"Drive-in" Birthday!

Last weekend Andrew was invited to his little friend Landon's birthday party.  The theme was a drive in, and it was just about the cutest thing I've ever seen!

They had boxes for all the kids to decorate a car.  We did this inside because it was still pretty hot outside, but everyone had fun making steering wheels and wheels out of plates, antenna out of pipe cleaners and racing stripes out of cool duct tape!

I had to chuckle because of course, daddy got in on most of the work!

Andrew "helped" for a little while, but when he got bored, Craig continued the project.  Secretly I think he kind of enjoyed it!  Ha!

My girl and I enjoyed watching all the fun!  (Nice part about having a baby: it is your excuse to get out of doing things, like help build the car!  Ha!)

One more shot of my pretty island girl with her eyes open this time!

It cooled off enough in the evening to still enjoy the drive in outside.  Seriously... are these little cars the cutest thing ever?

I seriously laughed for a full five minutes at Craig's creativity with the car.  I'm not sure what the wing flap thing is in the back with the pipe cleaners sticking up, but the "back off" license plate put me over the edge.  Seriously.  I did fall in love with his humor back in the day!  Ha!

This cracks me up.  My kid is the one sitting in his car patiently waiting for the movie while the other kids are racing around the yard!  Ha!  What can I say, he does love his movies!

They projected the movie up on the "big screen" stapled to their fence.  So clever!

I just thought this has to be the neatest idea for a party theme!  Parents brought lawn chairs and the kids all sat in their car boxes!  I could not get over how cute it was!

The kids all got special movie treats, like big candy bars and popcorn.  It really was like a real concession stand!

Andrew was in his absolute happy place.  To him, popcorn, m&m's and a movie is just about the best thing ever.

Daddy was being humorous during my photo shoot, but I wanted a picture of him with Kerigan.  He is getting good at posing, dont'cha think?  Ha!

To top it off, they had s'mores too!  I was starting to get nervous that Andrew was going to go home with a tummy ache!  Ha!  Let me tell you, this party is hard to top!  They just had everything!

Glow sticks too... 

What a super fun birthday party!  And it even cooled off enough for us to enjoy sitting outside for once.  Minus a few mosquito bites, it was a fantastic time!  Happy 3rd birthday Landon!  We are so happy you and Andrew are such good buddies!

Island Girl!

My little girl had her 2 week check up this week.  Her awesome pediatrician was thrilled with her weight gain.  She said the goal of that appointment was for her to be back to her birth weight (8 lbs 1oz).  She weighed 8lb 6oz!  To us, that was amazing.  We are not used to our kids gaining weight that well!  Ha!

Our little miss is just the sweetest, most cuddly baby I could ever imagine.  She is such a good girl, and pretty much sticks to her 3oz every 3 hour feeding schedule and sleeps in the meantime.  Lately she has been more alert between feedings, and we love to put her on her tummy or just hold her and let her look at our faces.

She loves to look around and is very focused on our faces and also loves to look at the photos above the couch of Andrew.  They are all different sizes in black frames and black and white photos.  I have heard babies love to look at black and white images, and I guess it's true!

I have gotten so many comments from strangers when we take her out.  Everyone comments about her hair.  She does have a ton of it!  It is just like mine when I was a baby.  My mom said that people used to stop my parents and say the same things about me, which I think is really funny!  

One lady even noticed when I was holding her when we were out the other day that she already cuddles and hugs me.  It is very true, she loves to lay on my chest and puts her little arms around me and curls right in.  I am pretty sure there is no better feeling in the world than that!

Lately, she has been acting somewhat fussy after feedings and showing some signs of reflux.  I took her back to the doctor because we have been getting very little sleep the past several nights as she is uncomfortable on her back and doesn't want to sleep unless she's being held- little stinker!

The doctor suggested we try switching formula first, and she did send us with a prescription for Zantac, in case the formula change doesn't do the trick.  When she was weighed today, she already weighed 8lb 13oz!  I almost fell over!  In only 3 days she gained 7oz!  We are so blessed this girl is an eater and is growing and healthy as can be!

