Independence Day/// 13months!!!

We had a great 4th of July celebration. I managed to stay home all night on call so that I could watch fireworks with the kiddos. Chloe seemed to be amazed by the fountain we lit off for her, and Karson had a blast lighting his own fireworks. We thought about going to watch the fireworks in Boise, but Chloe does best if she goes to bed early so we skipped it this time...maybe next year.

Since my grandparents recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, my mom threw them a fun little open house. We spent all day preparing food and decorating, and it all turned out great! Lots of friends/family came to congratulate my grandparents on 50 years together, and they seemed to be quite pleased. I asked people to send me their favorite memories of the couple... but only got a few responses :(  I decided to improvise and decorated a little notebook to write memories in and set it out at the party. Grandma loved it!

Chloe and Colton

Favorite new outfit

The next day we decided to take the Kayaks that my grandpa rented from the college out to the lake. We had so much fun! The dogs ran around in the water until we dragged them back to shore (since it's so shallow quite a ways out from the beach). My brothers practiced rolling in the kayaks, and Chloe and Karson had a blast just playing in the water. After a couple hours at the lake (and seeing lightning hit too close for comfort), we headed back to Mom's and the boys took a nap. We decided to stay one more night, and I'm glad we did. I never want to leave their house... being with them makes any place "home." But once we got home, it was nice to relax and unwind. I was supposed to work Monday night, but was forced on call all night (which was secretly what I wanted)... and now we're back to the daily grind.

Fun things Chloe's doing:

Mmmmmm

• walking/running around like a little drunk person
• babbling cutely
• handing things to whoever will take them with a little "uh" sound, and then taking them back...over and over and over again
• giving kisses sometimes when asked
• playing with Dad and Karson and giggling wildly... I absolutely love this!

Grandma bought Karson a new Cars suitcase at the thrift store, and this shirt and tie were inside of it (among other treasures that someone may or may not be missing LOL), and Karson wore the tie all day on Saturday... too cute!

What Karson is up to:

• tying his own shoes! *Props to Cris for teaching him this :)
• adoring his sister/entertaining her whenever he gets the chance
• working on his reading skills
• being the entertaining kid that he is and making me laugh with his every day comments :)

What Cris is up to:

• enjoying the stay-at-home dad life
• maintaining the yard/making future plans for our garden
• taking good care of the kids :)

What I'm up to:

• still working in the same unit of the hospital... some days are harder than others but I really like my coworkers
• studying for my CNRN  (neuroscience certification) it's taking over my life but hey... it comes with a nice bonus!
• slowly but surely hopping back up on the yoga train... all these hot 3 digit days make it really hard to go to hot yoga, but I will get back into it!
  
  
  

  

  I crocheted this cute little hat for a friend of my grandma's, and who better to model it than Chloe!

No longer a "Zero"

Chloe is now our cute little one year old. Crazy! I miss the newborn/tiny baby days, but not as much as I love to watch her grow. The more she learns, the more fun she and Karson have together and it is adorable! I had to work the night before her birthday, but when I woke up we all went mini golfing at Wahooz. Chloe had fun following the boys around, and taking their golf balls whenever she was fast enough. She decided to crawl around on one of the courses and Riley hit a ball right up her shirt LOL. On the last hole, Karson got a hole in one...which made the tiki guys shoot fire up into the air... it was pretty cool. Riley and Cris both missed, so they got sprayed with water instead.

After golfing, we had a couple friends over for a BBQ and some cupcakes. What a good day :)

Chloe's first birthday party :)

After lots and lots of fun planning... Chloe's big day finally came. I spent most of the day cleaning, decorating, and preparing food. Karson also had a soccer game at 3:10... which was a little too close to the party time, but it all worked out. We had just enough friends over that it wasn't too stressful, and I didn't feel like I was running around from guest to guest feeling like a chicken with my head cut off... I only had that feeling when I was trying to get all of the last minute things thrown together as everyone was arriving (thanks to the soccer game). 

I decided to make loaded baked potato salad, fruit salad, Lindsey's crunch coleslaw, beer-butt chicken (that caught on fire so the skin was just a little burnt to a crisp...but still good! LOL), blue raspberry pina colada punch, and chocolate dipped marshmallows. The little kiddos played in the kiddie pools and had a great time with rubber duckies and other squirty toys, and played on the slide Karson got for his 1st birthday. The adults played some horseshoes and just enjoyed each other's company :) We decided not to do cake since I had made cupcakes for Chloe's birthday on Thursday, and she didn't seem like too big of a fan. She really enjoyed the strawberries and the chocolate marshmallows though. Chloe got lots of cute clothes, and a couple fun toys that she has been enjoying the last couple days. Here are some photos of the party...

Chloe's first pony tail! Unfortunately she pulled it out before the party started while she was napping :(

Made this sign with some pinspiration from here

 

 

Surprisingly addictive! I'm not a big fan of marshmallows, but when paired with the chocolate they are hard to resist! The only thing I would do differently is put more chocolate on them!

I made some cute decorations out of baby food jars, Little Mermaid Squinkies, sand, seashells (from my trip to California) and string (got the idea here)

Photo chain from birth-12months

Mmmm strawberries!

Hello Daphnee!

 

Such a cute toy!

McKinnley with a yummy marshmallow

Chloe's New "Quiet Book"

I decided that I wanted to make something cute and crafty for Chloe's birthday... which is coming up way too soon! I found all of these tutorials on Pinterest (of course!) on how to make quiet books for the kiddos. After browsing through multiple different ideas, I decided to get going. I bought a deep-cut blade/housing for my Cricut, lots of different colors of felt, and some heat and bond to help my Cricut cut through the felt. Then I started looking through my Cricut cartridges to see what I could make. I decided on these page themes:

1. Hang the laundry on the clothes line
2. Pick apples from the tree
3. "Paper" doll dress up
4. Matching shapes
5. Put the petals on the flower
6. Mail a letter
7. "Basket weaving"

So I got to work cutting out my shapes with the Cricut (which by the way is so much nicer than cutting things out by hand). After my pages were all assembled, I went up to my craft room and rummaged through some fabrics that I had lying around.  I decided to use a cute pink receiving blanket with a butterfly on it for the cover of my project. For how OCD/follow the rules I usually am, the cover was actually a throw together/sew together type deal... but I think it turned out even better than I'd hoped it would. Karson tried it all out for me and seemed to like it...which may mean it is a little too advanced for little Chloe, but oh well. She can grow into it :) Cris was proud of me for using some of the valuable ideas that I have found while wasting my time on Pinterest. We'll see what Chloe thinks of it next week :)

Here's the final product: