Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Collin turns7!

Collin turned 7 last month!  He wanted to have a space party because he is just so obsessed with being an astronaut or designing shuttles/space ships.  We had lots of fun planning it!  We launched soda bottle rockets which every kid loved.  Even when we made one of them bleed.  (The kids...not the rockets)  As usual we had a great cake (though it sort of fell over)!  There isn't really much to talk about with a 7 year old's birthday but here are a few pictures.

These are of the kids decorating their rockets prior to the big launch!





Here is Collin's finished rocket getting ready to launch for the very first time!

 

This is the cake! 

Here is short clip of the launch!  

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A new blog!

Check this out!  I started a new blog!  You might find it interesting to read, you never know unless you try it!

So it might have been a while...

But I'm suddenly in the mood to blog again.  I feel guilty for not blogging since so much of my family lives far away and rarely get to see us.  Of course, we visit them much more often than they visit us, but who's keeping track?

Ahem.

So we have had quite a busy 8 months since my last post in August of 2010.  To begin with Liam had his first birthday.  That's pretty impressive considering we weren't sure we would ever have a second child.  He had an awesome Very Hungry Caterpillar theme.  Aunt Heidi helped plan all the decorations and Aunt Kimi made an awesome cake.  Both of which are pretty usual in our family!  Here are a few pictures:

Collin, Evan and Kira decoration butterfly cookies

The party favor, Liam got the red ball and the rest of the balls went home with guests.



 The awesome cake!



Then in October the next very exciting thing happened to our family.  Our new baby girl Della Corinne was born!  She was born the 23rd and was (we thought) 3 weeks early.  Turns out she was closer to 4 weeks early.  She was so very tiny at only 5 lbs 10 oz, a full 3 lbs 11 oz smaller than Liam!  She is just a beautiful little doll and we adore having a girl to dress up and play with!  She is now 5 months and is starting to get quite the personality!  Here are a few pictures of her!  (Blogger is making me mad so these are not in chronological order. Annoying but true)

The day after she was born with her big brother Collin.  She how small she is?  He is only six!

Uh oh.  Daddy is already in love!

Aunt Kimi showing off the flower on her butt of her outfit she and Terry picked out to take her home in.  We had to buy things in newborn size because we didn't have anything!  The boys NEVER fit in newborn.  Della wore it until she was 2 months old!

 In her car seat getting ready to leave.  According to the instructions she fit.  I wasn't so convinced. 
With Poppa
 She was born with lots of hair.  This is the first time her dad fixed her hair :) 


 Just minutes after she was born!


 11 weeks

 
5 months...in one of the new hats Aunt Lauren made her! 



Della with her cousin Avery.  They are only two weeks apart....Avery might be a bit taller :)

Other than all the normal things like Christmas and such nothing much else has happened this year.  Except Collin turned 7.  Which is a big thing and I want to make a separate post about it.  On a different day because I'm now tired and blogger is upsetting me (or my crappy laptop is upsetting me).  

Friday, August 6, 2010

Hawaii

Well, since it's been sooooooo long since I've blogged I thought I'd jump in wherever I felt like it ! After all, there is lots to catch up on and maybe just jumping in with both feet will get me motivated. So without further ado here is a little post on our recent (sort of) trip to Hawaii.

This was the first time for all of us. And while it isn't my personal favorite vacation we've taken, we did get some good pictures!

We were on Kauai for a week with a bunch of Terry's family as part of his brother CJ's wedding. So here are some pictures (which, after all, is the important part :) )

One of the first things we did was head up to Waimea Canyon. It's basically the "Grand Canyon" of Hawaii. And they really aren't kidding. Crazy.


I have several other scenery pictures, but I won't bore you with them :)


My boys. Yes, they are quite strange now that you mention it. I have no idea what they are doing in this picture...



Me with two of my boys!



We went to a luau but we were clear in the back, I suck at taking pictures and it was rather dark. So here is a picture of Collin with one of the dancers. That's as good as it gets this time folks!





Here is a great picture of my father-in-law, Ray. He never wears shorts. Ever. Seriously it has probably been since he was in high school......if then. And sandals? I believe this is the first pair of sandals he has ever worn. Ever. Period. These are the two shots I got of him. The first one he is warning me not to take the picture and the second one is him trying to spray me with the hose. I got the hint and took the camera inside, but I didn't delete the pictures! HA!







At the Hyatt they had parrots. This was a demonstration where you listen to a short presentation about parrots then you get to hold the birds. Collin loved it, Liam not so much.



These are some dolphins that Terry and Collin got to see when they went on a dinner cruise. That's pretty much all I know so there are no other pictures from the cruise. Let's just say that Liam and I weren't invited, so we got to spend a....well, let's just say "an evening in the hotel" instead. Not exactly the high point of the trip...









The wedding was held on the private beach of a botanical garden on Kauai. It was a beautiful place. They had a great kids garden, which is all we saw, other than the beach. Lots of fun things to play on and in. Including a "wading" pool, which is of course why Collin is soaking wet from head to toe in the picture on the swing. Collin was also the ring bearer during the ceremony. He looks angry in this picture because the flower girl wasn't throwing the petals. He was trying to make her do it. Unfortunately for him, she has two older brothers and didn't think his "help" was necessary. :)








One of the best things we did was hang out at the beach just us and the kids. We went snorkeling but Liam promptly got sunscreen in his eyes, then minutes later got taken out by a wave. That was pretty much all the "fun" he wanted so he went to sleep instead. Even when he was awake we had to stay far away from the water if we had him because he was scared of it :)

Collin loved playing in the sand though and was only mildly annoyed with the tide ruining part of his creation.


This is a rooster. They are all over the island. Ferrel. So funny. I thought stray dogs and cats were irritating!




On the last day we were there we went on a train tour of one of the plantations. It was lots of fun and the boys loved it. This is a picture of Liam watching the pigs we stopped to feed. Apparently they are also a problem on the island and they are open season year round.





And here are a couple shots of the ocean from the hotel grounds. Pretty amazing!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Happy 6th birthday Collin!!

A month late....

But only on my blog. We celebrated it in real life on time!

Aunt Heidi has been waiting 'patiently' for the pics of the invites since she designed them from Chicago and all I did was put them together. So here they are! Thanks Aunt Heidi! Even from across the country you still are awesome at throwing parties!


As you can see we had dinner and a movie. But they had to have somewhere to sit so we made cars. That way it was a "Drive up movie". The boys loved it and had tons of fun decorating their cars and sitting in them for the whole movie. And we didn't even have anything get spilled! Wow! They all got a Capri Sun and popcorn to start then we moved on to pizza. It was great for me too as there was almost no supervision needed or much involvement from me! Lesson? Movies are good choices for 6 year old birthday parties!


Aunt Kimi made the cake. She does such an amazing job! Even the 6 year olds were impressed with the cake! The decorations are fondant which some of them thought tasted funny, but since there was a layer of frosting underneath we had no real complaints! The cakes were awesome and I couldn't have been happier with how they turned out. And it's free to have your sister make them....even better!


Collin had a great day and got lots of great toys. He was pleased and so was I! You can't beat that!