Riley turns 4!!! And Happy Turkey Day too!

Riley Jane is now 4!! Can you believe it? We had a blast celebrating her birthday the week before Thanksgiving, we celebrated with a Dora and Diego birthday bash with her friends and family. We all had a blast playing musical chairs to Dora Fiesta music and playing Swiper bowling. The kids got to turn into Princess Dora and Prince Diego and help save the Kingdom!! We had a great time, check out the cupcakes I slaved over the night before! I thought they turned out pretty good. Thanks Nick Jr.com for all the party planning ideas and fun printouts for the kids :) And a big thank you to all our friends and family for making it such a great birthday!!A week after Riley's birthday Thanksgiving rolled in, time for turkey, yummy! Our first celebration was at Riley's preschool where moms and dads were invited to share a Thanksgiving feast. It was so much fun and we even got to watch a fun performance from each class including a funny turkey dance from Riley's class. As soon as I figure out how to post it, you might get to see it :) We had great fun at David's dad's for a Hawkeye thanksgiving celebration and then rolled on to Mom's for round two of turkey! There our turkey note war commenced with the Westminster clan, taken up where we left off from last year of course, and even they have to admit we annihilated them :) They got hammered with turkey note texts left and right, we still love you though:) Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!! We are definitely looking forward to the rest of the Holiday season!

More Halloween and Fun Fall Pics!!

I promised a few people I would post some more pics, so here goes. Halloween was great despite the 30mph wind gusts, the girls had a blast trick or treating and passing out candy to the last few stragglers that showed up at the end of trick or treat. We have been up way too late the last few nights with halloween fun, trick or treat, carving pumpkings, making halloween cookies, parties galore, etc . . . so David and I had to put an end to it tonight and get the girls to bed at a decent time:) Yeah right! David was asleep before everyone, he was kinda pooped out since we spent the day cleaning up leaves in our yard. Thank goodness for Gabe helping because we ended up with 37 full to the brim lawn and leaf bags today . . . and that's not counting the ones we cleaned up earlier in the week, which puts us up well over 40!! I guess he had a good reason to be so tired. Oh well, at least we got some cute pics out of those big piles of leaves. Thanks to everyone for all their help in leaf cleanup and making Halloween so much fun!! Bring on the turkey! :)

Happy Fall Y'all!!

Oh fall, my favorite time of year. We just celebrated David's 32nd birthday and our 7th anniversary, yay!! And I'm going to cheat and put up some halloween pics already . . . only because we have already been trick or treating once, and had a fun day at the pumpkin patch. Riley shot the corn cannon and hit the target so she one a prize, one perfect pie pumpkin!! She was so excited she carried it around all day :) Everyone is doing great, Riley is loving preschool, and Reese is enjoying some individual quality time . . . although she is still a lil daredevil and we have at least a bi weekly injury it seems, I really hope we get out of that phase soon, but I'm doubting it. We are really looking forward to Halloween and more trick or treating!!

Riley's 1st day of Pre-K!!!

Riley's first day went great!!! She was so excited and happy to be there. Her teachers are awesome and she has lots of great kids in her class. Her favorite part of the day was snacktime!! Definitely my kid :) I definitely had a harder time then she did, but I followed her lead and there were no tears shed today! Reese had a much harder time than anyone leaving her big sister behind and pouted until I took her for some playtime at Grandma's house. Reese and I both got big hugs when we picked her up, so sweet ! And Daddy is really excited to come home and see all the great pics of Riley's 1st day. I hope the rest of the year goes just as well !!! Our baby is growing up, which makes me happy . . . and a bit sad :)

Goofy, goofy girls . . .

