Baby with Broad Horizons!

Saturday night after the party, we made fried rice, sushi and eggrolls. Colin tried some of each and seemed to like them reasonably well!

Happy First Birthday Colin!

Because he loves music and dancing so much, we decided to have a music themed birthday party for Colin. We make music note cookies, xylophone and drum cakes, and had music themed activities for the kids.



We played musical chairs when the kids all got here. Brenna and Alaina were always the winners!
The kids each decorated a drum and chose colored drumsticks to take home with them. We also had recorders, hand cymbals, and music themed pencils...and earplugs for the parents!
Colin, stealing Ryleigh's drumsticks:
The big girls getting ready for the music parade with flowers in their hair.They all took turns pretty well riding in the wagon, pulling the wagon and being the leader!And switching instruments! They are such good kids!
Colin's friends helped him open his presents since he was too little to do it himself. :)

Eating citrus ice, one of his favorite things!
And getting ready to eat cake....
Yum!


Afterwards, Brenna got to help take down decorations by popping balloons with a pin! She was unsure for the first couple, but really loved it after that!
We are so lucky so many of our family and friends were able to come!

Colin didn't have the patience to open all his presents during the party, so we saved the gifts from family members until later in the evening. The basketball goal are from Grandpa and Nana and I think everyone enjoyed that present!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Night Out!

So Jon had to come to down for the day for some meetings and we picked him up from the airport tonight and went to dinner at Pappadeaux on our way home! It's great to get to see him and I love having the boys together; wish we lived close to them like we did in Dayton... Colin went to the Ryleigh's for the evening and apparently also had a great time - he was giggling at Ryan dancing when we came to pick him up. He tried to play with Jon a bit back at the house, but was getting pretty sleepy and ended up just going to bed! Can't wait until next time they get to come down and hopefully Kristen will get to come too! :)

St. Pat's Party

Here are some pictures from last night's St. Pat's party. Colin's favorite part was definitely balloons! Somehow I didn't get any pictures of him in his St. Pat's shirt, but I'm hoping Courtney did and I'll post those later...plus, he'll wear it again on Tuesday! I did get pics of other people's kids though, so here ya go! :) About 25 people show up by the end of the night = those of you who didn't, I expect you next year!

Most of my pictures were from before everyone got here, so there's a lot of Brenna and Ryleigh! Aren't they cute?!

The kids all spent most of the night upstairs doing crafts and watching movies. Here are some of the older ones eating parfaits and watching a movie.
And I had tatoos for them...Ryleigh thought hers was a boo-boo!
We made an assortment of green food, pub food (potato skins, wings) and Irish fare(corned beef and cabbage, shepherd's pie, scones). The Millers even brought a couple Marie Callendar pies for Pi day! Here's a bit of it. We had a really fun group of people and a good time was had by all! :)

Lucky Us!

One year ago today...Colin decided to make his appearance.

We brought Colin home from the hospital on March 16. I had found the cute "lucky charm" shirt a couple weeks before and planned to take a picture of him in it a month later - I guess Colin decided he need to wear it for a photo shoot ON St. Patrick's day, so he came early. We also had planned a party for the evening of the 15th, but again he had other ideas! Tonight will be his first St. Pat's party! Here are some old (and one new) pictures for you to enjoy!

Me sitting in antepartum testing for a regularly scheduled appointment. I was almost finished with the prep for the St. Pat's party two days hence...
The next day!
And getting ready to leave the hospital!
Colin's first St. Patrick's day!
And today, a year later - his birthday and getting ready for his first St. Pat's party!

Baby's First...

Shiner.
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later with this kid. The first picture makes it look worse than it actually is - he's making that face because he just got a drive-by-kissing from both dogs! It does show the bruise pretty well though. He woke up from a nap (yes, a *nap*!) Tuesday afternoon and it was starting to bruise; I'm pretty sure it's from earlier in the day either when he hit his head on the dishwasher or on his crib...either could have done it. Yesterday the bit of swelling had gone down and it was getting darker and today it's really just dark. Here's a couple more where you can see his eye isn't actually swollen shut like it looks in the first picture. :) Incidentally, none of this seems to have bothered him at all. Surprise, surprise...

"Water Fountain"

Colin helped me water the garden yesterday - and loved sticking his hand in the stream - then discovered that even when the hose is off he can get water to drink out of the nozzle. The first picture, with the fish face is my favorite!

You can see his tongue in this one! Glad we got that thing clipped!