Visit with family and more birthday fun!

I get to see my sister Amanda once a year. She's been in S. Korea teaching English for the last 3 years and just went back for a 4th. But she gets to come home in between stops and starts in her contract. She and Gary made a stop in Ireland to see his family and arrived in IL to this much snow at my parent's house!

We got to go to Il for a long weekend to see them as well as the Grays and have a little birthday party for Brady while we were there. I have a whole bunch of random pictures that aren't really in any order so here we go:

Erica brought a Yoda for Brady's birthday!

Ava and Preston (Ava's other cousin) were tending to a "dying" Brady. It was so funny-they were really getting into it and this went on for a long time in the play room.

Collin in the bib that Amanda and Gary brought from Ireland for him :) The look on his face makes it seem like he did just do something.....

Grandma G with me and Collin

Brady-testing out his new scooter with cuz Ava

Little stinker Sadie! What else can I say about this little cutie? That face says it all!

Our usual attempt to get all 4 kids together for a picture-this is probably better than our last attempt!

Look out-she's got a chain saw coming right for the baby! Remember what I said about Sadie being a stinker....exhibit A! I love the look on Melissa's face too!

One of multiple attempts to take a picture of our family with Brady and his cake. After about 10 shots Aaron walked out of it and said "Enough pictures-just light the candle and sing!" Ok, I don't remember exactly what he said but he thinks it's ridiculous that we always have to "pose" for a picture for everything!

Brady wanted another Toy Story birthday again this year so that's what we did!

Grandma G trying to feed Collin and all he could do was stare at Pop Pop! How is it that the women are the ones taking care of these babies and they just want to play with the men?

Great picture of my mom and sister. I'm sad that we didn't get one with all 3 of us sisters and our mom. I guess we'll have to wait until next year? :(

My dad eating some flavor of dried crickets.....nasty!

Gary and Aaron playing some soccer on the kinect-the sports ones were fun, the dance one was Ok (I like Just Dance for Wii better I think) and the animals one for kids was boring and way to hard to get set up before actually playing.

These 4 played together so well all day!

Brady and Preston dancing to "Who let the dogs out" on Just Dance for kids. Brady got it for his birthday and he LOVES it!

Aunt Amanda and Brady

Aunt Amanda and Collin

We had a great weekend filled with lots of food, fun, family, games, laughing and staying up WAY too late. It has been so nice living closer so that we can go back on a 4 day weekend and visit. We are looking forward to being able to come for Ava's birthday next month and Disney on Ice in St Louis! :)

Small birthday celebration and off topic story... :)

The other night we celebrated Brady's birthday at home. We had a fun dinner and let him open presents that he got in the mail and also the ones from us.

Birthday crown he got at school (you can still see the remnants of his purple eye)

He got to pick what he wanted to eat for dinner and he picked pizza of course. It was his idea to put the pepperoni in the shape of a 4.

Aaron and I gave him a new booster seat for the car and I've never seen a kid so excited over a car seat! We were going to buy a new booster for him anyway but Aaron suggested we give it to him for his birthday and I thought that idea was kind of lame! But as it is obvious here, he loved it and it was the perfect big gift for him to open!

The reason why I am mentioning this about Aaron is because he has a history of designating gifts that are practical that we were going to buy anyway as a birthday or Christmas present.....ie, I was looking at new shoes while we were black Friday shopping one year and he told me to buy them and they would be my birthday present. Then I needed a new winter coat and he told me that would be my Christmas present.....lame!!! Did I mention that he also bought himself new shoes on that same trip and they were not designated as any kind of present because he just had his birthday 2 weeks before that??? Anyway, I know it's just "stuff" but still, he was just getting himself out of having to think of something else to get for me! I really am not bitter about this, I just think it is funny more than anything else now that I think back to that shopping trip.... :) And he always lets me buy whatever I want for myself anyway so I really have no room to complain!

Ok, how did this post get so off topic??? We are having a bigger family party with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents later this month when we go back to IL for a visit! More pictures to follow (my mom will be around with her camera so that's a guarantee!).

