not like we live in Kansas?! We are all very grateful that no one got hurt and that the storm didn't cause more damage then it did.

To view even more damage caused by this storm, click HeRe.

~ Weekend in Review ~

FRIDAY

My weekend started with a much needed Mommy Night Out! My two best buds, Wendall and Jammers (my creative nicknames), decided earlier in the week that we should all meet at a local restaurant for dinner. Due to Kara's qualms with taking a bottle, I wasn't able to stay out late. I guess you could call it a mini night out. Whatever you call it, it's a night out and I was sooooooooooo happy to get a few hours away.

Jamye and I arrived at the restaurant a little after 7pm. Thank goodness we choose a restaurant that accepted reservations because the place was packed! We quickly scanned the crowd for Wendy but didn't see her. We figured she was just going to be little late and got seated without her.

I forgot to bring my camera to document dinner...sorry. Just so you have faces to the names: here are the three amigas...at my beautiful baby shower that Wendy and Jamye threw for me exactly one week to the day before I went into labor with Kara. Wendy is located on the left and Jamye on the right in the above photo. I think it's funny that we decided to do a mommy night out a week after Kara turned 8 months old. Is she really 8 months old already?!

After several attempts to get ahold of Wendy, we gave up and ordered our food. We kept joking that we got STOOD UP on Mommy's Night Out! Around 8:30 pm, Wendy finally called us back and apologized for not making it. Turns out she got stuck at work and she has an hour commute so it would just be Jammers and me for dinner. We were sad she couldn't make it but it just gives us an excuse to organize another night out...thanks Wendy!

We decided to splurge and ordered steaks for dinner but we were disappointed when they came out way too black on the outside! I ordered a petite filet mignon and wasn't about to let 20 something bucks go down the drain so I ate it. It tasted like ash. Jamye and I worked together at a Country Club while in high school and college and we can't help but feel bad when it comes to complaining about food while out to eat. So we lied each time the server asked us if everything was ok. Just a little white lie because the rest of the dinner was quite yummy!

We splurged a little more and got dessert. Jamye ordered a chocolate mousse bocce ball and I couldn't resist the peanut butter fudge cake....they were heaven. As we ate dessert, the manager stopped by our table to ask us what our thoughts were on dinner and our service. Not wanting to make a big deal about the steaks, we fibbed again and said it was good. We thought she would move on to the next table, but she stayed a little longer and asked a few more questions. Some how she got us to confess that our steaks were not up to par and she whisked our check away to comp the food! We sat there slightly embarrassed but also relieved because the truth was out and we didn't have to pay for the yucky steaks! Our bill at the end of the night came out to be a little over $20 for everything. WooHoo!

Halfway through dessert, I received a text from Chris...this is the pix/text:

"Time is UP!"

Nice, huh? My husband has a way with words and pictures...

It was bedtime and I was needed back home. Those 2.5 hours went way to fast. It was great to get out and even better to spend some much needed time with my best friend. Thanks for the ride and the laughs Jammers. I love you bud!

Saturday

I started my morning with a trip to the hospital to have 5 tubes of blood drawn. I am having some issues with joint pain and my family doctor decided to have a few tests run to rule out Lyme Disease and Arthritis. More on this later...

Chris had plans to help my cousin, Sahira with her Chemistry that afternoon. While the kiddies napped, I cleaned. That's what weekends are for lately...this house is NEVER clean during the week. It's just impossible to keep up with when it's two (kiddies) to one (me). I need Chris or someone to even out the score and then things get done!

Saturday night I caved under pressure and joined....

I know...what was I thinking? Just another thing to keep up with. My reasons for joining were to keep up to date with events that were happening with Penn State Berks Campus and just like everyone else on there, to see what the people from my high school days were up too. Several months ago, I was asked to help out with events at PSU and also for my 15 year HS reunion. It seems Facebook is the place to go when you need to get the word out about events these days. My guess would be because your almost certain everyone has page. For example, I had over 30+ emails from people I knew in school asking me to add them to my page within 24 hours of creating my profile. CRAZY! The main difference between Facebook and Myspace (which I will never join) is that you need to be a member with Facebook to view people's pages. So I kinda had no choice but to join if I wanted to participate and receive information on these events.

There you have it...I am on Facebook. Wanna be my friend?

Sunday

Sunday turned out to be a lazy day. I have a love/hate relationship with lazy days. Why? Well I love them because we don't make plans, we snuggle with the kids and just let the day pass without worries. I hate them because the house always seems to be in worse condition come Monday morning then it was the week prior! But I digress...

I finally made the decision to wean Kara and have her take bottles of formula during the day. As stated above, this little angel is not a fan of bottles in general...let alone putting the dreaded f-word FORMULA in them.

Being the smart mama that I am though, I've been putting formula in with her cereal for the past several weeks just so she could acquire a taste. She is definitely not a fan but she is accepting it more and more each day we try...here are few pictures from our attempt on Sunday.

Hmmmm...what's this?

So I just pick it up and...

...and give it a try.

**coughing and gagging pursues...**

Why Mom Why?

Always ends the same way.

And that was our weekend in review.

The End.