Happy birthday to Rachel!

Today is Rachel's first birthday (and her Auntie Angela's um, not first birthday)! We had a little 'party' for her last night at home and she seemed happy with that. Thanks to everyone who sent her cards and gifts! (Click the little pictures to see more)

My monkey baby

Trying to get Rach cleaned up from eating her birthday cupcake (early birthday...it's not until tomorrow, but we had a little family party for her today). :)

They're just getting so big!

I think it's the springtime...the kids just suddenly seem to shoot up and one day you look at them and think 'who is that big kid??'

Abby looks so 'three' these days!

Rachel playing in big brother & sister's room after her bath.

Showing off her growing curls. :)

Gavin's party

We had Gavin's birthday party at the park on Saturday - yes, it was the long weekend, but it was the only Saturday in May that worked for us to do it! (And we didn't realize it was the long weekend until after we had planned it...) It turned out alright as there only four other kids able to come, which is a perfect number of boys that age, I think! It would have been a zoo if everyone in his class had been able to come!!

It was a beautiful day (28 degrees!) and everyone had fun. Gavin had asked a few months back for a monkey cake for his birthday, and he's reminded me several times since. Michael's sadly did not have a monkey cake pan, so I was left to my own devices. It took a LONG time, but I think it turned out alright!

(Click to see all the pictures from the party)

We're still here!

Never fear - we haven't disappeared off the face of the earth! :) It's just been the typical spring busyness around here - plus a little bit, maybe.

Here's a quick update on what we've been doing:

- Rachel is crawling now (maybe that's why I haven't had time to post!). She's still mostly dragging herself along on her belly, but she's pretty quick! My favorite is when she gets as far as Gavin & Abby's room, and when I catch her there, she just squeals and crawls/rolls away as fast as she possibly can - she knows she's not supposed to be in there! And...standing! So far this is the only thing she can manage to pull herself up on, but I'm sure it won't be long before she's standing next to anything and everything!




- I was the photographer for a wedding a couple of weeks ago, which was a blast but definitely took a lot of time in preparation and now processing all the shots! Once I get them all up on the web (the bride wants to see them first before everyone else can access them on the internet) I'll post the link so you can take a look if you want. Greg did the ceremony as well, so it was a busy weekend for us!

- After going through 5,232,583 kleenexes wiping her nose all the time, and several helpful suggestions from friends, we finally tried taking Abby off of milk. Those of you who know her well know how much she loved her milk, so I was very concerned about this being a difficult transition. But those kids always surprise us! We bought a carton of rice milk to give her, and she drank about half a cup of it, then looked at it suspiciously and announced "Milk is yucky! I only like water - water's yummy!" She's been perfectly happy about it since. And I've probably only wiped her nose twice in the last few weeks, rather than literally twice every five minutes before. She still has a little bit of milk on her cereal in the morning and eats cheese and yogurt, but taking away the milk cup all day seems to have solved virtually all of her congestion - even we were surprised how much of an effect it had!

- Greg's busy planning for the dry grad party this year again. Grad is May 30th, and I'll be doing grad pictures for one of our youth, we've got the dry grad party, plus a couple of special dinners for graduates that we'll be attending.

- Gavin's riding his bike without training wheels now! We tried taking them off last summer, but that totally freaked him out and they got put back on within a few minutes, if I remember correctly. :) This year he was just ready - we took them off and I held on to his seat to help balance him, and he just started going so fast I couldn't run to keep up with him, and off he went. I'm sure he'll wipe out one of these days since he loves to go fast, but he's even getting better about not turning a minor injury into the disaster of the century. ;)

I think that's the important news over the last month or so, and hopefully I won't be so derelict in my posting duties anymore!

Happy 6th birthday Gavin!

Gavin with his special birthday chocolate chip pancakes Daddy made for him this morning!