November 30, 2010

Cara's One Year Pictures

Sorry that I never posted a link to Cara's one year pictures. The gallery had our last name in it and I try to keep that off the blog. But, I got the pictures today and they turned out great!

















November 29, 2010

Christmas Card Outtakes

I ordered our Christmas cards today! I'm not going to give away the pictures that are on the card, but here are some cute and some ridiculous outtakes from the Christmas card attempts.







Ian thinks it's funny to take pictures when you're not ready. Apparently, this is what we look like when we talk to Ian.


Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great time with my family on Thanksgiving! Everyone enjoyed the chance to hang out and eat. Unfortunately, I was sick on Wednesday, but I rallied on Thursday and was able to put away more than my share of Momoo's stuffing. This is our best family picture--getting five people to smile at the same time is nearly impossible.



Cara LOVED her first Thanksgiving dinner!

Cara Cuteness

Still not walking, but getting closer


Can't resist the back view




Sharing her snack with the "woof woofs"

November 23, 2010

30 Days of Giving- Week 3

30-Day Giving Challenge
Apologies if no one cares about these. I am holding on to the hope that some of you like reading about it. :)
Day 18: Donated a book to Reader to Reader via Anthropologie
Day 19: Technically, I skipped this day, but I did two on Sunday so I hope that counts!
Day 20: Went on a day retreat with the 8th grade confirmation class and the other mentors
Day 21: Helped decorate our church for Christmas and volunteered for Make a Wish Foundation (For an easy and fun way to give to Make a Wish this holiday season go to Macy's and write a letter to Santa, each one earns a $1 donation to Make a Wish. I'm one of the volunteers collecting and counting the letters!)
Day 22: Donated to Girl Effect
Day 23: Donated to the food drive at Lila's school.

Birthday Presents!

Two apologies: 1. Blogger has been weird the last two times I've uploaded pictures, I'm trying to fix it manually, but I apologize if the pictures are all wonky on the page when you're looking. 2. Sorry for the delay in getting these pictures up.

Last Monday, Cara opened her presents from her birthday party. It took most of the day off and on, but she had a lot of fun doing it.




















Getting into the idea of opening presents.





Thanks to Uncle Tim for the pony, she loves it. And thanks to Lola for the gift idea since she got one too at her party.



Not a great picture, but Cara got a Jump-o-lene from Gary and Sue and she was SO excited about it. The whole time Chris was inflating it she was leaning against it with a huge grin on her face. Unfortunately, this is the best picture I have of the experience.




Auntie Erin with her nieces and nephew. Erin was a HUGE help getting ready for the party and during the party, I could not have pulled it off without her. And the kids had a blast playing with her all weekend!

November 17, 2010

30 Day Giving- Week 2

30-Day Giving Challenge
A little late on this week's update too. Here's what I've done the last week.
Day 9: Donated to a pair of snowpants to Frosty's Rack and bought Christmas presents for a 3 year old girl who loves Dora for the Salvation Army
Day 10: In honor of Cara's first birthday made a donation to March of Dimes which helps all babies have a healthy start
Day 11: In honor of Veteran's Day made a donation to the USO
Day 12: Donated to the food drive at Ian's school.
Day 13: Donated to our church's food pantry. Lila's Sunday School class went there for their lesson and she learned a lot!
Day 14: Volunteered for the Make-a-Wish foundation of Illinois.
Day 15: Donated to the Junior League of Kane and Dupage Counties
Day 16: Joined a committee at church.
Day 17: Fundraising night for Lila's school.

Cara's Turtle-y Cute Birthday Party!

Sorry for the delay in getting these posted! Cara had a great first birthday party! Thank you to all of you who came and everyone who helped out! I decided to just include a couple of pictures from the party, but I put a link to my Snapfish album at the bottom of the post, so if you'd like to see the rest of the pictures you can check them out there.
Katie also made an amazing movie with pictures of Cara's first year. I think I might be able to upload it to the blog, so stay tuned to see if I can get that done.

Here's Cara modeling her adorable birthday party outfit.


The back view.


Singing Happy Birthday


Checking out her cupcake. She was a big fan!

