09/27/09

Photo Gallery

We're doing things a little different this time around. The website has limited space, so I uploaded the photos on Kodak. If you click a link you'll be directed to our album on their site.

We went to the BEST apple orchard today in Montrose. I knew it was going to be a good time when we were greeted by 3 huge turkeys in the parking lot. They had baby farm animals everywhere and it was encouraged to pick them up and play with them. We were given a bag of food for the goats and had a blast chasing chickens.  We saved the U-Pick apples for another year, but Sophie sure loved finding the perfect pumpkin.

 

We were sure to be home for the start of the Vikings game and Trav has declared this day "the best day of his life." Hmmm- thought that was his wedding day???  Favre worked his magic in the last 2 seconds and the Vikings won!! And I hate sports and don't know anything about football, but even I was a little excited. :)  

I'm starting to realize I'm running out of time. It's been a busy last couple of months and we've done some fun things. So, I'm just finally getting around to organizing pictures.  This slideshow is mostly the State Fair and Renaissance Festival. 

 

Brock was uncooperative again. He can't stand being contained for more than 10 seconds these days (ask me how clipping his nails go)!!  And he's on the move and walking.  My mom bought him some squeaky shoes that squeak (like a dog toy) with every step, so they saved his life a couple times at the fair as he was breezing through large crowds.  Sophie absolutely loved the Renaissance. I think she said the word "castle" about 70 times from the time we parked our car, to when we finally walked through the entrance. And from there it was fairy and princess city. She was in complete awe!!

 

Trav worked on the finishing the garage and pulled a few boxes out of storage I thought I lost. One was of my old cabbage patch kids. Score 1 for Sophie. The second was of my old dance costumes and uniforms. Score 2 for Sophie. She LOVES to play dress up with them (and so does Brock). I apologize in advance for the slobbery face. Our two darlings have had the nastiest cold forever!

 

I was thrilled to be shopping one day at Sam's Club and find some really nice Disney dress up clothes for a good deal. I thought I was way ahead of the game by picking up a Tinkerbell costume for Sophie to wrap for Christmas. I hid it far in the back of our closet behind Trav's clothes and forgot about it.  One day, I was getting dressed and Sophie said, "Hey mom. Did you see the Tinkerbell dress?" and I said, "What?"  She said, "There's a Tinkerbell dress in there." So I said, "Show me." And she went to the back of the closet and pushed the clothes away with all her might and said, "Ta Daaaa!"  I had to laugh at that.  I played dumb and took it out for her to play with.  I think she gets her present finding skills from my side of the family. This must be payback!

Brock turned one on July 29th. I can't believe how fast the year went! We had family over to celebrate on Sunday. Once again after everyone left, I realized I was so busy I didn't have a single conversation with anyone!  I think Sophie thought the day was about her. When I brought home the birthday cake the day before, her eyes got huge and she said, "Oh my gosh!!! It's my birthday party!!"

 

Brock is pretty close to walking.  He's extremely cautious and controlled about it. He can stand up in the middle of the room on his own and takes a few steps here and there. So far the record is 6 steps and turning in a circle. I think he's just waiting until he's REALLY got it, and then is going to skip walking all together and go straight to running. I'm scared!  I waited until a 1/2 hour before the party started to put is #1 birthday shirt on. Of course 10 minutes later, he was walking and fell on his face. When I was comforting him, I felt wet tears running down my arm and then Sophie said, "Hey mom! What happened to your arm?" and what I thought was tears, was actually blood! Poor Brocker had a bloody nose.  Once the blood stopped and he was in better spirits, I had to pull a couple miracles to get the blood spots out of the shirt before family arrived. 

 

He loved his cake. I gave him the biggest piece of all so he could get a little messy. But, he actually inhaled it. Unfortunately, I think he paid for it that night. He was moaning from an upset stomach as he fell asleep.

