Father's Day and a Birthday!

Okay, first a bit of normalness--here is a picture of me with Kelsey in our new shirts.

One day, everyone was dressed in brown but me.  It was cute.

 I had the privilege of making all of the arrangements for celebrating Joshua's 3rd birthday as well as celebrating Father's Day.  I wanted to make sure that everyone got the proper recognition and love, even though they had to share the holiday.  Here they are with their gifts: Josh got a coloring book and counting cards while Steve got a new (fitted--since he lost weight) Sunday shirt and a handsome work shirt.

 Steve got to choose our meal and dessert, but since we wanted Josh to feel special too, we called everything "Birthday ___"  For instance, here we have "Birthday pitas"....

 ...a "Birthday picture"....

 ...and "Birthday Apple Pie!"

This is the time Josh was born.

 The following week was pretty normal, though Josh would come over to me and say "It's my birthday!"

 On Friday, we decided that we would take a special trip downtown.  Since traffic is atrocious, we haven't been spending a lot of time downtown, but our purpose in going was twofold: we heard that Garrett's Popcorn was drool-worthy (which it WAS!) and we wanted to try out Pizza Persona again.  We loved both stops and the kids did pretty well too!

 Saturday the 23rd was the day that we planned Joshua's party.  We sent out about a dozen "Monstrously Fun!" invitations, and made monster cupcakes.

Party balloons!

We loved having Emilia, Avery and Carter come for the party.  They were excellent guests!

Here we are coloring party hats for "Pin the Hat on the birthday boy"

 Here is Emilia being blindfolded.

 Carter came the closest.

 After playing Red Light, Green Light and shooting hoops for prizes, we sat on the floor in the kitchen where we ate our monster cupcakes.  The kids all mostly liked licking the icing off, but they were a hit!

Happy birthday Joshua!  We are looking forward to the next many many years that we get to celebrate with you!

May Happenings

Josh is potty-trained now!  WAHOO!  I have to say that I LOVE not changing two sets of diapers. You can see he was terribly excited about wearing his new Cars underwear...

 Sassy has a bad habit of pulling down all of the books from the shelf near her bed.  Most of the time, I remember to pull the pak-n-play away from the shelf, but when I don't, a disaster ensues.

 She also likes hats.

 I am beyond entertained when I find her like this.  She is stuck between the treadmill and the wall, but she usually stays pretty content.

 Playing on the floor with dad.  She loves to give hugs.

 Over the Memorial Day weekend, we visited my parents and siblings for Eric's High School graduation. It was fun to be with everyone, show off Kelsey's walking skills, read books through the ceremony (sorry Eric, but it was really boring and everyone else was doing it....), and then party on Monday with friends and family.  We also loved seeing Steve's sister's family (the Coons!) and putting together the Eric-growing-up picture collage.

This, unfortunately, is the only picture I took that weekend, and it is of Scott and Steve bonding over pork chops and applesauce.

 Josh is ever my good little cooking helper.  He always talks about how grandma made him his apron.

 Kelsey's hair is coming in, but veeerrrryyy sllllooooowwwwwlllllyyyy.  It's cute and Steve actually got a bow to stay in it yesterday!

Gosh, I have about a dozen videos for you, but the uploader is taking hours.  Maybe another time...