Happy New Year!

I hope you all have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!!!

Happy Birthday Grandma!!

Today Nat's Mother and her sisters and brother threw their Mother, Katie's Great-Grandma, a surprise 80th birthday party at the Outdoor Country Club here in York. It was great to see everyone in the family in one place, look at what a good looking family I married in to!

Above is Nat's Grandmother holding Katie and surrounded by her 14 Grandchildren; note that Nat is the tallest at 5' 10"!! Below is a special blessing from the Pope in honor of Grandma's birthday and below that is Grandma with all of her children minus Teresa, who made it all of the way from Florida only to catch a nasty stomach bug last night!

HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY GREAT-GRANDMA!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

Visiting Cousins.....

Katie had some cousins over to play today, yay!!! Cousins Katie, Sarah and Angie all came over for a little lunch, some Wii time and some play with Katie time. It was fun trying to get my Katie's attention only to have another Katie turning her head, I really haven't had to deal too much with that yet. My Kate had a lot of fun with everybody here, so much so that as soon as Grandma and Grandpa left she fell right to sleep. We love play dates!!!

Cousins Katie (in the green) and Sarah (in the yellow).

Look at those cuties!!!

Merry Christmas (a few days late)

Whew, that was one heck of a Christmas!!!

Katie had so much fun seeing all of her Grandparents, Great-Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins, plus friends that she slept for 13 hours straight Christmas night; all of those new toys tired her out too! Nat and I are of course still trying to find room for all of the new stuff that we have recently acquired but we have been able to calm down enough from the Christmas rush to do home improvement projects like painting the kitchen and installing dimmer switches in the dining room and in the hallway. Oh yeah, we're handy around here!

I hope to get more pictures on the blog later this week, I got a bunch of cute ones! The one and only issue with this week has been Katie's mood, we think she's teething but aren't positive. She has been slightly bi-polar, happy one second, crying for no reason the next. Obviously we are keeping an eye on the situation but from all of the drool and her constant chewing we think we have it pegged. I'll let you know. Talk to you soon!!!

Family Christmas

Today we had everybody on my Mother's side of the family here for a Christmas party. It was fun to see everybody and eat like the calories don't count but the main attraction, of course, was Katie. She's the baby of the family so she got the most gifts and the one from her cousin Marc Jaymes, a big Tigger, was her favorite. She was laughing, smiling and kissing Tigger for at least 30 minutes and it was oh so very cute. I mean just look at that picture below, ADORABLE!!! I can't believe that we have two more days of this, it's so much fun watching her get so excited about things, no wonder people spoil kids!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!

Michelle's Shower

Today we had a little shower for my friend Michelle who is expecting baby #2, a little guy named Grayson. It was fun having everybody in the same place at the same time and watching all of the kids run around and play together.
This is Addison, she's Karen's six week old little lady.
Here are Makenzie and Lauren playing with some toys.

more shower pictures.....

This little cutie is Lauren, Amy's daughter, she's six weeks older than Katie.

Look at that cute smile, Miss Makenzie had fun helping her Mom open gifts for her soon to be arriving brother.

Michael, Shawn's son and the only boy, helped deliver gifts.

Shockingly this is one of the only pictures of Katie, I guess I was too busy snapping other peoples babies. Katie and Lauren had fun playing together and Lauren loved Katie's chair, way more than Katie does!!

Mysterious Mess....

What is this all over my hands???????????

What have I done??????????????

Mommy!!!!!!!!

(Oh and yes, it's dirt, my unkempt, wild child now eats dirt for fun! I swear she's a girl!)

Crazy Days....

Look at that crazy baby, her hair is all over the place and her big ol' belly is just hangin' out! Sometimes I wonder if she looks like she's well cared for or if people on the street are going to just assume she always looks like a unkempt child! In all honesty we are starting to have issues with nighttime baths, not because she's fighting them but because her hair is coming in so thick and curly that when she wakes up from tossing and turning she looks like a feral animal, wild and crazy!! I guess it's a scheduling issue we will just have to figure out, but the Mohawk look just isn't going to cut it.

I just took this picture about an hour ago while Katie was eating breakfast and I thought it was cute, plus her hair isn't as wild so I had to add it. (I didn't want you to all think that Katie was just going to look nuts all of the time!)

Just For Fun!

So it's not very often that I post a picture of the cat, but I really just had to! I mean come on, look at that tounge! Every once in a while she will stick her tounge out when your petting her and it kind of gets suck out there, she held this pose for about two minutes. I guess you could say that we all have our issues in this house, cat included!

Below are Mom and Kate, they were watching the Winnie The Pooh Christmas DVD and singing along. I love that dang movie, it's 45 minutes of sanity in the middle of the day, a real Christmas miracle!!!

Feeling a little Christmasy!!

Today we got the new Winnie the Pooh Christmas DVD for Katie, she loves watching the video commercial on the Disney Channel, so I knew it was a must have! I don't think I have ever seen her actually watch the television like she did while watching Pooh bear with her Daddy, it was hilarious, she didn't even blink! It was just as entertaining for me as it was for her, I did take a video of part of it but it turned out way too dark to post. I'll try again later!

In other news, sad news, my Grandma Sylvanus passed away on Friday. She had been suffering the effects of Alzheimer's for over 7 years and it was not the quality of life that she would have wanted or deserved. It was unfortunate that she never met Katie or understood her existence, she would have been in love with her just as we are, and Katie would have loved her silly way of making every sentence into a song. Rest in Peace Gram, I'll miss you!

Good Morning!

Here we are at 6:20am and Katie has already had breakfast and watched the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, yep she was wide awake by 5:20am, lucky me!!

I just wanted to say hi to everybody and tell you all about our photo shoot last night, oh yeah I said photo shoot, we are so cool. There is a magazine out there called Conceive, hopefully you haven't heard of it for good reasons, but it is a magazine designed for women that are fighting through infertility issues and trying to get pregnant. Anyhow, they are doing an article for their February issue about great companies to work for with awesome fertility benefits and Nat's company, Exceptional Software Strategies, was picked as one of the top five. His HR representative picked our family to represent the company in the article and last night a photographer came to the house to take a picture to accompany the story.

We are FAMOUS!!! (or will be?)

Katie did well with the bright lights and I did get to see some of the pictures and believe it or not there were a few that we all were looking at the camera at the same time, small miracles people! I am going to have Nat try and contact the lady at the magazine to see if we can have copies of the pictures, we don't have a lot of family pictures where we all look presentable! Well that was our night, fun, fun; I just had to share! I hope everybody has a great day and if you are in the Northeast enjoy the white stuff!!

Happy Days!

Today we were trying to teach Katie how to sit "on her heiney" in her chair; we had a bit of an issue with standing on the chair and then falling over and hitting the wall, end table, a random toy, whatever was in the way. She was a quick learner, thankfully, and now steps onto her chair, turns around, and then sits down. As a reward Katie and I decided to pretend to be monkeys, which for some reason cracks her up, and I got some funny pictures out of it so I thought I would share. Seriously she goes, well, ape for the monkey impressions; is that normal? Is it normal that I reward my child with animal sounds? Oh who cares, she's too darn cute, I'll do just about anything for that smile!!!