Merry Christmas (in July)

So today was our Christmas in July party with our friends from the Racine Family Club.It's our third year hosting the party so I've kind of made it an annual event. The kids absolutely love it! We decorate cookies, make a holiday craft and have a gift exchange. Here's Em all decked out in her reindeer antlers...

9 months

This month has been huge for Garret! He has now mastered the art of "real" crawling and it's ever so cute when I catch him doing the army crawl which is seldom anymore. He has a very LOUD voice, happy but just loud. He loves to clap his hands and even just started waving bye bye. He WANTS our food! I mean right off our plates but the poor thing still doesn't have any teeth and no signs of them even peeking through. Garret loves to snuggle and give hugs. His kisses have been hard to come by unlike last month but my heart just melts when he lays his head on me. Oh, and I swear I heard him last night say Mama as he was crawling towards me in the kitchen. John even stopped and thought he heard it too. But that was just once so who knows, wishful thinking :)

Dancing Queen

We attended a wonderful wedding yesterday for a dear friend. Lindsay made a beautiful bride and the wedding was full of so many little details. Emily has been waiting for this wedding for a long time! She was so excited that we found a dress that had the wedding color, cornflower blue, in it. (Who even knew there was a color named that?) She wanted her hair done up and was all excited about the reception! She couldn't wait to dance with the "girls in blue" as she called the bridesmaids.

Em and I went to the actual ceremony while John stayed home with Garret, which was definitely a good choice. The church is old so no A/C. There's no way Garret would have done well in the heat. After the ceremony we went home to relax a bit and then brought Garret over to Uncle Steve and Aunt Sara's house so Em, John and I would be able to enjoy ourselves. (Sorry Lindsay, I know you wanted him there :( And thanks Steve and Sara for watching him it was a huge help!) Here's a pic of us before heading off to the reception.So the details. The wedding theme was golf which was so cute and fit them "par-fectly" as the Hershey bar wrappers said! Em was in heaven with all the sweets. There was a candy bar/table where you filled your own little bag (this was huge since I really limit those kind of sweets for her) along with the Hershey Bar that was at each of our place settings. The food was great as usual for Roma and the cake was phenomenal. (Maybe I'll have to splurge and order one for my sad day coming up, the big 3-0!) Between eating all the candy and coloring in the Coloring Book Lindsay created, Em was getting very anxious for the dancing to get started. Well let me tell you once it did, it was nearly impossible to pull her off the dance floor. She is definitely my little Dancing Queen. She hears a beat and goes with it! She danced with the bride, the groom, the matron of honor, the other "girls in blue", her daddy and me, and even some of the "guys in blue". She even had one of them copying her dance moves, which made her night!
Here's a pic I "borrowed" from the photographer's face book. Congratulations Lindsay and Joe, we couldn't be happier for you!

5th of July?

So we came back on Monday, the 5th of July, which apparently became the day of celebration here in Racine. Lucky for us though because I was still able to take Em to see some fireworks since we missed them the night before. We ended up meeting some friends down at the beach. Em absolutely loves her bud Cameron and can't get enough from him. I think she's even learning how to push his buttons, silly girl! Oh and his sister, Kait, Em adores her so much. She even claims Kait is her big sister now! She's so great with the kids. Hopefully we'll get to see more of her this summer.

4th of July

We headed up north to celebrate the fourth this past weekend. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate as well as I would have liked. We skipped the parade in the morning because it had started to rain. In fact it rained off and on all day causing us to miss the fireworks up there :( We did however still make it to the annual 4th cookout at Itsy and Butch's and John even won the croquet tournament this year! (even more amazing was that I didn't do half as bad as I have every other year) Oh, and here's our 1st Family Picture. I can't believe we hadn't taken any good ones up to this point!
Here's Em & Garret with their cousins. It's just too bad that Em only got to hang out with Marissa the 1st night we were there since she had to leave the next day. Em just couldn't understand why she couldn't stay. :(