Our smart girl

Yesterday we went to Old World Wisconsin with Kory's mom. A tornado went through there back in April and it was amazing to see all the trees laying sideways still! If you've never been there, you should go. It was really neat to see all the historical farms and how people used to live back in the late 1800's.

On our way home Em was quite entertaining....

She can sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider song:



She can count AND sing parts of the alphabet:

Mini-me

I had taken the picture of Emily on Tuesday before her first dance class and Kory saw it and said - "Don't you have a picture with that same face"....Sure enough!

So anyways, I think she is my mini-me even if we actually don't look much alike at all. I think our personalities are soooo similar!

Parades, Festivals and Oodles of Summer Fun!

We've had so much fun this summer already. Hard to believe it's almost the end of August. Emily is such a joy, even if she does test us constantly! That girl can remember anything and everything, so there is no sneaking anything in around her. Her new favorite thing is to call people knuckle-heads. I have no idea where she heard it from, but it's hard to tell her that isn't nice when you're cracking up!

This week at school she went on her first field trip. She talked constantly about the bus ride and sitting next to Owen. LOL! She went to this bouncy house place and had a blast. We even had to take her earrings out for the first time, so we talked about it all week prior just so that she wouldn't be scared. She did great and she even let me put them back in after school.

Emily is LOVING her new school. She talks about her teachers all the time and seems to be playing with the kids more. She does special art projects every day which is her favorite. She loves loves loves to do anything art-related.

Her bug bite issues are hopefully almost over for the year. She is now on Zyrtec daily until the first freeze. Her Dr said she has the classic signs/symptoms of a mosquito allergy. They aren't real common, so there isn't much we can do about it - but he did say that typically the allergy goes away. So for now, she's on Zyrtec - but in the spring we will let her get bit a few times before put her on any meds.

Here's just a cute pic of Emmers. She is really into dressing herself, but hasn't quite figured out what matches and what doesn't:

This weekend is the Sun Prairie Sweet Corn Festival and this is Emily and her buddy Tyler all ready for the parade. They loved it! It was Em's first real parade and she had so much fun--again, check out the lovely outfit, I was actually embarrased that is how she was dressed! LOL! :

Here she is waving at Mickey Mouse:



She loves to play with her dolly's. Each one has their own blanket and spot she makes for them in her room. She had quite the mess going on here:

We also went to the carnival at Sweet Corn Fest. Daddy watched while me and Em rode the carousel. She loved it. She kept saying "do it again mommy!":

Here are a few videos of Em - this one is of her singing the itsy bitsy spider song:




This one is of her sooo excited at the parade:

Kory's New Truck

I mentioned a few posts back that Kory got a new pick up. I wanted to put up a picture. We all love it. The best thing about it (if you ask me!) is the seats are heated AND cooled!!!! So we can actually have a normal temperature in the truck and if he's hot he can turn on his cooled seats. Kory's favorite thing (besides the cooled seats!!!) is the longer bed for his tool box. It's awesome!

It's a Ford F-150, silver outside, black leather inside. Sharp!!

Random July Post

We have been so busy and I haven't had much time to post a blog. So I'm post a bunch of random things.

These pics are from a few weeks ago when we went with the Vosberg's to the Dane County Fair. We went early in the am to avoid the crowd and the heat, but it was still hotter than heck.



Kristen and Owen are here visiting from Montana, so we've been spending a lot of time with Kory's family.
I have lots of pictures so far, but here are just a few--

Here's Emme, Zander and Owen all playing so nicely together:



Owen doesn't have baby dolls at his house, so everytime we hang out with them he has to come and take Em's dolls. It's sooo cute and of course Kory keeps giving Kristen a hard time about her little boy playing with dolls.



This was SOOO funny. Zander is just about ready to walk on his own, he takes steps and everything. Here he is using his activity table as a walker and Em is racing him with a push cart and Owen is running after them. It was a riot!!



This is Em standing out in Kacey & Tony's porch and Z standing in the kitchen. I just love Em's sunglasses up on her head and everything. What a rock star!!!



Kacey and Tony even got their swimming pool out for everyone. Em actually swam! Usually she just plays on the edges. She was quite the fish that day!


This is from an activity project I did with Em last weekend. I saw it on Cullen's ABC's. I LOVE her ideas!!!! Anyways, we put letters and shapes in that yellow bag and she'd pick one out and then try to mimic it in the shaving cream. She didn't quite get it, but still had a lot of fun!



This is Em riding in Daddy's brand new Ford F-150!! It's quite the nice truck and Em was proud to be riding in it.


I just thought this pic was cute. Emme and Owen just lounging around at G's house.


This is one of my fave's. Em and Aunt Kristen!!!


This is a picture of the three FAVORITE grandkids on Kory's mom's side of the family. Zander (13 months), Owen (16 months), and Emily (2 1/2 years).


We've had quite a busy month of July since arriving home from Hayward. Casey and Mike are busy planning the wedding, they are getting all the big details sorted out. We are so happy to be a part of their big day!
Kory got a brand new pick-up truck which I'll post pics of next time. I haven't taken any yet!!
Em got another bad bug bite last Sunday and was into the Dr this week for another infection from the bite. We are just worrying like crazy about her. The antibiotics made her really sick this week, so we've stopped giving them to her. Waiting for more details from or Dr about what to do next. Poor girl needs to walk around in a net!!!
Kory got a pretty nasty owie this week too. He was washing his semi-truck and went to jump down and his wedding ring got caught on the hood. Not good. He ripped his finger really bad. Thankfully my friend was here and took him to the ER since I was on my way to work already. I met them at the ER and Kory ended up with stiches and a cut-off wedding ring :( Poor guy. He's pretty sore, but doing better each day. Just say some prayers that all heals well. It was exposed down to the tendons and ligaments, and the Dr's say he's very lucky to not have worse damage to his hand.

Hope everyone else is having a fantastic summer!!! Will write more soon.

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!!!