It's a MacWonderful Life

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Spring Break 2011

We went to Grammy and Papa's for Spring Break this year since Daddy was out of town. Who would've thought we'd end up with perfect beach weather in April! So, we suited up and hit the sand. One problem....how are we going to manage little Miss Katie who is crawling all over the place? Ah ha, go to Walmart and buy a pack-n-play for the beach. Brilliant. Worth every penny. She just hung out in there when we weren't playing in the water. Check her out....wind in the hair :)

Katie just loved the beach. She got so excited when the water would come up and touch her little feet. She also loved just sitting there playing with the water in her little bucket. So cute!

Everyone was having so much fun, no one wanted to go home!

Look at Ryan jumping those waves with Grammy....

and Kyle playing with his board.

Fun beach times!

Kyle also was able fit in a golf lesson. He LOVED it! Look at that stance!

We also took the kids into Wilmington to walk along the riverwalk and eat dinner one night.

Daddy joined us at the end of the week for Easter. We took the kids to see the Easter bunny and to join in on the big egg hunt!
I think Katie is wondering what the heck is this giant, white, furry thing I'm sitting on. She wasn't afraid, just curious.

Now that's a lot of eggs! I think they said there were something like 3000 eggs!

Here are the two goofballs waiting for it to start.

Ryan asked me to take this picture. This is his GQ pose. He's been breaking it out lately for special shoots on location.

Finally, they blew the whistle and off went 200 kids in different directions. I think they did alright, don't you?

Oh wait. Grammy forgot to read the little piece of paper they handed us when we got there. It said the limit was 12 eggs per kid. Oops. I was wondering why we got a few dirty looks. We did end up sharing a few, but still had way more than our share. Oh well.

As if they didn't get enough candy from the hunt. The Easter bunny was pretty good to them too!

I turned around for one second and Ryan already had his chocolate bunny unwrapped and was chomping on his ears.

Katie liked her treats too!

And what's an Easter without and egg hunt in the back yard. This is always a favorite. The Easter bunny not only brings candy, but quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies too!

We also hit the beach one more time.

Happy Easter!

Monday, May 2, 2011

Rainy Day Fun

Paper and crayons weren't going to cut it on this day, so we broke out the bag of marshmallows and the box of toothpicks and started building (and eating). I let the kids build by themselves for a while and then, of course, I couldn't let the opportunity pass without a little lesson in building trusses. Amazingly enough, Kyle somewhat figured it out on his own. Here are their creations.....

I couldn't let them have all the fun....

Sunday, May 1, 2011

A Goalie in the Making

Kyle finished up his first season of soccer at the end of April. He had so much fun! His team continued to rock the rest of the season and Kyle really honed in on his skills protecting the goal. I don't know if we have a goalie in the making, but we sure have one excited player. He cannot wait until the Fall season begins. Here's a pic from one of his last games. Check out the tongue hanging out.....who does that remind you of?

Monday, April 25, 2011

Happy 1st Birthday Katie!

One year old. How did we get here so fast?

She's been growing up so fast the last few months, I just want to hit the pause button for a while. She had her one year check-up and is doing just great! She weighed 28.2 lbs and measured 31 inches which puts her in the 97+% for both height and weight! We may be big, but at least we're proportional :) She's been doing so much this month. She waves at everyone, sometimes a double handed wave if you're lucky. I have to say, it is the cutest girly wave. She's mastered the "uh-oh" trick. Drop it, say "uh-oh", someone picks it up, repeat. It was funny, when she first started saying it, she'd say it backwards sometime and give us an "oh-uh." We've also learned how to "moo" and "woof". I'm sure the rest of farm isn't far behind. Have I ever mentioned how LOUD she can be? When she wants attention, she knows how to get it. The girl has lungs like I've never heard before. I'm wondering if she's going to be a great singer someday and there is some greater reason why she's been blessed with this gift, but in the mean time the voice training is a little hard to take. Mostly, she does this during dinner, so you can imagine our fear of public restaurants. We bring plenty of Cheerios and things to snack on because you never know when she might break out in song. I can take it to some extent, but Daddy is another story. He's taken stock in ear plugs. No, I'm serious. He wears them at dinner. He knows how I love that, but if it keeps the sanity going, then so be it! Anyway, as for baby Aretha, she had such a great birthday. Nana and G-Daddy came into town early to celebrate on her actual birthday with us. She did not hesitate to dig into that cupcake :) She's definitely my daughter, you know how I love cake!

And we opened a few presents.....

Then on Saturday we had Grammy and Papa and lots of friends to help us celebrate again!

Her little buddy Anderson was here and since they both have the same birthday, we had little cakes for each of them. Unfortunately, the cake smashing lasted all of minus 30 seconds. Neither were too keen on the crowd of people surrounding them and then Katie decided to put out the candle with her hand and that pretty much sealed the deal. Both were in tears. Oh well, the best layed plans, right?

It was still a fun party, right Katie?

Happy 1st Birthday Miss Katie! We love you so much!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Could it be?

I am officially caught up, almost 3 months in one night! I might have forgotten a few things along the way, but that's too bad! Now let's see if I can avoid falling behind. We all know what comes next.....Katie's birthday! Technically, today is her birthday as I sit here at 12:40 a.m. Happy Birthday my sweet little girl! We love you so very much!

The First of Many

Gosh, I feel like we've been lucky so far! Although they do their best everyday to injure themselves in one way or another, we have managed to avoid anything major. We've had scraped knees, busted lips and a chipped tooth, but this one is by far the worst. Somehow we managed to avoid the emergency room.....barely. Ryan was out on the driveway running with his digger and it slipped out from under him with nothing to catch the fall but his sweet little face. Ouch! This one had me pretty worried because he hit his head so hard on the pavement. The pediatrician had me watch him closely for an hour and thankfully no signs of a head injury. We'll just chalk it up to the first of many, right? I know I can't make him wear a helmet 24/7, but I want to :) This is what he looked like the next day. My poor baby!

It hadn't scabbed over yet in this picture. It looked pretty nasty, confirmed by the cringing people when they see him when we're out at Target or the grocery store. It's now been a week and it looks so much better, thank goodness!

The Big League

This Spring Kyle started playing Rec Soccer and he is loving it! I think Daddy is loving it just as much! I must admit, after the first day, I got a little worried that he would be frustrated. Let's just say the team wasn't exactly gelling on the field. I'm not sure half of them realized a game was going on. Anyway, that all changed the following week. They rocked! I don't know if everyone went home and practiced, but they truly rocked and they played really well as a team. Rick is helping out with coaching the team and Katie, Ryan and I cheer them on. Daddy gave Kyle a few pointers at home on how to play defense and man the kid is GOOD! I'm just so happy that Kyle is having such a great time with this!