Colorado Trip

Several months ago I learned that my dear friend, Denise, had the first of her three daughters, Kylah, getting married this month. Matt and I knew we wanted to try and get to the wedding. Unfortunately, timing-wise it just didn't work out that we could all go, but I was able to fly out for Kylah and Adil's wedding with Sawyer. The wedding was absolutely gorgeous and so much fun! Adil is from Morocco, so they incorporated some of his food and traditions. It just didn't make sense for me to fly out just for the wedding, so we extended my stay by a couple days, so I could squeeze in as much friend-seeing as I could. Here are some pictures from my whirlwind visit. ...and I must say that you know you have good friendships when you feel so at home in two places. Obviously, Nebraska is now my home....BUT, Colorado and the deep friendships I have there feels like I just pick up right from where we left off...as if I never left despite the fact I will have been gone three years this October. Where does the time go? Thank goodness for cell phones and free minutes, EMAIL!!!!, & digital cameras and the pictures that float somewhere through space or wherever and end up right on our computer screens! As hard as it was to leave feeling like I just didn't have enough time...awaiting me at the airport were Matt and the girls with the most wonderful sign and flowers picked just for me! What could be better than that?!?!?















Kylah is Denise's middle daughter. Denise and I met at AT&T Broadband, my first job when I moved out to Denver. We worked in the same department and became friends, often meeting for Diet Coke breaks during the day. She was also Lainey's first babysitter and just a good friend throughout the years. Adil & Kylah's wedding was just beautiful. They had a gorgeous day, beautiful flowers, and delicious food. It was such a great time!














Nicole is Denise's eldest daughter (and also babysat for Lainey on occasion) and Whitney is the youngest. They were both beautiful bridesmaids as you can see. I was so glad to see both of them as well!















Adil is from Morocco, so they incorporated a lot of the Moroccan culture into the day. As part of the entertainment before and during dinner, they had a belly dancer. This wasn't just a one-time shot of Sawyer. He truly was awestruck by her!











I met my good friend, Annemarie Roy, and her girls, Emma & Madeleine, at a park because Sawyer was sick, and they just had a new baby. It was a beautiful day! We made bead bracelets and formed a girl club. :-) It made me miss my girls as we would have had a blast together!!!! (next time) :-) I went back that night after putting Sawyer to bed at my other friend's house to visit with Annemarie until the way-too-wee hours of the morning (but it was so worth it)! :-)











I got to meet 2 new babies while I was visiting...Benjamin Roy (8 weeks old) and Andrew Beatty (3 1/2 months) with his mom, Sarah.











I stayed with our good friends, the Maggio's, while in Colorado. Sawyer and I got to spend lots of fun time with them...Tracey and Nino..and their kids, Mason, Owen and Lauryn. Sawyer enjoyed the kids since he was really missing his sisters! Their lives are just a glimpse of what's to come for us...soccer practice and games, baseball, school activities, etc...but we loved every minute! Plus, they are doing some home remodeling, so I got to get a little glimpse of what that "little" project entails. Thank you for letting us make ourselves at home!











I got to visit with my friend, Tracy Gibbons. Her kids, Alex & Oliver, were in school, but Sawyer made a fast friend with their dog, Winston. He was kind and gentle with Sawyer, and Sawyer loved him!











I enjoyed a precious girls' night out with my friends, Tracey Maggio (left front), Tracy Gibbons (left back), and Sarah Beatty (right front). We could talk for hours about everything and nothing...until we started getting dirty looks and head-nods from the wait staff! (Thanks, Nino, for staying home with Sawyer!)















I let Sawyer suck on some of the Colorado rocks to get those good ol' Colorado minerals in his system before we left. :-) [I NEVER would have let my first child do this. :-) ]











Sawyer was a trooper on this little vacation. He was always being shuttled here and there. Both he and I ended up getting horrible colds while there which put a little twist to some of our visiting, but he did a great job!

















The best part of vacation was walking up the airport to baggage claim, lifting my head and seeing Matt and the girls with a wonderful 'Welcome Home Mommy and Sawyer' sign and gorgeous flowers. (I didn't think the girls were going to be with him...he had told me they were still taking naps.) When picking the flowers out at Sam's Club, Lainey told Sophie they had to pick me out the most beautiful ones...enough to make my heart just melt! I swear my little girls grew up in the week I was gone. Sawyer was just as excited to see his daddy and big sisters as I was! As wonderful as it was to visit friends and feel such at home in Colorado again...it was even better to be back with my family where I belong.

