Back to Florida for Hannah's 1st Birthday!

In mid July we went back to Vero Beach, FL to celebrate little Hannah's 1st birthday! Since Brandon couldn't take off more time from work, Grady, Landon and I rode down with my parents and grandmother. Despite the 10+ hour ride, the boys did great! Special thanks to them for allowing us to catch a ride! Kelly and Louis invited a lot of family and friends over to celebrate her special day. Given the circumstances of how she came into this world last July, there was definitely a reason to celebrate! Here is a picture of Hannah enjoying her special duck cupcake!

Hannah opened presents the following day (with a smaller group of people). Grady was very excited to give her the gift from him - her very own Monchichi! I'm sure some of you had one of those when you were little (Grady has mine from when I was little) - we couldn't believe it when we saw it in the store!

The day following Hannah's birthday party, Kelly and Louis arranged for Hannah to be blessed. She was baptized in the NICU when she was just two days old, so this was a more formal blessing/baptism. It was also a memorial for Cora and Quinn, Hannah's brother and sister. It was a really nice way to remember them as we all celebrated Hannah's special day.

Here are some other pictures from our week in Florida...

Since Landon started crawling a few weeks ago, he quickly learned to pull himself to standing, which he gets very excited about! He now pulls himself up on everything, and his newest trick is standing in his crib.

Here are a couple videos of him in action:

Landon's favorite things lately are:

• Chewing on wires (well, trying anyway)
• Chewing on anything (He has 4 top teeth that broke through at the same time!)
• Chasing our cat and pulling her tail
• Beating the laptop
• Pears and carrots
• Eating puzzle pieces

In other news, Grady started playing T-ball for the YMCA on the 3-4 year old team. He just made the cut, as he had to be 3 by the end of June, so he's really the youngest one on the team! His team (now called the "Green Monsters") had their first practice last weekend, and it was honestly pretty hilarious! Luckily, one of his best friends - Grant - is on the team too!

Grady's 3rd Birthday & Landon's Baptism!

The weekend of June 19-20 was very busy in that we celebrated Grady's 3rd birthday and got Landon baptized. We were lucky that we had a lot of family in town ahead of time to help us with party preparation! Thanks guys! (We think they all went home and vowed never to come back after all the work they did!)

On Saturday we had lots of Grady's friends (and their families) over for an outdoor swimming party, which included kiddie pools, a slip n' slide, water table, and sprinkler! The kids seemed to have a great time! Grady got to open presents later that night!

The one request Grady had for his birthday was he wanted a red chocolate train cake. We ordered one way ahead of time, but unfortunately found out when we went to pick it up two hours before the party that they "forgot" to make it. Needless to say, they ended up having one for us in 30 minutes, which actually was way more extravagent than the one we ordered (and it was free)! So, in the end it all worked out!

The day after Grady's party, we had Landon baptized. This was something we intended to do for a while, but just finally got organized enough to plan it! :) It is definitely very different having a 7-month-old baptized compared to a newborn who peacefully sleeps through the whole thing. During the baptism, Landon spent most of his timing playing with the priest's robe, grabbing his book, playing with his watch, etc.... :)

Kelly and Louis are Landon's godparents, so they came up for the event (and for Grady's birthday party), which was really nice!

Grady and Landon were perfect angels during church (the baptism took place after church), so it was no real surprise that the meltdowns happened towards the end of the baptism. We thought this was a pretty funny family picture!

The day Landon got baptized was also Father's Day, so we celebrated that as well!

Grady drew Brandon a picture of our family on the back of his card.... This was one of the first times he has done this. It was so cute! :)

Here are some other pictures from the week/weekend. Kelly and Hannah came up early, so we got to spend a lot of time with them, which was great! Grady is absolutely in love with Hannah...every time we turned around he was hugging and kissing her! As always, the cousins had a great time together. :) In this picture Grady is pointing out all of the animals he sees out of this window....turtles, deer, squirrels...and most recently - an elephant. :)

Our Little Man is Crawling!

For a few weeks now Landon has been on the verge of crawling - rocking on all fours and doing the army crawl! On his 7-month birthday (June 11), he took his first official crawl across the room, which was very exciting! (This is two months earlier than Grady crawled.) While he is still a bit shaky, here are a couple of videos of him in action.

A few weeks ago, Landon's two bottom teeth popped through, and just a couple of days ago one of his top teeth came in. It has been hard trying to get a picture with his teeth showing, but we finally got one!

