Bath!

Tonight Porter upchucked his dinner all over the place. Luckily he was still in his booster seat and luckily Mike was the one feeding him!! Ha Ha! We think he just ate too much and his little belly couldn't handle it all. He acted fine the rest of the night. But he was covered head to toe in vomit so I just ran and stuck him in the kitchen sink. Stella thought it was pretty funny to get a bath in the kitchen sink and insisted she needed to be part of the action, too.
You might be a redneck if you bathe with your sibling in the kitchen sink!!!

Sprinkler

We got out the sprinkler again tonight. The kids just LOVE it. It's a far cry from the sprinkler we had growing up........

Best Friends

After the play date today, Stella's good friend, Berlin, stayed and played. They had a great time this afternoon. She was here for around 5 hours and there was no fighting, tears or injuries. It has to be a world record. :) Once the rain stopped we even ventured outside for some puddle jumping. Porter even had on his snow boots. :)

A tornado struck our house!!!!!

Okay, so not a real tornado, but it sure felt like it. I hosted a play date at my house today and since it was DOWN POURING rain (again!) we were all inside. After everyone left I looked around my house and gasped, it was trashed. But that just means the kids had a great time, right?!?! They really did play well today. Here are a couple of photos of the aftermath. Truly the pictures do not do it justice, it was a DISASTER!

Freedom

Free at last.....from gates!!!!!!! No more baby gates! Porter has successfully mastered going down the steps on his own. He learned last week and has been doing great ever since. We do still use the gates when we want to keep him from going somewhere, but it is so nice to not have to deal with gates all the time anymore! Yippie! He has grown up so much the last couple of weeks. He is such a climber. He can now climb up on Stella's bed and will scoot anything he can find over to the couch to climb up on the couch. No leaving him unattended! And he laughs and laughs whenever he gets up to where he wants to be. I think he is teething. He hasn't cut a new tooth in like 3 months. And it's practically impossible for me to get a finger in his mouth to feel around.

Stell-Bell

Stella wrote her name tonight for the first time. We haven't really worked on writing letters much, I was going to start working with her this fall, but today we did it for a few minutes and she did great. The second pic is how she wrote her name for the very first time, I think she did a super job. :) The bottom line is the S-T-E and the top line is L-L-A. She thought the "E" needed 4 lines pointing out of it, not just 3! She's funny. After being around Hannah this weekend (who is taking gymnastics class right now) Stella has been turning cartwheels all the time, which is her third pic.
She started complaining a ton tonight about her ears hurting, crying a lot. Mike is working tonight. The kids were already bathed and in jammies, but we did a Target run and I bought ear ache medicine and swimmers ear stuff. She was in the hot tub swimming a lot over the weekend and over at the neighbors swimming today so I'm wondering if she has water stuck in her ear. Right before bed she was complaining her head hurt. She wasn't warm or running a temp at all. I hope she feels better in the morning. We have a birthday party in the morning to go to, she'll be so upset if we miss it. Oh and she was so upset about her ears hurting, she was insisting she needed band-aids on her ears. So we trek to Target (in their jammies) with Care Bear band aids covering both of her ears. I'm sure we had a few strange looks coming our way!!!!!!! (I wish I had a photo of that!)

Random Thoughts........

Why can I never remember to use my reusable shopping bags!?!?!? It's so frustrating to me. I keep 5 of them in my car, yet can never remember to bring them into a store.
And how in the world is our fish, Barney, still alive? He is 13 months old...this has to be a world record!!!!!!

Twisty swing

Stella's new trick on the swing. :)

Happy Birthday To Me! :)

Wow! I'm 31! I guess I'm not one to be bothered by a number....yet! I'm sure when I turn 35 or 40 I'll freak out, but so far no birthday has made me feel tight in the chest. :) I had a great birthday, thanks for all the emails and phone calls. Mike took the day off work and started the day out great...making me choc chip pancakes. My favorite and I only get them twice a year....Mother's Day and my birthday! Then I went out for a day of shopping. I got some good stuff and it was fun to browse around without having to keep two little ones entertained. I also got my hair cut and really love my new 'do. When I got home, around 4, we went to Cold Stone for some ice cream. This evening we went on a walk and then Stella and I played outside after Porter went to bed. Even though I was only away from S & P for about 6 hours I still missed them!! I think Mike and the kids had fun today. They played outside a lot, which they both loved. On our walk tonight Mike asked Stella what her favorite part of the day was. Her reply "Going to Home Depot". A girl after her fathers heart!

Video of Porter

Here is a video of Porter going down the little slide we have in the playroom. He figured out how to climb up the slide and go down by himself last week.

video!

i hope this works, if so it's of stella in the bounce house at family fest on friday night. :)

Family Fest

We went to Family Fest last night and had a great time. It is at a park near our house so we just walked there and the kids rode in a stroller. We met up with some friends. There was live music, a bounce house, temp tattoos, adult beverages!!, food, etc. The kids had a lot of fun playing and rolling down this big hill. Stella even went out on the baseball diamond and run around the bases a few times. She looked so tiny out on the big baseball field! Oh and Stella and Berlin wanted a popcicle and Mike and Jeff went to buy them one and they came back with the HUGE popcicles!! I've never seen one so big!

Towel Boy & Flower Girl

Just a couple photos of Porter and Stella from tonight. Stella LOVES LOVES LOVES flowers, she picked these from our yard tonight.

Super Star

A local morning news show has a first birthday club. You email a photo of your child and they show it on the news the week of the child's birthday. Obviously Porter's bday was a few weeks ago, but I finally took a picture of his tv debut!
He also learned something new today-----sitting in the dishwasher! Something Stella never attempted. Now anytime I am loading or unloading the dishwasher he is right on my heels trying to climb in!!!

Sweet Corn

We had some good ole Iowa sweet corn with din-din tonight. Stella absolutely LOVES corn on the cob and Porter really enjoyed it, too!! :) Stella had 3 ears of corn! She's funny. A warm day here. Our next door neighbors have an in ground pool and today was the season opener! :) They have a heater so it was a nice 87-90 degrees. The kids loved swimming. Stella was able to stand in the shallow end on the very tips of her toes, she is very proud of that fact. I'll have to remember my camera the next time we go!

Monday night

We are having 2 big trees cut down in our yard. One is in the front and the other in the back. The guys were here today and took down the front one and hopefully, weather permitting, will take the back one down tomorrow. A lot of the neighbors were out tonight and everyone was very interested in our tree removals! :) Funny!! The neighbor kids were all out riding their bikes, so Stella joined right in on her trike. :) The next door neighbors were messing with getting their in ground pool ready for use and were draining some of the water out of it causing a nice stream of water to come down in front of our house, Porter enjoyed playing in all the water.....as you can tell.

Porter's Monthly Photos

I thought it would be fun to share Porter's monthly photos. I took them each month on the 11th (or as close to the eleveth as I could remember!!). I had to do this is 3 posts as it only allows me 5 photos per entry. I'm starting with month one then month two, you can scroll to the previous posts for the following months. :)

Porter's monthly photos

These are months 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7.

Porter's monthly photos

Starting with month 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. :)