 

On a random note - since I live for celebrity gossip - Sophie was looking at my People magazine and said, "Hey mom! Look! I see a witch!" and I looked to see what she was pointing at. Turns out it was a picture of Michael Jackson during rehearsal a few weeks before he died. Sadly, I had to chuckle a bit...poor Michael!!  Ah- to have the innocent eyes of a 2 year old!  ;o)

Much to Trav's resistance, I talked him into coming with us to the zoo. I just received an email from the zoo saying their new play park was opening on July 11, so I wanted to head their to check it out. It was so cute! Also on our days agenda was to feed the Giraffes on the Africa exhibit. So, we bought our two crackers for $5, and stood in line for 15 minutes with a 2 year old who was so upset she had to wait her turn. Then, once we finally had the chance to feed them, Sophie was scared to death.  I handed her half of a cracker and she chucked it over the side of the fence (that was a fast buck twenty five!) and screamed bloody murder while I fed him. I'm still laughing about it. The baby goats were a better choice for her.  On a side note- at 11 months old, Brock finally broke his first 2 teeth at once. Funny though. It's one on the top and one on the bottom, same side. So, when he smiles or cries, he sort of reminds me of that creepy huge guy in the movie Goonies that's in the basement of his smokey old mothers home with the two teeth, crooked ears and uneven eyes?  It's a face only a mother could love :)

We went to my parents for a family party and then off to my cousins fireworks. Once again, he blew us away!  My cousin, Tony, buys and makes his own fireworks as a hobby. For the last 10 years he's been doing a show for our family and his business and friends.  About 5 years ago he started choreographing them to music. Planning for his 4th of July show is a year long process for him and we are thankful we all get to enjoy it.   Later in the weekend, we took the kids to the community pool in Menomonie. Brock is a little water bug. He's fearless in the water and even puts his head in! The next day, I took the kids down to play in the river at my parents. BTW- I noticed the memorial day link was broken, so it's fixed now.

After seeing Sophie freak out and dance along to every song at Audrey's dance recital, I knew i had to enroll her in dance classes as soon as she was old enough.  While at the Albertville parade a dance school came through that has classes for 2 year olds so I signed her up for summer classes. She loves it, so I signed her up for another class this fall/winter.

Sorry I haven't been great at posting pictures. My life has gotten so busy chasing kids I don't have a spare moment to do anything else. I'm currently typing as fast as I can while Brock pulls on my skirt to try to get to the printer I'm desperately trying to block with my leg. Here's a run down of a few things we've been up to:

 

Audrey's Holy Communion

I thought Sophie was quietly sleeping, only to head back upstairs and find THIS

Memorial Weekend at the DeBrobander's cabin and at my parents house

Sophie has a big girl bedroom

These are pictures from Brock's 9 mo. sitting (pw: brock). I just love the way all of them turned out and I don't know how I'm going to choose just a few.  Sophie never cooperates when it's her turn for pictures. Of course, when we only wanted Brock, she had to try to get in every frame. At the end we gave up and let her sit in the basket. He's such a big boy - I can't believe how fast time has gone. At his 9 mo. check up, he was in the 97 percentile for height, and 63rd for weight.  He's crawling, pulling up and getting into everything. And now he's off the bottle, except for at bed times and feeds himself.  It makes me want to delay his walking because I know when he starts that, I won't be able to call him a baby. He's still a laid back, happy guy, but has found his voice when he does get upset!

We had a busy weekend. Sophie and I dyed eggs together. It went better than it did last year, but I was still on pins and needles having her around all that dye! She did great, but was too impatient to let them dry.  On Saturday, the Smither's invited us to their annual Easter egg hunt at Summer's mom. It was a beautiful, warm day and the kids had a great time.  Easter morning I tried really hard to get a picture of the two kids together all dressed up. I don't think one turned out, but as a group, it's sort of funny to see how it went down - not very well! We spent Easter Sunday at Trav's parents. His brother's family drove from NY to stay for a few days. The boys were so great with Sophie and Brock. In other news - Sophie's excitement with her Easter basket was short lived. While out on a Target run Monday morning, Chance pulled her basket off the counter and ate everything in it. He spend the day at the vet vomiting while the rest of us enjoyed lunch and a movie with the DeBro's!