And here is a picture of Landon doing some yoga....

In other news, (Aunt) Carleen celebrated her 30th birthday this week, so we met her (and Uncle Kevin) for dinner and then had birthday cake!

And here's Grady hanging out with his best buds Gavin and Grant!

Riding Thomas the Train!

We went up to Boone last weekend, and Grady was lucky enough to get to go to Tweetsie Railroad where Thomas the Train made a special appearance! :) (Thanks for the free passes Granny and Gramps!) We actually got to ride on Thomas, and although Grady was a little apprehensive of the loud whistle (he has a thing with loud noises), he had a lot of fun! He also got to jump in a Thomas bounce house, which he of course loved. We all rode the carousel, and Landon loved it most of all! He smiled and laughed the entire time....He also really enjoyed riding the train and looking out over the side.

The next day we went to Grandfather Mountain, which is always lots of fun! (Thanks again Granny and Gramps for the free passes!) We had a little picnic, and then went to see the bears, cougars, deer, eagles and otters. This year we did not venture over the swinging bridge... as you can imagine it made us a little nervous to have an almost 3-year-old who isn't scared of anything walking across a swinging bridge!

In other news, our friend Eileen paid us a visit a couple of weeks ago on her way to NYC! Eileen and I met in Ireland in 2000 when we were both doing a work abroad program. :) Grady and Landon clearly love her! :)

We also paid a visit to the Pulley family, who just added a new member - Matthew! Here are Landon and Matthew enjoying some play time!

Vacation in Florida!

On Friday, May 14, we all piled in the car and headed to Florida for vacation! The boys did suprisingly great during the 10+ hour car ride. Landon was excited to return to Florida for the third time... the first two times he didn't have a very good view since he was curled up in the confines of my stomach! :)

We met Kelly, Louis and Hannah in Orlando, where we stayed for a few days. On Sunday, we went to Disney World for the day, which was a lot of fun, despite the fact that Grady seemed tired and a bit sluggish. We found out later that night that he actually had a fever... After going to an urgent care that night, we were told he had the flu AND strep throat (which we caught very early...I still have my doubts that it was actually the flu, but that's another story). Ugh. How's that for news on our first day of vacation! Luckily his fever was gone by the following day, so it didn't put too much of a damper on our trip.

I'm not sure who is enjoying getting his picture with Snow White more....the boys or Brandon?!!

We were actually quite surprised at how many rides Landon and Hannah could actually go on with us! Here we all are getting ready to ride It's a Small World. You kind of feel like you're going a bit crazy by the end of this ride (what seems like millions of doll figurines and high-pitched music), but it was at least nice and cool and a ride we could all go on together! :)

I like to call this one "Lion King." I can just hear the theme song now as Hannah is lifted up over Cinderella's castle. :)

The boys just couldn't resist napping! We were lucky that we had a double jogging stroller to bring with us. (Special thanks to Granny and Gramps for the great early birthday gift to Grady!)

Kelly and Louis were nice enough to babysit the next day (even with Grady being sick!) so that Brandon and I could go to Discovery Cove to swim with dolphins! This was a belated birthday present for Brandon since we couldn't really celebrate this past November (since I was about 40 weeks pregnant at the time). It was a lot of fun and we got to swim with our very own dolphin - Jenny! Cameras were not allowed during the actual swimming with dolphins (shocker!), but here is a picture of the beautiful scenery! We actually did buy a few pictures of us with the dolphin, but haven't scanned them in yet.


On the third day we ventured over to Sea World, which was also a lot of fun! We unfortunately missed the big Shamu show at the end of the day because some meltdowns ensued, but we still had a fun day!


You can see Grady riding on Brandon's shoulders....Poor Brandon had shoulder issues by the end of this trip because Grady always wanted a ride!

Here are some other pictures from our stay in Orlando...



Here is Hannah catching some rays after a long day!

Here is Landon enjoying a meal! :)

For the second half of the week, we headed to Vero Beach to visit with Kelly, Louis and Hannah, and of course hang out at the beach! Grady wasn't too interested in the ocean (we realized swim lessons are an absolute necessity asap!), but loved the sand. Landon really liked the water.... He didn't get much time to play in the sand because it would have inevitably ended up in his mouth!

Another highlight of the trip is that Hannah tried her first bite of table food - "a puff!" You can tell how much she loves it!