Up

After the party, Tyler was having a lot of fun with his balloons. So naturally, Carl tied them to the poor boy's belt loop. He looked like he was going to float away and it reminded me of the movie, Up.

It was really hard to get a good picture, because he was having a blast running around with them. And because he thinks it's funny to run away from pictures. It was pretty funny though!

The Big Birthday Bash!

This has officially been the fastest year of my life. Tyler is one today! In fact, in exactly 40 minutes he will have been here for one year. At 3:49 pm. :-) I can't even believe it. Crazy!

I'll write more about him later. But this is about his Birthday Party! On Saturday our families and most of our Bible Study came to celebrate the big #1! My parents came all the way from Kansas and many others came from Wisconsin on Friday or Saturday. It was all very exciting.  :-)

We had a great time hanging out with my family Friday night. Some people played games. Emma and I tried to figure out how to draw dinosaurs. Saturday we woke up and made delicious waffles before we got in party set-up mode.

Tyler seemed to wake up knowing that it was his special day. He was in such a great mood. He's usually pretty happy, but he was really happy that day. He was smiling and laughing and giggling all morning. I'm fairly sure that he somehow knew everything was going to be about him that day.

Tyler really liked the decorations. Which is good, because I spent quite a bit of time on them and will probably use them every year for the rest of his life. I already told Carl I'm leaving them up for his entire birthday week so they get to be enjoyed longer.



It was a pretty simple party. We had pizza for lunch, which Tyler loved! We were very thankful for the gorgeous weather! With our basement under construction we couldn't use it, but people were able to eat outide, which was really nice.

Then he got open about a bajillion gifts. He did pretty well with it too! I wasn't sure if he would make it or not. I knew it could be pretty overwhelming for a 1 year old to sit in a room full of people and open things for a half hour. But he did great. We saved ours for last and that was right about his ending point. He crawled off Carl's lap and over it, trying to get away. :-) But he did finish everything. We are so grateful to everyone for their incredible generosity. Tyler is definitely a very loved little boy.

He tasted every toy and much of the paper. It was pretty entertaining - at least I thought so. :-)

And of course, there was cake.

Tyler loves spinach, and doesn't even mind lemons and pickels, but apparently he hates cake. It was the first time I've ever wondered if I'm actually related to him. He licked some of the frosting off the dinosaur, and picked off a couple polka dots. But he wiped a lot of it back out of his mouth and made a lot of faces. And if we tried to put a piece of the actual cake in his mouth, he spit it right back out! I don't understand it, but I guess he got his Dad's weird taste buds.

For not liking it, he still managed to make a pretty good mess. I'm still finding frosting in random places on my floor and walls today.












We feel so blessed to have such amazing family and friends who love our little boy so much. Thanks for helping us to make his first birthday special!



Babies, Babies Everywhere

On Thursday night our Bible Study had a shower for Baby #5! Baby Johannes will be here in a couple of weeks and we can't wait to meet her! Marcus and Aanna are going to be great parents and we are sooo happy for them!

 The excited Parents to Be  :-)

 The Boys

 The Mamas and the Babies

The Girls

Carl With the Oldest Two Babies. :-)



Not on the Agenda

Sometimes life doesn't go quite as planned. Sometimes you can't predict how you will be spending your evening. Sometimes you can do your very best to plan ahead and be on top of things and unexpected things just happen.

Sometimes you're happily going about your day and suddenly you find a family room full of water. Ugh!

On Tuesday Carl took the day off so he could stay home and do some projects. Tyler's birthday party was yesterday and since we knew a lot of people were going to be here we wanted to clean the yard up a little from winter and do a few spring cleaning projects. So Carl was out working in the yard for a couple of hours. He was burning some things so he turned the faucet on in case he needed water. Apparently the frost-proof valve wasn't working and our pipe cracked during the winter some time. And when Carl turned the outside faucet on, the pipe started leaking all over our family room downstairs. But we didn't notice until a couple hours later when Carl came inside. He went downstairs to find water everywhere. Everywhere. Walking on the carpet was like stepping on a sponge. There were water marks all over the ceiling and paint was bubbling on the walls.

