Monday, March 30, 2009

Lily climbing the stairs

Lily decided that one of her favorite things is climbing the stairs. She's pretty good at it!

She doesn't know how to get *down* the stairs yet, but that's OK... she's learning!



Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Party

We had a total of 9 kids and 14 grown-ups. We had a really nice time. I mentioned the bug hunt being a hit, the rest of the time was just low-key. Just hang out, eat, chat. I really think it was a great party.

Lily ended the party with taking 5 steps by herself while holding a ball. Yay, Lily!

Special thanks to all of you who came. It was special that you were all there.

Now for the pictures!

Lily's 1st Birthday Party

The Planning.

I thought I'd break this up into two posts. The Planning and The party.

Part of the planning comes with a story, for those of you who care to read this.

In October I threw Noah a Train party. I made little train cakes. The cakes turned out cute and all was well with the world. I stumbled across this bug pan around the time I got the train pan. I thought how cute would a bug party be for Lily's first Birthday. Now, you may be asking yourself 'little girl and bugs?' My little pet name for Lily is Lilypad. It just sort of happened that way, I even sang her the 'Lolipop' song except used 'Lilypad' instead of Lolipop. You know the one, maybe from the '60's or something like that. Anyways, the name Lilypad reminds me of Lilypads, and dragonflies and the pretty water lilies. For those of you who know me well, I am not much of a girly-girl. I hate pink, think dresses are unconventional, don't like make-up (Sorry Ma) and overall find girly things to be, well, girly. (I do like shoes and to have my toes painted.) So, I thought, how cute would Bugs be? Dragonflies, butterflies, bee's and ladybugs. Still cute, not too girly, but girly enough. Who knew that by the time this little Lilypad was one she would have gotten me to a point where I actually had pink cupcakes, got her a pink unicorn and a pink bigwheel. I also bought her a Birthday Dress. Yes, this is the first dress I purchased and approved of 100%! I loved it, thought it was perfect for the party, she looked like a little ladybug.

So this brings us down tothe planning part. The Food. Bugs are fun and I was going to use the cool cake pan that I got. (I bought it for my Birthday to use at this party.) I ran out of steam and called my local grocery store and asked them to make cupcakes and move them around to make the shape of a butterfly. The decorator had never done it before, so, I was thrilled with what I got. Next time, I will remember to ask for Pastel colors, (little less dye) if I get cupcakes again. I got excited with the idea of themed food. I thought of the oldie but goodie Ants on a Log, and making mini sandwiches using a cookie cutter. ( I won't do the cookie cutter sandwich again - they was super cute, but so much waste. I used two loaves of bread I didn't know what to do with all of the leftovers - there was so much.) Then I was like hmmm, now what. I called my gf Brooke and asked what she thought and we brainstormed and came up with some ideas. Then I went to the internet and got the ladybug lemonade idea. (Raspberry lemonade with frozen Blackberries - it was nummy.) Brooke and I thought that the spiral pasta could be cool to be like caterpillars, but then I founf actual bug pasta and bug graham crakers. So, there you have it. Our menu. The other thing I found on line was the idea of a game. We had a bug hunt. I got over 200 bugs and had them 'hidden' in the yard for all the kids to go run out and find. It was a hoot, and a big hit. I of course forgot to pull out my camera for the event, but you canimagine it was fun and fast. We had prizes for the top two buggers and everyone got to take home the bugs they found.

Before the pictures, I owe a huge thanks to Tiff for helping me get my house clean by playing withthe kids on Friday. Thank you Robin for coming and helping with the last minute details late Friday night with decorating and organizing. Thank you Nic for helping with the food prep in the morning and a BIG thanks to Jamie for hiding the bugs, holding Lily a lot, and taking so many amazing pictures on the big day.

So, here are the Prep photos! Enjoy!

