Head Shots

Grammie has been asking for some head shots of the kids.  She has some matching picture frames and she wanted pictures of each of the grandkids wearing solid color shirts and a white background.  

We were over at Grammie & Grandad's house to celebrate Michael's birthday and I took advantage of the time.  Grammie put up a white sheet on her couch and I had packed a clean shirt for each of them to wear.  

They did great.  Colin and Maggie were in a great mood and were more than happy to smile for the camera.

I did some quick editing of the pics and sent them off to be printed for 80 cents.  Not bad!

We hope you like them Grammie!

Colin at 3 years 2 months

Maggie at 1 year 4 months

Busy weekends

 Lately our family calendar has been pretty busy!

We are trying hard to enjoy these last few weeks of really awesome weather.  Not that triple digit, icky hotness we had all summer long.

So, we've gone to a Royals baseball game for the past 2 weekends and also had a wedding this weekend, too.  Our house might need a little bit (okay, maybe a lot) of cleaning, but the kids and us are having fun, so that's what really counts, right?

We are still doing gymnastics on Monday nights.  Colin has enjoyed himself, but we're not so sure we're at the right place.  We might try another gymnastics place in the spring maybe.  It's a very big company and Colin doesn't do that well when he feels overwhelmed.  We'll see.

On another note...I am SOOOO glad we moved into this awesome neighborhood.  I can't wait to really raise our kids here.  We have amazing neighbors, safe streets, and the Parkville community is great.  We have some young kids right next door to us and across the street.  Colin and Maggie are the youngest, but there are some 5 and 7 year olds that play outside ALL THE TIME!  Colin has been pretty hesitant in the past, but always asks if his "friends" are outside and if he can play too.  I think we've finally overcome that learning curve and now he has no problem going over there by himself and joining in on the fun.  Tonight Colin was chasing around another boy for hours.  It just makes my heart burst when I see him laughing so hard and really having a great time.  We've found our "forever" home, that's for sure!

I snapped some pictures of the kids before we headed out to the wedding yesterday.

Brian was a groomsmen in the wedding, so he was gone fairly early in the day to do pictures and such.  I got the kids all gussied up by myself and we even got to the wedding on time, woo hoo!

 Snazzy looking kiddos.

Please don't judge, I bribed them with suckers.  And if you look closely, Maggie has sucker-juice all over her sweater.  It was an awesomely sticky mess!

And, you get a look at my newest craft project...making Maggie headbands with bows on them.  

The flowers are made of felt and the headbands are foldover elastic.  They are really simple to make (when I can find the time) and she will keep them on her head, which is the best part.

 Another groomsmen snapped this picture of us right before the wedding.

It was a quick ceremony, thank goodness, because the kids were very curious why Daddy was up front and we weren't.  They did great and were ready to party after the ceremony.  There was a 2 hour break between the wedding and the actual dinner/dancing, so I had my hands full trying to keep them occupied.  Colin got his fill of cookies, cheesecake bites, and cheese cubes.  Maggie got none of the above.  Poor thing!

 Daddy with his kiddos, bustin' a move.  We started our own little dance party by our table.  

 Breakdance time....

 I love seeing the kids just being totally carefree and having so much fun!

 Maggie and I dancing the night away...

(until 7 pm when Grammie & Grandad took them home) 

:)

Very soon after this picture was taken, there were tons of kids on the dance floor.  

Colin and Maggie had a great time dancing for a bit.

We can't wait for Chris and Caitlin's wedding in June 2013.  

The happy couple, Brett and Andy.

We love hanging out with these two, and they regularly will watch the kids for us if we need a night out.  We know soon that will come to an end, when they start a family of their own.  Then, we can have a huge party at our house, with tons of kids!

Yardwork

 Tis the season!

Brian and I just love getting outside and working in the yard.  And, we have some major work to do at our new house.  The lady that lived here before didn't really tend to her landscaping at all.  Not only did she have  greenery that was not kept trimmed, they aren't even good looking greenery to begin with.

So, we have decided to do the best we can and just tear everything up and start over in the spring.

It's going to take some time, but we are excited to get some color and pretty bushes in our yard. 

The HUGE bushes in our front yard, completely covering up our front windows so there's no light coming in the windows nor any breeze.

We tried to just use our bush trimmer, but we are going to end up needing a saw of some sort.

This is a project for another weekend...

 Then while we were digging around in the dirt, we came across this seriously LONG root that extended almost the entire front of our house.  Colin did the honors and drug it up the hill in the backyard.  He is such a good helper!

 Ugh!  Daddy, I could use a little help here!

 The kids and I were just hanging out before dinner on Sunday and Brian captured this cute picture.  

I just love the ages of our kids right now.

Challenging, yet lots of fun!

Colin was sitting on our front porch and Maggie just walked up and sat right next to him.

I ran inside to grab my camera, hoping to get a good picture of the 2 of them together...

Instead, whenever I had Maggie sit down, she would get up in one second.

So, here's a picture of Maggie walking away from the steps and Colin getting tired of saying "cheese" for the millionth time.

Ha!  Someday I will get a good picture of the 2 of them...

Our 6th Anniversary

Last week was our 6th anniversary.

We didn't do much on our ACTUAL anniversary, which was the Monday of labor day weekend.  I had the day off, Brian had to work, so we really didn't see much of each other anyway.

We took the kids to the pool one last time (both Colin and Maggie are turning into quite the water-bugs), and then we also ended up going to Grammie and Grandad's for some barbeque.  

We just exchanged cards at the end of the night, and went through some of our older anniversary cards, just for giggles.  It was pretty funny seeing how our lives have changed in just this short amount of time.

Changed...for the better, of course :)

We went out for our anniversary just this past weekend.  We did, what is a rare occurrence around this house, a "date night".  

Brian got up at 3:30 am for work on Saturday so he could get off around noon and be ready for an early matinee movie.  I dropped the kids off at Grammie's house for their naps.  

We went to see the movie "Lawless".  It actually was a really good movie, but was pretty gruesome at times.  It was set in the Prohibition times and involved a family of bootleggers and their lives.  I only had to cover my eyes a few times during the movie.  Brian would let me know when I could look...

We then set out to use our Groupon for Em Chamas.  I had called to make reservations earlier in the day, for 6:30 pm.  We walked in at 6:30 pm, were told we didn't have any reservations made, and that it would be a 1.5 hour wait.  Awesome.  That's just about how our luck goes!

So, we ran home, grabbed our On the Border gift cards, and picked up some food, to-go.  

We hustled home so we could put Colin to bed and ate our food at 8:15 pm at our kitchen table.

Ended up being so-so food (you know, an hour after we bought it!), but great conversation and some fun memories made.

After 6 years, I'd say we appear to have this stuff figured out...

but, we don't!!

We've got 2 beautiful children, awesome friends and family, stable jobs, a wonderful house & neighborhood.

The ups and downs come along the way, but we've got each other!

Thanks for 6 wonderful years, Brian!!

Love you!