Easter 2013

We celebrated Easter a week early with Dan's family as his sister and her family would be spending Easter in IN.  The kids had an Easter egg hunt, took lots of Easter photos, we had a ham dinner, and the kids all got very generous Easter baskets from Grr and Grr Mom.  We spent the rest of the day playing with Easter goodies and new games. The kids had a great time playing together and had a fun dance party too.  At the end of the night, we had some of Grr's awesome air popped popcorn!

Since I had Good Friday off, we went out to La Crosse on Thursday night. We spent some time at Auntie Elaine's farm on Friday, which Rylie LOVED.  She loves to see all of the kitties, cows, and horses, yet she doesn't want to get too close to any of them.  We had a yummy Easter dinner with Great Grandma Kearns on Saturday. Rylie colored Easter eggs for everyone.  And on Sunday, the girls had fun finding their hidden Easter basket and another egg hunt.  Reagan found all kinds of eggs with puffs, yogurt melts, and some money while Rylie's eggs had jelly beans, peanut M & M's and some money too.  She had a great time lining them all up and counting them too.  The Easter bunny spoiled them again with Spring jackets, headbands, new plates, chap sticks and stickers for Rylie, a new bath towel for Reagan.  Gamma and Papa spoiled them too!

10 Months Old!

We have slept!!  Reagan has gone from getting up every hour or two, to giving us some restful nights.  There are nights that she still gets up two or three times, but there are also nights that she sleeps through or only wakes up once.  It is glorious!  

Reagan has tried all of the 3rd foods now.  She LOVES puffs and yogurt melts.  She stands on her own and is cruising along furniture.  She has taken about a half step or so by herself, but loves walking behind her walker or her alphabet train.  She still fights actually going to sleep, but at least once we get her down she gives us a good stretch of sleep.  She doesn't sit still and gets into everything!  I don't remember Rylie being quite so curious. So needless to say, she has had her share of bumps and bruises.  Unfortunately the majority of injuries have been to her face and head!  She enjoys diving head first off of couches and/or beds and shoves every little tiny crumb, toy, piece of paper she can find into her mouth.  We have had to dig out several things when we find her chomping away on, including a hunk of cooked bacon she found on the kitchen floor.  What can I say, like her Daddy and sister, she loves bacon! She loves bath time and comes crawling in when she hears the water running.  She loves to stand by the side and push things into the water while the tub is filling. She enjoys dropping things from her high chair and watching them fall and then watching mommy pick them up over and over again. 

Reagan loves to do all of her 'tricks' one after the other.  We ask how big she is, so she puts her arms in the air, then claps for herself and we say YAY and then waves hi.  I can't believe she is so close to a year old already!  Here are her 10 month pictures (I can still see a trace of the bruise across the bridge of her nose): 

My sweet girl

Clapping

Soooo BIG!

Ripping off yet another headband

Soooo Big! (again)

And that's enough pictures...I'm outta here

Catch me if you can

The never-ending Winter of 2013

We have kept ourselves fairly busy on weekends this Winter, so this is going to be one massive blog post.

We went out to La Crosse for a weekend in February and Dan and I were able to go out and spend time with my brother and some new friends and some old friends.  I can't tell you the last time we went out two nights in a row.  We had such a great time...I have not laughed that hard in a long time.  We went sledding one of the days as well.  I also can't remember the last time I have done that.  Rylie hasn't ever been on a big sledding hill; she has been pulled around our house in her sled and that is the extent of it.  One of the sledding hills in La Crosse is on a golf course (one that we took wedding photos at) and is across the street from a local tavern (one that we visited with our wedding party).  So we dropped off mom, dad and Reagan at the bar to watch out the window and I went up to take some pictures of the kids. We had a small group of people and the kids had a great time.  Reagan took one of the best naps of her life in the noisy bar.  My mom stuffed her pockets with cans of beer to take up to the guys.  And after a couple hours, everyone came down to the bar and we were those people that had about 6 kids in the bar eating popcorn and drinking soda.

Rylie was able to do a Winter gymnastics session on Tuesday mornings. Thanks to Auntie Leslie who signed Sophie up and asked if Rylie wanted to do it as well and picked her up and returned her to Beth's house each week, so it worked out great!  I didn't want her to miss out on the session because she loves it, but obviously wouldn't be able to transport her while at work. We're looking forward to the next session.  

Her teacher, Miss Tina, is great! I was able to make it to her last class and got some pictures.

My little Valentines:

Dan and I attended the Taste of Milwaukee for the third year to benefit United Cerebral Palsy of SE WI. It's a great event for a great cause and we have a great time attending with the United Heartland group, trying food from tons of area restaurants, and listening to our friend Stephanie speak!

Dan and I were able to get away for a weekend in March.  Since this Winter is never-ending, we were able to go up late in the year and snowmobile over St. Paddy's weekend. We stayed at the same cabin that we stay at with my parents for a week in the Summer. They got a bunch of snow while we were there so the trails were great and there was nobody on them.  The last time that we went away just the two of us overnight was for a New Year's Eve 2010 wedding.  That is also the only other time we have been away from our kids (just Rylie at the time) for more than one night. So two times in the last 4 years have we spent a weekend away...and the consensus was that we should try to do that more often.  We had a great time and enjoyed spending time just the two of us- which is pretty easy to do when you take away work, kids, cooking, laundry, house cleaning, baths, etc.

slightly different view than we're used to

The girls spent the weekend at Grr and Grr Mom's.  They had fun celebrating St. Paddy's weekend with their three cousins having dance parties.