Thursday, November 17, 2011

October!

IZABEL IS 4!!!
These are a few of her favorite things :)
We started off the month by heading to Disney's Princesses on Ice. Noah and I just took Izabel for a special night to start her birthday celebration. We met up with her friends Evie and Lily for dinner and then went over to the show. Izabel was feeling pretty yucky but she enjoyed the show a lot and we all had a great night.
Izabel, Evie and Lily at the Hampton Coliseum
Izzy and Daddy!
Izabel turned 4 and Tanner turned 2 1/2 on October 8th. Unfortunately they both had strep throat the whole week before so we ended up canceling the big party we had planned and only had a little get together at the house instead. We filled Izabel's room full of balloons the night before and they ended up being great decorations for the party and the rest of the weekend. Of course Izabel woke up in the middle of the night and said she wanted them out of her room! 

So much fun!

Noah's Mom, Aunt, Cousin and Grandma were all in town and got to celebrate along with all of the local family and close friends. We had lemon cupcakes opened presents. 

Izabel's new Leapster Explorer from Mommy and Daddy
Tanner got a little something too!
Strawberry Shortcake!!!
Busy coloring before bedtime
Mimi got Izzy and Tanner their very own bounce house so most of the party was spent outside jumping!
Jumping and Sliding

They had a blast and then we went to Izabel's favorite restaurant, Friendly's, for dinner. She got lots of great stuff and I'm pretty sure she had an amazing weekend surrounded by the people who love her the most! Thank you to everyone who came. 


P.S. Thank you notes will be coming soon now that I'm done with mid terms :)

Finally a good picture of both of them together and it was taken at school!
In other news - Tanner had his speech evaluation this month. We've been waiting forever for CHKD to get to him so we finally went with the city's early intervention program and they have been fantastic. They brought a team of people to the house and tested Tanner in every area. They tested him at a 3 year old level and he passed every test with flying colors. He is doing a great job in everything except speech. He makes sounds, but not words. He definitely expresses himself and makes what he wants known, he just can't quite form the words that we do. A speech therapist will be coming to the house once a week now to work with him and hopefully I'll finally get to hear his sweet little voice soon!

Tanner at 2 and a half
At the end of the month both kids had their check ups with our new found favorite Dr. Carson! If you need a pediatrician in the Hampton Roads area she is absolutely fantastic and we couldn't love her anymore!!! Both kids are doing pretty well. Izabel is 34lbs (42nd percentile) and 39 inches (37th percentile) and Tanner is 35lbs (90th percentile) and 37 inches (75th percentile). We talked about Tanner's asthma and the fact that he is back to coughing all the time and using the inhaler. For right now he is on a one-a-day allergy medicine but I am thinking he will be going to the one-a-day asthma and allergy soon. Since it looks like he probably has asthma he couldn't have the flu mist so he ended up getting the one shot. Izabel is doing great other than her sleeping habits. We have great routines in place and bedtime always happens at the same time every night, but she will lay in her bed awake for so long that she ends up getting less than half of the recommended amount of sleep for age! It's obviously a problem for all of us so we brought it up and the Dr. recommended melatonin. It's a natural supplement to help her sleep and so far it's been working okay. She has started falling asleep a little earlier. Hopefully we will start seeing a change in her soon as she starts to catch up on some rest! For most kids this is the visit before starting kindergarten next fall so she ended up getting four shots. My drama queen was very unhappy and limped around the rest of the day!

Finally, the month ended with Halloween! I like to coordinate costumes which was hard this year because Izabel wanted to be a princess. Disney really needs to work on their selection of boy costumes! I finally figured it out and they were The Princess and the Frog for trick-or-treating. They had a blast and definitely did not want to come home even though they filled up their buckets numerous times :)

Izabel just wanted to get going - not take pictures :)
Our friends Evie and Lily came too



Friday, October 28, 2011

Roller Skating

Izabel and Tanner went roller skating for the first time at Drew's birthday party a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure how it would go or if they would even skate, but they did and they loved it. The people at the skating rink tightened the wheels so they didn't roll very much. I got out there with them and we had a great time. Even during presents and cake Izabel kept asking to go back out and skate. I'm glad we have found something else that we can do as a family that we all enjoy!

Sorry for the terrible pictures...I only had my phone!







Sunday, October 2, 2011

Picture Update

A few recent pictures for you to enjoy!

Little Brother Big Sister love
Their new past time is reading to each other...I love it!
Not the best picture but the only one we got at Ryan and Melissa's wedding

Amy's Baby Shower

A couple weeks ago (sorry for the delay) we had a baby shower for my sister Amy. Her little girl Rowan will be here early in November and we are so excited for her. They are going with a monkey themed nursery so I used that as the theme for the shower as well. We had a great time and she got lots of great stuff and really cute clothes. Rowan is a lucky girl!


Strawberry Banana Monkey Cupcakes made by Sweet Temptations!


Izabel is ready for a baby cousin!




Friday, September 9, 2011

First Day of School

This week was the first week of school and Tanner's first experience as a preschooler! It's crazy that all four of us will be in school this year, but our family values education right!?!?

I was kind of sad about sending Tanner to school. It is so great for him and he loves it so much, but he is the baby and it's sad to see him looking so grown up. I couldn't stand it when we were walking to his classroom. I didn't cry, but I did get a little teary eyed and didn't get much accomplished at work that day. Both Izabel and Tanner are attending Greenbrier Manor. Izabel went their last year and we couldn't be happier with them.

All dressed up and ready to go!
Izzy and Tanner outside of the school
Eating breakfast with Ms Bridget (Izzy's teacher)

Tanner and Izabel both had a great first day of school and came home super excited to go back! I got home pretty late from my classes that night so I didn't get to hear a lot about it, but I've been getting nightly reports about their days and notes from their teachers. Tanner's teacher even sent home a picture of his first day at school! Here's to a great start for this school year and a foundation for a love of learning all throughout their lives!!!

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Natural Disasters and Random Pictures

So Virginia has gone through almost all of the natural disasters possible in the last week! We started with a very random 5.9 earthquake on Tuesday. Talk about scary! It was really not a big deal and the people from California got a big laugh over our craziness, but feeling the ground move underneath you in a place where it never does is scary. I don't need to feel that ever again! Then we all braced ourselves for hurricane Irene which hit last night. She started out looking very scary and did cause some damage to a big part of the area, but we were pretty luck and never even lost power. Out of Irene came a tornado at Sandbridge that did some pretty bad damage to the beautiful rental houses down there and threatened to come through our area. Through all of this we have been smelling the smoke from a wildfire in the great dismal swamp for a while now. Hopefully we won't have any tsunamis or blizzards in the near future because this area needs a break!!!

Now on to the pictures! I heard recently that I haven't been getting pictures up a lot and I know it's been pretty bad. I did warn you in my last post that as my life gets crazier this year I will be posting less and less! Here are some random pictures from the last couple weeks to hold you over for a while :)

Tanner bowling for the first time - he loved it!
The shoes went great with her outfit!
Love the hands on the hips!


Our anniversary dinner in Atlantic City - look closely!
6 years of marriage
Nothing like a bunch of purple chips to help us celebrate!!!

Izabel likes to read to Tanner
and play Angry Birds with Daddy :)