🎉 Grizz Celebrates His 3rd Birthday 🎉

 Griswold, the cute little miniature schnauzer that joined the family in 2017, has recently celebrated his 3rd birthday! On July 13, 2020, Grizz turned 3 years old, no longer a puppy, although he's still the size of one! Since there have not been any recent blog posts about him, let's catch up a little...

 When we first got him, he was literally a ball of fur. As you can see in the previous post, "Welcome to the Family, Grizz!" Griswold looks a bit sad, and he was. For about a week after we got him, he just moped around the house and looked sad. He barely ate or drank anything from his food and water bowls. He was missing his breeders and his family, but soon he got used to our family. He began to eat and drink more, not poop or pee in the house, and follow us around! He was very stubborn with learning commands for about 4-5 months, and he still is. We took him to obedience school and had him socialized, which is the one thing he's actually good at, besides not following directions 😜. He eventually learned some basic commands, and then began to develop somewhat annoying characteristics, like barking at every single dog that came within 50 feet of our house, eating bugs, and chewing up dirty tissues in the trash. As he grew older and older, some of his cuteness started to fade away, and he became extremely stubborn. 

    In conclusion, even though Griswold is stubborn and annoying, he will always be loved by our entire family. Happy birthday, Grizz! 

 Click here for more pictures of Grizz!

     

Emily's 4th Birthday!

Emily is now a 4-year old, which is kind of hard to believe.  Where have the last 4 years gone?

Emily's birthday fell on a school day, so she took tiny cupcakes to share with her class.

Emily decided she didn't really want to invite people over for her birthday, but she did want to do something fun.  Of course that meant going to Chuck E. Cheese's.  As soon as Dad got home from work, we headed out to have some fun with Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Amy.  Emily had a blast!  Fortunately, she decided that she'd rather have pizza from a restaurant than eat Chuck's pizza, so we stopped at MOD Pizza (the girls' new favorite restuarant) on the way home.

No 4-year old's birthday would be complete without cake.  Emily insisted Rainbow Cake (which is a white cake with rainbow sprinkles inside).  Happy 4th birthday, Emily!

Link to pictures

Kara's 7th Birthday!

Kara came down with croup and missed the entire week of school before her birthday party. Fortunately, she started feeling better the day before the party, so we were able to have the part as planned.  Kara had her party at Jump N Rope this year, which is a local jump rope gym.  The gym was great about planning games and activities for the kids.  The kids all had a great time running around during the party.  We finished off the party with some pizza and pumpkin muffins.

It's hard to believe Kara is 7 years old!

Link to pictures

Disney World Hangover

Emily picked up a little bug our last day in Disney, which made the travel day home quite unpleasant.  Unfortunately, she continued to have a snotty nose and a cough after we got home.  Dad came down with the flu a few days later, Mom came down with a cold a few days after that, and Kara finally developed a barking cough a few days after that.
Emily seems to be fine now, but the rest of us are still fighting the cold.  Good fun!

Emily's birthday was the weekend after we got back from Disney.  It was a little subdued since we were all a little sick, but we still got a cake, of course!  It's kind of hard to believe Emily is 3 years old already!

We got 2 separate heavy snow storms later in the month.  We got about a foot on March 18th, which happened to coincide with Kara coming down with the cold.  She wasn't too sick to go out and play, though.  The weather warmed up right after that and all the snow had melted by the time the second storm came in on March 23rd.  The second storm came in fast and furious, and we had 21" of snow on the ground by that afternoon.  It was Kara's spring break, so she didn't get a snow day, but that would have been her third one this year.  Crazy!

Unfortunately, the second snow didn't melt quite as quickly as the first snow, so we had to do our Easter egg dyeing and Easter egg hunt inside.  It's not quite as fun as outside, but the girls still enjoyed it!  Emily knew what was going on and jumped right in searching for the eggs (stopping to open up each one as soon as she found it).  Later in the day, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Easter dinner.

Emily is starting to develop into an annoying younger sibling (Tyler's words).  She routinely does things these days purely to bother Kara.  She's also developing a bit of a rebellious steak.  She enjoys running away and slamming doors when Mom and Dad are trying to get her to do something (like get dressed).  She's landed herself in time out a few times.  Fortunately, she continues to loves hugs and cuddles and is still very empathetic and sweet.....80% of the time!

Kara is loving school and all the learning and friendships that go along with it.  In fact, when we got back from WDW, Kara said she enjoyed the trip but wished she hadn't missed a week of school! :O  Her written stories are getting more nuanced these days, and she's started story-boarding a motion picture involving unicorn superheros.  There are also 3-D paper mock-ups involved.  She has requested a videocamera, so stay tuned.  She's a hoot!