I am thinking we are creating a monster by holding her all the time, but I have to admit, I absolutely love holding this girl.  She is so fun to hold because she just cuddles right in and is so content.  We feed her around 9 at night and then we just love on her while we are watching shows before we go to bed.  It is so fun to have a little person with us at night now.

When I took these pictures of her I could not get her to wake up!  My sweet friend Lisa sent me this beautiful little island dress because it reminded her of our tropical themed wedding and Hawaiian honeymoon.  I thought that was so sweet of her.  And Kerigan looks just precious in it!

We are just loving having this sweet girl in our family.  She is everything we could have ever hoped for...

And more.

We still can't believe she's only been in the world for 2 weeks.  We look at her and wonder what we ever did without her now!  (And yes, I'm having too much fun with bows, playing dress up and having photo shoots!  Ha!)

first family outing

We have had a great weekend!  We are enjoying getting to do "normal" things with our healthy little girl!  On Friday we wanted to do something fun so we took the kids to the pool.  It was Kerigan's first pool trip- she slept the whole time!  Ha!

Bathing beauty...

It was a little hot, so Kerigan and I only stayed for an hour and relaxed in the shade while daddy and Andrew went on the big waterslides and Andrew practiced putting his head under water!  He is all set for swimming lessons this week- he can't wait!

I got a little camera happy (when don't I?  Ha!) but I just thought she looked so sweet in her little tiny swimsuit and cover up.  She was quite the hit at the pool!  She was just 10 days old.

We took her in the water for a brief time and splashed some water on her so she wouldn't be too hot.  She didn't really mind it.

Like I said, she still slept the whole time!  I thought about next year at this time she'll already be one year old.  I can't believe it.  I just know time is going to go so fast.  I just want to soak in every minute of her sweet little newborn-ness!  

After swimming we all went home and took showers and got ready to go out to one of my favorite places- Jordan Creek Town Center.  There are so many fun things to do and places to shop and eat!  I love going there.  We ate at Red Robin- daddy's favorite!  Andrew actually ordered a hamburger and ate it the right way!  Ha!

Kerigan's first restaurant experience! (Again, she slept the whole time! Ha!)

After dinner we headed to the mall and Andrew played on the mall play set since we haven't been able to go outside to the park much because of this heat!  Kerigan and I did some shopping while daddy and Andrew played!  I was loving shopping with my girl for the first time.  She pretty much slept!  Ha!  And I got some awesome deals at Crazy 8 (my favorite store!) a bunch of racks of clothes for $3.99!  You can't beat that!

I couldn't even take a good picture here because I was literally laughing out loud.  They have a "build-a-smurf" at the Build a Bear store right now.  They were giving out smurf hats and even daddy wanted one.  Ha!  I was laughing so hard at them, also because Andrew wanted one so bad and he kept saying "we'll have to come back and get this another day, right daddy?" over and over and over again!  I'm sure we'll be seeing that movie in a few weeks!

We got some ice cream at Cold Stone (another yummy favorite!) and walked around the lake.

Andrew threw rocks in the water and loved seeing the ducks.  We just had the best time!

We have been getting along great this week and settling into a routine that works for us.  Having daddy home has been the best blessing in the world to me.  I am already dreading him going back to work next month.  He sometimes has an evening game or activity at school, but he's been home in the mornings, and this has worked so well with Kerigan being up in the middle of the night.  I usually feed her at night, but then I get to sleep in and Craig gets up with both kids in the morning!  I am so blessed to have such a great husband.  Not only that, but he washes the bottles and mixes them up for me every time and lines them up in the fridge so they are ready to go.  He is just the best.

 This week our good friends brought us dinner, which was so nice!  I am getting so spoiled!  Ha!  They brought this cake and I was having a piece.  I had set it down on the end table and Andrew spotted it when he and daddy got home from running errands.  He ran over and just dug right in!  Ha!  He thought it was pretty funny!  (As I had to get out the spot shot to clean the crumbs out of the carpet!)

These two are just two peas in a pod...

Kerigan already adores her big brother

And he adores her.

He is always asking me "Is she happy?" and giving her kisses every time she cries.  When she cries he comes running to the rescue!

I am so grateful for my little monkeys!