So Carl immediately had to go downstairs to try to clean it up. Ha! Like that was possible. When Tyler was in bed I came down and took a shift. We filled the shop vac three times with water from the carpet and then realized it was not going to make a difference. Eventually we turned fans on and just had to leave it until morning. You can't really see the water in this picture, but it's there, I promise. My feet were soaking wet and water bubbled out with every step.

We aslo had to turn our water off until we could talk with a plumber. So it was off for about 24 hours. Meaning no showers, no flushing toilets, no washing dishes, no cooking... So needless to say Tyler and I spent most of Wednesday out of the house.

On Thursday a plumber came out right away in the morning and fixed the pipe. A contractor came out soon after to assess the situation. He works with our insurance company and was able to tell us what would be covered.

On Friday morning a couple guys came in their neon green trucks to cut out sheet rock and tear out the carpet. They came at 8:30 am and left around 12:30. My family started coming for Tyler's birthday weekend a little after 1. Wow! Talk about cutting it close. :-)

We're very thankful that they were able to get the carpet out before people came because it was already making our house smell musty. We were able to get it pretty well aired out. The only problem was sleeping arrangements. We were planning on having people sleep in that room, which clearly couldn't happen. But for the most part everything worked out and we had our house cleaned up and back together by Friday morning!

They left those cool green fans and a dehumidifier to dry everything out over the weekend. Tomorrow we will hear what the plan is for getting everything finished. They will be back sometime soon (hopefully) to possibly take out some of the ceiling and replace it. And then they will repaint everything and put in new carpet in the whole family room and up the stairs. What a project!

I will be sure to put pictures up of our finished room when it is done.

Summer in March?

I love this weather!! I fully realize that at this point we could still have a blizzard, but for right now, this weather is amazing. We have gotten to spend so much time outside lately. We've gone for long walks, we've played outside in the yard and we've gone to quite a few different parks. Both Tyler and I have been loving it during the days and Carl has gotten to enjoy it with us in the evenings as well. I don't have much else to say about it other than, it is making me so excited for summer! It is going to be so much fun to play outside with Tyler this summer. I am so looking forward to parks, pools and camping!

For now I just have some fun pictures to post of some of our latest adventures. These first few have nothing to do with being outside. They are just some of my recent favorites.

Tyler has a drawer in the bathroom and he opens it up countless times a day to get his toothbrush. He loves brushing his four little teeth. :-)

Everyone has to have a picture of their first spaghetti sauce experience, right?

All dressed up in his Sunday best!

Tyler found our basketball in the garage the other day and now he goes and finds it every chance he gets. He is very proud of himself when he manages to pick it up.

 I think he looks so big here!

Tyler has a blast at the playground. I spend most of my time pulling sticks and woodchips out of his mouth. :-)

March Madness

Ok, well it hasn't really been madness. March has been awesome! And that is part of why I haven't been on here in awhile. I kind of miss writing! It has been a busy, fun and wonderful month, for the most part (with the exception of some nasty colds)!

The first weekend was our sixth anniversary! I really wanted to get on here and write about that, but somehow I just never managed to get to the computer. For almost a month. Yikes!

March 4, 2006

March 4, 2012

We haven't gone out much without Tyler, but for our anniversary this year we got to go on dates two weekends in a row. On our actual anniversary Carl's parents came to take care of Tyler and we went to Crave for dinner. We had a great time dressing up and spending some time together while we ate a delicious meal and amazing dessert!

Then the next weekend Uncle Jacob and Aunt Laura came to hang out with their nephew and we got to go out again. We went out for lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and then spent some time shopping for Tyler's birthday. It was so nice to go out for lunch, just the two of us, and go for a leisurely shopping trip!

Then to top off a great day, my brother Jeff came over that night and we all grilled burgers and hung out together. So fun!

I have lots more to write about. Right now our computer is having a few little troubles so it has taken me a ridiculously long time to write this. (And that is another reason I haven't been on here recently.) But I'm going to try to keep posting over the next few days to catch you all up on our fun March adventures!