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone has a great Valentine's Day! As I mentioned before, I have really gotten into Valentine's Day this year. I guess I have 3 reasons to love "love" this year! Here's two of my reasons:

I made these pictures for our family this year of my two cute boys! As much as I complain about being the only girl in the house I love these 2 sweethearts to pieces! :)

And here's my third reason:

Wow-we looked so young 7 years ago!

I'm making a fun fondue dinner for us tonight and some yummy chocolate and raspberry cupcakes. I told you I was obsessed with the chocolate raspberry thing lately! And luckily for me, that's the hubby's favorite too!

Happy Birthday Brady!

You never really know how much love you have for your child until he arrives. I knew that I would love him but I never imagined how much. Even though our life was great before him, I could not imagine my life without him the moment we had him.
It's crazy how women go through 9 months of discomfort of all kinds in pregnancy, painful labor for long hours and then the delivery and recovery to have this sweet little miracle to make you forget about all of it!
It was kind of scary at times when I had Brady, especially since he was my first. But even after the 10 hours of labor, 2 hours of unsuccessful pushing and an eventual c-section, most of that went out of my mind the moment I held him and realized that I had been given the best gift ever!
That was 4 years ago and it seems like it just flew by. Now we have added another sweet little boy to our family and it is fun to see Brady with Collin and how great of a big brother he is. I love him so much and I am so proud of the sweet little boy he has become. I can't wait to see what the future holds for him. I know he won't be little forever, but for now I am sure enjoying the time I have to spend with him and don't want it to pass too quickly!

Cookie Touchdown!

I hope everyone had a fun Superbowl Sunday! We had a couple friends over and the house was full of kids playing and all of us watching the game and eating some good food! This was my little idea I had for a dessert. I wanted to make some homemade Oreos and I decided I was going to try and make them look like footballs. Instead of rolling them into balls and baking, I rolled them into logs and pinched the ends a bit to make a football shape when they were done baking. I then put the frosting on for the stitching on top and they turned out great! Fun and yummy! One of the little boys that was here said "Hey, there's footballs over there you can EAT!"

Purple Eye

So we had a little bit of a scare last night. Of course, Aaron is out of town. That's when something always happens!

Brady was all ready for bed and settled down (a hugh accomplishment all in itself!). All he had to do was brush his teeth. I told him to go down the hall to the bathroom and I'd be in there in a minute to help him. I had to set the baby down on the floor so I had both hands and then I went the bathroom. I was just in time to hear a big fall and crying. I was only like 5 steps behind him.

Apparently, he opened the drawer to get his toothbrush and paste out and then tried to step up on his stool. Somehow, he slipped off and hit the corner of the open drawer right next to his eye! 5 seconds after this happened I looked at it and it was already swelling really big and it was dark purple! How could that happen so fast?? It was like the size of a marble sticking out of his head! (Did not take a picture at this stage of course because I was too busy freaking out!)

I of course went to the worst case scenario of what was happening and thought that blood would start pooling up behind his eye and he would go blind........it was pretty scary looking! (Yes, I know I was overreacting but I didn't panic in front of him!)

I called my Mom (Aaron was flying so I couldn't reach him at all) and told her to get on Skype and help me figure out what to do. We got ice on it right away and left it on for over an hour. He wasn't even crying for that long so it couldn't be that bad right?

After talking to Grandma and Grandpa for a while and icing it, he seemed to be doing much better. I mentioned in passing that I wondered if he would have a black eye in the morning and this made him cry almost more than when he got hurt. "I don't want a black eye Mom!" He just kept saying it. I tried to explain that his eye wasn't going to be black but we just call it a black eye because it's dark around your eye.

He then informed me that it should be called a purple eye because he saw it on a cartoon and it was purple-not black!

I took this picture right before he went to bed last night and the swelling was almost all gone and it turned from dark purple to greenish with a red spot in the middle.

This morning it looked even better. No purple eye for him! Aaron felt bad that he wasn't here when I told him about it last night. He was already feeling guilty leaving us in a blizzard to fend for ourselves without a snow blower! :) No worries-I took care of it with a little help! It's a good thing he's coming back tonight before something else happens.... ha ha