Celebrating Sophie!

Our precious Sophie turned 3 years old on Friday (September 12). It's hard to believe she's three...yet she's seemed older than 2 for quite some time now. I just returned from my trip to Colorado Thursday night (will blog soon), so we made Friday a special day for Sophie with just the family and celebrated her birthday with a party with friends today. She had quite a fun couple days! Here are just a couple reasons we LOVE our little girl!!!!

• Her smile can light up the room and has so many variations...move over Mona Lisa! One smile can look sweet and innocent yet mischievous and ornery all at the same time. This is not a recent accomplishment. She has perfected this since infancy.


• Her little spaghetti arms will wrap all the way around your neck and she will jump up onto simultaneously to give you a hug. What could be better?


• She has now started staring at me with a cheek sucked in fish-lipped expression meaning...I want a kiss..just out of the blue. How could I possibly resist that?


• She is finally 98% (well, given yesterday and today...95%) potty-trained!!!! YIPPEE!


• This little girl oozes personality, orneriness, lovability, sweetness, naughtiness, and cuteness simultaneously from every pore of her body.


• She quit taking naps at 15 months and just keeps going and going and going and going and .....


• She's a witty and smart little whipper-snapper!


• My brother Scott said he could just watch Sophie for hours, and you know, after he said that I did just that...not for hours, but for several minutes. She is fascinating. Her expressions change constantly...and are hilarious. She doesn't sit still for even a second...and she does just march to the beat of her own little drum.


• She is a wonderful friend to Lainey (most of the time), and good big sister to Sawyer (most of the time) and a daughter that makes our hearts melt (most of the time). We are all SO blessed (ALL of the time) to have Soph-a-loaf!

waking up to streamers in the doorway & a star pancake b-day breakfast



the expressions say it all here...it's just the simple joys of life!




Lainey organized the gifts & balloons just right for Sophie after dinner. She really wanted it to be special for her. You might not be able to see it (although just click on the picture to make it larger if you want) but Lainey does have her notebook and pen in hand ready to write down what gifts Sophie got from Sawyer, mom, dad, and herself. :-) Lainey gave Sophie a fur-real puppy....she was quite proud of her gift!...and Sophie liked it too...again...chilren's expressions really do say it all.



Back Row: Lainey, Sophie, Alissa, Maddie
Front Row: Nolan (in front), Parker, Ryley, Tyler
not pictured (at his flag-football game): Hunter
also not pictured b/c he was finally taking a nap: Sawyer

Sophie had a special request that my cousins [specifically,
Brandon, her boyfriend (today)] :-) come to her party.
They were happy to squeeze it into their busy day.
Brooke, Brandon, Sophie, Nicole, Jeanette, Joselyn(back)

A Day of Firsts

Pre-School

Today was Lainey's first day of Pre-School at Wee Lambs here in Gretna. It's her second (and last) year there. (Thank goodness she's not in Kindergarten yet!) I get to have one more year at home with my babe. :-) She goes three mornings a week...Mon-Wed-Fri...9-11:30. She was SO excited to get to school and ran out of the room when I picked her up exclaiming, "Mom, I had such a super fun day!" I am so very thankful that she loves school and learning.






Haircut

Today was Sawyer's first haircut as well! He did SO well. I just had her scissor cut it. I wasn't quite ready for the clipper-cut. I'm heading to Colorado this week for 7 days for a friend's wedding with Sawyer and will have the kids' pictures taken when I return so wanted to get everyone cleancut and ready now. There's something about the first cut that immediately transforms the little babes into kids. It did that with Sawyer too. And...as evidence by the pictures...he had his first sucker too since he was such a good kid. Boy...he grabbed hold of that and DID NOT let go! What a sticky hairy mess we all were when we left. :-)

Before......

During....it was a long process, but he did well

After!




Yummy 1st sucker



Lainey's & Sophie's cute new do's



First Car Ride with Buddy Nolan

Sawyer took his first solo car ride without the girls with a little neighbor buddy, Nolan, who lives right across the street. Nolan is almost 15 months old. Sawyer had a best friend right away. Nolan was a little shy and might need a little warming up to the idea, but I definitely see some future trouble-makers!