These goofy girls are just too funny sometimes . . . Reese is going to be a rock climber some day and Riley is going to be like Jeff Corwin or the Kratt brothers from "be the creature," she is a different animal every single day,or many in one day. Her favorite is to be a kitty or a baby jaguar . . . thank you Dora and Diego! She even has Reese crawling around the house like a bear and living in a cave (blanket fort) on some days. And Reese, my dear sweet Reese, stitches at 10 months old and she still won't stay off of anything. I can't leave the room for anything. One day I just walked around with the camera and took pictures of her craziness. She is also quite inventive about what she will use as a step stool, and I didn't even take pictures of some of the scarier moments . . . like on the entertainment center, the back, top of the couch, etc. She is even getting bolder and doing some of these things right in front of me, like the dishwasher, trying to reach the "nanas" on the counter, and the snackies . . . Lord help us.

Reese turns 1!

Okay I know I really suck at the blog thing lately, but I am yet again gonna chalk it up to a lack of time, or possibly a mismanagement of time. So seeing as a slide show takes a bit longer I am just gonna post a few adorable pics from some of Reese's many birthday celebrations. It is hard with so many people we want to celebrate with to get away with one party, yes my kids will be spoiled in that respect:) Who shouldn't get to celebrate with both family and friends. We had a blast at all of them, we celebrated at mom's on easter, a quiet night at home with just our little nuclear family on her birthday, and a friend bash the following weekend. Mom and Tiff made an adorable cake for her friend party, and our good friends Lisa and Dyson brought over a bounce house to help entertain all the wee ones, and some of the big kids as well :) Reese has been using walking as her main mode of transportation for the last month or so, she is quite the little climber, and loves playtime with her big sis, Riley. She finally got her first two teeth just in time for her birthday, all the better to eat all that cake and ice cream. Thanks to everyone for helping to make Reese's first birthday so special!

Boys in Breck!

Tough Girl

I know I haven't made much time for blogging lately :( No excuses to be had, but here is the latest news with us. Reese got her first stitches yesterday, so sad I know. She had a little tussle with the wall, and the wall won( well the baseboard really.) She is only nine months old and trying to keep up with her big sister, trying to walk already, and testing herself to see how long she can stand. So I am not sure exactly what happened, even though I was mere feet away from her. She was standing next to the babygate one minute and then the next, down she went and smacked her poor little head on the baseboard. Instantly I knew she was really hurt by the way she was crying and when I first looked at her face, it wasn't even bleeding yet . . . and then it came. I called mom, because she is the closest and frankly my go to for just about anything, and told her I was pretty sure I had to take Reese to the emergency room and could she come over and stay with Riley and help me. Next I called David to let him know, and he said he was on his way. Of course it was the last 10 minutes during the lunch hour at my pediatricians office, but I figured I would have to take her to the ER anyway, I really thought it looked like she at least needed one stitch. So mom got there 5 minutes later and by then Riley was watching a movie, Reese wasn't even crying about it anymore . . . so everything was fine, right? Until I thought I would add to the days events by having a PANIC ATTACK! That's right, I was fine until everyone else was calm and Mom showed up to help, so it was almost as if my body said, okay now is a good time to freak out. So I almost passed out, got the cold clamy sweat going on, and I am laying on the cold kitchen floor with a cold washcloth on my head while Mom checked out Reese's injury. But as I laid there trying not to lose consciousness, I was semi useful, I called her doctor, they said just take her to the ER, because if it needs stitches they would send us there anyway if it is too close to her eye. I calmed down about 1 minute later, David got home, and we took Reese to the ER while Mom sat with Riley. She ended up getting two stitches above her left eye, and that was not fun to watch. And if you are wondering I was fine all the way through the novocaine and then when the good doctor started to stitch, I felt like I was going to pass out again. So David held Reese's hand so I didn't puke :( She honestly did great, she was more pissed about being swaddled than getting stitched up and I am positive it bothered her Mommy more than it bothered her. I am not a good person when it comes to dealing with bloody situations, especially when it is my own kid, but at least I know that now and can be better prepared next time. Reese on the other hand, woke up 2 and a half hours after we got back from the hospital and immediately got down to play, she is such a tough girl. Her stitches come out in 5 days, David says he wants to take her to get them out by himself, I personally can't think of any reason he wouldn't want me to come, can you??