Happy Memorial Day!!

The beginning of summer....

Having fun in the summer sun!!

Mother's Day and 28 years old

Sunday was not only Mother's Day for me this year, but my birthday as well. I was born on Mother's Day so it's pretty special to me when my birthday falls back on that day (about every 5 years or so). We went to the Saturday night service at church so we were able to sleep in on Sunday (until 8:15am...that IS sleeping in these days). It was the perfect way to start off the day. Then we went to Sunday school at 11am and lunch at California Pizza Kitchen after that. Sydney was in such a great mood and was really well behaved the whole time we were there. We took her to the mall playground after that to run off some energy then headed back home. While she napped, I went to the grocery store and Craig cleaned up the house for me....so SWEET!! That night we had some fabulous cake from Central Market (their Italian Creme Cake) and ice cream. Perfect ending to a perfect day! Craig got me a pre-natal massage for my birthday (can't wait to use it!!) and this precious necklace that I (heavily) hinted for. It turned out just like I imagined and I LOVE it. Here's the link to the seller on Etsy in case you are interested.

Happy Easter!!!

What a fun weekend we had!!  Sydney had a birthday party to attend on Friday night, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon.  Her social calendar is really filling up these days!  After the parties and lots of cake, we came home and did an Easter egg hunt in the backyard.  We knew it was supposed to rain most of the day today so that's why we did it yesterday instead.  It was her first egg hunt at home because she still wasn't really interested last year.

Then after the Easter egg hunt, we dyed some eggs. We got to use Sydney's super cute apron (thanks Jeff and Becky!) and she had a blast dipping the eggs in the dye. Then she decorated them with stickers. 

This morning when Sydney woke up, she discovered the basket of goodies that the Easter bunny had left for her. Of course she wanted to eat all the candy right away. Then we went to church and after that went over to our friends Justin and Joanna's house for Easter lunch. Everything was so yummy!! It's so hard to get Sydney to sit still for a picture these days so these were the best we got of her.

Sydney's BIG girl room!

We finally finished Sydney's big girl room last weekend. She is loving it and doing great sleeping in her new bed. Craig was such a champ getting everything painted (since I can't help) and now I'm sure he's looking forward to doing Harper's nursery as well. Here are some pics from her new room!

Sydney's 2nd birthday party!

Sydney love loves loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so we decided to do a Minnie themed birthday party for her this year.  She loved her party and still talks about it today.   Here are some pics from the bash!

Can it really be??

Our little Sydney Claire turned 2 years old today.  I really can't even believe it.  She is such a little girl now and not a baby at all.  I have to say though, Craig and I talk all the time about how much we LOVE this age.  Everything she does and says is the cutest thing ever.  She amazes us everyday with some new sentence or song she knows.  For instance, she loves that song "5 Little Monkey's Jumping on the Bed" (not sure if that's the official title but that's what we call it).  Well at the end of the song it goes:

"Mommy called the doctor and the doctor said, 

'No more monkeys jumping on the bed!'"

So Sydney says that last line (as the doctor) in a really low voice, almost like she's talking like a man.  It's sooo funny!!!  

For her birthday today, she took cupcakes to school and had a little party with her classmates.  Then Craig and I picked her up early and took her to Build-a-Bear.  In my head, I thought she'd absolutely love making her own bear, but it didn't exactly go as planned.  She was fine picking out her animal (which turned out to be a pink monkey) but after that she seemed scared of everything else.  She didn't want to give the monkey a heart, she didn't want to stuff the monkey, she didn't want to bathe the monkey.  The one thing she was interested in was accessorizing her monkey!  She got a Hello Kitty purse that was supposed to be for the monkey, but really ended up as Sydney's instead.  After Build-a-Bear, we went to the mall playground to let her run around.  After that she threw a royal fit in the middle of JC Penney - I guess she wanted to let us know she was officially 2!  We had asked her earlier what she wanted for dinner and she decided on macaroni and cheese.  So we took her to The Black Eyed Pea for dinner where she got more than her fair share of some mac n cheese.  While we were there, she was sitting next to me in the booth and I guess she leaned down to pick something up and when she did she smacked her eyebrow on the table.  It was so LOUD so I knew it hurt pretty bad.  She was screaming of course but calmed back down pretty quick.  Back home, we sang Happy Birthday and let her blow out the candles on her cake - and eat a piece too of course!   All in all, I think she had a pretty great day!  Her daddy and I sure enjoyed getting to spend it with her!  Here are some pics from our afternoon...some were taken on Craig's phone since we forgot to bring the camera with us to the mall.

