Hayward 4th of July Trip 2010

Every year my immediate family gets together for a week up at the lake house in Hayward. My parents are always so happy to have us there, and we always have a great time.

I have a gazillion pics that I uploaded to a link, you can check them out here.

Mikaiya helping Emme up the hill-


My sunshine-


Look at those baby blues - lovely Braenna-

Grammy pulling 2 of the girls-

Papa taking Emme up in the neighbor's tree stand-

Mikaiya and Jeff out on the tube. This was Mikaiya's first time and she absolutely loved it-

A picture of all 3 girls looking at the camera...it's a miracle-

Us-

Casey and Mike-

Cori & Jeff-

Check out that ROCK!! Yep-Mike proposed to Casey while we were all out one night. We are sooooo happy for the two of them-

Here's a group shot of us big kids. Thanks to Grammy for watching all 3 girls so we could 'live it up' for a night :)-

Here's Emme trying on Auntie CeCe's ring - I think she likes it!!!! -

A family picture!!!!! We haven't had a new one of these in ages. I love it!!!

Grammy made the girls matching dresses. Aren't they so cute?

We had a great time up north. We did get to visit the ER unfortunately. Emily got bit by a bug on Tuesday and by the middle of the night her arm was incredibly swollen. So we took her to the ER at 1am, and they said she had cellulitis which is basically a bacterial infection. They put her on antibiotics and benadryl, but wanted us to go to the clinic in the morning. So the next day we woke up and her hand/arm were worse!!!! So we took her to the clinic and it was quite the adventurous day - poor little girl! She had to have her blood drawn, which didn't work - so then they got blood via finger pricks. Then she had to have one of her bug bites lanced so they could get some of the ickies out of it and grow it in a culture. Then the worst part was they had to hold her down and give her an antibiotic injection in each thigh. That was awful. Em did soooo good! Thankfully the injections helped and by Thurs morning she was finally doing better. She went back to the clinic 1 more time and they did a finger prick again and the blood draw showed the infection was going down. Ends up she got a staph infection from the bug bite. Very scary!!!

Other than that, the trip was fantastic. I got to waterski - which I hadn't done since before I was pregnant. Got up my first try! Yay me! Got to spend some time with our friends Bruce & Kate and their 2 kiddos. Got to see my little sissy get engaged...how special for all of us!

Can't wait for next year :)

Vegas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kory and I went to Las Vegas on June 17th - 21st, it was a total last minute decision and we ended up having such a nice time. Kory had an idea on Tues (June 15th!!!) that since we already had a long weekend off work to head up north...maybe....we could go to Vegas instead for the Great West Truck Show. So we asked Bonnie if she could watch Em for us, and everything just fell into place. We got a decent last minute deal staying at Harrah's and flying out of Milwaukee. We left Thursday after I got done with work and got back on the red eye Monday morning.

We didn't take a ton of pictures, but I've posted a few of the good ones.

We aren't huge gamblers, but did enjoy a little time in the casino. Here's a pic of my winnings at the NY NY casino. LOL! Thought that was really funny!!!

We even went out of our box and played one of the tables. We played Black Jack by ourselves with the dealer and had a great time. It was a $10 table and we each put in $20. We played for a good 45 min. We were very proud of ourselves and learned a ton! Our dealer was so sweet and she really helped us to learn the game.

Here we are happy to be enjoying our spontaneous vacation:

One of our favorite things at Harrah's was the outside bar, called Carnavale Court they had with live music all day long and the best flair bartenders around! Flippy was one of the bartenders and was 3rd in the world for flair bartending (his mom must be proud...LOL!). Anyways, we LOVED going and watching them do all their tricks. This is one of him balancing all those bottles and drinks on his forehead. He did this trick every day!!!

While we were at Carnavle Court the lead singer from the Ramone's showed up. So he got up on stage and sang a few songs with the band 'The Spazmatics'. It was a riot!!!

If you cheer loud enough during his trick, he walks around the bar and pours free shots in your mouth...yum! This was the lady next to us getting her free shot:

This was another one of their tricks. They put all these cups together and then pour it into shot glasses. Kory watched them enough times to figure out that it was dependant on how much ice was in each cup. Crazy!!

