Steph, Jesse, Kaylee, and Little Fuzz

2012-01-15T19:56:00.000-06:00

I find it a little crazy that it's already the middle of January! We had a fantastic Christmas. Kaylee, especially, loved it!

Here, she's practicing on her new scooter

Kaylee and Daddy dancing to a silly song

She got her very first sewing machine from grandma and grandpa. Now she can sew, just like Mommy!

a new minnie mouse bank complete with a roll of quarters kept her entertained for a while

I threatened to have the drum stay at grandma and grandpas house ;)

One of Kaylees favorite new games, Red Rover

Kaylee with grandma, grandpa, and her cousins (Amber and Tristan)

Monkey pile on Leila

Kaylee and her cousins

Showing off their smore ornaments

Loving on her new kitty

Jesse really enjoyed his new Polar Express train set

Snuggles for Stella

A cape for Apollo

Once we got back home, we put together the gingerbread house

TADA!

I found Kaylee sleeping like this one night when I went in to check on her

The first snow of the year (Jan 12th!) can you believe it! It warmed up just enough for us to play outside for a little bit

Kaylee's First Snowman

#2 Update

Here's my 20 week picture just before ultrasound day! I've been feeling Little Fuzz moving around since the flight to Texas for my friend, Amy's, wedding reception. It's such an odd feeling, I just don't know how to describe it!

To our pleasant surprise, Little Fuzz is a BOY!!! YAY!! Here are some pics of the little guy :)

I think he was practicing some arobics in there during the ultrasound.

Here you can see him moving around a little bit

I've finally begun to gain weight now, 2 lbs so far :) And I've been feeling great! I've been craving BLTs for the last couple of weeks, but other than that nothing out of the ordinary. I have a lot of sewing projects in mind for our new little man, I don't know where to start! We've also started making our name list for him. We hadn't given it much thought before we found out what we were having. We'll share our list once we've narrowed it down a little :)

Tis The Season To Be Crafty

2011-12-26T10:15:00.003-06:00

I will warn you ahead of time, this post only has 1 cute picture of Kaylee in it. The rest is me showing off my mad sewing skills :oD. I've been able to make a lot of progress and finish a handful of projects lately, which is always super nice. Even better that most of it was done with fabric I already had in my stash!

This is a Crazy Nine Patch that I started in Nov. 2010 at a quilt festival class with Kate. I've finally completed the top! I recently found the backing fabric for it so hopefully I'll get it completely done soon!!

This is a Sweet Treat pattern called Hodgepodge that was picked up at quilt festival last year. The theme for the new baby was owls, so I appliqued an owl to the corner to give it a little something extra. I love how quickly the Sweet Treats come together!

This is a tree skirt from a pattern I'm pretty sure I picked up at last years quilt festival too. I started it last year and just finished it the day we got our tree this year :)

Proudly displayed under our tree this year.

My sister had requested for me to make a Hobo bag for her for Christmas. I'm hoping this fits the bill! I found this free tutorial online for a Pleated tote and slightly modified it so it wasn't quite so huge. It's the first time I've added a snap and an interior pocket. Both of which were surprisingly easy to do.

I'm tickled at how these Silhouettes of Kaylee turned out. They are Christmas gifts for the Grandparents! They were super easy to do, although it was very tiring for the fingers!! I think they turned out pretty schnazzy!

This is the picture I used to trace the silhouettes out.

Next I'm planning on venturing into the land of clothes making by making some adorable jammie's for Kaylee and her cousins. The patterns I got seem like they are written in a totally different language, yikes! Good thing I got the quick and easy ones!

Santa Came Early!

2011-12-22T17:15:00.001-06:00

I had arranged for Santa to come a little early this year, because we'll be traveling for Christmas. It was SO exciting to watch Kaylee open all of her presents this year. She really got into it and seemed to love and toss everything equally. Toys and clothes alike :) She'd open them up, ooh and aah a little then toss them aside for the next present. Too funny! After all of the presents were open she went back through everything to start playing. What a great Christmas!

Santa had actually visited her at her school that morning. So I told her he was going to stop at her house after he was done there. We went to Kaylee's gymnastics class and then out for dinner before finally arriving home to see what Santa had brought.

Kaylee's Class

Kaylee had expected to see Santa at her house when we got home. She walked over to the back door in the kitchen. When she didn't find Santa there she headed to the living room and saw the presents under the tree. I wasn't fast enough with the camera, but she put her hands on her hips and bent over and stared at the presents in awe. It was adorable! Then she circled the tree, sat down and started unwrapping.

Grandma gave her a LeapPad as an early Christmas present too. She LOVED it!

Doing the Hokey Pokey with Elmo

Kaylee with all of her Christmas treasures

Getting Ready For Christmas

2011-12-22T10:23:00.000-06:00

We've been busy these last few weeks getting ready for Christmas. Kaylee's been having a great time with all of the decorating and cookie baking and especially all of the pretty lights we get to see on our way home from school.

She did an awesome job helping to decorate the tree. The trick was getting her to leave the ornaments alone after the tree was done! It’s nice having a real tree this year, it smells SO nice!

Kaylee sang us Jingle Bells while dancing around the tree as we were putting the lights on it. It was very festive.

We brought out the stockings and Kaylee was a little confused about what to do with them at first. She kept asking where the other one was. LOL

I put up some lights on our banister and she enjoyed looking at them before bed time one night. It looks like she’s trying really hard not to touch them.

Kaylee was such a big helper with making the Christmas cookies this year!! She LOVED it!! Her favorite part? Eating the dough, the frosting, and the sprinkles of course! She was pretty wired for a while! Good thing we had all day for her to run around.

She even helped to roll the cookies into balls…or snails, as she called them. The chocolate ones don’t look quite right, but they turned out great!

In November we noticed the carpet getting wet after it rained. After further investigation, involving ripping out all of the built in shelving on the basement wall and tearing down the paneling behind it, was a crack in the wall that went from the ceiling to the floor!! Luckily we’ll be able to salvage the carpeting that was near there, but we need to redo the wall completely.

Here’s what our patched crack currently looks like. We have a lot of work ahead of us to get the room back together, but I actually like how it looks without the built in shelving. The room looks so much bigger!

Having to rip down the shelving also gave Jesse an excuse to buy a new TV, since we were limited to TV size with the built in unit. Here is Jesse showing off our new TV, thanks to an awesome Black Friday super-secret deal from Best Buy. It fit perfectly between the fireplace and vent in the wall.

Now it's time for an early Christmas present! I'm pregnant :) I am currently at 17 weeks and have an ultrasound coming up in January where we'll be able to find out if we are having a girl or a boy. I'm SO excited, I can't wait! Jesse thinks the odds are in our favor for having a boy, but those Freier girl jeans seem pretty strong! We shall see! I will post more pics of Little Fuzz after the ultrasound, but until then here is a belly shot and the first look we had of Little Fuzz at 13 weeks.

I've started showing WAY sooner than I did with Kaylee and I'm sure I can feel Little Fuzz moving around in there already! It's so exciting! I'm much happier now than I was a couple of weeks ago. I had a heavy case of morning sickness and was mostly limited to soups and yogurt being the only thing that my stomach would not throw a fit about. Everyone seems to think I'm having a boy because of it :) The nausea is gone now, thank goodness, and I may even have started gaining weight this week. I had lost 10 thanks to the nausea! Now I've had lots of cravings and aversions. To my husbands dismay I can't stand the smell of popping popcorn or Doritos. Most fried foods are a turn off too which means most fast food places are off my diet, not necessarily a bad thing. I've really been craving fresh fruit, salads, potato salad, Sobe drinks- especially the Macintosh Apple Cherry, and lots of tomatoes. Last week it was BLT sandwiches and the week before that was meatball subs both loaded with extra tomato. Too bad it's not tomato season anymore!