Party Prep

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Lily's Birthday Evening

After the kids had their naps, we were able to get on the WebCam with Grandma and Papa Van. The kids played outside for a few minutes and then we headed out for dinner. We stopped at the grocery store for a little piece of Birthday Cake and went to Elephant Bar. I like a silly Momma totally forgot my camera. We did not get any pictures of Lily chowing on Chicken Stirfry with veggies. The restuarant gave Lily a free Birthday Sundae and brought one for big brother too. This was very nice. It even had a candle in it. We ended up not having the cake. So Lily will have her Birthday cake for Breakfast tomorrow morning and I'll have my camera! Yay!

We came home and opened her presents and then went up for bed. It was a lovely, lovely day.

Thank you all for sharing it with us by checking out our blog. I can't beleive my baby girl is a year old already. She has brought joy and laughter and love to our lives. I look forward to all of her next Birthdays and Noah's too!

Lily's Birthday night

French Toast at Ruby's for Lily!

Lily had French toast at Ruby's for her birthday brunch.

This was actually the *second* French toast she had today... I also made some at home for  her!


Lily's Birthday Morning.

Happy Birthday Lily!

We had a busy morning. We started off with going to the Doctors. Lily is 21lbs and 13ounces! She is 30 1/2 inches long. She is in the 60% for her weight and 90% for her height. Yay, Lily!

We headed over to 'open' the Mall. Lily played in the playground with Daddy while Noah got his haircut. Then we headed over to Build-A-Bear and got Lily a Pink Unicorn for her Birthday. Noah pumped the stuffing, and picked the heart and helped Lily give it a kiss, he gave the heart a kiss, and he made his wish, put the heart in the Unicorn. What a good helper and good Big brother he is.

We then headed over to Ruby's for 'second breakfast'. Noah had french toast for his first Birthday so it seemed fitting for Lily to have the same. She got a little extra bonus, Ruby's gives free Sundae's for Birthdays. They sang to her, it was sweet. Not like a Luau of a hundred or so people singing to you in Hawaii, but sweet enough.

We'll get some more pictures today for Lily's Birthday evening.

Lily's Birthday Morning

Monday, March 23, 2009

March 2009

We have been a busy bunch of 'bees' and March isn't even over! We will get Lily's Birthday Party on the next blog post. Her party is the 28th. I can't believe she will be one year old in just two days! Time has just flown by. Nearly knocked us down it went so fast!

We have 'of course' taken advantage of our sunny and warm days by playing hard outside. We have brought out the water table (Noah would play every day - cold or hot). The two of them have a good time. Lily is cruising everywhere. She rarely likes to be sitting down, she wants to stand or walk. Soon she will be able to chase her brother around the house and yard. They play pretty well together. It is fun to watch them change before our very eyes.

Grandma Lala and Auntie Rose came down for a visit. The kids loved the time they were here. Noah thinks his Grandma Lala is funny, and asked for her a lot when she left. We had such a nice visit.

The Aldrich family was in SoCal for vacation and just so happened to be passing by and came for a nice visit. Noah and Madeline, Mackenzie and Macintyre played so well together. Lily found a new favorite shoulder to snuggle on Tom. Amy and I caught up at about a million miles an hour. Tom did an awesome job staying in the conversation that bounced all over the place. What is amazing about good old friends is that we can pick up from anywhere and just go with it, talk about anything and everything all in about a two hour and some change visit. So nice!

My girlfriend Mandi had her baby boy Aaron Joshua on St. Patricks Day. I like a goofball, brought the camera and video camera into the hospital and was just so happy to be there, forgot to take pictures. Momma and Baby are doing great. Big brother Jacob is doing relly well and Daddy is enjoying his family while he has some much needed and deserved time off.

That about sums up most of March. Lily turns 1 on Wednesday her Birthday Party is Saturday. I hope to get lots of picutres to share.

Oh, and I got my haircut! I was able to get 10" to donate to Locks for Love. Monte loves the new 'do'.

One more thing - we'll be out there in the Chicagoland area late June early July. We hope to see as many of you as we can.

Happy Spring!