Link to pictures

Kara's 6th Birthday!

For Kara's 6th birthday, she decided to have her party at everyone's favorite childhood birthday party destination: Chuck E. Cheese.  Kara's birthday happened to fall on the Friday before Thanksgiving break (the school district gives all the kids the whole week of Thanksgiving off), so Mom and Dad thought that maybe not everyone would be able to come.  As it turned out, every single kid invited was able to come.  It was a wild and crazy party.  The pizza was just as delicious as Mom and Dad remember, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.  The highlight for Kara was her turn in the Ticket Blaster, which is basically a phone booth full of game tickets that has a fan and blows tickets around as the birthday kid tries to grab as many as he or she can (see the video).  Now we're going to have to top this party next year!

Link to pictures

Emily is 2!

It's hard to believe that Emily's been with us for two years already.  It's been a blast, and we've had a lot of fun getting to know our little girl.  Emily has grown into an energetic, intelligent, sweet little girl.  Happy birthday, Emily!

Emily talks quite a bit these days, but we suspect she'd talk more if Kara didn't talk so much.  She's also proven to be a very active girl, always trying to keep up with big sister Kara.  She's become quite a good jumper, leaping off things with both feet.  Emily measured in at 34.25" in height (61st percentile) and 25 lb, 6 oz in weight (33rd percentile).

We did a family birthday for Emily this year.  We Skyped with Mimi, Papa, GiGi, and Uncle Trey in the morning.  In the afternoon, Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Amy came over for some cake and ice cream.  Emily enjoyed having everyone sing her happy birthday, even though Kara blew out the candles on her cake (see the video below).  Special thanks to Aunt Amy for some great pictures!

Link to pictures

Kara is 5!

It's hard to believe, but Kara is 5 years old. Wow, where does the time go? For Kara's 5th birthday, she decided she wanted to have a big party for all her friends at our house. We had 17 kids (17 kids, all 5 years old and under!) at our house for the party.  Amazingly, nothing got broken and no one got hurt!

We had activities like storytime, Play-Doh, pin the tail on the donkey, and pass-the-bag (kind of like musical chairs except you pass a bag and if you get caught with it when the music goes off, you have to put something on).  However, the kids are old enough now to know that parties include cake.  We had at least three kids asking how much longer until cake.  The party was a huge hit, and all the kids had a great time!

Link to pictures

 

Visit to Shorter - Fall 2014

Early this month, we packed up the girls and went to visit the family down in Alabama. This was Emily's first flight since she was just a tiny baby, so we were a little nervous about her. For the most part, she did very well. She even passed out for about an hour, which made the time go by much faster. Kara, of course, handled the flight like a champ... as long as she had a screen (Mommy's iPad or her LeapPad) to look at.

While we were down there, Justin, Heather, Sean, and Robin McD came down to visit us at Mimi and Papa's house.  We hadn't seen them in almost two years, and we'd never met Robin!  To paraphrase Heather, "Robin and Emily are best friends, they just may not know it yet!"  Emily and Robin got along pretty well.  For the most part they just played next to each other, though Emily was not too happy when Robin took a ride on her Mickey airplane (her favorite toy at Mimi and Papa's house).  The girls even held hands walking around outside, which was pretty sweet.  Kara and Sean got along really well, mostly because Kara led Sean around the whole time they were there and Sean seemed okay with that.  Sean was such a good sport doing crafts and even reading to Kara.  We also had a little birthday party for Kara.  Overall, it was great to see our friends.  Hope to see you guys again soon!

On the last full day of our visit, we headed into Montgomery to check out the Montgomery Zoo.  It's a really great zoo for kids.  It's not too big, so we could check out almost the whole zoo.  Plus, it has a pretty awesome playground and petting zoo.  We even got to feed giraffes!  The girls both had a really great time.

The trip home was just plain no fun at all.  An arctic front moved into Denver while we were down in Alabama, which caused delayed flights leaving Denver.  We checked our flight status before heading to the airport.  At that time it said our flight was still on schedule; however, about 15 minutes after getting dropped off at the Atlanta airport, we got notification that our flight had been delayed.  In the end, the flight was 2.5 hours late taking off, so we spent almost 4.5 hours at the Atlanta airport.  The flight went pretty smooth except Emily was pretty irritable.  We realized about halfway through the flight that she felt quite warm.  We hoped that if she could just get a good night's sleep, maybe she'd feel better.  We landed in Denver about 8:30 (almost 2.5 hours late) to single digit temperatures.  While Dad was waiting on the jetway in the freezing weather, Emily was throwing up in the terminal.  Fortunately, after that, Emily started acting much better.  Then, Dad forgot one of our bags on the shuttle while we were trying to get everyone and everything to the car.  He had to chase down the shuttle through the icy parking lot in 0 degree weather.  Whew, that was brisk!  Fortunately, the drive home went off without any hitches, and our travel day concluded safely.