As an extra special treat Jesse and I got to travel out to Arlington, Texas for our friend Amy's wedding reception. She got married in Australia in October and we were able to afford the airfare all the way out there, so I made sure we were able to make it for the Texas reception! We were calling it our mini-babymoon, since this is likely the only time we will be able to get away before Little Fuzz comes. We had a great time with our friends Amy and Danielle! Kaylee had a lot of fun playing with Grandma while we were gone.

The funniest part about when us girls get together is we are always asked if we are sisters! That evening the grilled cheese station lady asked us :) Even though they are not related by blood, I still think of them more like sisters. No matter how far apart we are or how long it's been since we've seen each other, we always pick back up right where we left off, just like it was only yesterday.

It was a little foggy from the smoke machine, but Jesse managed to get some shots of us dancing the night away. He even joined us for a few songs at one point :)

Auntie Danielle made Kaylee a super cool dinosaur tail and a space shuttle pillow for Christmas. Kaylee LOVES them! She sleeps with the shuttle pillow, which she calls her 'spaceship' and she loves wiggling with her tail. It's too funny not to share!

Family Fall Fun

2011-11-04T23:00:00.001-05:00

We took a trip out to Bloomsberry Farm when my parents and Lexi came to visit. It was super windy, but really fun.

Kaylee thought that feeding the piggy was the coolest.

They have a giant sandbox full of corn kernels instead of sand. The kids had a great time playing in there and I found corn in odd places for days!

Kaylee always takes the opportunity to ride a pony even if it's not a real one.

The weekend after Kaylee and I went out to Wilson's Apple Orchard. Kaylee had a blast! She ran around most of the orchard before her legs got tired.

After we made it back up to the top of the hill, we took a ride on a tractor and got a few apple snacks.

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-04T22:11:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween! We had a great one! We went out to Ushers Ferry for their "Safe Halloween" and got a nice bucket load of goodies and she got the hang of saying Trick or Treat pretty quickly. She wouldn't wear the hat, but she was still a pretty cute little garden gnome.

Enjoying some cake after making the rounds.

Saturday we played with pumpkin guts :) Kaylee wasn't too sure about it at first, as you can tell by her yucky face.

Kaylee and her best friend Rose right before the parade at day care.

Kaylee's class. Look at all those cuties.

Kaylee checking out the pumpkins before heading out to trick or treat.

She fits right into the landscape with her hat and shoes.

Bart's Farm

2011-10-10T21:20:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we went out to a local farm for some pumpkins and animal fun. This farm is sweet because they have pony rides. And they aren't even the carousel type where the horses go round in circles. There were 2 horses to pick from, Princess, the small horse and Gunner the full sized horse. Which one did Kaylee want to ride? Yep, Gunner! Ha! she looked so little on his back, and I'm sure he barely felt her there :) She did awesome though! She had a smile on her face the whole time and even let go to wave to mommy and daddy. I'm so proud :) We need to find more horses to ride!

After Kaylee's ride we visited the barn where they had a couple other animals to visit with and feed. We saw this beautiful horse and Kaylee got a kick out of feeding it hay.

I took a little video of her feeding the horse, but I forgot the camera doesn't automatically rotate the video. Sorry if you get a kink in your neck! I found it helpful, when viewing from my laptop, to just rotate the computer so I didn't have to turn my head 90 degrees.

Here is Kaylee feeding the baby goats. Their ears were super soft!

We eventually got out to the field to hunt some pumpkins. Only after we promised we could go back and say goodbye to the animals when we were done. Kaylee found a couple that were just her size.

We took a short walk through some corn, just for fun. Kaylee thought it was really funny to be walking in the corns.

Random Fun

2011-10-09T16:08:00.001-05:00

We went to one of our local parks on a cool weekend and there were lots of Canadian Geese around. Kaylee thought they were cool and liked to follow them around. She got hissed at a few times, but none of them went after her.

I had received an awesome package of quilting magazines from one of my good friends and Kaylee looked though everyone :)

Kaylee got her first good scratch from our kitty, Moe. When Moe was up on the bed and Kaylee was trying to pet him, his back claw got her as he was trying to get away. The scratch went away pretty quick and she still loves to chase Moe around, so no harm done.

We went up to Sheboygan to help celebrate my sisters birthday. We went out to eat at a place that isn't known for it's quick service, but has excellent food. On the drive up there I had a great idea. The pony worked for a while, but then I busted out the secret weapon, You Tube! It worked beautifully! They have a bunch of episodes and clips of Elmo's world that kept her attention until the food made it. Whew!

While we were there we took a visit to the local free zoo. It's a nice place to let little ones burn off some energy. The prairie dogs always put on a good show.

As we were walking over to the barn/playground area there was a guy and his daughter looking up at the trees. When we got closer he explained that he had just seen a bald eagle fly over their heads and into the trees. Sure enough! There she sits, a little above center in this picture.

Here's a close up. She must have been visiting her captive bald eagle buddy who resides in the zoo. It was pretty cool to see one flying free!

While my Mom, Lexi, and I were looking for the eagle, Kaylee ran ahead to the playground. As we got closer to the playground I didn't see Kaylee running around. Finally I get closer and what do I find? Kaylee dangling from the play set. She wasn't crying or shouting for help or anything. More like she was just hanging around with a grumpy look on her face. It was hilarious!

The first weekend in October, Amana Colonies celebrates with Oktoberfest. Complete with PONY rides!! Kaylee was in love! Her favorite horse was Scout. I wonder how soon I can get her in riding lessons? ;) hehehe

I think fall is my favorite season here in the Midwest. The colors of the trees are so pretty and the weather is perfect for playing outside for hours! The best part, according to Kaylee, are the LEAVES! She wasn't shy at all with them this year, she just jumped right in.

There's nothing better to draw the neighbors over than a big pile of leaves and a little girl who likes to play with anyone. Here is our across the street neighbor, Chandler. She was great playing with Kaylee.

Here are some of Kaylees recently acquired talents.

Throwing the ball well

Dribbling the ball

Playing the harmonica

Here's what we've been up to lately

2011-08-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

A few weekends ago I got to see my favorite band live in concert at one of the county fairs in Wisconsin, TRAIN! We had a fabulous time!

You know when you are at a WI fair when you get to ride a tractor drawn wagon from your car to the gate

Our seats for the show

2nd row from the VIP section

Look at the big crowd behind us

Celebrating with some spiked tea: Jeremiah Weed

We didn't forget the glow sticks and glasses

The next weekend Kaylee and I were back in WI to celebrate Lily's 5th birthday. She had her party at Monkey Joe's, a super fun place full of bouncy houses and giant inflatable play areas and slides. Kaylee mostly just ran around in circles, but I did manage to get her down a few slides.

The next day Kaylee and I went to Sheboygan's Brat Days. Yep, it's a weekend my hometown celebrates the Brat complete with a parade and carnival :) Kaylee did a lot of things for the first time here! She was so excited to ride a real pony.

She got to feed goats and sheep and lamas. She thought they were funny and tickled her hands and loved petting them.

She rode the carousel all by herself

She even rode a car ride all by herself. I wasn't sure if she was ready for the caterpillar roller coaster ride yet. Next year for sure!

