Happy Birthday Aunt Granny

I figured out how to download her pictures from Saturday. Hopefully these pictures will make Aunt Granny smile on her birthday :) They are not edited but you get the gist of it!

http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/KateS2YearPictures

Two trips to the zoo and a visit from Nana

Thank goodness for the family pass to the zoo! We got full value of it this weekend. Ryan, Kate and I visited the zoo on Saturday for an hour or so and Kate and I went back today to meet John Riley at the Splash Park! As expected, Kate was scared to death of the water park but did enjoy the Tootsie Pop and John Riley shared. I guess he is getting ready for his little sister to arrive in a few weeks. We can't wait to meet you Lucy!
We also got Kate's 2 year pictures done on Saturday, which turned out just great. I will try and download this to picasa but am not sure if I can. She was a little hesitant at 1st but ended up doing pretty well.

If the zoo and pictures were not enough on Saturday, Ryan and I had a great date night with some friends to help celebrate our friend Jack's birthday. We had a great meal and drinks at Morton's. Thank you to Nana for making the trip to Louisville to watch Kate Saturday night! We enjoyed the free time.

Hope everyone has a great week!
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/TwoTripsToTheZoo

Calypso Cove

Here are a few pictures from the pool today. We are at the Calypso Cove, which is part of the YMCA where we work out. It opened at the beginning of summer but today was our first chance to go. Kate was a little timid at first but ended up loving it and even went down a the kiddie slide a few times with Daddy! Ryan and I tried out the big slide, which was great!

http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/CalypsoCove

Happy 1st Birthday Maddux and Happy 2nd Birthday Cameron

Another weekend and yet another birthday party. We celebrated Maddux's 1st birthday today with a fun party at Jonathan and Alyson's house! Kate had a big time helping Alyson open all of the goodies and playing with all the kids (Luke, Maddux, Amelia, Mallory, Davis and Caroline). We missed Cameron today on her birthday and look forward to celebrating her 2nd birthday in a few weeks. She and her sister Sawyer are still in NC with Jennifer's family! Kate is looking forward to them both returning so she can come to Lexington to visit :)

The other pictures attached are from a visit with our friend Kevin and his sister and her children. We all went to Cherokee Park to a small creek area and played in the water. Kate had such a great time that this will likely become a routine event on Saturday mornings. She fell into the water a few times but was a champ and got right back up!

The other exciting news of this week is that Kate has started pee-peeing in the potty! Her teacher at school is now taking her every 2 hours and she successfully went twice on Wednesday for the 1st time. She has now gone several times at home and school for a total of ~7 or 8, including once at Luke and Maddux's house tonight. We just have to catch her before she goes! She is so proud of herself after she goes that it is just priceless. We are proud of her too!!!

I hope you all have a great week!
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/ADayAtTheCreekAndMadduxS1stBirthday02

Spurlock Family Reunion

Ryan and Kate made it back to Louisville safely several hours ago and Kate was such a trooper...6.5 hours in the car! She was well occupied with her Nana in the backseat with her and a few hours worth of the Backyardagins. From what it sounds, they had a big time at the farm with the Spurlock family, including Kate's cousin Ava. Seeing the pictures tonight remind me just how fast they grow.

I ended up having a very relaxing yet productive day today, which is what I needed. A special thank you goes out to Ryan and his family for being understanding of my absence at the reunion. I am glad I got to enjoy the day through all the pictures...Ryan is a champ at taking pictures!
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/SpurlockFamilyReunionJuly2008

4th of July Weekend

Hello! I hope this posting finds everyone doing well. Life here is great just more hectic than ever before! My new position with Abbott is going very well. I have officially completed 3 weeks and am starting to feel that my head is coming out of the water for the first time. I have been blessed today with a free day all to myself. It comes with a bit of anxiety since it is Kate's 2nd birthday and Ryan's family reunion, but after a several very rough weeks, I needed a day to get my head back on straight and try to be a good mom and wife again. We celebrated Kate's birthday last weekend so I doubt she will even know. And at this point, she would far rather spend some time with her Daddy than anyone else so I am pretty sure she is having a big day today at the reunion.

I am going to spend the day doing a little yoga, getting a pedicure, and catching up on all the little details, like paying bills and catching up on the blog, which have been very neglected with all the new responsibilities.

These pictures are from my and Kate's visit with my mom and Bob on Thursday night/Friday morning. We gave Daddy his night off on Thursday and enjoyed a great dinner and visit with my mom. There is a little story behind the swinging pictures...last summer, we could not get Kate out of the swing. However, this spring/summer, she has been petrified of the swing and would scream bloody murder if you tried to put her in it. Our dear friends down the road have a swing set with a regular swing on it and several weeks ago, she got on it and wouldn't get off, even despite a fall. Ever since...she is back to not wanting to get out of the swing. Needless to say, we have been swinging A LOT over the past 2 weeks, including an hour or so at my mom's yesterday. The video is a sweet video of her singing her ABC's and counting to 10, and as you can hear, if I try to help, she says, "no mommy". Too cute.

The other pictures are from our friends party last night in celebration of July 4th. Kate wanted to get in the castle jumping gym but she was a little overwhelmed when others were in there with her. We were able to get her to stay awake until the fireworks went off but unfortunately, our precious little one was PETRIFIED of the fireworks. As quickly as the party started with the fireworks, they ended for us and we made the walk home. So a common theme coming from this posting is that Kate is scared of everything...swinging, juming in a castle, fireworks, strangers, etc. Let's hope this is just a stage...

Enjoy the pictures!
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/FinallyLikesToSwingAgainThankfully
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/Happy4thOfJuly2008

Kate's 2nd birthday party

Please enjoy the pictures! I promise to post a description of her party and provide all the details this weekend...my work-life balance is not where it should be right now :)


Well, I'm back! I apologize again for the delay in getting the blog updated but hopefully you enjoyed the pictures in the meantime. I know that is really all anyone likes so I will try and at least get pictures up each week and update as I can.

We had a blast last Saturday (the 28th) celebrating Kate's 2nd birthday. Kate talked all week how fun her "burday prty" was and how she enjoyed playing with all of her cousins and friends. We thank all of our family and friends that were able to come up and help celebrate Kate's big day and thank you for all the wonderful gifts. We have already put them all to good use, including the following...

Nurturing her babies with their bottles and taking them on walks in their new stroller, all while wearing her new Elmo backpack...which she won't take off
Taking walks in her wagon to see the Doodle Doo's at the park (our neighbor who back up to the schoolyard have several roosters and Kate is fascinated by them)
Running away from her new water toys (sprinkler ball and slip-n-slide)...as with everything right now, these will take a little time to get use to!
Talking on her new Dora phone that actually says her name
Riding in the new bike trailer...now safely with her new Dora helmet
Wearing all her new shoes
Playing with her abacus and wooden dress up puzzles (these are great for eating out!!!!!!!!)
Sitting out on the back patio in her new lounge chairs...that just happen to match her Mommy and Daddy's furniture

Needless to say, this has been a very fun week for Kate and I know she is going to enjoy these toys for some time. It is nice to get to play with some new stuff myself :)

As you can tell from the pictures, the theme was popsicles since Kate loves popsicles. Phlen's bakery did as good of a job as they did last year matching the cake to the invitation! I love throwing these parties and will have to try and think of something creative again next year as it will probably be my last year to get to choose the theme. I have a feel from then on...Kate will be deciding!

I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful 4th of July holiday. We are enjoying the downtime!

http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/KateS2ndBirthday