Hayward Vacation

Mom, Emily and I took last week off and headed up north to my parents house in Hayward, WI. We had a BLAST! It was quite the busy week, but we still got lots of relaxation time in.

One of the most exciting parts of our whole trip was finding the missing bean bags coffee can....we have been looking for this can for the last 2 years up north! LOL! It is too funny because we all blamed each other on who lost the bean bags for the bean bags game. Casey and Mom ended up sewing some new ones last year so we could play. Well mom and I were driving out one day and saw something red in the trees. We had to stop and see if it was the missing can...and sure enough...it was! We came to find out that the coffee can has definite teeth marks in it - so something grabbed it and ran with it! I only found one of the four bean bags and it had been torn open and all the corn was gone. Too funny. Well at least we now know we aren't all losing our minds! We could not figure out what happened to them.

We got a lot of playing outside time even though it was March in Hayward. We totally lucked out on weather. Yay! Here are a few videos of Em playing with her toys. We're pretty sure she's the athlete in the family!!!

Here's Em out playing on her tricycle.

Here's my smiling sweetheart:

Here she is sitting in Gee's end table with Dora:

We even went to the park one day. Here she is out playing:

...and swinging:

...and getting ready to go down the 'wee' (a.k.a slide):

We even took a day and went to Duluth/Superior. We took Em to the Duluth Children's Museum. I wouldn't recommend it...it was pretty lame. Madison's is MUCH better!!!

Here she is playing with the train table at the museum:

Here she is fishing at the museum:

Then we took a stop at the mall. This was just prior to Em's major meltdown!!!!

And my favorite pic....Emme and Gee looking out over lake Superior. Duluth was soooo georgous!

The Wheels on the Bus

Emily and I love to watch Cullen on http://www.cullensabcs.com/. Emme has learned so many songs by watching her and she does really great things around the holidays too. If you have kids you should check her out!

Here's a video of Em singing the 'Wheels on the Bus'. It's a riot!!!

Isn't she so darn cute?

Here's a few pics to share as well....

Em on the trampoline at www.madtowntwisters.com they have open gym on saturday's for kids under 6 to play on all the fun gymnastic equipment!

Here is Em brushing Auntie CeCe's hair.
We finally had some nice weather a few weeks ago so we got Em's bike out. She still can't reach the pedals, but had fun anyways.
Em LOVES to draw. We do it pretty much every day. She's going to be quite the artist someday!
We switched Em from a sippy to a 'big girl cup' for dinner. She's doing so good with it.

Annual Winter Waterpark Weekend

Every year we get together with some our friends and head up to the Dells for a winter weekend at a waterpark. Typically we have always gone to the Wilderness Hotel, but this year we decided to stay closer to home and we went to the Holiday Inn West in Madison. It was perfect for all the little ones. There were 5 kids and Emily was the oldest!!!

Here is Daddy with baby Zander and Emily...OMG does Emme look pasty white compared to Z or what? LOL!

Check out our little diva in her bikini. She LOVED the waterpark.

This is the only pic I have of the kids in the water because I was busy chasing Emily around the whole day! SORRY! At least it's a good pic of Tiffy and Z.

Here's a group shot of our small room with lots of friends!!!

Little Anika (Matt and Brenda's little girl) is cheesing it up for the camera. If you even point the camera in her direction she shows you a beautiful smile. She is such a little peanut, and such a sweetheart too!

Here's Zander enjoying hanging out with everyone. He loves all the ladies!!!


Anika decided it would be fun to hang out in the cabinet under the sink. Emily decided to join her for a while.

Emily did SOOO good potty training this weekend. She hardly had a wet diaper the whole time. I am so proud of her! We were getting her ready for bed and Kory handed her a pull up and next thing we know she is running around the hotel room looking like this - everyone thought it was hysterical!

Here's Tiffy holding baby Landon. Kacey and Tony were babysitting him for a friend. It was really funny to see Kacey and Tony with 9 month old Zander and 6 week old Landon. People looked at them a little strange! It also gave Nick and Tiff good practice considering they are expecting a baby in August. Yay! We can't wait to meet the little guy/girl.

Here is Emily and Grace (Amy & Erik's daughter) giving hugs. Emily is 6 months older than Grace, but they seem really close in age and have lots of fun together.

This picture made us all laugh hysterically. We put Ani, Grace And Emme all together on the couch and by the time I snapped the picture (and I am quick!!) Ani was already almost off the edge of the couch and Emme was getting off the other side. Grace was sitting there still saying "cheese"...being such a good little girl, unlike the other two. LOL!

Uncle Kory fed baby Zander his bottle before bed and put him to sleep!! Emme got a little jealous and had to jump up and snuggle too. What a sweet picture. Emily absolutely loves Z....oh and check out that kid's cheeks. I LOVE to kiss them!!!!


The End.

Our Fashion Icon and other random things...

Emily decided one night after bath that she needed to wear tights to bed. So this was her waking up the next morning in her t-shirt and tights.


