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Dear Elliott,

You are one year old today!  As usual, the time has flown by and you are growing by the minute.  On Saturday, you had your first birthday party!  It was a lot of fun and you got to celebrate with neighbors, family and friends.  We choose a robot theme, similar to the theme in your room of spaceships and robots.  Daddy is already planning a spaceship theme for next year.  Today, to celebrate your birthday, we are going to take a family trip to the Ft. Worth Zoo.  This will be your second zoo experience since we went to the Dallas Zoo for Laurel’s birthday last year.  You were only 2 months old though, so it was not as exciting for you.  At one year old, here are some things you enjoy

• Making “music” by banging things together- instruments, pots, toys, water bottles, whatever
• Chasing after Laurel or “getting into trouble” with her.  You find her hilarious and laugh so much when she does silly things
• Scooting all around on your bottom.  You have decided this is easier than walking for the time being, although you continue to pull up more and more each day
• Being outside.  The fresh air always seems to calm you down, so you enjoy stroller rides, sitting on the rocking chairs, or just hanging around outside.
• Grabbing for remotes, cell phones, or gadgets of any type and then getting really upset when someone takes it away
• Throwing toys or dumping things out
• Eating Mum Mums and trying new food
• Waking up in the middle of the night!  I am hoping this will stop soon.  I think the sleep training will start next week so we can get you on a better routine

Well, I need to get some rest so I can have some energy to help you celebrate tomorrow.

Love you always! 🙂

Mommy

We celebrated my birthday this past April. Kyllan and the kids threw me a Star Wars themed party. While I am not quite sure that Kyllan even knows what a lightsaber is, the kids enjoyed playing with them. Elliott enjoyed his first piece of cake and Laurel she still hasn’t grasp the concept that sometimes people like to open their own gifts. More photos can be founds here.

 

Here are a few photos from 2013 that were never posted to the blog. There is an album on Flickr with ~20 photos. I only intended to put 2 or 3 in the post, but I couldn’t pick!

I am long overdue for a post, but in the meantime, here are a few photos from Easter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s right… we’re expecting Baby #2 May 30, 2013.

We are obviously very excited and looking forward to our children growing up together and hopefully becoming great friends.

We don’t know the sex of the baby yet, but I am about 17 weeks along, so we may be able to find out sometime in January.

Laurel does not seem to understand the concept of “mommy having a baby” or being a “big sister”, but perhaps as we get closer she will understand it better.

The next few weeks will be very busy with Christmas, moving into our new house, travel for William, and just our usual routine, but I will try to do a better job of posting updates and photos to the blog.

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday William and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary.  This also means that we have known each other for 10 years.  The time has certainly gone fast and we have had so many joys to share.  We can’t wait to see what the next 50+ years hold!

 

Today we are visiting the National Civil Rights Museum as part of our family reunion. This picture is taken outside to Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

William and I have had some busy weekends and last weekend was no exception.  We traveled to my birthplace of Cleveland, Ohio for my cousin Shannon’s wedding.  She was a beautiful bride and I enjoyed being a part of her special day!  It was also Laurel’s first time in Ohio and her first time seeing many of my family members, including my dad.  He had surgery right before she was born and did not get a chance to come down with my mom.  My mom hadn’t seen her in a few months either.  It was an exhausting, but fun weekend.  Click here for photos.

Yesterday, Laurel turned 5 months old, and today she celebrated her first Christmas!  It was a great day.  William’s parents were in town to help us celebrate.  My parents were not able to make it down, but we will see them in a few weeks when we go to Cleveland for my cousin Shannon’s wedding.  We started the morning by checking out the goodies in our stockings.  William loves to be in charge of stocking stuffers, and does a great job every year.  He fills them with our favorite candy, and some small trinkets.  Laurel’s stocking was filled with things like new teething rings, and fun toys.  She sat in her Bumbo seat and played with her stocking toys for quite a while.  We then began opening gifts.  Laurel had some great gifts, but was much more excited about trying to eat the wrapping paper. 🙂  She became a bit tired midway through opening her gifts… yes… she had that many, so she took a nap and we continued later.  After enjoying some blueberry Belgium waffles using the batter William picked up at Williams-Sonoma, I began my cooking.  The spread for the day included turkey, ham, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole, corn on the cob, greens, rolls.  I also baked a sweet potato pie and chess squares the night before, so we had some sweets in the house (although my mom sent chocolate chip cookies she baked, so I was already on  a sugar high).  It was the first time I had done that much cooking since Laurel was born and I really enjoyed it.  My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew joined us later for dinner.  After a failed attempt last week to feed Laurel rice cereal, which she had absolutely zero interest in eating, we tried offering her sweet potatoes today so that she could join in on the Christmas dinner, but did not seem interested in those either and actually made a face as if to say she did not like them at all.  So… perhaps we will try again another day.  We have both photos and video, so we’ll get those posted as soon as William gets them downloaded on his computer.

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!!

 

Kyllan and I took Laurel to the State Fair of Texas the weekend before last. Kyllan grew up in Texas and views attending the fair as some weird mix between obligation and treat. She was determined that Laurel, as a native Texan, attend her first fair this year. Well, we ended up with only one picture, because our daughter sleep through the whole thing. Below is a picture of Kyllan in front of Big Tex at the fair, with Laurel strapped into her Ergo Baby. There is a random picture below that to help everyone see how fast she is growing.