Niki and Pat came up from Rochester for the weekend and stayed at the Radisson on 694 and 81. Their daughter, Brooke, is turning 3 at the end of the month and they have another baby due in July. We met them on Friday night and had a blast at the water park. It was perfect for our kids age. Sophie and Brooke were two peas in a pod and it was so fun watching them interact. Even Brock was able to take a dip in the pool! If you haven't been there, it's definitely worth checking out. Trav especially enjoyed their "toilet bowl" slide. It was a huge plunge in pitch dark and then opened up to a toilet bowl type thing that went around super fast and dropped him into a 10 foot pool. Both Pat and Trav said it was pretty scary. I was too chicken to try it!

They have farm babies on display at the zoo until mid April. Sophie had a ball chasing the goats. She was yelling, "baby goats, baby goats, baby goats!" over and over again. I don't know if one ever slowed down enough for her to pet it!

The team I support at Boston Scientific had an offsite at Cooks at Crocus Hill on Grand. We split up into teams and each made a dish all sat down together to enjoy what we made. Good times!

Sophie looked so springy in her new little outfit one warm day, I couldn't stop taking pictures of her. Eventually, she found her tutu and when Trav got home, she threw on her new rain boots and headed outside to play with him. It was such a fun/cute combo, he took even more pictures!

I know it's been a long time since I posted pictures. I haven't stopped taking pictures, I just ran out of time. I have plenty of pictures of Brock sitting on his own, first taste of solids, and sitting in the bath tub. When I finally had free time to take the pictures off my camera, there were 300 of them. Now, they are safely stored on our hard drive. Here's a few recent pictures of the kids. We've had a few 40 degree days and to our surprise, Sophie figured out how to peddle her tricycle. But her favorite is riding the 4-wheeler with Daddy. Brock has progressed quite a bit as well. He gets up on all fours quite a bit and is doing the backward crawl.  Just tonight, Trav and I saw him figure out how to get from laying down into a sitting position. He's a pretty determined baby - he's been working on that one for a while.  Life is good! :)

We had family over on Saturday to have a birthday party for Sophie. It was everything Dora (Sophie wouldn't want it any other way)!  I found her two hours before the party 1/2 way into the gift we got her. I had to reassemble it the best I could. We knew this would happen when we named her Sophie, but the cake came back with the words, "Happy Birthday Sophia" on it. We all pondered on how we could rearrange the frosting to make it say Sophie. A few minutes later, Aidan decided to solve the problem for us. We noticed the I and A were missing from her name and Aidan was smiling with pink frosted lips!  Once we all chimed in to sing Happy Birthday, it got to be a little much for poor Sophie. She burst in to tears, but quickly felt better when she finally got to eat her cake.

Sophie turned two on a Thursday. We sent her to daycare with a few treats and they had a small party for her there. At home, I made her, her favorite meal (which she ate about two bites of,  BTW).  She blew out the candles herself and miraculously got her appetite back to devour the entire cupcake. She opened a few small gifts Trav and I got her, but really enjoyed her pony pulling pick-up truck she got from her Uncle Todd and family in New York.  It was a tough night for her. She was over-stimulated, over-tired, and filled with sugar. Eventually, she threw the woman figurine one direction because she couldn’t get her in the truck anymore, and the puppy the other direction for not standing up right. So we quickly wrapped things up and put her to bed. Welcome terrible twos!! Poor Brock is just two weeks away from solids, but he wants real food so bad. It's really hard to eat around him because she stares so hard at us, like, "Are you going to give me some of that or what??" Sorry for the grainy pictures. The flash apparently was not set up right. I did my best to lighten them in photoshop!

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This site was last updated 09/27/09