All in all, it was a good trip, and it was great to see everyone!

Link to pictures

Emily's 1st Birthday!

Emily had her first birthday, and we celebrated by all getting sick.  When we say sick, we don't mean a little sniffle, we mean a nasty stomach bug that will take you down!  Emily got the party started by waking up on Friday covered in vomit.  Mommy and Daddy thought maybe Emily had just eaten something that hadn't agreed with her.  We were wrong. On Saturday, Emily's birthday, Mom started to feel sick around noon, and Kara started throwing up shortly thereafter. Daddy was able to hold it together through Saturday, doing load after load of laundry to keep everyone with clean clothes and bedsheets.  Daddy couldn't hold out forever, though, and fell victim Sunday.  Fortunately, Mommy was starting to feel a little better by that time and was able to keep everything together.  Fun times, huh?

The following weekend, we did a re-do on Emily's birthday.  Grandma and Grandpa came up, and we called Mimi and Papa on the iPad.  Emily really enjoyed her cake.  She didn't know quite what to do with her wrapped presents, but she eventually figured out how to tear the paper (not quite fast enough for Kara, though).

Emily has now mastered walking.  She can move pretty quick these days.  She has also been working on her communication.  She can usually convey what she wants through grunting and pointing, and we think she might be close to saying her first words.  She's said something that sounds a lot like "baby" (while looking at her Baby Beluga CD case) and "here you go" (when sharing her toys).  It's amazing how fast they grow up!

Link to pictures

Kara's 4th Birthday

Kara had her first real birthday party this year.  It was at Mountain Kids Gym, where the kids got to run around and play on obstacle courses, rope swings, trampolines, and a foam pit for two hours.  It was a hit!  The kids had a great time, and there was minimal work for Mommy and Daddy.  Win, win!

We also had family over on her actual birthday (during the week) with cake and her favorite foods - pizza and soy beans!

At Kara's 4-year check-up, the doctor referred to her as a "perfect specimen."  She weighed in at 35 pounds (50th percentile) and measured up at 39 3/4" (50th percentile).  She also has better than 20/20 vision.  We'll see how long that lasts with her genes!  We're keeping our fingers crossed. :)

It's hard to believe it's been 4 years since Kara joined us.  We can hardly remember life without her!

Link to pictures

 

Welcome to the World, Emily Rose!

Well, our little girl finally decided to join the world!  And she was only 9 days late, early compared to the 12 days late standard set by Big Sister Kara.  However, she may have stayed in there just as long if the doctors hadn't induced when they did.

The induction was scheduled for Friday, March 8th since the doctors tend to get a little concerned if the second baby is more than a week overdue.  We were told to report to the maternity ward at 7:30 am to get the ball rolling; however, we got a call at 6:00 am that morning telling us the maternity ward was overflowing and to check back later in the day (there was a blizzard forecast for Saturday and the change in weather often causes labor in women - unfortunately Mommy was not so lucky!).  We got a call around noon to show up at 2 in the afternoon.  We finally got the ball rolling at 3:45, and boy did that ball roll!  Within 3.5 hours, Mommy was ready to push.  Emily joined the world at 7:35 pm that night, weighing in at 7 lb, 4 oz and 20 inches long.

Big Sister Kara is really enjoying her new role.  She's getting really good at getting herself dressed in the morning.  She still ends up with mismatched clothes and the occasional inside-out shirt, but who doesn't have that happen?  She also decided she's too old for The Lion King songs and instead prefers Poison's Every Rose Has Its Thorn.  I think we're in for quite a ride with our two girls!

Kara Quotes:
Grandma: "Kara, what do you think of your new sister?"
Kara: "Beautiful"

A neighbor brought by dinner with cupcakes for dessert.
Kara: "Are cupcakes junk food?"
Mommy: "Yes, but it's okay to eat them occasionally."
Kara: "Cupcakes are (pause) fantastic!"

Link to pictures

Kara's 3!

About three days after we got back home from Disney World, Kara had her 3rd birthday! Since we had just gotten back from an eventful trip (and Thanksgiving was two days away), we just had a cake at home.  Kara seemed perfectly happy. :)

She has been playing pretend more and more.  She really enjoys playing the princess and having Mommy and Daddy be a beast, tiger, Prince Charming, etc.  The playing usually involves dancing, "dinner", and chasing her around.  It's fun to watch the wheels turn in her little head, but it does wear Mommy out by the end of the day!

