Since you've been gone.....

...Er, actually, since I'VE been gone a lot has happened. Obviously it would take me forever and a day to update everything that we've done in the last 3 months, so I'll give you the quick rundown.

• I got another tattoo! Well, it's technically two (one on each shoulder) but I say one. It's a pair of swallows. I got them for the kids. Swallows represent loyalty and pride. They always come back home and I would like to think that I am home to Graycen and Parker.

• We got family pictures done by Emily Schnick, who happens to be an old friend of David's family. It was sort of a One Year birthday shoot for Parker/family picture day. We went down to Hidden Falls in Highland Park and Emily shot our pictures. She did a FANTASTIC job! You should go check her out!


• Parker turned one! Woo hoo and Boo Hoo all at the same time. My little baby is officially a toddler now and it's such a bittersweet moment. He started walking about a month after his birthday and now he's all over the place.

• Parker was officially diagnosed with food allergies. After a scary discovery that he was allergic to peanuts (I had to call 9-1-1 even) we had the allergy testing done again. Turns out he is allergice to peanuts, eggs and soy.  We now have to be very aware of what he eats and always carry around EpiPens. I'll write more on this one later.
• Our sweet niece, Ava Mae, was born to my little brother, Zach and his fiancee, Emma on June 28. She is absolutely adorable!
• Graycen went and spent the weekend up north with Grandma, Grandpa and Buttons. Now, Buttons is their dog and while up there those two created such a bond. She sure loves that puppy. This was her first time away from home so it was pretty rough on myself, David and Parker. Parker was so grumpy and whiney the whole time she was gone. Poor guy missed his sister. She had a great time though! There's another trip in the works, we'll just see when it will be!

• We made a trip to Como Zoo and the kids enjoyed it like they always do!

• As a family we went out to this mini family fun day at Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove. Graycen had fallen asleep on the way out there so she was a grump for the first little bit that we were there. She got to do a few little crafts, but her favorite thing was when she got "a tattoo" on her cheek. She sat till long enough for the lady to paint a tiger with a rainbow on her cheek. It was pretty cute.

• Graycen was a flower girl in our friends, Dino & Dana's wedding. She was adorable in her little dress and tiara. She wouldn't cooperate for pictures, but did so well walking down the aisle with Bobby (the ring bearer) It was a beautiful wedding and we couldn't have been happier to have Graycen in it.

• Graycen was asked to be flower girl in another wedding! Our niece, Katie, is getting married next August and her and Josh decided to ask if Graycen would like to be their flower girl. She was super excited when I asked her if she would like to. Of course we accepted!
• David and I got a night out and went and enjoyed Jason Mraz at the Xcel Center. He was amazing, as he always is. His openers were Bushwalla, K'Naan and G. Love & Special Sauce. The show was fantastic!!

• The whole gang made the trip to the fair. The kids were great and they both fell asleep in the stroller, which allowed more time for David and I to stroll around and look at more stuff (and of course, eat more!)

• I made Ambassador at school. In short, what this means is I'm kind of like an honors student/teacher's aide. I will be graduating with additional honors because of it. You're chosen based on your grades, attendence, behaviors and participation. I'm very proud to say I have kept my GPA at 3.89 and have only missed 2 days of school. Not too bad!
• We met up with my aunt Diane at the MN Zoo. Graycen instantly became her bestie and they hung out the whole time. It was a great time, the weather was perfect and since the fair was going on - we really had no traffic there!


• We tried to get Graycen into Head Start. Did you know there are income guidelines and waiting lists to meet to be able to get into this program? That's crazy to me, but whatever. Anyways, because I am in school we actually meet the income guidelines right now BUT there is a huge waiting list. There were 174 kids on the list ahead of where we would be had we chosen to put Graycen on it. The average wait time to get her in - 8-14 months. No thanks, we'll find somewhere else.. even if it means we have to pay to get her in there.
• Graycen turned three! We had a mini celebration at my aunt Rae's house last Sunday when they had a BBQ and we brought a cake and it turned into a little party.

• 
  
  Saturday was her actual birthday and Ma (David's mom) came down for the day. Our plan was to hit up Como Zoo after we went brithday hopping for the girl, but there was seriously no place to park over there. It was horrible. Change of plans - we went to Applebee's for some lunch and then went back home. Both kids fell asleep in the truck on the way home and Graycen stayed asleep. We waited awhile then woke her up so we could do cake and presents before Ma had to leave for home. It was a good day.

