Addie Turns 2

Lauren and Braden's little girl Addie turned 2 on the 21st.  We headed to their house Saturday for a birthday party.  They live in Jacksonville, Illinois about 2 hours from our house.  We had never been to their new house and we were excited to go and celebrate Addie.  They had a nice BBQ dinner for everyone and then we had fun playing some party games.  She made a pin the ladybug on the flower game that everyone played.  They colored their own lady bug and then tried to pin it on the flower.   

 

 

 The each painted a flower pot and then planted some flower seeds in it.  Lucy took her time and did a great job painting. 

 

Addie showing me her paint brush with paint on it!

Nolan was excited to paint his pot.  I made the boys take their shirts off since the paint wasn't washable.  Nolan does a god job looking at the camera and saying "cheese!"  Such a fun age!

Garrett really liked painting.  He painted the outside and inside of his pot.  We even all went into the house to open presents and he stayed out to keep painting.

Cousins painting! Jordan also painted a pot, he did good and made a chevron design.  

 

 It was such a beautiful day, perfect for playing outside and enjoying the weather.  Tyler and Garrett love to play with uncle Jordan. 

Sweet Chloe, she was so alert.  We all passed her around and made sure to all have a chance to hold her.

 

Addie snatched a cupcake and started eating it while we were waiting for everyone to come sing.  I think she ate like 3 cupcakes. 

 

 We got Addie a wagon for her birthday.  A friend in our neighborhood was selling one.  I texted Lauren to see if they had a wagon or if they wanted one.  She said Addie would love it.  We got it all cleaned up for her.  She was so excited about it and I know Lauren will take her on plenty of walks around the neighborhood. 

 

I am glad we were able to go celebrate Addie! It was fun to see where Lauren and Braden live.  The drive wasn't bad and the kids watched a movie on the ipad while Nolan slept.   

Middle Child

I don't know if it is just his age, he's the middle child or if it is a phase but Garrett is feeling picked on lately.  He is always saying "it's not fair" and is feeling like we punish him more.  I think all kids feel that way at some point.  I have been trying to encourage him more and not be so hard on him.  He is such a sensitive boy and just needs a lot of love and snuggles.  Friday we let Garrett pick the meal and the activity.  He needed some new shoes so as soon as he got home from school we headed over to the Nike outlet to pick out a new pair.  He was so excited about them!  He wanted to wear them home.  His old pair wasn't worth keeping so we recycled them at the store and he got to wear the new shoes home.  He requested homemade pizza for dinner, with white sauce and the fluffy crust.  He also loves family movie nights.  I got the new minion movie from the library and JJ had taken them to all pick out some candy.  He was in heaven.  I need to remember to make special days for my kids more often, they really do love it!  I am glad we got to make him feel extra loved.     

I finally made it, Nolan can attend the child care at the gym! Kids have to be 2 to go to the child care area at our gym.  I knew when I was pregnant that this would be a huge area of struggle for me.  I survived! I made it work to still attend a few classes in the evenings.  I mixed it up and stayed motivated working out at home the other days.  There was no way I would let that area slide in my life and we just had to juggle things and make it work.  Thankfully I have the freedom to go back and I love it.  I started taking all 3 of the kids to the gym a few times in the evenings to classes I wouldn't normally make it to.  I knew that Nolan would not just run right in and it would be a transition.  With Garrett and Lucy there with him he was able to become familiar with the new place.  Lucy was a huge help and would always play with him and help him be happy.  It worked great and now when he goes with me by himself he runs happily in each time. I love it and I love being back with  my morning gym people.  I am still trying to figure out which days I want to go but its so nice to have the option.

I love the ladies there in the morning.  They are great and Monday they made this cute craft with the kids.  Nolan was so proud of it and happy to bring it home with him. 

Monday evening Garrett had a cavity filled at the dentist.  I took the kids for cleanings a few weeks back and Garrett had a new cavity and a filling that needed to be replaced.  He did great and it amazes me how brave he is.  I don't think I would be as calm if I had to have a cavity filled.  My Mom watched Lucy and Nolan for me so I could go with Garrett.  We then had dinner with them before heading back home.  I had brought down the ingredients for my dinner and Lucy helped make it with my Mom.  They had fun and it was a nice evening with everyone.  Garrett also had to go to the dermatologist this week to have a wart frozen off.  He has had a very stubborn wart on the bottom of his foot for several months.  We have taken him in several times and it is slowly going away.  When she froze it this week it hurt really bad and he started to cry.  She said that was good because the smaller it gets the more sensitive the skin is.  I feel bad for him, it has been a rough week. 

I have been looking for a sandbox this week for the kids to play in.  I posted "in search of" on our local sell and swap pages and no one had what I was looking for.  Someone did post that her neighbor had a free turtle box on her driveway.  I decided to go with that and we went and picked it up.  I stopped by and picked up a bag of sand.  Nolan was so excited to help me clean it all out and put sand inside.  He had such a fun time playing with his trucks.  I know the kids will love it and spend lots of time out there.  This sandbox is working good but I will continue to keep my eyes open for what I was hoping to find.