November 11, 2010

Cara's Stats

She is still pulling off deceptively chubby because she is only 15th percentile for both height and weight. She is 19 lbs and 27 3/4 inches long. For comparison, Lila was 18 lbs 5 oz and 30 inches and Ian was 21 lbs 14 oz and 30 inches long. It's looking like Cara is going to be the shortest one in our very short family.

Cara is One!

Cara's first birthday was yesterday! It's hard to believe that a year has gone by and it's amazing to see what a difference a year makes! Here is Cara the day she came home from the hospital and yesterday, on her first birthday.


















Cara started the day with her one year portraits. Hopefully, I'll have a link to share in a few days. She wasn't as smiley as I'd hoped, but I still think we will have some cute ones. Chris took the day off since he'd been out of town most of the last two weeks so we had some family time to celebrate the big day. In fact, Cara enjoyed it so much she opted out of her afternoon nap! When Ian got home from school we opened presents.
Cara with her birthday presents.


That's one way to open presents!


A little something for Lila.


All her presents from Mommy and Daddy!


Singing Happy Birthday


Eating her dairy free banana bar.
Cara's 1 year check up is this morning so I will update later with her stats. However, she had the allergy blood test last week and it came back negative for all food allergies! The doctors were quick to point out that she could still have food allergies/intolerances, but I'm still considering it good news. This week she has had both eggs and soy and had no problems, so that is more good news. She has also been off of her reflux medicine for about two weeks!
She is getting better and better at standing, but still has zero interest in walking. When I encourage her to take steps or give her a toy to push she just sits down. She has learned several new words this month including book, boom, paci, shh! and shoe. Shoe is a favorite word, right up there with woof, she gets excited whenever she sees shoes and starts pointing and saying shoe!, shoe!
She is our family clown, always doing things for a laugh. But she is also very opinionated and "talks" very seriously to us when she wants something and gets mad when I can't figure out what she wants. She loves stacking and sorting and is very good at manipulating small toys and stacking them.

November 8, 2010

An Update on Us

It has been a busy week, but no pictures and not much that was blog-worthy. There will be an onslaught of posts and pictures in a few days, I'm sure, as we celebrate Cara's 1st Birthday.

On Friday Ian had a swim meet and got personal bests in two of his events, the 50 yard freestyle and the 100 yard freestyle! Way to go Ian!

On Saturday, I ran my first 15K (9.3 miles) and finished in 1:31:17 which is a pace of 9:48. It was COLD, but once we started running it was actually great weather for a run and the course was beautiful along Lake Michigan with the skyline view. Click here for some unflattering pictures of me running and right after I cross the finish line. I also got a a little Christmas shopping done on Saturday and got to spend time with Momoo on her birthday!

30-Day Giving Challenge

And, as promised, here's what I did for the first 7 days of the Giving Challenge.
Day 1: Donated clothes to Amvets
Day 2: Donated my change to Ronald McDonald House at the McDonalds drive-up
Day 3: Participated in the Huddle for Hunger. If you text HBCU and your zip code to 71717 they donate a meal to a local food pantry.
Day 4: Bought a just because/thanks gift for a friend. Would have done it anyway, but it also helped me check off day 4.
Day 5: Purchased a shirt, part of the proceeds go to Ronald McDonald House Chicago.
Day 6: Donated to St. Jude
Day 7: I'm a mentor for an 8th grade girl going through the confirmation class at church and today we attended church and took communion together.
Day 8: Donate to Cure JM, an important cause to a good friend.

November 1, 2010

A Little Something Good...

One of the blogs I read is participating in the 30 Day Giving Challenge and after reading about it, I thought I would give it a shot. I know 99.9% of you only come here for pictures of the kids, but I thought I would post about it anyway in case anyone else was inspired to participate.

30-Day Giving Challenge

Today was Day 1 and I conveniently had already told AmVets that I would have some things to donate. So, Day 1--check! I think I might try to post every Monday about what I've done to "give" each day.

If anyone else does decide to participate it would be awesome if you could comment (or e-mail me) with what you've done.
Here's hoping I can come up with 30 things...