When we were sitting at the bar this guy showed up with this girl. Kory was like - I think that's someone famous. I was like uhh...no clue. So I took a picture of him. Supposedly he's famous - or at least we think he LOOKS like he's famous :)

One of our other favorite places at Harrah's was Toby Keith's bar - I Love this Bar! It was super fun. Here's Kory drinking his beer out of a jar-

Here we are at Toby's bar getting ready for lunch.

We went to the truck show both days (Friday and Saturday). It was a really small show, but Kory got to talk to all the vendors he wanted to and we even got to see some of the show trucks.

This is one that has an amazing tile floor in it:



This was one of my favorites. It has a mural of the firefighters raising the US flag in front of the 9/11 towers. It was georgous!!!

This one caught my eye. I said "Hey honey, can they really lease onto FedEx AND UPS?"...LOL! He was like uh....no idea! I just thought that was really bizarre.

We ended up having a fantastic trip and we are so glad we decided to go at the last minute. We got home at 5am on Monday morning to a very sick little girl. Poor Em had woken up on Monday with a fever. So I stayed home with her Monday and most of Tuesday. On Monday night her fever was at 104.5. It was incredibly scary. She woke up hallucinating. It was very hard to see my little nut bug so sick. She was better by Tuesday and now she's back to 100%.

Kid-free Night Out!

The 2nd weekend in June, we met up with some friends out for dinner then out to the comedy club on State Street and then out to a few bars downtown. We had a blast!!!

Here are the Casey/Kacey's :)

Here are Kory and I doing a lovely self portrait-

Awe...the Vosberg's are adorable...even with Mike in the background :)

Here's Mike with me and Kacey.

Here are the sober two of the bunch :) My neighbor and good friend, Kathy and Kory. They were soooo ready for us to go home! They were good sports though and were finally able to drag Kacey and I out of the bar! Thank goodness :)

Thanks everyone for coming out. We had a blast and hope to do it again soon!!!

Emme's Big Girl Car

We bought Emily a Jeep Renegade last winter and had it in the basement until she was big enough to ride in it. It's quite the Jeep!

Here she is getting ready to go for her first ride~



She decided to let Blue Bear drive first...LOL! She was like um....DRIVE FASTER BEAR!!!



This is her checking under the hood. Pretty sure she's going to be a mechanic someday!

Grammy's Hair Salon

I have to live in reality (even though most days I try not to!) that someday my mom will not own her hair salon. It's really all I've ever known, I remember my dad and I going over there to paint the inside when it literally was just a shell of a store. I remember sitting around the kitchen table as a family and picking out the name and picking the phone number.


It was really, really, really important to me that Emily got to experience my mom's salon. She has owned Lasting Impression Hair Design for 21 years and we are all so incredibly proud of the business she has built from the ground up. We hope that someday soon someone with just as much passion and willingness to learn will take over the salon and continue to support it's growth.
Here is Emily sitting on her special chair for the first time. She is used to getting her hair cut (she gets it cut more often than I get mine cut!!), but not used to being in a salon. This was her first time. She is picking out her nailpolish :)



Here is grammy getting started on the haircut:

Look out, she's going to be a beauty queen:

The bangs are always a challenge - poor girl has curly bangs:

The finished product. Grammy even gave her a mannequin head to take home as a momento of her first salon haircut. Great. Now we have a giant head in the playroom!


Here is Em afterwards deciding to wash her Head's hair:

Well I just wanted to thank mom for letting us come in and for cutting Em's hair (like always!). Thanks for letting Em run around and basically take over the place for an hour. She had fun and so did I.