(don't know why the cake is sideways)

I'm sure there's more but my brain is fried for the moment. If I think of something I will add it in.

Happy Labor Day!

For me, Labor Day has been different ever since 2006. You see, I actually went into labor with Graycen on Labor Day. So since then, it has kind of served as a mini day of reflection for me. I constantly find myself thinking, "at this time xx years ago I was doing (fill in the blank.)" It has been 3 years since she was born but I still remember everything so clearly - almost to the minutes still. It's amazing!

Even though Graycen's birthday was 2 days ago I'm still going to wish her a very happy 3rd birthday.

Graycen -

To our little sweetie girl who is so incredibly intelligent, crazy, amazing, beautiful, imaginative and so many more words that I can't even come up with right now, Happy Birthday! Mommy, Daddy and Parker love you more than anything in this world! Hope your 3s bring you many good things!!

...And at this time 3 years ago I was probably just rolling (literally) out of bed getting ready to do some housecleaning...

Interested in reading her birth story? Click here.

Huge Update

So, I realize I haven't posted for real in like a month now. That is just crazy. I'm sorry everyone! I will try to be better at this (again!) In the last month a lot has happened:
We went to the fair, Graycen turned 2, we had a visit from ma, Parker turned 3 months, Graycen started potty training, Graycen attended her first Mary Kay party, we went to the apple orchard.. see a lot of stuff happened!
Since I have already started this post I am going to write everything out and then I will create another post with the millions and millions of pictures.

August 30 - Graycen and Parker's first trip to the MN State Fair
David happened to have a half day at work. He got home at like 12:30 and we decided just right then and there that we were going to the fair. We found a parking spot (which was a good close one!) got everyone unpacked and headed in. We no more than left the gates when David got a call from Dino. They were on their way to the fair and wanted to know what we were up to. Since we were already there he asked if they could meet up with us. Sure! So, we ate some stuff, walked around and just had a good time. I had been waiting for the fair since I was pregnant with Parker so I could eat all of this nummy stuff and since I am on Weight Watchers, i chose not to indulge in everything I had wanted. I ate corn on the cob, a couple of fries and too many of Sweet Martha's cookies. Graycen had her first roasted corn on the cob as well as her first Sweet Martha's cookies - oh no, she's hooked! Graycen fell asleep right before we left and slept until we got home. She was a mess and definitely needed a bath when we got home. My feet were also disgusting. I couldn't believe it. Parker slept the entire time we were there. Go figure.

September 5 - Graycen turned 2 years old!
Graycen woke up in a good mood this day. It's like she just knew it was something special. We didn't do anything, really. I had the boys to watch and we celebrated her birthday with them with mini, pink, sprinkled cupcakes at lunch. After the boys left her aunties and nana stopped by to deliver some birthday gifts. She had a blast and was a riot - dancing for everyone! Later on we played some Guitar Hero III (Graycen absolutely LOVES GH) ate some pizza and bread sticks, which David picked up from Little Caesar's and just had a good family night with the birthday girl. We put her to bed and reflected on the last two years. Always a way to make me cry!

September 9 - Graycen attended her first Mary Kay party and was a total diva!
So, I had a Mary Kay party. Graycen was home and awake while this was going on. Being the total girl that she is, she wanted in on this makeup thing. So Natalie made up a little makeup tray for her and let her go to town. I didn't mind! Graycen put lipstick, liner, eyeshadow, blush and lotions all over her face. She definitely looked like she was ready to go to war with her war paint. It was so cute!

September 13 - Ma came down to visit and celebrate Graycen's birthday
Ma was unable to come down the weekend of Graycen's birthday to celebrate it with her so she came down the following weekend. Ma did the traditional grand kid birthday day - took her shopping! Graycen got her winter coat, some footie pajamas, socks and a new pair of shoes.Oh and of course, it wouldn't be a birthday without a toy too. She bought her a bag of Mega Blocks (which Graycen just loves!) We were sad to see her go - as usual - and always wish she could stay longer.