Here she's enjoying her first sno-cone

Last weekend we headed to my Cousin, Laura's place near Chicago. We took a train into Chicago to visit the Shedd Aquarium with the whole Freier clan. Everyone had such a great time!

Kaylee was a little freaked out at first on the train and clung to daddy like a Koala

After a little bit she got use to it and had lots of fun.

The Shedd Aquarium had a really cool jellyfish exhibit with tons of different kinds of jellies.

They also had an area where you could touch and feel some fun sea creatures. Kaylee always loves that.

Here her Cousin, Lexi, is showing her some more fun stuff to touch.

Watching the dolphins swim from below the water was neat. They even had a little cafe down there so we grabbed a snack while we watched the dolphins play.

Checking out the Belugas from the top

We are waiting patiently for the dolphin/beluga show to start

Watching the belugas in action

And that's about all Kaylee saw before she dozed off. Too bad she missed the dolphin show, but she was getting really sleepy.

In the distance is Chicago's Navy Pier. We are thinking about going there for next years trip :)

Chicago skyline including the Sears tower.

Kaylee expending some extra energy. Notice the dark cloud rolling in from the left - we got a little wet on our way to Rainforest Cafe.

I'm a sucker for awesome architecture.

After a lot of walking and a ride on the subway we made it to the Rainforest Cafe to celebrate Lily's birthday.

You really can't go wrong at a Rainforest Cafe there is so much to look at while you are there.

Nick was nearly taken alive by a giant snake!

He was a bit more friendly to us ladies

The train ride back was a little rough until munchkin fell asleep. She decided to try and stay awake as long as possible by people hopping. Right now she is reading the paper with Uncle Nick.

I loved all of our Wisconsin adventures this past month, but I'm so glad we were able to stay home this weekend. The weather was gorgeous, so we thought we'd do a little exploring in our own territory. We went for a morning walk in the neighborhood and collected some pretty wild flowers.

Kaylee getting close and personal with the trees. She was 'hiding'

We took a short drive out to one of the state parks near us. Wapsipinicon State Park (how's that for a mouthful?) It turns out this is a pretty cool park. One that we need to go back to much better prepared for. They had a fun playground right next to a small river.

The road actually goes through the river or the river goes through the road, which ever way you want to think of it. It would have been a lot more fun for Kaylee if we had brought her water shoes, an extra change of clothes, and a towel. It was really slippery!

This park has a couple of marked unmonitored caves in it. Too cool! We didn't get too far in before it started getting really narrow, but it was still fun.

We went back and forth in and out of the Ice Cave, Kaylee loved it.

Here is the walkway to another cave. This one had a big cavern and would make a great shelter if you suddenly found yourself in the middle of a downpour.

My little explorer

It was a little slippery in there and Kaylee slipped more than once. Again, where a spare set of clothes would have been helpful! She was having fun though and liked going down to the river to wash the mud off.

That's all of the grand adventures we've been on the last couple of weeks. We are all out of plans for new adventures, but I'm excited to see what we find next :)

Pool Time And Camping Adventures

2011-07-24T18:47:00.000-05:00

The weekend before we left on vacation was nice and warm so we set up Kaylee's little slide pool and she had a blast. She spent a good hour or two playing in the pool in the afternoon after it warmed up.

After a while of sliding she figured out that it was really fun to hop and make a big splash and that doing this off of the little pillow at the bottom of the slide was even more fun.

This past week we spend on a camping adventure. Most of the week we stayed in a 4 bedroom cabin in Shawano, Wisconsin with my family. The cabin is right on Lake Shawano and had it's own dock for my dads boat and a little beach area for access to the water. Everyone had a super great time. We even stayed an extra day so Jesse and I could partake in karaoke at a local bar - pictures to follow ;) First I want to share the fun we had on the boat. I tried my hand at water skiing again this year. Still haven't been able to make it up! This is how I looked most of the time:

My sister, Amy, did great though!! She got up on the first shot and didn't fall at all!

Kaylee didn't care for the boat this year. I'm not sure why. She got really still and clingy when the boat was moving and didn't want to get up and move around after we had stopped. This is really strange for this little one! Although I did enjoy the snuggles :) To get the boat to go fast, Kaylee's cousin, Lily, says "I feel a need of speed"

Lexi even tried skiing this year! She got SO close to getting up. Closer than I did, for sure!

Kaylee snuggling with Lexi after the sun in the sun.

Ready for the sun!

The next day my sister, Amy and I did a little bit of dusk tubing and got cut short because of an approaching thunderstorm. We had a relaxing ride back to the dock.

Back at the cabin, it was hair doing time. Lexi did great on her first french braid of Kristi's hair.

And Lily made Amy's hair real pretty :)

My Dad and Kristi's husband, Nick, went out fishing most mornings. Here are a couple shots of their big catches.

While Kaylee was napping one day, the rest of the family went out to the sand bar and splashed around for a while.

Leila had lots of smiles!

When everyone was back at the cabin the girls played their own version of rock band complete with recorders and a keyboard.

Time for bubbles!

Time to clean up. Kaylee brings the water.

Such cute sisters, Lily and Leila.

Nigh-night Violet

Such a pretty smile, it almost distracts you from all of the stickers she put on her leg.

Back in the lake for some whale wrestling!

One of the local bars makes really yummy homemade Old Fashions for $2 during happy hour. We always have to go at least once! This time we tag teamed it. My sister and I went for the first hour and then the boys got to go for the second hour.

We even had time for a couple rounds of pool.

Then we got a little silly...

I think they are having a debate on who's mom is the silliest...

Time for more fun in the sun (and shade). It turns out that giant turtles are awesome!

Learning how to ride a scooter.

What a couple of cuties!

Oh what fun you can have playing follow the leader on the slide. Everyone goes down the same way.

Why not throw a somersault in at the bottom.

We make our own happy hour ;)

Kaylee would often walk up to the radio and it seemed as though she intended to turn the music off and suddenly the music took her and she stared dancing. It was too funny

Here's our beautiful view.

Kaylee and her twirly whirly ponytail. I love it!

Our final night at the cabin was karaoke night! Kristi, Nick, Jesse and I were able to go, while Nana and Bompa watched the girls. As always, it was a great time!! We needed some liquid courage from rocket pops, before our debuts :)

Nick and Kristi's Duet

A few friends we made a long the way...

My mom was there to greet us when we made it back home. She enjoyed our highlights of the evening.

Alas, our time at the cabin had come to an end. We had planning on doing some tent camping at a Wisconsin State Park for a few nights. We only made it one night though. It was super hot and muggy and the tent we had leaked real bad. We decided to pack it up and head home after the first night. It's a good thing we did too, cause it rained a whole bunch that next night too!

Here's our camp site during the rainy morning, before we packed everything up.

We did do a little sight seeing in the area before we left. At the top of Blue Mound they had a couple of tall towers. There was enough of a break in the rain that we were able to climb up to the top of one.

The view from the top

After the tower we headed over to the Cave of the Mounds for some exploring.

They had a cool area where you could pan for gems.

The cave was really neat and a nice break from the heat outside.

The only spot in the caves we were allowed to touch.

The landscape around the cave was really pretty too.

Before we started the tour of the cave they showed a short informative movie about the history of the cave. They were describing the orthocone cephalopods that were around before the time the cave was being formed and Kaylee corrected them by saying 'NO, thas a accapus' everyone giggled. On our way back to the car we found a path with a whole bunch of Kaylee's accapuses.

Whoa! That was a lot of pictures! I hope you enjoyed them!

