Uh-Oh...the BIG * 3 - 0 *

HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY AUNT VAL!!!

I have a surprise for you behind my back.

I bet you thought it would never come!

Here it is...HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Man I am cute!

It wouldn't be a birthday without a poem...

"My diaper is dirty, dirty!
Guess who is thirty, thirty?

My Aunt Val is thirty,
and she is lil' bit nerdy.

Not really! Well, just a little bit...
Oh well."

I hope you have a great 30th Birthday and that I get this diaper changed!

First Easter Egg Hunt!

Yesterday was Lake Jackson's City Easter Egg Hunt at the park! We were so excited to take Kendall to hunt eggs for the first time, but we really weren't sure how she was going to do. They have it broken up into different areas by ages, and if your kids are walking, they don't let you go out and help them. So we really didn't know if Kendall would understand what she was supposed to do. We tried to practice at home some with her basket, but that didn't go so well.

On our way to the hunt!

The hunt started at 5:30 SHARP! So we got there super early so we wouldn't miss it. Randy is on the Parks and Rec Board for the city of LJ, so he was there before us volunteering and helping make sure people didn't get out in the hunting areas early. We had to wait awhile with our friends. Kristin and Blake, Holly, Aaron, Ethan and Ella, and Mary, Nathan and Sarah were all there waiting with us. The kids could see all the eggs and didn't understand why they couldn't just run out there and get them!






When they finally blew the horn to let the kids go, Kendall ran out there and then just froze! She wasn't crying, she was just standing there staring at one egg, frozen for a long time! It was so funny! Randy was able to be out there because he was helping, so when he walked over to her, she started crying, I guess because she got overwhelmed by all the kids. It was pretty funny. She calmed down quickly and when Randy put her down, she found one egg. Just one! And she was so proud of that one egg.





Notice she doesn't have her basket. It was just too much to think about to carry the basket AND go after the eggs. Maybe in all our Easter festivities this weekend she will get that part down.

We wanted to get a picture with Kendall sitting in the Easter bunny's lap, but the line was super long and we had our college small group to get home for. So, we posed next to him. We just knew that we would wait in that long line and then get up there and she would cry like she did with Santa. Maybe next year!

(It was very windy!)

Get Well Great Granny!

Kendall's Great Granny had knee replacement surgery yesterday! We hope you are doing great Granny and we want to send you some pictures to help you feel better!

Kendall says, "This is my knee. How is your's doing Granny?"

And this is a hug from Kendall! She has started signing "I love you" and a hug to us. She squeezes her hands together on her chest like she is doing the sign for love. It is so sweet! I asked her to give you a hug Granny and she did this!!

We love you and hope your recovery is perfect! Enjoy your stay at the "hotel!"

Happy Birthday Blake!

Today was Kendall's friend Blake's 2nd birthday! His party was at the park next to our house - Shy Pond - so we just loaded up in the stroller and walked over there! We love living next to the park! It was super windy today, but I don't think it bothered any of the kids - they had a blast! Kendall was playing on the playground equipment, climbing and sliding, and walking around the park seeing how close she could get to the ducks. One time she got pretty close and then it turned around and starting walking towards her and she got scared and turned and ran back to us! It was pretty funny. At one point, she was climbing into the playground over the low black wall barrier thing and she fell and busted her lip! It was very sad and bled a whole bunch. So for the rest of the party she had a big blood stain on her shirt and a big fat lip. I'm sure it's not going to be the last time that happens, but it was still sad to see. The Beams brought their new puppy and she loved "barking" at him and even tried to let him drink some of her juice.

Holly had Ella in a sling during the party and we thought she was so cute so we took a picture. She was sound asleep the whole time!
And of course, before we left we had to try to get a picture of all the kids together. This is Kendall with Sarah Grace (whose name she can now say!), Blake (the birthday boy!), Ethan, and Lawson. I went ahead and posted some of the outakes because it's just so funny when you're trying to get them all to sit still at the same time.

Check out those thigh rolls! I don't think she will be wearing these shorts much longer - Dad says they are too short! Also notice Kendall's size next to Sarah Grace. She will be 2 in a couple of weeks. Sarah has been passing down all her clothes to Kendall, but now we have been joking with Mary and Nathan that Kendall is going to have to start passing her clothes down to Sarah!

Sarah is rockin those sunglasses!

We had a great time Kristin and Scott! Happy Birthday Blake!

New Turtle Friend!

Last weekend Granny and Papas came in town to visit with us and to stay with Kendall while we went to New Braunfels Monday and Tuesday. While we were gone, they got her a new toy -- a turtle sandbox for her to play in! Mom and Aunt Alden had one of these when we were growing up and we had so much fun in it. I know Kendall will, too! Thanks Granny and Papas!

Using her little pinchers to get the sand.

It took her a little while to warm up to having her feet in the sand, but now she loves it! She can even lift the lid off herself and start playing!

Her favorite thing to do: take all the sand OUT of the sandbox!

Even Molly loves the sandbox!!! Once she got in, Kendall tried to get back in and Molly growled at her!

New Chair!

Kendall LOVES to sit in chairs! We have been wanting to get her a chair that she can sit in while she reads or watches Sesame Street. I had this one picked out that I loved from Pottery Barn, but it was super expensive. So we kept looking for other chairs, but never found one we liked. Then Randy had the idea to look at Ebay. He was able to find the exact chair I wanted! It comes in two parts, the insert and the slip-cover, and he found both, brand-new, for less than half of what it would have cost if we went through Pottery Barn. Crazy! And, someone who has an Ebay store had even monogrammed the pink gingham (the print I wanted) with her name already!

It was meant to be! :) So we used some of Kendall's birthday money to get it for her and she just loves it. She sits in it all the time.
I took these pictures this morning, so she's still in her PJs. I will take some better ones later, but this is a start!

Blog Book!

Since about the time Kendall was getting ready to turn one, I have been thinking about how I would love to have our blog printed out in book form so that we have a hard copy of it. We started in November of 2007, with her 3D sonogram pictures, and I would just be a wreck if somehow all of our posts were lost or something happened. Plus, it would make for a really cool baby book, and since I don't scrapbook it would take the place of that too. So, I started researching websites that enable you to print your blog. There are not many...at least that I have found. And some of the ones I found don't support Blogger blogs - just other kinds like Wordpress and Typepad. But just recently I found two that I thought might work and might get my blog printed for a reasonable price. That's the other part of this saga....we have blogged A LOT! I would love to print the blog each year, but this first year (and a half) of blogging has been very long!
All that to say I decided to go with www.blurb.com. They have this free software called BookSmart that you download onto your computer, it then "slurps" your blog onto the software, and then you can go through and edit, cut out posts, condense pages, etc. When it slurped our blog, we had 846 pictures from November 2007 to February 2009. I don't know how many posts. But it put each post on a new page, with some posts that are longer taking more than one page, and our inital page count was 276!!! I have been working through it and condensing some of the posts onto one page, or putting more than one post on a page, and I am down to 250 pages. It takes a LONG time because either the software is slow or our computer is slow or both. But, when we are finished, we will have all of our blog in a nice hard-bound book!
Maybe before Kendall turns two we will have the book done of her first year of life!
(I would love to hear of any other sites people have used to do this. I also looked at http://www.scrapbookblogger.com/, but it wouldn't load all of our blog for some reason. )