Birthday Mania!!

We celebrated March birthdays this past Saturday on Kole's 1st birthday. I was a great day of good food(Pizza Ranch) and good conversation.


Here is Kole with his first birthday cake!!

The rest of the March birthdays. Susan, Ella, me and Dad.

Ella enjoying her own personal princess cake.

Kole with his lawn mower that he received as a gift. He loves it. He can even pull the cord!

Our Big 3 Year Old!!

What a blessing Ella is to our lives. I can't believe she is three already. It is going way too fast. She has informed us now that she's three there are many things she can do. Such as not sit in her booster seat at the table.(notice she is sitting in it at breakfast) She also believes that she will now be able to go to school with Addi and Daddy as well. She had a very special donut for breakfast and was able to open her presents right away this morning. She is modeling the new birthday shirt. The book bag was a highlight since she has been carrying one around constantly since our trip. She fills it with her 'treasures' which range from books and toys to sunglasses and jewelry.

Kole is walking!!!!

After many weeks of cruising around furniture and lunging from thing to thing he has finally started walking. He is doing more walking than crawling now. It's amazing how fast it happened. He got a lot better over the weekend and then spent all day doing it yesterday with Grandma. He is so interested in getting better right now that he isn't getting stuff quite as much. He also wins the prize for our child that walked the earliest. I realized that the order they walked was in the direct relationship to how much they weighed. Kole is the thinnest and walked the earliest whereas Addi was the chunkiest and walked the latest. Here is a little clip of him in action.

Ideas for a snow day!

Say What?

This last week I have noticed the girls have some interesting words that they use. For example:

Addi-"Mom I need to rememberize that verse for Pioneer Club next week." (memorize)

Ella-"I would like a Kbar for snack" ( granola bar)

Addi-"The tubberware is on the counter." (tupperware)

Ella-"Let's read Junie D Bones" (Junie B. Jones)

I think my favorite would have to be when we were driving past a pasture with buffalo in it and Ella yelled to me very excited Mom I just saw a lion!

Odds and Ends

I never got time to finish the last two days of our trip. I am finally having time to sit down and write about it after all the unpacking is down and the laundry washed and put away. Thursday and Friday we did go on any large outings, but with the kids around there is always some excitement.

Kole experienced his first black eye while we were there. He came into contact with the edge of the futon. He was not pleased. As we were boarding one of the planes on the way home a man said to Trav 'I bet the other guy looks worse.'

The girls had great fun trying on Grandpa's glasses.

On Thursday afternoon some of the people in the park had a party for Bruce and Pauline's 50th. I wasn't able to go since it was during nap time, but Trav and Addi got to go and help celebrate. One lady made this really neat picture of a suit and a dress out of folded dollar bills. There was also a great big ice cream cake!

Friday was Bruce and Pauline's anniversary. We started the day by doing a yummy breakfast buffet at Fred's. Ella really wanted to know who Fred was, but was content enough to eat anyway. After breakfast we headed back to the trailer while Bruce and Pauline went to a dr appointment. I spend time packing and Trav got Kole to sleep. At one point Trav noticed Ella playing in my purse and asked her what she was doing. After awhile she responded nothing and we thought nothing of it. About 45 minutes later I was getting something out of my purse and noticed that the girls one had one vitamin left in their container. A little earlier there had been 6 multivitamins and two colostrum. Yes Ella had eaten all, but one of the multivitamins. Then we noticed that her face and ears were bead red. Then from her wrists to her hands were red as well as her knees and elbows. I had Trav call Poison Control. The only problem was we didn't know what we in the vitamins, because we left the bottle at home. Trav either wanted to make her throw up or drink lots and lots of water. The Poison Control guy convinced him not to and just told us to feed her so she had other things in her stomach. His last bit of advice was not to give her any vitamins for like 5 days since that's how many she took. After about an hour the red coloring went away. She has had some pretty interesting bathroom trips since then, but otherwise is fine. We found it odd that she left one and didn't eat them all. This was her response 'I wanted sister to have one!' Yikes we just never know with that girl.

Addi, Pauline and I continued our day with a trip to a flea market to get t-shirts. We stopped at an orange grove to take a picture of Flat Addi for school. The groves are all over down here. It is quite unbelievable. Then we ended our day with supper at Bob Evans.

Our flights home were great. Both landed early and Kole even slept on the one from Atlanta to Minneapolis. Ella did get a bloody nose as we were getting off the plane, but we survived that. On the way back to Iowa we stopped at the outlets to do a little shopping and survived that even though one of our children (who will remain nameless) thought it would be fun to run around the store and slam the dressing room doors. We finally made it to home sweet home at about 9 and it never felt so good to sleep in our own beds.

Heading Home

We are all through security and are sitting and waiting to get on our flight here in Tampa. Hopefully everything goes smoothly since we only have 45 minutes in Atlanta to get on our connecting flight. The kids are enjoying the kids play area while we wait. We should be back to cold Minneapolis by 3:30 this afternoon.