2 Year Old Pictures

2011-07-09T17:47:00.000-05:00

We were finally able to get out and get Kaylee's 2 year pictures taken this weekend. The people at Portrait Innovations always did a great job in Houston while we were there so we decided to try them out here. They did such a good job it was SO hard to pick the best ones! Here are my favorites.

The Weekend Of The 4th In Sheboygan

2011-07-09T17:17:00.000-05:00

Before we headed to Sheboygan for the Forth of July long weekend Kaylee took part in a parade for school. They dressed up in hats and sashes they made and walked around the parking lot waving little flags. Kaylee almost had fun, she was too concerned that I would suddenly disappear for some reason.

Kaylee's Class

This is what I got when I told her to say 'cheese'

So sad! Real tears and everything!

Since it was such a beautiful weekend in Sheboygan the first thing we did that weekend was head out to Bookworm Gardens with Grandma and Grandpa. It's a cool new garden designed especially for kids. They have fun storybook themes around the garden and tons of books for the kids to read. I can't wait to go back and visit it again next time.

Kaylee's favorite part was the Magic School Bus you could climb around in!

She found a fun doggie to sit on too. YeeHaa she says

Grandpa in his next house :)

Kaylee paid a visit to Pooh's house, just in time for tea.

Fun old school typewriter in the barn...why not!

Relaxing for two seconds with Grandma and Grandpa in the tree gazebo

She even got to ride a cool sparkling dirt dragon

Back at the Freier Household we enjoyed some fun in the sun

The water was chilly, but that didn't stop anyone. We just needed some break time for our lips to fade from blue back to pink. 'Nugglin' with Daddy is a great way to warm up.

If you thought sliding down with a wet hiney would make you go fast down the slide, you should try it with a soggy towel too. ZOOM! Way fun!!

On Sunday we went with Nana and Leila to the zoo in Manitowoc. The girls were being super cute together and I got a lot of good pics. Oh and the animals were fun too :oP

They had a gazebo with a bunch of pretty flowers. This was my favorite.

Time to stop for a snack

I think they were sharing more secrets

Leila is such a cutie

Although I'm not overly thrilled about the meaning behind the song, it is really fun to watch the girls play ring around the rosie

We all fall down!

We are so lucky to have been able to bring Grandma back with us to Cedar Rapids for the next two weeks! We took Grandma to the splash pad and had some fun.

Playgrounds, Father's Day, and Ducks!

2011-06-26T22:07:00.000-05:00

A few weekends ago Kaylee and I ventured out and found a couple of new places to play. There is another elementary school pretty close to our house, only a 3 min drive. Little to my surprise she headed straight for the climbing wall. Why wouldn't a 2 year old think that's the most fun thing to play on. By the time I caught up to her she was already climbing.

One the same block as the Elementary School was a little playground. This playground was a bug magnet for some reason. They were only harmless little black and orange bugs though. Kaylee had fun following them around.

Kaylee loves to play on her big girl bed. Sometimes it's hard to find her.

Father's Day weekend Kaylee and I drove up to Sheboygan for the Freier Family Father's Day Fun Fest :) We had a great time! Kaylee did surprisingly well for the car ride without me in the back seat to keep her company. I think this is mostly in part to her favorite movie, Toy Story 3. It's the very first movie she'll actually sit and watch all the way through! Well mostly sit anyway :)

Kaylee really loves playing with her cousins and talks about them all the time at home. Lexi was putting together a standing cooler and Kaylee just jumped right in there to help her. Although I'm not sure it was any help, Lexi still loved it.

It was nice enough for us to play outside on Saturday. Slightly chilly, but not too bad.

Sunday was rainy all morning so the girls found fun things to do inside.

Lily was a great big sister to Kaylee and played house with her in the toy room.

Lily even played dress up with her. I'm pretty sure Kaylee had at least 4 different outfits on within a half hour!

Here's Lily tucking Kaylee in to sleep after having changed her in to jammies. I'm pretty sure those jammies were made for 9-12 month babies....

After the rain stopped and the sun came out we were able to play outside more. Those girls got pretty silly!

They were pretending the porch was a jail and were asking us to 'please help'. It was too funny. I love Lily's 'please let me out of jail' face in this one :)

Here's what Kaylee and I made for Daddy for Father's Day :)

This is my favorite thing that Kaylee made for Father's Day from her school!

Jesse got a lot of projects done on his Father's Day weekend off. He got the old nasty sandbox all torn down and the new fire pit set up in it's place.

He built a bed frame for Kaylee's twin mattress to mimic a toddler bed so part of the sides would be taller to prevent tumbles. It turned out really nice!

Here Kaylee is checking out her new elevated bed. The look in her eyes say, this is nice, but something is missing....

All my animals!

And don't forget the books!

Ok, so he didn't make the flowers bloom so nice, but it was a nice touch to come home too :)

This weekend was a very productive weekend too. I finally got Kaylee's Giraffe growth chart hung up in her room. I don't think she's grown much at all in a month so I'm still counting this as her 2 year line ;)

Even though it was a little rainy on Saturday, Kaylee and I ventured out to find the Great Eastern Iowa Duck Race. There were over 16,000 ducks in the harbor area next to the Cedar River. Unfortunately there was no current and no wind so the ducks went no where fast. Good thing some folks came prepared with leaf blowers! Once those ran out of gas people actually started hopping in the water and started pushing the ducks towards the finish line.

Kaylee came prepared with her rain jacket. Thank you Target clearance :)

Kaylee, of course, was drawn to all of the doggies at the event. :) Her favorite was a tiny Chihuahua doggie named Fearless

Jesse and I were able to put up a few more pictures around the house. Here is our now tranquil dinning area.

I love this addition to Kaylee's butterfly wall. I had this made from a vendor while I was in New York City with my gals.

Look Who's A Big Girl!

2011-06-10T20:53:00.000-05:00

Kaylee is super excited to sleep on her big girl bed for the very first time tonight! The first thing she did after we got the sheet with the Hello Kitty's on, was take all of her books from her bookshelf and put them on her new bed :) then she started reading...EVERY ONE! And this was even before she got ready for bed. Silly little girl!

Once we moved the crib the wall looked really bland so Kaylee picked out these wall stickers and helped me hand them up. I wonder if they will still be up in the morning??

So far so good! I spent a little extra snuggle time with her telling her what a big girl she is for sleeping in a big girl bed. I haven't heard anything from her since I left. I'm actually a little surprised! Wish us luck that she gets at least a little bit of sleep tonight!

2 Weeks of Fun Stuff

2011-06-05T20:59:00.000-05:00

Two weekends ago Kaylee and I met up with one of my coworkers, Tasha, and went on a field trip to Sutliff Cider. They are a small Cider making farm just outside of Mount Vernon, IA. Tasha and I got to taste test the Hard Cider and Kaylee loved trying the Soft Cider. I can't wait to go back later in the summer when there are apples on the trees! Kaylee had fun playing in the slightly overgrown apple fields though.

Here are the really pretty and aromatic lilacs in my back yard. To bad they didn't stay bloomed longer!

Last weekend was Memorial Weekend and I happily convinced my sister, two little girls, and my mom to come down for a visit for the long weekend. I was SOOO happy they did! Even though it was rainy all weekend we still had a great time. Kaylee loved having her cousins over to play with. She still keeps asking where they are :)

Lily was being a great babysitter and getting the girls all cozy around bed time. She tucked them in and gave them their blankies and books and everything :)

My sister and I got to go out on a Mommy's Night Out on Saturday. We hit up a couple of the places in downtown Cedar Rapids and had a really fun time. This is the only picture that I'm willing to share with the public :oD I'm on the look out for a good karaoke place for next time!

