Celebrating in La Crosse...

Since it was Rylie's 1st Birthday, we wanted to make sure she got to celebrate with her La Crosse family too, since her great-grandparents don't really travel. Here are a few pictures from her La Crosse party along with a few other random pictures...


More cake smashing:






Great Grandma LaVonne


Great Grandpa and Grandma Jenks


I see you Grandpa

Giving daddy love

Again showing mommy and daddy that she doesn't need toys...laundry baskets are fun!

The climber:

Approving her new seat!

The last of the background pics...

Rylie had her 12 month check up the Monday following her birthday. She somehow managed to not even gain 1 pound between her 9 month and 12 month appointment...thanks to all of the moving! She has a really good appetite, but she just burns it all off because she can't sit still! So she weighed in at a whopping 18 pounds and is 29 1/2 inches long. We also had the ok to go ahead with whole milk, so we made the switch and I don't think she even noticed the difference. Also at some point in the last two weeks, Rylie's 1st tooth, yes her first tooth, popped through. The second doesn't appear to be too far behind.

Rylie is ONE!

Rylie's birthday weekend was far from over. The day following the 4th of July, Grandpa and Grandma were able to stay long enough to go to the Brewer game with Rylie, myself and Uncle Patrick. Daddy had to work because we both took off for Rylie's birthday the next day to go to the zoo! She had a full week and we had so much fun celebrating with her. We can't believe she's already one! It's a little bittersweet. We're sad how fast the time goes, but at the same time it's fun to see how much she is learning every day.



Her buddy Carter was there too!

The humidity brings out the curls...


First trip to the zoo:

Time for gifts from Mommy and Daddy:

4th of July

The second long day of this crazy weekend was 4th of July. Every year Dan's family and extended family and friends park vehicles (the night before even!) all along the Stonebank parade route. You would think this was as big of an event as La Crosse's Oktoberfest, but instead we are out there at 9 in the morning for a parade consisting mostly of fire trucks and old cars, that starts at 11 and lasts about an hour. I'm pretty sure the population of this little town quadruples in size on this day. As we do just about every year following the parade, we went over to the park for more beer, some music and, of course, corn on the cob to support the local Lions. And then finally we head over to Ted and Marcia's for a dip in the pool and dinner.

Our crew


Just about all of our cars fit in this picture



Taking bloody mary orders



Resting in the shade...it was a HOT one!

Somehow this seems backwards...I think I should be sitting and he should be pushing

You may have to brace yourselves for the excitement of this next picture. Every year for as long as I can remember, my parents bought us a box of fireworks that you light off at home. There were always sparklers, of course, and some of the cones that spray different colors a couple feet in the air and always a few duds too. Since moving to the Milwaukee area, each year Dan and I have bought one of these cheap $10 boxes of fireworks and lit them off at the end of the day. This year we hadn't really seen them at Pick 'N Save or anywhere else in the weeks leading up to the 4th. Since my parents were in town and because Rylie's a little too young for the real thing, we thought it would be fun to light some off with them. We ran out to Wal-mart on Saturday night after Rylie's party to see if we could find anything. As luck would have it Wal-mart still had quite a few boxes, so we grabbed a couple. Dan opened one up the night of the fourth and found that they really weren't fireworks at all. There were about 10 of these tubes things and they, upon twisting the bottom, shoot out confetti (see picture below). They also contained something resembling a roman candle, which instead was also a tube full of confetti. While the boxes had TNT and Danger warnings written all over them, the only thing you could actually light in there were the sparklers. We were quite disappointed and Dan even went back to Wal-mart that night to return the other box. Needless to say, the 5 second sparklers that the box contained were the big show this year.

Rylie's 1st Birthday Party!

Rylie's 1st Birthday party was Saturday, July 3. We thought the 4th of July weekend would be a good time to have it since most of the family is typically in town that weekend getting ready for the Stonebank 4th of July parade. And my parents and Patrick would be in town as well. It turned into a crazy busy weekend, but we had a great time spending time with family and friends all weekend long. The morning of her party, she took a pretty long nap, which is exactly what I wanted, hoping she'd be able to make it through the party. I thought she did fairly well considering the number of people around her at all times. Once everyone arrived, we all visited for a little while and had lunch about 1:00 (thanks to Grandpa Mike for grilling). We followed that with cake. She wasn't too crazy about her smash cake, although she did dig into it after a while. Aside from her hands, she stayed fairly clean. By the time we got around to opening gifts, it was evident that she'd had enough and was ready for another nap. But we made it through with the help of a bottle. I think the whole day and all the people were a little much for her, but she did great and it was a memorable one!

The Snoopy cake and smash cake made by Grr Mom

Grr mom makes a table cloth for each of the grandkids and stitches a picture of the theme for that year. Everyone at the party signs their name and she then stitches all of those in, so the kids are able to look back and see who celebrated with them.

We didn't really do a theme for this birthday...I thought Rylie was a little young, so we went with colors instead...magenta and lime. The Snoopy on the cake and table cloth were (lets be honest) more for mommy. But someday maybe Rylie will love Snoopy as much as her mommy and Grandma do.

My cutie pie

Waiting for guests to arrive

All of the kiddos at the party (plus Jenny- Trent wasn't sure about the picture)

Working hard to get through the grass

Uncle Patrick and Grandma testing out Rylie's birthday gift from mommy and daddy

Waiting for the cake!

Very dainty

Not so sure about this...

Oh, so is this what you're all waiting for me to do??

Sharing with daddy

Mmmmm! I don't know if she ever did taste any of it, but she had a little fun digging anyway.

The best picture I have of the gifts being opened...was hoping it would look like she was laughing, but she was just DONE at this point.

Relaxing with Uncle Patrick

OUT

Rylie is one lucky girl to have had so many people come and celebrate this special day with her. And oh my, the gifts she received!