Also, she has recently acquired an imaginary friend!  She has a mouse that keeps her company at night. She was telling Daddy she was throwing "millions of apple chips" at the mouse, and she told Mommy that the mouse had a cold and needed help blowing his nose.  Kara is also into exaggeration these days.  Here are some recent quotes:
 - "I'm making eggs and toast.  The best dinner in the world!"
 - "I'm the best dancer in the world!"
 - "I'm the fastest runner in the whole world!"

It's all pretty cute.

Link to pictures

Look Who's Two!

Our little family has had a very busy November. On November 10th, we headed down to Alabama to visit Mimi and Papa. Uncle Trey, GiGi B., and Great Grandpa H. were also there.  Great Grandpa had never met Kara and GiGi B. hadn't seen Kara for several months, so it was great to see them.  Unfortunately, Mommy and Daddy got really sick while we were there, so that wasn't too much fun. Kara, however, had a great time.  We went to the Montgomery Zoo one day, the Cracker Barrel, and had a great time running around Mimi and Papa's estate.  While we were there, we celebrated Kara's birthday.  Mimi baked and Uncle Trey decorated a great Elmo cake.  Kara enjoyed blowing out the candle ("I no touch" as Kara would say) and opening her presents.

When we got home, we had another birthday party with Grandma S., Grandpa S., GG K, and Aunt Amy.  Kara really enjoyed it when everyone sang Happy Birthday to her.  She also enjoyed the cupcakes Mommy made and spent the rest of the day running around to burn off her sugar rush.  All in all, Kara had two great parties for her second birthday.  It's going to hard to top it for her third birthday!

Kara's latest sayings:
- Whenever we asked her how old she was, Kara would say, "Two years old.  Put birthday hat on top of head."

- Mommy took Kara to the doctor's office for her 2-year check-up.  While they were in the waiting room, Mommy told Kara that Dr. Miller was a good doctor and she'd be fine.  After the appointment (and much crying), Daddy asked her how the doctor's office was.  Kara replied, "Dr. Miller, he's good man.  Listened to Ta-ta heart."

- While we were at Mimi and Papa's, Daddy was drinking some orange juice during Kara's snack.  Once Kara figured that out, she said, "I want some."  To which Daddy replied, after you finish your snack.  Kara came back with "I really want some," and Daddy caved.

Pictures from our visit to Alabama:

Pictures from Kara's party in Colorado:

Kara is 1!

Happy First Birthday, Kara! It is amazing that Kara joined our lives just one year ago. She's such a large part of our lives, we cannot possibly imagine a our world without Kara.

Kara woke up on her birthday around 7:00 (which is pretty normal for her these days), but instead of Mommy greeting her with a Good Morning song, Mommy sang Happy Birthday to her. Kara thought that was quite odd, and gave her Mom the dirtiest look she has. Once we got Kara dressed, we went out to breakfast at The Huckleberry in downtown Louisville. It was delicious! Kara got the Mickey Mouse pancake, though we're pretty sure Mommy and Daddy ate more of the pancakes than Kara!

After breakfast, the day was pretty uneventful until 3:00 when the guests arrived for the party. Grandma and Grandpa S., Great Grandma K. (or GG K. as she likes to be called), and Aunt Amy came for the party. Grandma and Grandpa H. and Great Grandma B. (or GiGi B. as she likes to be called) called in through Skype, so they could enjoy the party as well. We sang happy birthday for Kara (and got another dirty look) and then let her go on her own little cake. Surprisingly, she didn't really enjoy the cake too much. Everyone else, however, enjoyed the cake enough for her. Kara got lots of fun toys and much appreciated clothes for her birthday!

Uncle Trey wasn't able to be there for the party, but did call us on Skype the next day. It was great to see him, and he was surprised how much Kara had grown since the last time he saw her.

In other news, Kara just finished her first session of swim classes. Kara had a lot of fun at every class. She didn't actually learn how to swim, but she did learn how to blow bubbles (she likes to practice now during her baths). She slept very well on swim nights, which made Mommy and Daddy happy. :) Kara is getting pretty good at communicating these days. She's recently picked up the sign for "sleep" and likes to walk into the kitchen and sign "eat" (Mommy will usually give her a little cracker when she does that). Kara is completely off formula and now just drinks whole milk and water. She still gets one bottle just before bed, though that probably won't last much longer. It's amazing watching her grow. Like Mommy said the other day, she's not a baby anymore, she's turning into a little girl. I agree.

Link to November pictures


Link to birthday pictures