Kaylee loved it when Lily would show her silly things to do. And she did all of them :)

I think Lily's favorite part was Moe. She just loved loving on him.

We went to The Playstation on Sunday cause it wasn't very nice outside and the girls had a blast! It was hard for Kristi and I to keep up with the three of them.

Check out that super cute L.I.L. Klipz hair clippy Kaylee is sporting.

After all of the girls left on Monday we headed out to the Amana Colonies for their Iowa Renaissance Festival. We came near the end of it, but there was still stuff to see. We caught a couple of shows with my friends Alissa and Rick and their little guy, Sawyer. Sawyer let Kaylee wear the hat he'd won at one of the games. She makes a cute little gnome :)

We saw some dancing ladies

Kaylee likes a good show.

Sawyer was having a good time too.

Then there were the ladies dancing with swords on their heads.

After they were done they did a dance with anyone who wanted to join in. I had just gotten back from the restroom and was surprised to see her up there without daddy! She didn't last too much longer up there once she saw me. So I joined in.

The grand finale was a couple of juggling guys. They were pretty good. I even got volunteered to stand between them while they threw the pins in front of and behind me. Did I mention that my allergies were acting up really bad and I had a huge sneezing fit prior to being on stage?? Luckily I didn't get a tickle in my nose while the pins were ripping by! Kaylee wasn't too happy that they were throwing the pins at Mommy so Jesse wasn't able to get any pics of it.

This week was Kaylee's last week of her first Gymnastics session. They got to play in the big gym and jump on the big trampoline and play in the big foam pit. Kaylee loved the trampoline! She was doing all kinds of crazy stuff! Her teacher said she is going to dominate the big gym when she gets old enough :D

I think Kaylee and Leila may have talked a little too much last weekend because no sooner did they leave than Kaylee started breaking out of her crib. Leila must have been telling her all about how cool her big girl bed is and how to escape without injury. I'm in the kitchen doing dishes after putting Kaylee to bed and the next thing I know is Kaylee walks in. I was totally shocked. I asked her if she had gotten hurt even though she wasn't crying, I just couldn't believe it. She made 2 other escapes this week so this weekend we went out and picked up a twin mattress for her. We'll get it all set up for her to use next weekend so we can have a full weekend to rest if she doesn't sleep much. Kaylee and I went shopping and she picked out the Hello Kitty sheet set (no surprise there!) :D She even went with us to pick out the mattress. She had fun trying out the different beds.

Since it was such a gorgeous weekend we went down to our local park ~4 blocks away and played at the splash pad for a while. That water was COLD! But it was really fun and Kaylee was just giggling at the whole thing, even after her lips were turning blue.

We finished out the weekend by going to the pool that is closest to us ~1 mi away. It was pretty cool! It had water slides and shallow areas and even a giant sand & water box! Kaylee had so much fun she didn't want to come out even after her lips were blue and her whole body was shaking cause she was cold. At least the sun was out to help warm her up. Snuggling with Daddy was a pretty fun way to do that.

We are going to have a great summer, I can just feel it :) Who's going to join us??

Guess Who’s 2!

2011-05-16T23:23:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to my little girl! I can’t believe how big she’s gotten and how much she’s learned in the past year! She’s now talking in sentences and using all kinds of words. She’s also starting to get good at her colors, she knows blue, yellow, red, and pink. Thanks to the Talking Letter Factory Kaylee knows most of her letters and the sounds they make. She’s jumping with both feet off the ground and doing somersaults like a pro. She can even tell you how old she is.

Here are her stats from her 2 year check up, still tall and skinny:
23 lbs 13 oz
34.5” tall

We went to McDonalds on Kaylee’s birthday for dinner; she thought it was such a treat. This McDonalds didn’t have a play place, but it did have a kids sitting area complete with Ronald McDonald, a big tree person, and other McDonalds characters. Kaylee had to give them all hugs before we left.

After McDonalds we went home for some ice cream cake and presents. I was so ticked when Kaylee actually unwrapped the presents! She had a lot of fun doing so too. It was funny to see how clean she was about it. Not wanting any of the paper to stay on the floor.

Thank you Nana and Bompa for the basketball hoop!

Kaylee loves the daisy pillow I made for her. She especially loved putting things in the pouch once she figured out there was one.

Needless to say, Kaylee loved the pink frosting on her cake. She got a kick out of us singing happy birthday to her and wanted us to sing over and over again throughout the night :)

This past weekend we trekked up to Sheboygan to celebrate Kaylee and her cousin, Leilani’s birthdays. Kaylee loves her cousins!
Dueling pianos

I made the girls matching shirts and tutus for their birthdays this year and I have to say they were quite adorable in them!

Yay for present time!

Kaylee had a great time playing with the wrapping paper once her presents were unwrapped.

Peek-a-boo, I see you

Kaylee playing with her doggie cousin, Stella.

Best buddies

The birthday cupcakes were delicious! At least Kaylee and Leila thought the frosting was anyway :)

For some reason Kaylee didn’t want to pick up her cupcake to eat it. She got a little creative instead.

Before our trip to Sheboygan, Jesse’s mom had been staying with us for the past few weeks to help Jesse out while I was away on a business trip and then a Ladies trip. Kaylee loved having Grandma over and spending all that fun time together. In between my trips, Kaylee, Grandma and I went to the local free zoo. It was a neat little park with a bunch of farm animals. Kaylee loved it!

Would you believe she could get up and down from this little pony by herself!?

Swinging like a big girl

Kaylee has been practicing putting on her own pants and undies. Sometimes she gets it right, other times….

I love her face. I could stare into those pretty blues for hours!

Easter and more

2011-04-29T20:19:00.000-05:00

We had a fabulous Easter this past weekend. We got to celebrate it at my cousin Laura’s place in Batavia, IL, just to the west of Chicago. At the Super Bowl Laura had lost a bet with me because of the Green Bay Packers victory. The loser of the bet had to host a NFL themed Easter party. Packers if they won, Bears if they didn’t :) So I was super excited when the Packers actually pulled it off! Since I had been down in Texas the last 7 years I barely got a chance to see this side of my family and I missed them dearly! I’ll add that to the list of reasons it’s great to be back in the mid-west! It’s only a 3 hour drive and, man, was it worth it! We arrived around noon on Saturday and decided to check out the local attractions. They have a little zoo nearby and it’s free! So we went to check that out and let Kaylee stretch her legs a bit after the drive. It was exactly what we needed! After the zoo we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to a playground that was a minute or so from my cousin’s place. It is right on the Fox River and they had a real nice play area and a great bike/running/walking path and trails that lead to the river edge which of course Kaylee wanted to play in the river and mud. Maybe next time….

These are from the zoo.

Kaylee absolutely LOVED the reptile house

Kaylee checking out the bugs crawling around on the ground

Don't forget to hug the statues

Kaylee doing a great job walking up the stairs without holding on! She's getting so big!

Playing at the park by the river

I love this pic of Kaylee and Daddy

You know Kaylee and her love of animals! This held true for the 2 ridgebacks that my Aunt has. She loved petting them and giving them hugs. They were such well mannered doggies and tolerated Kaylee’s obsession quite well :)

My sister Kristi and her bunch stayed the night on Saturday night as well so the girls got to play all morning. They were too cute! I’m glad they get along so well.