I have been switching our grocery day to Thursdays so we can free up our Fridays.  Nolan does a pretty good job shopping with me.  I have to make sure my list is good so we can go quickly.  Shopping with kids is hard, especially a 2 year old.  I do anything I can to keep him happy and get the job done.  He saw me put a box of nutrigran bars in the cart and wanted to have one.  I frequently will open things and let him start eating while we shop.  I just tell them when we go check out we opened it.  As hard as it is, we enjoy being able to do other things together on Friday when JJ is off.  

Nolan 2 Years

We took Nolan in for his 2 year well child visit this week.  He is growing right on track, nice healthy kid!  He is our tallest 2 year old, almost as tall as Lucy when she was 3.  His height it 35 1/4 (75%), Weight 32.13 (95%) and his head 19 5/8 (90%).  I was surprised with how tall he is that he was only in the 75%.  He loves to be around people and play with other kids.  He is very active and is always on the go.  He mostly runs.  I have learned that when he starts running I better start running too because he usually doesn't stop.  Just today at church I had to sprint down the hall in my heels to catch him before he ran into the chapel during the sacrament.  He doesn't sit still for very long.  The only show he will watch on TV is Daniel Tiger and he wont even sit still for a full episode.  He is talking more and more and putting words together.  He does well with mimicking things you say.  It makes me happy to hear him trying hard to talk and learn words.  He can say every one's name in the family and loves to ask where everyone is.  All day long he asks me where people are, "Where Dada at?"  He loves to play outside.  His favorite thing is to push his little lawn mower around.  He loves to figure things out.  He can open all the doors and we recently had to install a lock at the top of our garage door.  He can open the door and then open the garage door and be in the front yard.  He loves to open the van doors and will usually run around to the other side of the van to get in.  He loves to drink milk but calls all drinks water.  He calls all fruit apples.  He loves to read books and look at the pictures.  He loves trucks and tractors.  He is all boy! Love to be outside, explore, splash in puddles and run around.  We love him and I am sure I forgot to add other things about him.  He keeps me busy and I don't mind.  I have fun trying to keep up with him.  We love how happy he is and how he loves to make us happy.  Hopefully this week we can take him to have his picture taken.  His black eye is almost all healed up.

We took Nolan to have his picture taken on 4/29.  He had a little cold which didn't seem to help how much he didn't want his picture taken.  He wanted nothing to do with sitting still and smiling for the photographer.  She even called in another person to help.  At one point Nolan literally ran out of the portrait place and JJ had to chase him down in the parking lot.  We were able to get a few pictures taken before we decided to call it good.  She thought she got something and we figured if not we could come back and try another day. We were pleased that there were a few good ones.  We thought this one was most like the happy Nolan we love.  His sweet smile was perfect.  We were glad we were able to go and get a nice picture to hang on the wall. 

Family Party For Nolan

Sunday we celebrated Nolan's birthday with my family.  With JJ at his conference all weekend we didn't want to worry about trying to celebrate until he was done.  Plus Sundays work good for everyone's work schedule.  I made Nolan a Daniel Tiger cake.  I thought either that or a train cake would fit his current interest.  Even though he really didn't care what his cake looked like.  I always think its fun to do something cute and I have fun trying.  I made a double layer round cake and used cupcakes for the ears.  With our large family we can eat a cake pretty fast so it was good to have cupcakes as well.  I was excited that when Nolan saw his cake he knew exactly who it was.  He pointed and said "Daniel!" 

He was so excited to blow out his candles.  He actually blew them out as soon as they were lite.  We had to re-light them and have him wait to blow them out until we sang to him.

JJ worked hard making most of the food.  We made the same tacos we had for my birthday.  It is my cousins recipe and my family was all so excited to try it.  We all love Mexican food!  JJ did all the grilled to make the chicken and pineapple salsa.  He also made the avocado crème sauce.  I made a bean dip and Christy brought chips.  I also had corn on the cob.  My Mom helped bring plates and ice cream.  It was all delicious and I am so thankful for all the work JJ did to help!  We had a nice dinner and enjoyed relaxing and talking.  We then let Nolan open some presents.  The Hughes family gave Nolan this v-tech alphabet toy and a Thomas the train movie.  He really likes the apple toy and I can tell he will play with it for several years as he learns his letters.

Jordan and Jenny gave Nolan this "My first bible stories" book.  Nolan loves books and the pictures are so cute in this book.

My parents gave Nolan some little Daniel figures.  They are about the size of the little people.  It came with Daniel, Miss Alena, Katarina Kitty cat, O the Owl and Prince Wednesday.  He loves them!  They also gave him a Thomas the train book that has little suction cup trains that you put on each page.  He will grow into it more and it will be fun for church.  They also got him the basketball t-shirt he is wearing.  As soon as he opened it he wanted to put his new shirt on.  He said "my ball shirt!" Everything is mine right now.   