First day of school

On Monday, Emily started what we call her 'Big Girl School'. We have been talking about it a lot, but this weekend we really talked it up. Kory and I took her together Monday morning and got to meet some of the teachers and a few of the kiddos too. The school is called Gingerbread House. It only accepts kids 2 - 5 and they must be potty trained. They do preschool from 9 - 11:30 every day - the rest of the day is standard daycare. We've gotten through 2 days and she seems to absolutely love it. Her teacher, Miss Maggie (which by the way is the same name as our neighbor's dog - you should have seen Em's face when we told her it was her teachers name! LOL!) is wonderful! She said that Emily is a sweetheart and eats like a champ - if you can believe that :) She goes potty all by herself and has been getting along nicely with the other kids. She even said she follows directions well - must not get that from her stubborn and independent mommy!

This was a very big decision for Kory and I - to move her to a big girl school. She will be 2 1/2 in a couple of weeks and we just decided it was time. I know it's only been 2 days, but we both feel like we have made an excellent decision.

Here is Em on her first day of school. I asked her to smile nice and this is what I got:



This was after school. She was running around like crazy! She was even doing wheelies with her cozy coupe:


Here's a video of a song she kept singing all evening. We have no idea what song it is - so if you know - feel free to clue us in!! She must have learned it at her new school:



Bedtime was a bit of a challenge last night - considering her fantastic nap at daycare. She was sooooo hyper all evening and into night time. Finally about 9pm we went to go to bed and she was still talking away in her room. I peeked in to find her standing in the middle of her room quite proud of her accomplishment:


She cleared every book (except 2) off the book shelf in her room and piled them on top. If you look to the far left you can see that stack is about to topple over. I have no idea how she stacked them so high!!!

Happy Memorial Day

We had a nice long weekend. It was busy, but not too busy. Kory's dad and his wife Bernita came to visit too which was really nice. We hadn't seen them since November. We had absolutely fantastic weather! I can't believe it. Here's a few pics we took lately:

Kory and his Dad-

Emme and Bernita playing-

Emme posing for a pic with Papa-

My attempt at creative shots-

Emme and Papa on the carousel at Brat Fest-

Happy Memorial Day to everyone. Thanks to our soldiers and their families for the ultimate sacrifice so the we can all live in a country of freedom.

Hayward Trip

We went up north last week for Mother's Day. We had a great time. The trip up was a little stressful with Emme. I worked until 11 and then Kory picked me up at work. He had the whole truck packed and Emme all ready to go! It was fantastic. The problem was that she played for 2 entire hours and then screamed for a full hour before finally passing out. So she slept the last hour and a half - guess we can't complain too much.

It snowed on our way up north...in May!! We even woke up Saturday morning to a fresh blanket of snow. Crazy! We did still got some outside playtime though. I just love being in Hayward. I have so many memories as a child hanging out up there with my family and I hope we can give Emily the same wonderful memories!!

Here's a pic of her after nappy time. I love those kissable rosy red cheeks:


We were able to take Emily fishing for the first time. Thanks Z-pants for letting us borrow the life jacket. Let us know when you need it back! Check out those rock star sunglasses...I'm pretty sure her outfit was loud enough to scare fish away! LOL!

Here is Grammy holding on to the "oh sh**" handle on the life jacket - that's what it's for, right??? Em thought fishing was a contest of who can reel their empty lure in the fastest!! She was sooooo funny. Mom was trying to get her to leave her lure in the water a little longer so maybe a fish could grab it, but nope - Emily is VERY bossy and would yell at Grammy. It was so funny.

Thank you cousin Mikaiya for letting me borrow your barbie fishing pole - I don't have my own one yet :)

Here's a fish that daddy caught - Em loved it!!!!! She was helping to reel it in. Look out - I think we have a fisherman on our hands.

The last day there Grandpa let us take the Ranger out for the spin. Thanks Dad! Emme LOVES the Ranger. The whole family went for a ride. It was super fun.

Thanks to mom & dad for letting us come visit more often this summer. Happy Mother's Day to two of the most beautiful, loving and kind women in the world - Mom and Bonnie. You are the most fantastic "mom's" I could have and I look forward to many more Mother's Day's with both of you.

New Playset

We bought Emily a new playset a few weeks ago and finally got a few nice days to put it up. Kory did all the work! It looks fantastic!!

Here is a cute video of Kory hammering in the anchors and Emily was saying "oh dada" each time he hit it. You have to listen closely to hear her.