While driving, Kaylee's new fascination is to take her shoes and socks off and then put her socks on her hands and put her shoes back on. I say, whatever keeps her happy.

We even got a chance to look through some of my grandmothers old photo albums while we were there. It was a nice trip down memory lane. Here are 2 of my favorites

Me and my sisters

My best friend in middle school, Krystin, and I at a Halloween Party

Sunday was the big Packer-themed Easter party and I got to see most of my dad’s side of relatives, which was SUPER nice! Even my Aunt flew in from Florida. It turned out to be a gorgeous day, which was great for the Easter egg hunt. I made a few items especially for this occasion including a bunch of can and bottle cozies and an outfit for our Easter bunny :)

All of the little ones lined up getting ready for the hunt

Ready, set, hunt!!

Kaylee was great at finding the eggs, until she figured out there was something inside them!

Pretty cousin Leila.

We were sad to leave so soon on Sunday, but had to get back to get Kaylee in bed at a decent hour. But we are starting to make plans to meet up again soon for a family train trip to the Shedd Aquarium!! I can’t wait!!

Let’s see, other things we’ve been up to lately… Jesse, Kaylee and I went down to the Coralville mall the weekend before Easter. It was still rainy and we needed something to do to keep Kaylee entertained. The Coralville mall is the one that has the Children’s museum. We would have gone in, but it was crazy busy! So we check out the rest of the mall instead and took a bunch of rides on the carousel…Kaylee’s favorite! She branched out from the ‘meow’ this time and rode the bunny too :)

The weekend before that, we took Kaylee to an Easter Festival at the church by her daycare. We missed out on the egg hunt, but still had fun with the games inside. We even saw Sawyer, Sammy, and Alex there!

Kaylee enjoying one of her prizes

What do you do when the weather warms up enough, but you don’t want to turn the air conditioner on yet….enjoy a popsicle

Look at those beautiful curls! Apparently Kaylee’s hair gets curlier when it’s warmer. I love it :)

Enjoying a Beautiful Day!

2011-04-26T12:58:00.000-05:00

I wrote this entry up way back in the begining of April and forgot to hit publish, silly me!

Yesterday, the weather was absolutely gorgeous! It may have been a bit overcast, but it was still in the mid-70's! Thank goodness it was a Sunday so we could go out and enjoy the warm weather! Kaylee and I got to go on a couple of walks and went to the park. Our first walk she insisted on taking the doggie out for a walk. Thank goodness she only meant her little stuffed doggie. Kaylee is plenty to handle by herself without throwing Apollo into the mix, especially at the playground!

Here is the playground we usually go to. It's at the elementary school less than a block from our house!

While we were at the playground Kaylee made herself some older friends who played with her for a while.

On our second walk Kaylee spotted a leaf flying down the sidewalk. She picked it up to take a look at it and I told her it was a leaf and it came from a tree. And you know the next thing she did was walk over to the nearest tree and try to put it back :) How endearing is that? She also hugged a few trees along the way. Silly girl!

Bye-Bye Pacifier!!

2011-04-01T19:44:00.001-05:00

I'm happy to report that Kaylee has officially given up her pacifer! Well we ceremonously threw them all in the trash today anyway! Kaylee put every single one in her mouth and sucked on it once or twice before spitting it out into the garbage can. She sucked on that last one for a few minutes before we were able to convince her to throw it away.

After all of the pacifiers were deposited into the trash can Kaylee helped carry the garbage bag out to the trash bin. Then we gave her a prize for being such a big girl!

After knocking down the pins a bunch with the ball, she decided it was just as fun to have all the pins piled on top of her.

So far everytime she has gone to look for a pacifier, I remind her that she threw them away and she normally calms down enough to not even need anything. Bedtime was a little rough though. We'll see how tonight goes :/

Happy Spring!

2011-03-30T22:05:00.000-05:00

It's been a whirl wind first part of the year for us! We've been keeping real busy getting to know our new city and we've gotten to take multiple trips up to Wisconsin to see all of the Grandparents.

It's been a while since I took a picture of Kaylee sleeping. She mainly likes to sleep on her tummy and we're lucky she hasn't figured out how to escape yet! She does enjoy waking up and jumping on her bed though :)

We've only had 1 really big snow storm since we've been here. Within a few days afterward it got warm enough to go outside to play in.

She even wanted to help shovel

It warmed up enough for the snow to melt and then it got cold again, but that didn't stop Kaylee from playing outside and hugging trees and playing with the rocks

Kaylee had fun decorating valentines for the Grandparents. She loves to color!

Kaylee loves to sit down on her floor and in the rocking chair in her room and read her books. She doesn't keep a favorite for long. Last week it was an Elmo book, this week it's Pout Pout Fish. She says 'aka puth' when the pout pout fish meets the octopus :) Too cute!

One day she really wanted me to sit down so that she could put her shoes on my feet.

Pretty smiles!

Tubby time!

Kaylee's favorite show ever is Elmo. She likes to watch the little clips of Elmo on YouTube. Her favorite is Elmo and the ducks.

Visit to Nana and Bompas in February to help Lexi celebrate her 13th birthday. She was just chillin watching some Elmo and making some tunes.

She must have been SO tired. She nearly fell asleep at the table!

One of Kaylee's new favorite places to go and play when its cold out is a place called the Playstation. Our first trip there was for my friend, Teri's, son's 4th birthday party. It was SO much fun. They have a ball pit and a giant play area with slides and tubes and all kinds of fun things. It's even designed for parents to play along too. It was exhausting, but Kaylee loved it!

You can't have a birthday party without the birthday cake! Yum yum!

Mid-March we headed back up to Wisconsin to help my sister, Kristi, celebrate her birthday. We went to a place called Above and Beyond. It's like a Children's Museum and it was fantastic! Kaylee had such fun playing there with her cousin, Lexi! I can't wait to take her back there!

They had a giant nest with all kinds of stuffed animals. She was trying to pet the deer on the wall.

They have a net tunnel that stretches above the main floor. Kaylee had no fear and made it through without any incidents :)

Playing in the Toddler/Baby room with the giant 'meow' of course!

There was a cool view of the Sheboygan Theater out the window. It's downtown Sheboygan in all it's glory :)

Up on the 4th level they had a place to play dress up and put on a puppet show. Kaylee had fun with dragon Lexi was tickling her with. She even took the dragon and pretended to tickle herself. It was too funny.

Cool mural they had on the 4th floor wall. I'm not quite sure what the hand dryers were for...

There was also an area to play school in. Kaylee put her scribbles on the chalk board.

One of the neatest things they had was a wall of plastic pins that moved in an out. So you could create fun shapes in it just by pressing the pins in. Here are some of our creations :)

Kaylee :)

After I saw this one, I thought it kind of looked like an ultrasound picture.

I wanted to share a quilt that I finished recently. This quilt has been in the works for over 2 years now and just kept sitting in my To Do or UFO (UnFinished Object) pile! I'm so happy to have it all finished and hanging up in my bedroom now.

Last thing to share this time around! Kaylee playing her version of catch! Enjoy!

Snow Day!

2011-02-02T16:07:00.000-06:00

Thanks to the 12" of snow that we got last night, I'm able to make an update to the blog :) I've had a super productive Snow Day! Shoveling done, dinner's in the crock pot, and the dishes are done :)

Last weekend we met a few friends out at the Children's Museum in Iowa City. It was really fun! I enjoyed that it was no where near as busy as the Houston Children's Museum so Kaylee could play with more things. They had a nice big section devoted to airplanes. Here is Kaylee and Sawyer flying a little plane.