We all took turns passing Chloe around.  She is so tiny and cute and smells so wonderful!

Nolan was really interested in the baby and wanted to hold her.  Chloe didn't enjoy it as much as Nolan did.

 I am so glad everyone was able to come celebrate Nolan's birthday.  It was such a nice evening and everything went perfect!

Nolan and Vale

Saturday was Vale's birthday.  Nolan and Vale are just a day apart and it is fun to celebrate milestones with them.  They hosted a party for Vale on Saturday and were so sweet to include Nolan in their celebration.  They had a BBQ for a bunch of our friends.  Since we are now in a different ward from most of our friends it is fun to still be able to get together with them.  We miss our ward and our friends so it was nice to visit and catch up with them.  The kids had fun running around together and trying to stay out of trouble.  They have a little pond in their backyard and the kids were drawn to it and all the little frogs around it.  Ben and Becca had such a beautiful backyard and it was perfect for a get together.  Ben snapped a few pictures of the birthday boys.  I am hoping to get a few more from him and I just took these ones off Facebook.  I love these boys and their fun happy personalities!

Nolan's Birthday!

Nolan turned 2 on Friday, crazy how fast time goes!  JJ has Fridays off but was attending a conference downtown.  We were bummed he wasn't able to be with us.  I wanted to do something fun with Nolan on his birthday.  We ran all our errands and did our grocery shopping on Thursday so we could have all day Friday to do something fun.  I was trying to think of something that he would enjoy.  He would be happy anywhere he could run around.  He also had no idea it was his birthday and wouldn't have cared if we went to the playground.  I thought about the zoo but traffic has been so bad on the highway with construction.  I also didn't want to go to far away so we could be back for lunch and nap.  I have heard fun things about Big Joel's Safari but we have never been.  Garrett went on a field trip there for kindergarten but no one else in our family has been.  It is only 20 minutes from our house and it is basically a big petting zoo where you can feed almost all the animals.  I thought Nolan would love it so we got an early start and got there just after it opened.  Nolan was so excited to see the animals!  We bought a big cup of food to feed the animals and we headed out to see them.  He was so excited running around to see them all.   

 Most of the animals had spoons attached to the fence.  You could put the food in the spoon and then the animals would eat out of the spoon.  Or they would eat out of your hand.  All the animals knew exactly what to do and would come running over when they saw you coming.  Nolan liked using the spoon, he was to young to understand how to hold his hand to let them eat off it.

 We went into the barn to feed the parakeets.  We bought a stick with food on it for $1.  You went into the bird cage with about 80 parakeets and they would come land on your stick and eat off it.  Nolan really liked this but one sat on his hand and he got really nervous.  He was so cute to watch in there.  You could tell he really didn't know what to think and hadn't ever experienced something like that.  We also went and saw the camels and sheep while we were in the barn.  There was a goat in there and Nolan was really unsure about him. 

 The worker in the barn snapped a picture of us and the goat was trying to eat Nolan's shirt. 

There was a baby sheep in the barn that was born the day before.  It was so cute and little!

 We went back outside to feed more animals and the goats were pushing on the fence trying to get food.  We went over there and they all ran over to see if we were going to feed them. 

 The goats were crazy and I was trying to get a picture of Nolan and they were pushing so hard on the fence.  It was bowing outward and the goats were on top of each other.  Nolan was concerned about them! After we took pictures we feed them the rest of our food.  They were so hungry and were fighting to eat out of the spoon.

 

 We had a really fun time together walking around and looking at the animals.  It was the best place to take him, he was able to explore and walk around all on his own.  We saw everything in about a hour and then decided to head home.  As we were leaving 2 buses full of kids came for a field trip.  I am glad we were there early because we were pretty much the only ones there.  We are excited to go back again as a family.  If you keep your cup that the food came in you only have to pay half price for refills.  

 We got home and got the water table out.  The weather was beautiful and we wanted to stay outside and enjoy it.

 For dinner we headed to Red Robins.  We knew we needed to go somewhere family friendly.  We weren't having cake and ice cream on his actual birthday so we also wanted to go somewhere that would bring him a birthday treat.  Although he could have cared less about his ice cream.  We all ate it for him.

 

 We went home and opened presents and got on facetime with JJ's parents.  JJ's Mom made Nolan this fun quilt, it will be so fun to use when he moves up to a big bed.  Nolan's new nursery teacher also stopped by with a coloring book and some little Oreo cookies.  That was so sweet of her!  He liked putting his Oreo's in his dump truck.  

 We got Nolan a little t-ball set, a dump truck that makes a couple different noises, a truck book with lots of flaps and a Daniel Tiger book.  He loves his new dump truck! 

We went outside to let him play with his t-ball set.  He got the hang of it and I'm sure as he gets older he will enjoy it even more.  He loves his books and we read them everyday.  It was such a fun day with him doing so many fun things.  We sure love Nolan!  He is such a fun boy and loves to be with us, he makes us so happy.