Juliette Update!

Just a quick update on Juliette that I forgot to mention previously...while we were in Louisville she played peek-a-boo for the first time! While wearing her poofy pink dress, she would pull the dress up over her face and then yank it down while we yelled "Peek-a-boo"! She kept laughing and did it over and over again - too cute! Also, tonight for dinner, I gave her some baked potato and cooked zucchini - she did great with it! So I will keep trying new table foods with her from dinner each night now - yay!

Virginia's 1st Communion

While we were in Louisville, we got to see Cousin Virginia make her First Holy Communion! So we got all dressed up...

and watched her on her special day - doesn't she look pretty?

Proud father and daughter after mass...

After mass, there was a party at their house. Abbey was very interested in watching Virginia open her presents!

Family photo opp!

Opening Day!

After the race, we got all dressed up and borrowed some of Carolyn's hats to go spend Opening Day at Churchill Downs!

Even the cousins had hats to wear!

Cousin Madelyn had to go retrieve Ben a few times - he really liked watching the horses race!

Aunt Theresa, Virginia and Madelyn show off their beautiful hats!

Thanks Carolyn - we had a lot of fun dressing up in your hats!

And we all had a great time at the races!!

Family Time in Louisville

We had a great time in Louisville visiting family last weekend. Theresa and I started the weekend off by running the Derby Half Marathon. We ran a half marathon together 3 years ago when Ben was 14 months old and we always planned to run another one together. It took 3 years and 2 more babies before I was able to train with her, but we did it and I am so proud of us! Plus, we beat our time from 3 years ago by 4 minutes, so we were quite pleased!!

All weekend long we got to spend quality time with Paul's brother and his family. Juliette had not met her cousins before this trip, so here she is bonding with cousin Virginia.

Plus she enjoyed seeing Mama Kay again too!

Here she is having fun with her Uncle Godfather David.

Abbey also got some quality Uncle David time reading books.

Aunt Theresa and Juliette...

Aunt Carolyn gave Abbey a baby doll and she has not put it down since we got home. Now she has 2 babies - 1 she goes to bed with and 1 she plays with when she is up. It's so cute - thanks Aunt Carolyn!

Juliette is 8 months!

It's hard to believe that time is passing this quickly, but Juliette is 8 months old already!! She has had a big month in terms of learning new things. She sits on her own, babbles quite a lot (mostly saying dadadada), she can now get down onto her tummy from sitting and is trying to get to where she wants to go. She isn't crawling yet, but she manages to roll and stretch to get to whatever it is she wants to play with. She has pushed herself backwards a few times, so I would expect some forward movement soon. She is a very happy and smiley baby and has been laughing quite a lot lately - she has a good belly chuckle just like Ben did. She really enjoys most foods she eats, but especially seems to be fond of the meats (which is pretty unlike Ben and Abbey at this stage). We will be trying her on some coarser foods soon in hopes of getting to table food before too long. She went in for her 8 month appointment and weighed in at 17 pounds, 2 ounces and was 26 and 5/8 inches long (putting her in the 40th percentile for weight). She is doing great and we are so proud of her!!

At the Zoo!

On Friday, Patch flew up to spend the weekend with us too! So Saturday we decided to take an adventure to the Brookfield Zoo. Abbey is just at the age where she knows all the animals and their sounds, so it was a fun time to take her and show her the real animals. And Ben still loves the zoo too, so we got a membership (thanks Patch)!! Here is Patch and Abbey at the entrance to the zoo.

We went on the Merry-Go-Round. Abbey loves giraffes so Paul put her on this one, but she wasn't very fond of this activity.

Ben loved it though!

Patch shows Abbey a brand new chick (cheep cheep).

And Ben got to feed the goats with Madgie.

Abbey got super excited when she saw the real giraffes!

Patch and Juliette check out the waterfall in the monkey exhibit (which was pretty cool by the way). We saw Rafiki!!

Ben and Daddy check out the monkeys.

Does anyone see any familiar looking river otters?

We had a great time - thanks so much for a fun visit Madgie and Patch! Can't wait to see you again soon!

Monkey Joe's

Well after spending some quality time at home, we finally felt the need to get out of the house! So, we took an adventure to Monkey Joe's for some bouncing fun. I wanted to see if it was something I could take the kids to by myself, but I don't think that will be the case until they are a bit older. Juliette couldn't bounce yet, but Abbey needed help so she needed someone in there with her (which I couldn't do since I was with Juliette). I think it will be easier when Juliette can bounce and I can help both of them (and watch Ben of course), so maybe in a year or so we can try it by ourselves. Until then, we will have to go with other people to help - thanks for helping me try it out Madgie! Here's Abbey needing a little help...

Juliette just enjoying herself in her car seat...

SHOCKING...Abbey is looking at the camera!!! I had to blog this moment!

Ben had a blast! So much fun that he didn't want to leave and we had a bit of trouble getting him out the door. Note to self - next time leave a little earlier.

Madgie visit

While Madgie was here, some of us got pretty sick unfortunately, so we spent a lot of time just hanging around the house and playing so various children could nap and relax. It turned out to be a lot of fun, even if we didn't do anything big and exciting! Madgie did a lot of reading to the kids (in different sets of 2).

We went for walks and to the park on nice weather days.

And we solved some pretty tough puzzles too - thanks Madgie for the new books and puzzle!

Chicago Botanical Gardens

Madgie came up for a visit and we went to the Chicago Botanical Gardens to check out spring! Unfortunately, it was a bit colder than I had anticipated, so we didn't stay too long, but it was still nice to be out in the sun and seeing the flowers.

Check out that beautiful tree (and how hard Ben and Madgie are trying to get Abbey to look at the camera and smile!).

Look at this little cutie!

Weekend of Play Dates

We had a great weekend. On Saturday afternoon we had some new friends over for a play date. One of Ben's friends from school and his family came over and we had a lot of fun with them. They also have a younger son who is about a month younger than Abbey, so everyone had a lot of fun - no pictures though.

On Sunday we had Keegan and Kasey (and their parents Bob and Heather) over for lunch. Kasey is one week younger than Juliette. They hadn't seen each other in a while, so they sat down to catch up for a bit.

Then Abbey showed Keegan the train table we have and sat down to watch him play.

Kasey is quite the camera friendly cutie...

Ben shows Keegan some of his other fun toys - everybody loves playing with cars!

We had a great time - thanks for coming over and let's get together again soon!

More Easter Fun!

After the egg hunt, it was time to go to mass and celebrate the real reason for the holiday. Abbey looked beautiful in her Easter dress!

Here's the family...unfortunately Juliette was asleep in her car seat so you can't see her very well.

Then we headed over to Aunt Domi's house for some more fun. Cousin Hunter hid some eggs for the kids to find, so here are Ben and Caroline getting ready to go find some more eggs.

And they're off!

Abbey is off to find eggs too...

Papa holds Abbey and Juliette.
Aunt Theresa, Ben and Caroline saying Blessing before our feast. Thank you so much Mama Kay and Papa for bringing and preparing such a wonderful Easter dinner!

Juliette really enjoyed her first Easter!

Caroline had fun holding Juliette and cuddling with her.

We had a wonderful Easter and hope you all had a Blessed Easter as well.