These little planes were pretty cool. They had pedals in them to drive the propeller. Kaylee couldn't quite reach the pedals, but she enjoyed climbing in and out of them.

I just realized I didn't take a picture of it, but they have this tall twirly slide there that was really fun. Kaylee and Sawyer must have gone down that thing a dozen times! It's great for wearing them out and that's why she slept so great on Sunday :)

Here is Sawyer, Sammy, and Kaylee checking out the friendly turtle. It would come out from under the ledge and go up to the glass when the kids came up to it. Sammy is my friend, Teri's littlest of 2.

We also went to a carnival at a local high school this past weekend. It was a bunch of middle school bands that were doing some fund raising. Kaylee was a little on the young side for it, but she did really well. Her favorite part was watching the bands play! I was so impressed by her just sitting still and watching the bands play and clapping when they were done.

Her favorite game was the duck pond because they gave her little suckers. Yikes...sugar! :)

She also liked the plinko game with the ping pong balls.

Here are some other fun things that we've been doing lately. Kaylee is a little bookworm. She loves reading her books in the car, in her bed before falling asleep, and up in her glider chair in her room.

She also enjoys coloring in her giant coloring book she got for Christmas and she insists that I sit down and color with her. She won't color and will pat her hand on the floor while saying 'momma dit-dow', until I comply. Silly girl!

We enjoy watching all of the Packer games now that we are in the right region and they are all shown on the local channels! Kaylee was even cheering for the Packers when they defeated the Bears!

Kaylee is such an animal lover. She loves to chase Moe around the house calling him 'mee-ow'. She's even been able to get on Apollo's back, in an attempt to ride him. Thank goodness for a patient doggy! She's taken to playing 'momma' to her baby doll and the animals too. It's too funny! Here we are getting her ready for bed one night and she had to take care of everyone before she went to bed.

As a part of our Christmas presents we set up a fish tank. We had to let the water sit for a little bit before we could add the fish to make sure all the chemicals were balanced right. We are really enjoying having the tank with fish in it now! Kaylee love to watch them swim around and when they eat. She says nigh-night to them too. She's been pretty good about not slapping the glass, she just needs reminding sometimes.

We've been able to do a little bit of decorating of the house now that most of the boxes are unpacked. Instead of painting Kaylee's room again I decided to add splashes of color with wall stickers. Kaylee helped to decorate her wall.

Empty boxes make the best toys! I can always tell when she's ready for a nap or bed time. She gets her blankies and has me put them on her and says 'nite'

Happy New Year!

2011-01-09T11:28:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year from Cedar Rapids, Iowa!!

It has been a crazy last couple of months! We are now all officially moved into our new house and settled into our new jobs here in Cedar Rapids. It was a whirlwind of activity since I accepted my new position at Rockwell Collins. It was really nice having them pay for all of our moving expenses, and although I wouldn't have packed up my stuff the way they did, at least I didn't have to do it myself :)

Kaylee and I made our way to Cedar Rapids by plane. Jesse did the driving. Kaylee's getting really good about flying. It does help when the whole row is empty so she has room to move around though. I'm going to miss when she's no longer free, but the guaranteed seat for her will be much needed!

Kaylee loved looking at all the airplanes.

Our new home sweet home...somewhere under all those boxes! We absolutely love our new place and as of Dec 20th it's all ours :) We got really lucky and were able to move in and 'rent' the place right away when we got there in November. Kaylee's favorite part about our new place is the stairs! Up and down, up and down. She's getting pretty good at it, but it still makes me nervous.

Another thing Kaylee loves about the new house is the whirlpool bathtub. 'bubble! bubble!' she says when she gets in the tub

Here she is playing in our corner cabinet in the kitchen. We made it Kaylee's little play area so she would leave the rest of the cabinets alone.

November was still nice enough outside to do a little tidying up. Jesse cleaned out the gutters while Kaylee and I raked and swept. She's such a big helper!

Kaylee hasn't been much for posing for pictures lately. I ask her to smile and this is the best I get!

One morning Kaylee decided to do a little rearranging of the pantry.

Since she is new to snow and it was too cold to go out and play in it, I decided to bring some to her in the form of a snow treat :) She loved it!

Here are some pretty smiles in a pretty dress

With the age comes the sassiness! She's been testing us lately with everything. Time for mommy and daddy to learn some consistency and follow-through!

Kaylee's favorite shows to watch are still Yo Gabba Gabba and Sesame Street. She loves her Elmo! It's funny how captivated she is and how long she'll actually sit still to watch them!

She will take a break from the tv to help me sew. She's really interested in watching what I do. Gotta start her off right and early, then she'll be quilting in no time :)

Before Santa came and brought Kaylee a bunch of new toys, she found other things around the house to entertain herself with. Laundry baskets are all kinds of fun. Especially when daddy drags it around with you in it. Whenever he would stop she would say 'wee wee'

I'm so thankful to be so close to family now. We were able to make the trip up to Sheboygan in 4.5 hours, not too shabby compared to the 5 hour driving and flying time it was before from Houston. We actually got to spend Thanksgiving with my family, which hasn't happened since before I went to college! We stayed for a week and a half for Christmas too. It was so nice not having to worry about flights.

Kaylee absolutely loves all those little animated characters that sing and dance. There was quite the collection of them over at Nana and Bompas house. Although I think Bompa may have been a little tired of them after listening to all of them over and over and over during the Packer game. Thanks for being such a good sport Bompa!

Merry Christmas! She gave me a nice smile :)

Although she was a little more interested in the whole present thing this year, as opposed to her paper eating fascination of last year, she still didn't really get the concept of ripping into the presents to find out what was under that paper. So Mommy and Daddy did a lot of the unwrapping while she played. At least she wasn't eating the paper!!

Kaylee was a really good girl this year and Santa brought her all kinds of cool new toys.

Christmas day we went to Jesse's side of the family for a little while. It was really nice visiting with everyone and we can't wait to see more of them now that we are closer. Although we can't use the excuse that we live to far away to avoid family gatherings anymore, bummer ;)

We found out that not only do cabinets need locks on them if you don't want their contents strewn about, but sliding doors need them as well! Kaylee figured out how to open the sliding door out onto the patio over at Aunt Glorias house. Boy did she have fun with that!

It finally warmed up enough to go out and play in the snow, but the only problem was that it warmed up too much and a lot of the snow had melted by the time we got out there. She still enjoyed it though.

Kaylee got this one monkey from Grandma that Kaylee likes to wrestle with. The monkey wins most of the time :)

How do you get 2 toddlers to sit still while the adults play a round of Telestrations? It's the magic of ELMO :) Works like a charm!

I don't know what it was about going and staying with Nana and Bompa for that week and a half, but Kaylee's vocabulary just exploded! She went from saying a couple dozen words here and there, to saying sentences and repeating almost every word I said. It's so cool to hear her talking. Not to mention it's a ton easier to understand what she wants and what's wrong!

Catching Up - September and October

2010-11-24T08:59:00.000-06:00

There has been a ton of stuff that has been happening in my household lately. Lets see, since the last time I posted we had a visit from Nana and Bompa, Kaylee had a great time. We even got to go to the Downtown Aquarium. Kaylee LOVED looking at all of the fish and the white tiger there. Unfortunately it was rainy out that day so she didn't get to ride on the carousel. We still had a lot of fun though.

Kaylee loved it when Bompa read her stories, over and over and over and over ;) Her favorite at the time were the Sesame Street books with Elmo.