The update of all updates!!!

Yikes! I realize I am sooooo far behind in blogging. So, I am making one gigantic update of everything that's been going on with us lately. Let me start by giving you a little update on Sydney. She is talking like crazy now...full sentences and all. I would guess her vocabulary is somewhere in the 200 word range but I've never counted so I don't know for sure. She can pretty much say anything you ask her to say and she's a parrot too so you have to be careful about what you say around her. Craig said the word "moron" the other day and Sydney said moron like 10 times after that. I was NOT happy (but it was kind of funny). She can also say all of her ABC's now but for some reason she often leaves out E-F-G...not sure why, guess she doesn't like those letters. :) She can also count to 10 now!! She loves singing and sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Itsy Bitsy Spider and attempts the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song. At the beginning of the show they sing "M-I-C-K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E" and Sydney always says "Yyyyyyyy", "Eeeeeeee"...she hasn't quite gotten all the letters down yet. She is also so girly lately. She loves her purses (yes plural), wearing jewelry, having bows and "ponies" in her hair and going Shopping! She'll say at least 5 times a day that she wants to go shopping. For those that know me well, you know she did NOT get that from me! :) We finally decided on bedding for Sydney's "big girl" room yesterday which lead to a paint decision being made so I finally feel like we're making progress on that front. We officially have 2 weekends to completely finish her room. (I want it done by her 2nd birthday) On to little Harper. She is growing well and moving a ton lately. I had my 24 week appointment last week and everything went great. I'm measuring "perfectly" according to my doctor and my blood pressure is staying down so far which is great. I go back the end of March and after that I start going every 2 weeks. I can't believe I'm already getting to the "every-2-week" point in this pregnancy. It's seriously flying by. We'll start working on Harper's nursery once we get Sydney moved into her new room so that will be our next project. It shouldn't be too bad though since we're reusing everything that we had for Sydney's nursery. Craig and I are also doing well but let's be honest, you only read this post to find out about the kiddos huh? Okay...picture time. Bear with me. There's a LOT!

Like I said, Sydney LOVES jewelry and one of her favorite things is to get out one of my jewelry boxes and put ALL of it on.

Some pictures of Sydney playing at the "park" (aka the elementary school playground)

Valentine's Day with Daddy.

Holding sweet little Pierce - practicing to be a big sister!

STUCK. Sydney loves to say she's stuck or her hand is stuck or her foot is stuck. This day, she really was stuck but of course I had to get a picture before I helped her. (she's in between the levels of our coffee table)

Aw, sweet sweet vacation. A week ago, Craig and I left Sydney in Dallas with our partents and travelled with 3 other couples up to Colorado for 7 glorious days. Yes, it was hard leaving Sydney and I missed her terribly but it was a MUCH needed vacation for both of us. Thankfully our friends partents have a house up there so we were able to "room" for free and bought groceries to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday. Craig skiied 3 days while we were there and had a great time. I pretty much just laid around, read a couple of books and RELAXED. It was fabulous. Hillary is also pregnant so the two of us were homebodies the whole time. Megan skiied the first day but poor thing ended up falling and tearing her ACL and had to be on crutches for the rest of the trip. Here are some pics from our wonderful trip. Thanks for much for inviting us Chris and Hillary!! :)