Chloe walking

Over the past week, Chloe's walking skills have really taken off. She is now walking all over the place!

(Please excuse the disorderliness all over my house ... Audrey & Carter made a "wipeout" obstacle course through the whole upstairs.)

Chloe's 1st birthday party ... a few pics

Just a few memories of her 1st birthday party ....

I have a thing about making the cake. I enjoy it, so I always make the birthday cake myself!

And on your first birthday, you get your own personal cake!

It hit triple digits on party day, so what else could we do but get out every pool we owned? :)

(Even the grown-ups all stuck their feet in the pool!!)

I tried to get a picture of the cousins together and looking at the camera but this is as close as it got.

Here is cousin Brooke playing in the water.

And Chloe.

Chloe was having so much fun and got so excited she bit her brother on the cheek and left teeth marks ... fortunately she didn't break any skin. Little vampire!

Opening some presents, sort of.

Chloe and "Mama"

And eating some cake ... again!

We were so glad to have Chad's parents here from Minnesota, Chad's sister & bro-in-law, Molly & Josh (and their daughter Brooke) from Long Island, and of course my parents, brother, and uncle from good old Pennsylvania. Thank you all for coming and making it a fun and special day! We love you!

oy.

Well, well, well.

We are back from Ocean City! Vacationing with children is always ... hmm, interesting and of course tiring, but we had a really great time, and were really glad to spend the time with Chad's parents too.

And now my hard drive is breathing its last breaths ... I will be posting more when Chad actually gets it functioning well again. I am SO GLAD that Chad knows how to deal with computer issues because I am an idiot when it comes to that kind of stuff. He is trying to save all my stuff before it dies, and then he will replace the hard drive. So blogging is a challenge right now.

But don't you worry, I'll be back with more pictures than you will ever want to see ... :)

PHEW!

Wowzers, this has been quite a busy few days. And again, not a photo to be found in this post ... sorry, I'll have to post some later on! (and then all you friends will be inundated with more pics of my family than you'll ever want to see ...) :)

Chad's parents came Thursday night, we spent Friday at BJ's and cleaning up and preparing, and on Saturday we had Chloe's first birthday party. In the 100 degree heat. Probably the 1st of many hot birthday parties - the joys of being born in July, I suppose. But we had a great old time anyhow. It was really fun to have Chad's family and mine together.

This morning we had Chloe dedicated at our church and since we had a TON of food left over, we had another semi-impromptu gathering at our house with all the family that came to the dedication along with the pastor & his wife. Only this time it was only 95 degrees out. :) Boy, am I ready for the fall. Well, at least the fall weather. Anyhow, after lunch I did 4 loads of laundry, gathered clothing for me & the kids, got some food together to bring along, etc. and tomorrow morning we are headed with Chad's parents to Ocean City for "vacation" ... hopefully it will truly be a vacation! I don't know how on earth we are going to fit all of us and all of our stuff in our van ... but one way or another we will get there. I'm looking forward to the beach and boardwalk!

In other news, Chloe is about this close to walking. Today she was taking a lot of steps and I think in the next week or so here we will have a walker. I think those little baby steps are just the cutest!

I don't know if I'll have internet access this week ... if not - see you in a week!

If she only knew ...

Today Audrey & Carter were begging to go outside to play. Mind you, we had spent a few hours outside playing with friends midday, but now it was 4:30 and their internal clocks were saying "let us outside!"

I was stalling because, frankly, I did not want to go out into the 90-odd degree heat AGAIN. I finally said - "Audrey, I really don't want to go outside to play again."

Audrey paused and said "You know, Mommy, you can't always get to do everything you want to do all the time."

It was all I could do not to laugh my head off right then and there. Always doing everything I want to do? Oh my. If only ...

And then I took the kids outside to play. She can't claim that I only got to do what I wanted to today!

The dollar store

Yup, another Carter story. They say such funny things at this age!

Yesterday I took Chloe to get some pictures taken and Audrey tagged along to help out. While we were gone Chad & Carter ran a few errands.

When I got home I asked Carter where they went. He said they went to the dollar store (which is not one of the places Chad mentioned heading to).

So I asked Chad - "did you go to the dollar store?" and he said no. I said - "Carter said you went to the dollar store, I wonder why he's mentioning that?" But sometimes Carter says random things about places he went 6 months ago, so I just chalked it up to that.

As I put him to bed last night, I said "Buddy, did you have a fun day today? What was the most fun?"

He usually doesn't answer really because he doesn't have a good sense of what "today" means (again, he might mention something that happened two weeks ago ...) So to jog his memory (and help him understand what "today" means) I brought up his lunch out with Daddy at the pizza place ... and again he brought up the dollar store.

I said, "Carter, Daddy said you didn't go to the dollar store today."

He looked at me and said "Yes, we went to the bank."

Aha. Dollar store = Bank! Chad did mention a trip to the bank ...

It does make sense when you think about it. You go to the grocery store to get groceries, and you go to the "dollar store" to get dollars.

Never know just what he might say next.

Let her eat cake

Hey, guess what everyone? I'm one!

My big party isn't til next week but we had fun celebrating just the 5 of us today.
My family got me a princess cake.
Mommy took all my clothes off because she knew that I was gonna make a big mess!

When I saw that piece of cake, I didn't mess around. I picked up the whole thing and shoved it right into my mouth.

It was really good!

Why is everyone laughing at me?

Hmmm, how much can I fit in my mouth?

Delish.

That was really good, now what else can I eat?

Maybe this plate will taste good too?

Hmm... these hands are feeling pretty disgusting now.

Come on now, clean me up already!

And I mean now! My bozo hair has got to go!

Aaaah, much better now. :)