Jesse bought a new boat! It's a 20 ft trimaran. You can kind of get an idea of what it looks like in this pic. It had be stored in the water down in Corpus Christy so Jesse got all the barnacles off and repainted the bottom. He's super excited to get it in the water next summer.

Kaylee loves to drag her over sized Elmo with her all around the house.

There have been a couple of really pretty rainbows in Houston in Sept and October. A sign of good things to come :)

so pretty!

One day I had taken her mattress out of her crib in order to change the sheet and Kaylee just had a blast flopping down on it and bouncing. She also likes to pretend to sleep now. She'll lay down and put her blanket over her. She'll usually pat her back to tell me that she wants me to rub her back. So precious :)

She has been getting a lot more independent lately too. She has eaten at the table like a big girl a couple of times. She would normally climb up into her highchair when she was hungry and a few times she climbed up into the chair. So I let her eat at the table, provided she doesn't throw her food or dump her plate :) She's done pretty well with that. Some times it works better than others.

She really prefers to eat her apples whole now. The first time I let her have one she ate nearly the whole thing! I was very impressed.

Thanks to Grandma we put Kaylee in swimming lessons. Kaylee did pretty well, She always seemed to enjoy the first half of the class, then she would get cold and cranky. Hopefully we can find more swimming lessons at a warmer pool soon!

Now on to the real exciting stuff! While my parents were visiting us I went out to Iowa and interviewed with Rockwell Collins. I was offered my choice in one of the 5 different groups I had interviewed with while I was there. So I am now working for the Commercial Systems area on the new Bombardier business jet systems. I'm still learning exactly what it is that I'll be doing, but it has to do mostly with updates to current displays used on those airplanes. I'm really excited about it and can't wait to dive into it! At the beginning of October Jesse, Kaylee and I went on a house hunting trip to Cedar Rapids. We left super early on Wednesday and were lucky enough to get an empty seat next to us for both legs of our journey. Kaylee liked this MUCH better than being stuck on Momma's lap the whole time.

Trying to coordinate everything while staying at the hotel was a bit complicated. Nana and Bompa came down while we were there for the first night so we were able to hang out in their room while Kaylee slept. We were very grateful for their help. Kaylee got to play with them while Jesse and I went to see a ton of houses. On that Friday Jesse had 2 interviews at local companies. He accepted a job with CRST as a Safety Specialist.

After Nana and Bompa left we took Kaylee to a couple of the local parks to expel some of her energy. She had fun playing in the leaves. Ah, I missed the beautiful northern Fall!

This is the playground close to our new house. It had some really fun equipment, all kinds of acorns to pick up, and fun squirrels to chase around!

Check out the splash pad, for summer time fun!

We had successfully had an offer accepted on a house before we left, so we did what we had set out for :) The trip back to Houston was pretty smooth too. There was a whole row open behind us. This was really handy when she fell asleep right after take-off!

We had a lay-over at the Dallas airport and they have a fun play area for the kids. Kaylee loved playing with the older kids that were there playing.

We were able to go to Boo at the Zoo this year at the Houston Zoo. It was Kaylee's first time at the zoo and she absolutely loved it! We went with our friends Danielle and Dave and their little boy, Colin. They had little trunk or treat booths with candy for the kids and pumpkins in a lot of the animal areas. It was really cute.

Kaylee's favorite part by far was the petting area. They had a bunch of plump goats that the kids could go and pet. Kaylee ran up to them and flopped on top of them to give them a big hug! I'm very glad the goats are so good natured! They all just stood there and took it.

Happy Halloween! This year Kaylee was a most beautiful Tinkerbell. She did great in the parade at her day care and she even went trick or treating for a few houses.

One of the other girls at her school was a tinkerbell too :)

As the house filled up with boxes we had to get a little more creative with playtime, since our play area was shrinking. So I was making forts for Kaylee to play in. She thought it was really funny.

Just a few days before leaving Houston to move to Cedar Rapids I went to the quilt festival with my really good friend Kate. We actually got to go 2 days in a row this year! The first day we went with our friend Beverly and the second we met up with our friends Danielle and Cari before we headed to our class. We both have really cute new projects started and I'm excited to work on it more when my sewing room is all set up!

Here is the crazy sea of people that is quilt festival

Here's what Kate and I were making

Summer Vacation

2010-08-30T10:36:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of August we took our summer vacation. We decided to go where it was cool enough to play outside while also enjoying fabulous company. Where was this, you ask? Why no other than grand 'ol Wisconsin of course! We were there for a week and a half of fun times and great gatherings. Kaylee LOVED playing with her cousins, Lexi (12), Lily (4), and Leila (11 days older than Kaylee)!! She also loved all of the extra attention from Aunty Amy, Aunty Kiki, Uncle Nick, Nana, Bompa, Grandma, and Grandpa!

Kaylee did really well on the plane both there and back. She really enjoyed looking out the window while we were still on the ground and point out all of the airplanes and trucks. Then when we got into the air she would look out the window and point at the clouds.

The 2 little ones (Kaylee and Leila) had a blast on the stairs at Nana and Bompas house. Both girls don't have stairs at home so they were fascinated by them and thought they were the most fun ever! Especially since you can go up and down as many times as you want! Kaylee ended up with a little rug burn on her belly from sliding down the stairs too much in one day while wearing a shirt that didn't tuck in. Lessons learned!

Getting lots of love from her cousin Lily

Leila giving her sister lots of love while Kaylee watches closely

After a few days we left to stay at a cabin on Shawano Lake. Everyone enjoyed lots of fun in the sun while we were there. The weather was just about perfect! Mid to high 80's, cooling off at night...I loved it! We enjoyed going out on the boat and playing in the lake. Kaylee loved the boat and finding all of the fish in the water.

Little Miss Independent wanted to do everything by herself...good thing there's a handle on that life jacket!

Playing in the water in front of our cabin

Lexi, Lily, and I tubing


Lexi and Lily		.

When we weren't outside on the water the girls enjoyed helping out with the dishes any chance they could :)

So we had to distract them with a little Yo Gabba Gabba. They loved to dance and scream during the intro song.

I'm very thankful that my sister had brought along 2 little cars. They were quite the hot commodity!!

Kaylee and Leila learned how to climb up on the chairs while we were there

We headed into Shawano one day and visited a little petting zoo. It was basically someones large backyard full of a bunch of different animals. They had a couple mini horses, a zebra, camel, a small kangaroo, a lamma, some goats, and other other things you might expect to find. All of the girls, and me, loved it :) I was just sad we couldn't actually go in and get up closer to them. I can't wait for the weather to cool off in Houston so we can take her to the zoo!

Kaylee thought it was funny when the little goat nibbled on her fingers

Nana and Bompa stayed at the cabin with the kids one night while Kristi, Nick, Jesse, and I went out for Karaoke night :) Yep that's right! We managed to get some smiles out of Jesse and even got him up to sing a song!! Can you believe it???

Jesse and Nick at Karaoke Night

After our fabulous week in Shawano we headed back to Sheboygan and helped throw Lily's surprise 4th birthday party. It was fun watching all the little ones run around. The hit of the party was Lily's new guinea pig.

The Guinea formerly known as 'Charlie', now known as 'Winnie the'

We had a wonderful time while we were up in WI and can't wait to get back!! When we go home the grass was really long and Kaylee wanted to help Daddy mow. She pushed it up hill and everything!

Here are a few of her most recent prized stuffed animals. She likes to take them all over with her tucked in the crook of her arm. So cute :)