My Baby's 1st Birthday

I can not believe it was a whole year ago that Gwen was born, however, looking back at pictures, it's unbelievable how much she's grown in 1 short year!

We started getting cards in the mail yesterday, and she got her first gift from Aunt Katie in the mail. We played with it all afternoon!

Today Gwen must have been excited to celebrate because she was up and at 'em before 6am :) We spent the morning eating pancakes, going for a walk, going to the park, and making some stuff for her party.

Adam got home from his business trip, and we took her to the mall to ride the caroussel.

We finished the day by getting her Dairy Queen and playing with Diggs.
Funny how such simple things made her day great! The celebrations continue this weekend, as we have company coming tomorrow, and her party Saturday!

Happy, happy birthday Gwen. You are the best little girl I could ever imagine having and I love you more than anything! What a great year you have given us!!!!

August 2011

Summer's close to being over already, but we are still enjoying it!

We have got to hang out with Gwen's cousins from both sides. We got to go watch Mara's horseback riding lessons, and Allie came to visit, so we spent a day with her!

We go to the pool A LOT!

We went to the farm park and Gwen loved seeing the animals.

Gwen's favorite activity is just playing at home, haha. She loves Diggy, dolls, books, rolling her ball, playing with kitchen utensils, Nick Jr., anything that makes noise, getting into everything (toilets and Diggy's dog food included), making messes, swinging, dancing, etc. She keeps me VERY busy because she is constantly in motion!

We love summer!

Family Visit

Katie's family was in Illinois for 3 weeks, but between her trip with her inlaws to NYC, our trip to the Ozarks, and us having to work, we had only seen them at the beginning of their trip. To celebrate Katie and Kristie's birthday and Ellie's birthday, we went home for the weekend. We basically had meals, pool time, play time, and walks, but it was a great weekend!

The Roleys are back in AZ now, safe and sound. It was good to see you guys and have lots of QT together!

Happy 4th of July

Well, we actually celebrated Independence Day on July 3. The Morton fireworks are always the day before the 4th, and you can see them from my parents house, so they have a party every year. Katie's family was home from AZ, and this was the first year since I have been married that we have been home for the 4th. It was lots of fun. There were lots of families, food, drinks, and fireworks! Diggy was scared again, and Gwen went to bed before the big show, but it was a good time.

Happy 4th of July!

June 2011

June flew by; here are some of the highlights!


Bayer got married! It was such a fun wedding. We had the best time with my girlfriends and their husbands/boyfriends. Courtney looked sooooo pretty and it was such a nice wedding. Lucky for us, my cousin Emily lives close to where the wedding was and babysat Gwenna. We were able to have a fun night and be there when she woke up in the morning! Adam had his first Father's Day. We spent the Saturday before with his dad at Robin's house enjoying a really nice brunch. Then on Father's Day, we went to Morton for the morning and came back to Mahomet and went out to dinner with just the 3 of us. There are lots of little festivals in the Champaign area during summer. This one was the Blues, Brews, and BBQ festival. Strangely, the weekend of this festival it was very fall-ish weather. Adam liked the food there! I got sushi afterwards :)

Gwen is getting so old and taking her places gets more and more fun, yet more and more difficult :) She has so much fun but gets into EVERYTHING! Being outside is a challenge because she can't stay put and puts everything into her mouth. I love her adventurous, spunky personality! She loves animals so we thought she'd like this horse at the mall, but it wasn't her favorite activity!

Lexie came to stay with us for a couple of days. It was so nice having her here! If I wasn't only 27, I would wish I had a 14 year old daughter :) She was such a help and is so good with little kids. We went out to meals and frozen yogurt, took walks, went shopping a bit, went swimming, etc.

Bring on the Heat!

While most people are complaining about the heat and humidity, I am LOVING it. I love the fact that it feels like summer! Warm weather makes for so many more activities to do with Gwen and we are taking advantage! Every night we take a walk or bike ride, we go to the park, we swing in the backyard, we grill out for dinner, we swim, etc.

Our weekend consisted of not only enjoying the weather but also attending dance recitals both days :) Friday night we went to Reese and Mara's recital in Champaign (we also got a babysitter and go to go to a nice dinner before, outside of course :). Then Saturday we went to Bloomington to Sylvie's. We took Gwen to this one, and she LOVED it. I thought she might fuss and we might have to take her out a lot, but she loved the lights, music, glitsy costumes, and dancing.


We had a great week, and now we are excited for next weekend...my friend Bayer's wedding in Chicago, which pretty much is a Kappa reunion :)

End of May

As always, the weather in the midwest is so unpredictable. There have been lots of storms, so we are trying to take advantage of every minute that it's warm and not raining!
Last week was Sylvie's preschool graduation, so Gwen and I got to go. Cal's in the same preschool, so all of the classes sang some songs. It was really cute.

Today it has been very warm outside and it's supposed to rain later, so we spent the whole morning outside. After story time, we went for a long walk, then got home and Gwen had lunch outside. Then we swang and she splashed in her pool.

We are excited that after a long winter, summer has arrived!