A rainy day photo shoot

Cheeseball

The many faces of a princess. . .

Her new surprised face.
Her cheese face.


Aunt Lizzy sent Kailer a gift card for Target. After an hour of meandering up and down the toy aisles, he finally settles on these skates. Today was his first time out on them and he did surprisingly well. Thanks Aunt Lizzy!

8 months

Child Locks

I had just finished scolding my husband for leaving open the cupboard containing all our cleaning agents  for Addie to get into. I walked over, closed the cupboard, and then continued to waste time trying to figure out my new computer. Several minutes later, we hear muffled squeals coming from somewhere in the kitchen. I guess I should apologize to my husband.

She had opened the locked cupboard and then locked herself inside. We contemplated leaving her there for awhile.

Giving up control

Recently, one of my friends posted about having to give up some control over her child- specifically when it comes to her daughter's wardrobe choices. I have recently found myself in the same predicament.  I let Kailer pick out what he wants to wear quite often. However, lately his selections, or shall I call them creations, have become quite interesting. Here is an example of one of his more mild concoctions.  A jersey he's outgrown, a clashing pair of red shorts, buzz lightyear socks, and camouflage shoes. At least he's got the matching hat, right?

a beautiful day at the park

Happy 4th Birthday Kailer!
Thank you Aleks & Dmitry!







Thank you Grammy & Grampy!

Are we there yet?

Michael's parents let us exchange one of their timeshares for a week on the east coast. We traded for a beautiful place on a golf course in Myrtle Beach (actually, it was right outside of Myrtle Beach in Murrels Inlet. We had plans to rent a car for the trip, but a couple weeks before we left we got this wild idea to buy a car. It actually turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. We love our car and it made the trip that much more enjoyable, for us and for the kids.
We took our time getting to Myrtle Beach, stopping at various places along the route: one night in Baltimore with our friends, Chris & Svati Long, 2 nights in Virginia Beach, and one night in New Bern, NC.

Sesame Place
Before getting to Baltimore, we spent our first day at Sesame place. It's a theme park outside of Philidelphia with both an amusement park and a water park. It was a great start to our vacation! Michael and Kailer are in the second car from the front. Michael held on tight while Kai held his hands in the air the entire time!







Virginia Beach

Searching for sand crabs


Addie spent most of this beach day climbing in and out of the hole I dug for her.


Kailer was determined to get this crab meat out himself.


The morning we were getting ready to leave Virginia Beach, Addie had an awful accident and it was all my fault. As I was doing her hair, she reached up and grabbed the curling iron! After running cold water on it for 15 minutes, we took her to the ER (thank goodness for our navigation system). It formed an enormous blister pretty quickly. They put antibiotics on it, bandaged it up, and said to keep it dry. So much for our "beach" trip. . . I thought. However, Addie handled it all really well. She never complained about her owie or the hideous bandaging we had to change every day. We just bagged it up whenever she was in the water and it stayed nice and dry. It's finally finished healing and looks great. Tough lesson learned. . . by both her and I.