Celebrating 9 years....

On Sunday, May 16, 2010, Erik and I celebrated 9 years of marriage. We had a enjoyable, low key day at home with Elaina. We went out to eat Friday night by ourselves so we celebrated a little early.


On Sunday, I got up early with Elaina and let Erik sleep. Elaina and I made a trip to Dunkin Doughnuts (Erik's favorite) for some doughnuts. We surprised Erik with them. To avoid getting doughnut crumbs all in the bed (with a 2 year old), we ate them in the floor of the bedroom on paper plates and napkins. Kind of fun and different. Here are some shots of the fun time....

Post powdered doughnut :)
Happy Anniversary Erik!! I love you so much! You are the greatest husband and father EVER. It's been the best 9 years and I look forward to many many more!

Sorry to everyone else for enduring through the sappy "I love you's" but they had to be said :)

Birthday Parties

On Saturday, Elaina was invited to 2 birthday parties. Both for friends of hers and daughters of good friends of our. Addie had her 4 year old birthday party - it was a carnival themed party with a blow up slide, carnival games, face painting, cotton candy, snow cones, and hotdogs... She had a blast - her are some shots of her enjoying her time there...

Up the slide - she must have done this 100 times.

Face painting... she requested a red sparkly heart. That's what she got.

Party #2 was Olivia's party. It was a garden themed party with lots of digging in the dirt for buried treasure and they got a chance to plant their own flower. Super cool idea and the kids loved it - especially Elaina.

Here she is digging in the dirt...

With her marigold that she planted in a pot to take home and take care of
Watering her flower
Waiting on cake and ice cream with her friend, Olivia (the birthday girl)
And the most awaited part of the day - cupcakes and ice cream - YUM!
Thank you to Addie and Olivia for inviting Elaina (and us) to your parties. We had a blast!

Random pics

So, no one thing we have done over the past few weeks has justified a blog posts all to itself. So, I thought I'd just post some random shots I've taken over the past few weeks.

Erik and my brother in law, Kevin, worked hard one Friday a few weeks back to build this retaining wall around one of our front flower gardens. I did not take before pics but it looks SO much better. I love it.

And they built this garden around my mail box... love it too. Thanks guys for the work Elaina had a play date with her friend Olivia a few weeks ago and they did this....

On May 1st, my company had its picnic at the Knoxville Zoo. It was a wonderful day. Elaina got to see her friend Caitlin and hang with her.

Everytime we go to the zoo, Elaina loves to play with in this old car. We've got pics of her in this same pose from the last time we went. Looking at the elephants with her daddy...

Posing in front of the gorilla cage

Finally, I had a Pampered Chef Party last week and my friends Lisa and Tanya came which was super exciting because I don't get to see them a lot. We all have girls that are a year a part. Elaina is almost 3, Isabella is almost 2, and Sydney is almost 1... We tried to get a shot of the 3 of them - you know how that goes. Here is the best I got. They are all so cute...

"What we do last night"

So, to go along with some of the funny things Elaina says....

Elaina always want to know what we are doing that day whenever we wake up. She wants to know what the plans of her day are... school, play, church, granny/mamaw/friend's house, whatever. When she asks what the plans of the day are, she asks "What we do last night?" "or "Where we go last night?" She means today but she says last night.

Also, Mother's Day after church, she came home singing her songs she sings at church (as normal). There is a song they sing where the words say "We want to Jesus lifted high." Well, she was singing "We want to see Jesus is my friend." She is putting two songs together but super sweet, right? Right. So, I said "Yes, that's right. Jesus is your friend, Elaina. That is so great." She responded, "No, Jesus is not my friend." Uh oh! I've got my work cut out for me :) I am going to choose to laugh about it now and pray that changes one day in her life.

Shopping with a Toddler

I haven't had any blog posts lately so I thought I'd include a random pic from our trip to the mall yesterday. So, everyone knows that shopping with a toddler can be a challenge (to say the least). Well, this trip was no exception. She wanted to climb on, in, over, under, and through everything she saw. I bet we went up and down the escalators 20 times while Erik was browsing. She did like that. What possessed us to not take her stoller in, I'll never know. Or what possessed us to even go in the first place, I'll never know. We hate the mall but Erik had a gift card to there that was burning a hole in his pocket. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon so we thought we'd try it out.

Even through all the chasing of Elaina, we did get a chuckle at her when I went to find her and she had found this random hat and put it on her head.... At least we got one laugh. This pic taken from my camera phone.

That was the only laugh we had the whole trip, trust me. We were exhausted by the end of that trip and were never more glad to get home.... Toddlers - gotta love em! :)