The much anticipated GeoTrax set

Nolan's big gift this year was something that he first set eyes and hands upon while we were staying in Rochester, MN when Kenny was doing his away rotation there in August. The family that we house sat for had a little boy a just a bit older than Nolan-who obviously had a serious love of trains, and Nolan quickly become enamored with the large GeoTrax set that was in a huge storage bin in the closet. Nolan loved Rochester, loved all of the friends he made, loved the big house and big back yard, and he especially loved discovering new toys to play with. So of course when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday he recited "A great big set of GeoTrax" every time. Which I was a bit uncomfortable with, I mean if you look it up on Amazon, GeoTrax are kind of a pricey investment-at least for us at the time being! Thank heavens for craigslist. I was browsing a couple weeks before his big day and found a lady who was selling quite the impressive set for a pretty decent price-still quite pricey for a birthday, but after enlisting the Grandparents donations, Kenny and I took a date night and drove the 30 mins to buy it, and then we had to distract from the strange train noises coming from the back of the van after we picked the kids up from our date night group! So now that you know the story, here are the fun photos of the big surprise!

So excited...

Trains!!

One very happy boy!

I'm going to need a bigger house...

Phew! Look at these two ruggedly handsome guys!

Audrey and I hugging on our birthday boy.

ROBOT NOLAN'S 4TH BIRTHDAY!!

Hello All! I do realize that my last post was 3 months ago and I do intend to update the blog with the gobs of pictures so that we can share them with our families and friends.

However today I have a different mission!

MY BABY BOY TURNED 4 TODAY!!

This year he has learned so much and has become such an independent little person with and imagination that is going constantly. He LOVES the color green and chooses it always when coloring or picking something out. He has also developed a love of robots and often asks if he can get a "robot something". So it was no surprise when I asked what kind of cake and party he wanted for his birthday...A GREEN ROBOT PARTY!

So that's what we did! Easy Peasy. We invited the whole playgroup and had ourselves some Robot fun today.

First the cake though...

My awesome Mom sent me a blog link that gave me the idea for this guy. He turned out pretty cute! Gave me some serious wrist cramps with all of that piping, but it was worth every one!

I wrapped him in foil last night and let Nolan unwrap him this morning-he was very pleased, but reminded me that I forgot his lollipop ears! So we definitely added those.

We were busy setting up the food for our party when I was greated by a green faced Audrey in the kitchen.

Apparently she thought that the robot cake needed a little alteration herself.

Little stinker.

Next our friends showed up and we got busy decorating our robot chest panels,

and making our antanae.

Then we played "Pin the Sprocket on the Robot"

(Thanks Kenny for being the artist in the family, and the robot panel creator, and the crepe paper decorator-this party was right down his ally! I was busy with Mr. Robot Cake.)

After that we were ready to re-fuel, so we hit the snack table for some "Fuel Cells",

"Nuts & Bolts" and "Robot Fuel"

Then we sang Happy Birthday, and ate ourselves some robot legs...guess all of that other stuff filled us up so the robot was spared...for now!

We are so blessed with such great friends-Thanks for coming everyone!!

Wow- Nolan's birthday has been pretty fun so far...and that was only until noon!

To be continued...

'Drey's Birthday Part 2

Audrey woke up to some pretty fun decorations for her big day and spent most of the morning pointing to them and making the "Ooh" face. We had cupcakes for breakfast...and then later experienced green spit up...yeah a real duh moment for me!

We had some errands to run and Nolan wanted to buy Audrey balloons for her birthday so a trip to the dollar store was also in order. So later that night after pizza for dinner we had our friends Todd, Jessica and Malia Pitts over to celebrate with some presents and some yummy strawberry trifle.

Audrey needed some help with the unwrapping...

She was too busy trying to eat the paper rather than see what was inside!

But once she did she was pleased! (So was Nolan)

She knew right what to do with this one too!

This gorgeous skirt was made by Jessica and we LOVE it. I have one that has a similar pattern and I was so excited to wear them together, which we did this last weekend to church, yay! Thanks Jessica for helping me play dress up!

I love the reaction to baby's first birthday candle, and hers was quite adorable I must say.

So was her approach to attacking her first birthday trifle!

Then there was Nolan's reaction to her eating that trifle-he thought it was hilarious!

Here's the rest of the gang ready to dig in also.

"Burp...now I think I've had too much."

'Drey's birthday weekend!! Part 1

Just about a month ago we celebrated Audrey's first birthday!

I know I'm late posting it-there is just something about big events that come with lots of pictures, I just have a hard time sorting through them!

We had a busy and exciting weekend planned out so this will be a three part post most likely!

On Thursday the 29th we went with our City Branch play-group to the Boerner Botanical Gardens and celebrated the day before her big day with bubbles for everyone and some sunflower cupcakes! I was up late the night before making them to ensure only my fingers would be the ones that created them, and I was pleased with the results. Thanks Mom for the "Hello Cupcake" book for Easter-it was a great inspiration.

Here are a few pictures from that day. But on a side note, as we have yet again come to this time of year when friends graduate and move away these pictures become special reminders of the sweet children and mommies that we've become friends with over the last three years and it makes it bittersweet to see how much each of these kids have grown and changed...sigh. Ok-sorry on to the photos:

Last time Audrey saw this giant butterfly she was only 4 months old and couldn't take a ride,

but this time she was right up there with her big brother!

Here is Amy, Isabel, Nolan, Grace & Zerrin testing out the flight capacity of our butterfly friend.