Thought this picture was a riot!! When Em asks to do something "one more time" this is what she does - except she says "three". No idea where that came from....and also no idea why this time she decided to put her blanket over her head. She is too cute!

This pic is from last Friday. Emme was going to Miss Trischia's for daycare since Grandma Bonnie was out in Portland taking care of Kurt and Kalli. She started out saying she wanted to wear tights, so she picked out the ones she has on below. I got her into the jean skirt and then she decided she wanted to wear that red flowered shirt....and then the purple zip up...and then the multi-colored striped shoes. I was like...whatever! I will pick my battles and this isn't one of them! Somehow she found Daddy's hat sitting around and thought that would complete her outfit!

We have recently started give Emily her big girl cup for dinner. So when she sits at the table during dinner she gets to use her big girl cup. She's done well so far. It's been about a week and I think there has only been 1 major spill! yay Emme!

This was at Auntie CeCe's and thought it was sooo funny. Emily was sitting up on their counter watching the fish swim around the fish tank.


We have been working with Emily on potty training. We want to put her into a preschool 2 days a week and the one we really like requires them to be potty trained. So this weekend we really worked with her and she is now telling us quite regularly when she has to go potty. She is doing such a good job. We hope we can keep it up and she'll be potty trained in no time...wish us luck!!

College Girls Weekend

We had our first (but hopefully annual!!!) college girls weekend in Wisconsin Dells. We stayed at the Kalahari in a family suite and it was perfect! We had such a good time. There were 5 of us who came on Friday and went shopping at the outlet mall and then came back to the hotel for happy hour beverages/appetizers and nice catching up time. Then we headed out to a dinner at one of the restaurants in the hotel. We came back to the room and got our suits on to go hit the hot tub and walked all the way to the waterpark to realize that it had just closed...LOL! So we came back to the room for some more girl talk. Pretty sure we were all sound asleep by 11! We are sooo old!!!

Then on Saturday morning, we got up and had fancy coffee's and muffins from the coffee shop in the hotel while waiting for the last 2 girls to arrive. Once all 7 of us were there we relaxed and got ready for our spa treatments.

Here's Tina and Alison hanging out:



Some of the girls got pedi's and others got massages. Here is Katie enjoy her hot stone pedicure. They were awesome!!!


After our spa treatments, we headed for a lunch in the hotel. Here is Sarah, Heather and myself waiting for our lunch to arrive:

After lunch we headed to the bar in the waterpark. Here's Sarah, Katie and Cori with "The Captain" in the background. LOL!



We stayed in the waterpark for a few hours hopping between the hot tub and even a few of us girls did some waterslides. They were soooo fun! We are never too old for tubing it down a waterslide, right?

After the waterpark, we decided to get dressed up and actually head out for a nice dinner and head to the dance club.
Thank goodness the hotel room had 2 full bathrooms - it really was the perfect set-up for all 7 of us!

Here's the make-up artist Alison doing Tina's make-up...ahhh the memories from Winona! Some things never change :)


Here we are all ready to go out enjoying a few beverages for "free" before having to pay for our drinks. We may be older, but we are all still just as cheap!!

On our way to the restaurant, Tina decided she needed a ride. Here's Heather giving her a good push!

Here's the girls after dinner enjoying some drinks at the bar. It was a fun bar where the bartenders do all these dance movies and stuff like in the movie Cocktail. It was really fun!

Here's Ali, Heather and Tina - beautiful girls!!!

I am so thankful to have such wonderful friends. Hard to believe it's been 10 years ladies. We may be older, but it's amazing that we are all still such great friends. Hope we can do this again next year. Love you!

Emily Turns 2...a little late!

We finally had Emily's 2nd birthday party. We went to Rossario's in Monona for Spaghetti on a Board...they literally take a huge mound of pasta, sauce and meatballs and dump them on the table. You all get a fork and eat out of the same pile. It is so much fun! Em loved the spaghetti and I think everyone else did too. It was a really nice relaxing afternoon with great friends and family. Thanks everyone for coming!

Here is Emme sucking down a noodle. She loved sucking them in and getting spaghetti sauce all over the place!

Here's a shot of the table with Em peeking at me-

Here's a shot from the other end of the table and you can see the giant mound of spaghetti. I think we ended up with 6 full boxes of leftovers!

Here's a pic of Em's DELICIOUS birthday cake that we got from Carl's Cakes at Market Street Diner in Sun Prairie. It was vanilla cake with raspberry filling..it was delicious!!!

Everyone singing Happy Birthday to Emily and Daddy helping her blow out the two candles.

Here's Emme enjoying her cake. She's just like her mommy and enjoys eating all the frosting the best!


That night we opened a few presents. Here she is opening her presents from mommy and daddy:
She opened some presents from my parents earlier in the day - and here is Daddy and Grandpa putting her new easel together. Check out Em's "diaper crack". LOL! You must know the joke about Walker girls to get this one!

Here's Em enjoying her easel the next morning - and yes, her hair always looks like that after a night of good sleep!

This pic has absolutely nothing to do with her 2nd birthday. Daddy took it a few days later, but I love this one, so I just had to post it!!