March

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Noah helps make coffee

I promised this one before. Noah usually helps me make coffee in the morning.

Lily going down a slide...

... with Momma's help!


Noah on his tricycle

Noah riding in the yard on his tricycle... he's quite good at it!

Lily pushing her car around

Lily is showing off how well she can push her car around!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Dressing Lily

So, it has happened. I am now loving having a little girl and putting her in what I call 'cute' clothes. I don't get all girly or anything, but cute is well, cute. Here are a handful of outfits that have been given to Lily as gifts by many of you. She is finally able to wear a lot of them. Some of the clothes needed a long sleeve onesie under them because they were short sleeved and she will be grown out of them by summer. I think she is pretty darn cute! So, for those of you that recognize the outfits you gave, Thank you!

This is my last post for now. I'll get some from Lily's Birthday party and those should be the next photos that will go up. By the way, I bought Lily a dress for her birthday party. (That would be the first dress I bought her ever!)

Videos from Daddy to come!

Dressing Lily

Random photos Jan - present.

I repeat it has been awhile since I have unloaded the photos from my camera. These are just random.

Thanks for lookin' at my kids!

Random Jan. - Feb.

More updated house photos.

I mentioned we have more house photos. Along with the built-in's we had the railing to the stairs, the inside of the front door and all of the mantels re-stained. I still haven't put pictures on the mantles, I will get to it though. I wanted to show the drastic difference on the foyer floor, we decided to have one of the fireplace surrounds done with the same travertine tile. I think those are it when it comes to what we had done before we moved in.

My parents came out twice since we have moved. Roland and Monte did projects both times. The first time they installed an attic ladder (not shown) and they built a cat box station. I wanted the cat boxes in the garage. I asked for a hole to be put in the office door and a hole to be put between the office wall and the garage. I also asked for the cats to be safe, thinking we'd build some kind of closet with walls and doors. Then brilliant Monte asked, why not in a cabinet? Fabulous idea and so it came about. The cat station is in the garage in a cabinet. This may not sound all that interesting to most of you, but with the layout of the house there really was no place to put boxes. No, we aren't getting rid of them - I have heard that 'solution' before!

The last set of pictures are our 4 new babies. We had 5 trees removed. One in the front had already busted our driveway about 4 inches, we have been talking about having it re-poured. I said, no way no how until the tree that did the damage is gone. (Not pictured.) In the back we had a dead tree removed, and a tiny root invasive tree removed. The tiny tree would soon be like the two very large shade producing trees we had removed. If you scroll back in the blog you can see a picture of the ficus. They had to go. The already busted a strip of concrete that separated the yard from the 'tree/flower' bed. It's roots were all under our yard and all along the back wall. In no time would it be able to completely bust a wall. The roots above the ground were as thick as the trunk of the tree itself. It was pretty bad and scary. Beautiful trees, but we are not going to have our new home have ts foundation ruined by some pretty trees.

There you have it, the newest on the Krolfront.

As for the selling of Orinda. We had a buyer - they backed out (quite late) and now the house is on the market again. We could really use some prayers to have our house sold. We could also use prayer that if it is God's will to rent that renters will come and we'll be patient and accept God's will gratefully. (We really want to sell.)

Thanks all. I have more pictures to come.

House updates

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

It has been awhile...

So, looks like I last posted in January. Lots has happened since then.

For starters we had my parents in for another lovely visit. We all had a nice time. (We are going to forget that Grandpa wasn't feeling too hot for part of the visit.) We hung out, went to a Birthday Party, tried out a new church, Roland and Monte did a mini-project in the garage, had Brooke and the kids over while they had movers at their place and watched Noah and Lily do what they do. It was a busy 4 days.

Lily was doing her standing and my parents got a Noah-full. That is a mouth-full from Noah. Our son, nothing like his Mother or Father talks non-stop.

Here are a few shots of them. Once again on the last day. Hey, to me, it is more important to make memories of fun, than have photos of the kids not having as much fun getting their pictures taken.

January Van Dusen visit