We stopped at the top of this big green hill, and before we knew it most of our kids had run straight to the bottom of it before we could catch up and drag them back. This is what we envision our backyard to be someday...well maybe not THAT big.

Aww, dandelions. They always make the best gifts.

These two are just about the cutest pair of little princess friends I've ever seen. We adore them and are so glad that Nolan has been able to spend his last 3 years growing up with them.

Happy windblown birthday Audrey!

Sleep training...bleh.

For the past few weeks we've been trying to push Audrey's bedtime closer to Nolan's at 7:30pm. Our little girl had up to this point has been quite the little night-time party animal. She would always take a nap at 7pm and then wake up from it bright eyed and bushy tailed, and ready to hang out with Kenny and I until around 10pm or so. It really wasn't too bad, it was time that we got to spend with just her, and she is always so happy and easy to be around we'd just let her play while we went about our night-time business. The problem actually became that our little party animal then would sleep in until at least 10am and I'd have to wake her up to go anywhere and that usually meant that we'd have to rush to get her dressed, and fed and we were always late for everything it seemed. So little by little we've been working on it. I hate to admit it but I am the worst at sleep training. I have THE HARDEST time listening to them cry when trying to go to sleep and I usually just cave in. After 3 years worth of struggles that we have had with Nolan, who has always struggled to go to sleep, HATED his crib and only spent maybe 2 weeks worth of sleep in it, and even now stealthy makes his way in to our bed at least every other night...only to be taken right back to his race car bed, we have decided that we will not be taking the same path with Audrey.

It's not been tons of fun, but we've been surprised at how well she is actually adjusting. It may still take several visits at night to convince her that it's time for bed, but eventually we hear her cries turn in to long moaning songs...and then it gets quiet. Hallelujah. Thankfully, SOMEHOW Nolan is able to sleep through her crying and only wakes up occasionally to come tell us that Audrey is "making him so scared". This is how I found them tonight when I went in to check...aren't they just beautiful? I think so.

Get carried away much??

With SUMMER approaching, I have realized that both of my kids are in major need of summer clothes. Nolan can't wear too much of what he had from last year, and of course Miss Audrey has nothing for this summer either. So thanks to THIS COUPON from Babies R Us, and then Crazy 8's "Crazy cash redemption" this last week, I may have...I most definitely have... gone a little overboard. But I did get some seriously great deals on EVERYTHING that I have purchased!! It's a good thing Audrey's birthday is coming up, so I can justify the quantity of clothes...I'll just say some are from the Grandma's! :) Nolan cleaned up pretty well too, just not to the extent that I felt the need to photograph the collection. Ah well. It's good to have kids that are better dressed than you right?

P.S. For anyone who may be interested in kids clothes up to size 4T, that Babies R Us coupon is good until the 22nd....just so you know!! Maybe you can go overboard too! It was quite fun.

Easter Weekend

We had one of the nicest Easter weekends that I think we've had yet here in Wisconsin. The weather was so great, we spent basically the whole weekend outside. We loved that it was also Conference weekend too, what a great excuse to sit around and play with the kids while we try to hear as much conference as we can on TV.

We had been playing outside so much that we kept putting off the egg decorating until Saturday evening...when I had realized that I had forgotten to buy more eggs at the grocery store earlier in the day. GEESH! So we had a total of 5 eggs to color, since two got cracked while cooking and Nolan started peeling those to eat right away. But at least that left one egg for each of us, and a bonus egg for Nolan to color.

Later that night the Easter Bunny made a visit, and he also delivered some goods that were sent out by Grandma Whittaker and Grandma Merrell. Needless to say our kids had a pretty decent Easter haul this year! Yikes.

Nolan was super excited to start finding the eggs that were hidden in the living room and dining room, poor kid was bouncing off the walls going from his new toys, to a newly discovered egg and back to his new toys. Good thing he had all of that sugar to keep him fueled up!

Audrey was a pretty big fan of the egg hunting as well. Especially since her eggs contained Gerber Yogurt Melts, her favorite thing in the world. She does the funniest hyperventilating laugh whenever you show her the bag.

Easter also happened to be the day that Audrey decided that she no longer needed to hold one of our hands in order to walk across the room. First thing she did after finding her second egg was toddle over to show it to me! She amazed and startled us all day by just taking off on her own all around the house. In about a month's time she's gone from just standing pretty well alone, to walking everywhere all by herself. She's really stable too, she just mostly has to contend with her brother whizzing by or running circles around her, or even better trying to help "Audgey" walk...which never ends well.

Easter weekend brought us so many fun memories, and we were so thankful to have the time to spend together-homework and hospital call free. This year is really cruising by, and our kids are growing up so fast I can't believe that we're going to be celebrating Audrey's first birthday on the 30th. We have so much to be thankful for, and we have so much that the Lord has blessed us with. On a side note, we have a Catholic church about a block away from our house that has wonderful church bells that ring every day on the hour and especially on Sundays and holidays to announce mass. This year I did a little reading about Easter and what different cultures practice and celebrate during Maudy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. It really made a big impression on me. I know that I paid a lot more attention to the sacred events on each of those days, and I was so glad for the opportunity to reflect on our beliefs and to also have the ability to listen to our Prophet and Apostles teach us about the things that the Lord needs us to know in these latter days. I am so thankful for all that I have and for all of the wonderful people that are in our lives. I think Easter has definitely moved up on my favorite holidays list for good.