Nebraska State Fair 2008

What is there better to do on a hot (91*) windy Nebraska Labor Day than head to the Nebraska State Fair in Lincoln, Nebraska? It's only a 45 minute drive for us, and we thought the kids would enjoy it. We were right. Although the day got MUCH longer than we intended (thank goodness Sawyer can now eat table food!)..they were troopers...all three of them, and we all had a GREAT day! (Oh...by much longer...I mean, we got there at 11:45AM and were heading home at 8:30PM!) We'll head to Lincoln next year for sure. After that it will be in Grand Island...not as easy to get to for a quick day-trip...but maybe more of a little family 'vacation'...we'll see. Someday the girls may have things there for 4-H...or at least Open Class???? We'll see how ambitious I am. :-)



The girls enjoyed several shows (and honestly, we enjoyed them too). There was the stunt dog show...featured on Letterman and several other nationally-known shows. We saw The Pirates of the Caribbean diving show...quite impressive! And (in the air conditioning!) the traveling Moo-Man Comedy Kids show...very cute! Lainey was even picked out for the ventriloquist dummy to talk and sing to her!



Speaking of Nebraska...I mentioned it was a hot and windy day. We made our way in and out of the air conditioned buildings to give the kids a break from the heat. (We'll probably all come down with summer colds again!) But...I just had to take a picture of the pivot they had set up in the street misting people to cool them down. ONLY IN NEBRASKA! :-)



The had several 4-H buildings full of different animals. This happened to be the small animal building with roosters, chickens (one duck that we saw), and bunnies. (As you can see...Sawyer was not fond of all the cock-a-doodle-dooing that was going on.) The larger 4-H animals were the cows and horses which the girls found quite impressive. The exotic petting zoo was interesting...they got to touch a zebra, alpaca, emu (well...he didn't come close enough to touch..thank goodness!), itty-bitty baby goats, a tortoise, antelope things native to Africa (can't remember their real names), water buffalo, and lots of other animals. They saw camels (you had to pay to ride them)...but we only did the free things today. :-)



The Ag department of UNL had an animal birthing building...quite interesting. No large animals were giving birth when we entered (thankfully)...in fact, unfortunately, several of the animals had already left to go home to the farms they live on (this was the last day of the State Fair). But, we were able to see the triplet lambs born just this afternoon at 2PM. There were also twin lams born yesterday. There were piglets and calves born yesterday (but those were gone)...much to the girls disappointment. :-( As pictured above though, they did get to hold the baby chicks. They had a rotating incubator on display with chicks hatching constantly. It was really neat to see. THEN...I had to act like I enjoyed showing the girls the display of 10 plexiglass mice cages with varying stages of baby mice inside ranging from minutes to a day or two old. As I type it the visual makes my blood run cold and me want to gag. But, I showed them and explained it..then let Matt take it from there. Notice, no pictures. I think there should be a reduction of that species...not showing the production...man they have A LOT of babies in those litters too! UGH!



On our way to the car we saw the sand sculpture display...very cool...but the girls were beyond the point of being impressed. :-) (and Sawyer just wanted the rope) Oh...we also watched a man carve an amazing sculpture out of a block of cheese. (How do people think of doing these things?)



Of course we had to eat some of the food at the State Fair. If I had a metabolism of a freight train, I would have had fried pickles, fried snickers, fried cheesecake, (do you see a trend)... :-) (OK...it wasn't the metabolism...it was the fact that a small slice of fried cheesecake was $6 and a tiny fried pickle that I really wanted was $5...seriously?) Instead I had a walking taco for lunch and a potato sundae for dinner...just let your imaginations run. :-) Matt had a brat for lunch and prime rib dinner for supper, sharing a rootbeer float with the girls for dessert. We fed the girls before we got there for lunch, and they had treats of snow cones, samples of full-sized granola bars (score!), fruit snacks (score again!), then their first corn dogs for supper. I'm sure what we ate took a couple minutes off our lives (and hopefully nobody wakes up with bellyaches)...but hey, you can't go to the fair without some of the food, right?!



We walked through exhibits, and the girls made name bracelets and played on playground equipment. Matt saw on old baseball friend and his cousin and I an old highschool/college buddy. We ran into our neighbors and two of the girls' good friends down the street. The girls practiced milking a fiberglass cow and watched real honeybees busy working in their hives. At one point Lainey told me "This is the funnest day of my life!" (Oh...how nice it is that the simple things are still wonderful at this point!) Oh...and one more point I have to say because those of you that I talk to frequently know this has been a struggle as of late...I was brave and let Sophie wear panties all day to the fair...and she kept them dry! So, all in all it was a good day...no, I take that back...it was a FANTASTIC day!