Baby Kisses

Taylor Rose loves to kiss.  She will actually lean in to "ask" for a kiss.  Then she sits very still, sometimes literally for minutes, to absorb every tender second.  While I kiss her, she will slowly blink her eyes in a doting trance.  It is absolutely the sweetest thing!

Taylor at Chel's

While the grown-ups acted like kids at happy hour, the real kids had some fun of their own.  Christian spent the entire day with Matty (Ryan's mom, Patty) at NRH20.  They had a blast!  She met us at work and took him with her first thing in the morning.  She said this was her birthday surprise for CK, but I really think that was just an excuse.  I wish I had pictures of their day!

Chel (my mom) picked Taylor up to relieve Dimie, the kids' nanny.  They had some quality girl time for a while before Matty dropped CK off at her house.  She took some really cute shots of Tator!

I love love love this one!

CK's First Dentist Appt

It went great!  He absolutely loved it and keeps asking when he can go back.  He has 20 teeth and needs to concentrate on the back teeth more, but they all look wonderful.  I guess Ryan and I have been letting him to do it on his own too often.  He still needs assistance. 

Fun with Friends

Last Friday, we had a much anticipated HH at the good ol' Library.  I am still having trouble figuring this camera out, and decided its probably best to just use my simple camera for fun pics.  So, these pictures are blurry.  I realized later that I had my aperture setting too low (small?  whatever.), so the shutter was slow to compensate for the lack of light. Hello, flash!  Oh, well. 

Our traditional bathroom pose. I still have no idea why we all crouched down in the first picture.

Mary and Laura bought shots - WITH ICE!  Haha!

Then the next day was Miley's princess party.  Tommy, her fiance, put the whole thing together... complete with a princess bounce house. 

 (I was slam dunking CK into the basketball hoop)

We didn't get to her party until a little while after it had started.  Ryan had the 4Runner and was running around town trying to find parts for the Lexus.  Needless to say, we are now saving up for a new car.  (No, we don't finance.  That is a yucky word in our house.)  Hopefully we will have our Audi or Passat by the end of the year. 

Chatter Box

I have posted before about Taylor's way of complaining.  Usually, she gets really chit-chatty before bed.  Sometimes it turns into complaining.  I love her sweet little voice just yacking away!

And She's Up!

Taylor can sort of pull herself up.  Someone usually helps her get all the way up.  Then she grins ear to ear at her accomplishment. 

She has a little Leap Frog grocery cart toy at my mom's that she really likes.

C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N

He's got this spelling thing down.

He has the "C-H-R-I" part perfectly.  The "S" is a little hard for him. 

We are still working on the "A-N". 

Christian is 4.0012 years old!

After a month of birthday surprises for Christian, I think we are officially done celebrating.  First, we went to the farm the weekend before and revealed his birthday mini-pig to him.  (What an awesome pet she is, btw!)  Then, on the actual day, some of my girlfriends stopped by to meet Sarah and introduce Frankie the pup.  The neighbor had dropped off a new football for CK; Ryan brought home Babe the movie and a few small toys; I just happened to make a sponge cake with a berry sauce topping, so it sort of turned into a little party.  DeAnna even brought a gift - a finger skateboard and a Transformer costume.  Perfect!  Then Grandad and Mattie came over one day to give CK his gift - a CoolSchool keyboard.  Later, Mattie took him to NRH20 for an entire day since she missed his birthday party.... which leads us to this post. 

His birthday party. 

We kept it easy.  His nanny and her girls had friends in town.  His neighbor friends were out of town and, since we just moved, he is short on friends right now.  Luckily, I have a pretty hefty family.  Pops, Penny, Kyle, Kelli, Chel (who brought Dave), and Candice (who brought Frankie the pup) all came over for cupcakes and cake.  Christian had some great gifts!  Pops and Penny gave him a few different Lego creations.  Chel gave him a Wii Tony Hawk skateboard and game, plastic boats for the bathtub, and bubbles.  Candice and Ricky gave him a really cool lap drumset and a pretty fierce water gun.  After eating, we headed down the road to the lake's beach.  It was very hot so the water felt really nice!

To keep CK from getting too hyper pre-party, we turned on a movie in his room. (Since we are limited in our itty bitty house, his huge closet is also his little entertainment center)

How cute are they???

Cupcakes, Cake, Cards, and CK

Inappropriate

I debated over putting this story on here because it may be inappropriate for the public.  But, since I use this blog as my virtual photo album and memory log... I am going to post this anyway.

Saturday night, I was sitting on the couch looking down at my phone. Christian walked up with his hands open so gently, as if he was holding a tiny bird's egg. Politely telling on himself, he said "Momma, I found it so its mine. Okay?" (He knows not to get into other people's things, so he must have felt guilty.) I brushed him off for a second. Then his new toy caught my eye. OH-MA-GAW! I cracked up!!!!! He said "Feel it... its kinda sticky. Pell it. (smell it)" I grabbed my phone to text Ryan about what had just happened. I looked up again, and he had come back with a yellow ball.  He had made a hat...

I told him it was a snake catcher, but didn't say much because I didn't want to embarrass him. He was so sweet and proud. I couldn't hold my laughter in, though. I literally had tears from laughing so hard!  When he said "Momma!  Its not funny!", I told him I was laughing at a funny text. We nonchalantly put it away and didn't make a big deal out of it. 

Sunday School

Back when Ryan and I first became members of our church, we took a quiz to discover our spiritual gifts.  Mine revealed teaching.  This is great since I will have to teach for a certain number of years before I can become a school counselor.  I also really enjoy it.  So we signed up to teach Sunday School - Christian's class.  It works out great for him since he is high-needs and does best when he can be with me. We have been at it for about five months now.  I absolutely love it!  Ryan tolerates it for me.  For some reason, kids seem to see Ryan as an easy target.  He gets picked on a lot in class.  Kids LOVE him! 

This was a long haul for him all the way up the stairs to the indoor play area!  Haha! 

 We have so many ADORABLE kids in our class.  There is a group of girls that all play together.  They decided to chase Christian.  Ah, it starts early!