September 17 - Graycen started potty training - successfully!
For some reason today was the day that the whole potty thing really struck Graycen as something she wanted to be involved in. We have been trying the potty thing but haven't been pushing it. Lately we kind of pushed it to the side since it seemed like she really wasn't too interested. Well, today was different. She decided at one point she wanted to go potty while I was going. I said OK and let her hop up on the big potty (she LOVED this!) she went and was super excited. She jumped down and yelled, "I did it! It's awesome!" we high-fived and she ran out to tell David. He got excited and came in to look. She repeated the above again. It was too cute. All day long, about every 5-10 minutes she said she had to go potty so we decided to bring her potty chair out of the bathroom and let her run around sans undies all day to see how it went. Much to our surprise, she came to me telling me she needed to potty but kept pointing to the big potty. I took her in and she pooped. First day really on the potty and she pooped. Of course, I had to get a picture of it. She was so proud and so were we!
Since that day she has been doing GREAT with potty training. She doesn't wear a diaper during the day and uses the potty all day long (the big and little - whichever she feels like at the time) She only wears a diaper to bed and nap time which the past few days she has been waking up dry!! YAY!! We were out for about 5 hours this weekend and had her in a pull-up. She kept it dry the entire time- telling us when she needed to potty. As a reward/motivational tool we let her pick out big girl undies on Saturday. She picked a pack of Dora and a pack of Ariel. She loves them and is so excited to wear them! This is going great *knock on wood*


September 20 - Our trip to Emma Krumbee's Apple Farm
We had anther family day and went out to Emma Krumbee's in Belle Plaine. Let me just say, I feel like we wasted our time and money. We drove for an hour to get to a place that wasn't worth the $5/adult we had to pay to get in. Basically we spent $20.95 on a half peck of Honeycrisp apples. Yay!
There was a hay pile that you could jump in, on and off of. Graycen enjoyed that part! They had scare crows which people made all around. We looked at them but Graycen didn't really care about them. They had, what they would like to call a petting zoo. It wasn't. It was a fenced in area which contained some miniature horses, donkeys and goats. All of the animals were in the shade next to the barn and really only came up to the fence if you had some feed. We made our way back to the car and that was about it. Boring, right? Next time (which will be later this season) we are going to try out Afton. We'll see how that goes!

September 22 - Parker turned 3 months old!
Where has the time gone? Parker is already 3 months old. He smiles like crazy, has GREAT head control, sits in the Bumbo chair, chats with you like he's never going to talk again, sleeps through the night, naps so well and well, he's just a great baby! He's continuing to be huge! He is rapidly growing out of the 6-9 month clothes that we have already. It's just nuts! He watches Graycen with so much intensity. It's adorable to watch him stare at her. Graycen is doing so much better with him than she had been. She doesn't hit him anymore, thankfully! when he cries she gets concerned. It's cute.

wow...

At this time 2 years ago, David and I were roaming the halls of United waiting to have Graycen (or should I say: Grayson/Graycen)

I got another great birthday present yesterday!!

A visit from my Grandma Jones! OK, I also got really lucky and she brought me lots of great presents, too!

Yesterday Grandma Jones came down for a day long visit. She was unable to make it down for Graycen's birthday party due to work, so she made it up by coming down to see us. She brought Graycen her birthday presents, took us shopping and bought us dinner. It was so nice to see her. It's always too bad she can't stay longer.

Here is Graycen (and her gifts) in her super cool, new wagon!

Playing with her puppy and kitty books.

Still playing with her books, but also wearing one of her new outfits from Grandma.

Graycen's One Year Pictures!

On Graycen's birthday (last Wednesday) we went to Target and got her pictures taken. The time that we had our appointment for turned out to be the time that she was SO READY to go to sleep. Unfortunately, we were unable to reschedule because they didn't have anything else for us. We went anyways. The lady was so patient with Graycen and I felt like she really cared about these pictures. She was doing whatever she could to get her to smile and capture her real personality. through all of the pictures that the photographer took, she was able to get some really good "shots" and some great candids. Here are a couple of my favorites. You can see the rest here:
https://www.thesmilestation.com/home.asp?AC=LTTT0031105199TAR
Use David Jones as the guest name.

Ok, it's been 3 days, I should probably talk about the birthday party!

So, we held our very first birthday party on Sunday afternoon. In a few words, it was: crazy, packed, fun and... wow! Every single person that RSVPd "yes," showed up to the party! We had 31 people here. The weather was pretty chilly, so there was no going outside. Graycen was still sleeping when people started arriving, so we let her sleep for a little while longer. She woke up, we visited, ate, opened presents and did the cake! She was in a little mood, but what else is to be expected from a 1 year old that was woken up from her nap to find 31 people in her house? In short, Graycen was spoiled - to the bones! She is now enjoying every last thing she got for her birthday. It was such a crazy day and everything went by so fast and it was NOTHING like I imagined it would be, but we had a fantastic time. We really felt all of the love that our family and friends have for Graycen. Thank you to everyone who helped make it a phenomenal day!
Here are some pictures to show the day.