5 Years Strong!

This picture was taken much longer than five years ago, so we have officially been together for 11 years now. Legally married for five though...and still it seems like yesterday we were in Kirksville playing Twisted Metal on Playstation at 4 o'clock in the morning. Quite honestly, Josh was the most unexpected thing I stumbled on in that Fall of 1998. Surprisingly underneath that rough and cynical exterior, I found a loving and loyal friend that I cannot live without. He makes me laugh so hard I cry and drives me utterly insane all in the same day, but I love him. Now, with a home, a dog and two beautiful daughters together, I couldn't be happier...well, maybe if he got a new car :-) I think the Jeep is ready to go dear...

All I can hope for is that we live together this same way for many more years to come and have three eggrolls at a time. (Don't worry, you don't have to get that reference, hee hee!)

Happy Third Birthday my Emaline!

Today, my baby is officially three years old. Crazy, I know. I don't believe it either. Since we had her party last weekend (we're going to a wedding tomorrow), today was the day she got to visit one of her favorites right now--Chuck E. Cheese. Her and Kaya go nuts in that place and its just so easy to let them do their thing. We went for lunch and enjoyed a full meal of pizza, all you can eat salad, and breadsticks. Thankfully we had coupons with us! Emaline got an awesome birthday girl crown with shiny new tokens tucked into it. She looked so cute and funny wearing that thing throughout the joint. My hope is that she'll always be silly and continue to wear the inflatable crowns until she's old and gray :-) I really will be sad when she'll think it isn't cool to do such things...*sniff sniff*.

On to the fun though...we had a great time. Josh luckily was off work and got to participate in the fun with his daughters and niece. We played skee ball, video games and always the token sucker: the coin pushing games. We always have a fun time when we go, and come out of CEC with lots of little crap that will get lost somewhere in the shuffle. Then, when she thought it was all over we got back to Nana & Pepere's house and was surprised by a new big girl bike waiting for her from Mom & Dad (after more cake and ice cream, of course)! She couldn't wait to try it out. Now to remind her to always wear her helmet! I'm glad she enjoyed the day! Happy Birthday my Stinkyface! I love you more than anything in the world.

Here's Em escorting Kaya to the car to make sure she gets buckled in safely to go (I love these pictures of them holding hands!):
Here are more fun pictures of our afternoon together:

Em & Kaya ready for fun! and Emaline's famous!

Em and Dad & Piper scoring a ride too!

Emaline's 3rd Birthday Party!

We had Emaline's 3rd birthday party yesterday and I can't believe she is going to be this old already. The time really has flown by...and things have changed. It isn't so easy to just do what I want and have it done. Her input is something we have used throughout this whole party.

Me: "Em, what kind of birthday party do you want this year?"
Em: "I think a princess party Mom. Or maybe a Backyardigans, Dora, Disney Princess Party. Can we do that?"
Me:"Well, let's pick one honey and stick with that. So which is it, Backyardigans, Dora or Disney Princesses?"
Em: "Definitely princesses."

So...we had a princess party. My sister and I also decided to make our own castle cake by doing some research on the Internet. You can find anything on the world wide interweb! So, she came over the night before and we decorated to our little heart's content. My friend Robyn also came for cleaning and moral support...I love them both! They did great jobs helping me out. The party went really well, we had a nacho/taco bar, which my Mom helped out with, thanks Ma! It was awesome and everybody kept saying how good it was. I'm just glad that everyone came back for seconds! I'd venture to say the kids had fun too with the bouncy house we borrowed from The Tinkers (you guys rock!) and making their own crowns and tiaras, which I found quite reasonably at the fabric store. They were just the little foam ones, but it kept them busy for at least 10 minutes! :-) Then we sang Happy Birthday to the birthday girl and everyone had cake and ice cream. After everyone was quite full, I'm sure, we opened gifts and all the kids were really well behaved and patiently waiting for Em to open them all! I was impressed! Finally, as the highlight of her day, she went outside to an awaiting Princess FJ Cruiser from Nana and Pepere. "My car!!!" she roared. She had been perusing the internet with her Pepere and learned of the big wheels very close to her birthday. I'd say, "Em, what do you want for your birthday?" "I'm getting a pink car Mom", she would reply. Oh boy...and so she did and loves it. Its so cute to see her driving around the yard with Kaya in tow. She's really quite good at maneuvering as well! All in all, I thought it was a fantastic afternoon and the weather was perfect! Thanks to everyone who came out and celebrated with us! Here are some choice shots of the afternoon:

A Floatin' We Will Go

About a week & a half ago, Josh and I decided to go camping/floating with our friends Robyn & Cory at a friends place (Mark) in St. Clair by the Meramec River. I was so glad we did. It was a great trip and it was nice to get away for a weekend without the kids. Although, I would love to take the girls when they get older! I don't think we could have asked for better weather, but we did have to get through setting up tents in the rain in order to get it! I'm sure I've never worked so fast to get a tent up in my life! It was pretty funny, but got done and then we hung out under some giant patio umbrellas that Mark had thought to bring drinking our beers :-) Thankfully, the rain subsided and we really got the fire going and enjoyed the cool night. Enjoyed cooking some grub, drinkin' some brew and sittin' under the stars. The next day we got up made breakfast, thanks Robyn! and got on our way. Probably one of the best floats I've ever been on. The river was a little low, but somehow we only got stuck once! Everything else was great, except probably Robyn's mishap with a dead tree...we blame it on Cory :-) Oh and the raccoon eyes. I was just glad that the whole 5 hours we were out there it was just us and no one else. I loved it. Thanks to Mark for letting us use his family's land and for the great weekend and thanks to Robyn & Cory for driving and all the floating gear (thanks Papa Cooper!) because I think we can safely say we had an awesome time. Can't wait to do it again!

Emaline & Piper's First Trip to Grant's Farm!

On Saturday, the 22nd, we met my sister, her husband and Kaya at Grant's Farm for an impromptu family outing. Joshua had worked the night before and we needed to get out of the house to let daddy sleep for a little bit. So...packed up the girls and headed southward around 10:00am. What time did we get into the park? 11:40am. Yes, it took us about 25-30 minutes to get there and then another hour and 10 minutes to actually get on a tram and get into the gates of the farm. Crazy I know, but it was a fundraiser weekend and a absolutely beautiful day, I think one of the 10 best we've had this year. After we finally got inside, Stephani got the girls the little Fun Passes they offer that get you two bottles of milk to feed the goats, a ride on the carousel and a snow cone. Good deal for $5 and in the parking lot they were giving out free hot dogs and drink vouchers for kids under 10! Score. One hot dog for Em and one for Mommy (Piper isn't ready for tubed meat yet, but I still got one for her). I think the girls had a great time getting attacked by goats--Kaya being knocked down and Emaline getting her hair eaten. Ouch! :-) They also saw parrots, camels, an eagle and some famous Budweiser Clydesdale horses. A lot of fun, but now I know an all day affair! Excited for our next trip.

Basement Remodel: Part IV

The drywall has been hung and mudded and is looking great! It really doesn't look that different from the last pictures, but it only took 4 days for all the taping and mudding (thanks Todd!)...and there is dust everywhere! Ugh. I don't know how we are going to get this place cleaned up. Well, now that we are ready to paint, Josh went and bought a giant bucket of paint for the ceiling and did most of it in one night. I was very impressed. Its amazing what this man gets done when we are all sleeping! In the coming weeks we will get supplies like wainscoting and trim and try to figure out what colors I want to paint with. Although, I do have to get our family room done first. At the same time was getting all the drywall finished off, he decided to take down the paneling in our family room and lo & behold there was some decent drywall under there. So Todd went ahead and finished that off for us as well...the problem is I have to paint the whole room again. Now wondering what I want to paint it! We shall see in the next couple weeks :-)

The first two pictures here are of the basement:


These two pics are the family room:

Grandma Little

My husband's grandmother passed away last week and I thought I would take the time to say what a wonderful woman she was to him, probably more than she'll ever know. He loved her very much and I wish that we would have had more time with her as a family. Hopefully she can rest peacefully now...

More Pool Time

We've spent quite a bit of time in the pool this summer, but never got any family time together. Josh had to take some time off (too much comp time accumulated) so I also took a week off from work and we spent some much needed family time together and got some stuff done on the basement. On the Friday of our week off, we went to my parents house to take advantage of the great weather and meet my friends Carrie and Robyn for a little sun time. We ended up getting this fun little family pic while we were in the water. Piper's hat and sunglasses crack me up! She is so happy and natural in the water, which is exactly how Emaline was as well. So we might have another little fish in the making! Hopefully, we'll get to enjoy a couple more days like this as summer winds down.

Basement: Part III

Josh and Jaime have made great strides in getting our basement finished. After all the framing was completed, new windows put in and insulation laid, the drywall was delivered (by a giant truck!) and now we have it put up ! It is great to really see the rooms come together now and visualize what I will have to work with when all the "construction" is finished and I have my way in decorating. The boys have cleaned it up really well too, so there isn't as much dust as I thought there was going to be...yet. We have a guy coming to mud the drywall next week and get it all smoothed out and ready to be painted soon. I can't wait for this whole project to be done, but looks like we've extended it a bit. We've decided to try and put a bathroom in down here. At least rough in what we can while still not finished and then complete it later. This means Josh has to dig a trench in the concrete from our drain stack to where the toilet is going to be...so we'll see what happens there! Hopefully it will go smoother than I expect, but I would really like to have a bathroom down there because it will makes things so much easier. Especially if we spend as much time as I think we will down there. Here are more pics of the drywall up!

Emaline Swimming!

Emaline has officially become a swimmer. I can't believe it. We really got her going at the end of last summer and I was afraid not being able to have the pool all year long that it might set her back, but nope...there was no stopping her! So this year we switched her over to swimmies/floaties so that she could get a feel for floating around on her own and she really like the independence. I did buy her one of those swimming vests, but she absolutely hated it, so the swimmies were the next step for us. Then, just randomly a couple days before the 4th she told me, "mom, I don't need my floaties, I've got magic fish goggles that will help me swim". So I put on her goggles for her and sat on the step with her in the pool, next thing I know she's jumping off and kicking her legs and moving! She had gotten really good at holding her breath, but it scared me too, so I made her hold on to me for a little while and the next day she was showing Pepere like she was an old pro. Now, no more floaties, no more holding on to Mom....*sniff sniff*, my baby is growing up! So here is one of her first push offs. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I do.