We got some complimentary tickets to Disney on Ice this year from a very gracious friend so we took the girls. Ivy was a little unsure at first, but warmed up pretty quick. We sat behind her friends Addison and Bailey so that helped too. By the end of the show she was clapping and dancing by herself in the aisle, it was precious. Ada slept the whole time, bless her heart.

When you spend an hour every other hour sitting in front of the tv feeding a newborn, it's good to have a reliable channel to turn to...HGTV hasn't let me down yet! I swear that you can watch the same type of show with a different name every half hour. Design on a Dime, My House is Worth What?, Curb Appeal, Sell this House...they all basically do the same thing, take an old, cluttered, ugly home and turn it into something prettier. For some reason, I can't seem to turn away once I've gotten into the first 5 minutes of the show. I find myself staying up to catch the "big reveal" when I could be catching zzzz's.

It was my golden (29th) birthday today and I had to blog about how Ivy sang to me. She loves everything about birthdays, the cake, icing, candles, presents, and singing. This year she was able to join in on signing to me before we blew out the candles. "Happy birthday dear cake" is how she sang it, not dear mommy...oh well, it was cute as all get out.

We had a beautiful and healthy baby girl this morning at 9:22am and we named her Ada Marjorie. She weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces, and was 20.75 inches long. Click on her picture to the right to see her website with more pictures!

    Just thought I'd post a couple pictures of Ivy in her penguin Halloween costume this year. She actually put the candy in her pumpkin instead of trying to eat it all on the spot. It was fun to go around the neighborhood with Riley and Jacob.

We won't forget when the first snowfall of the season was this year...Ivy's birthday! She turned two today and she's getting so grown up. We had the families over on Sunday for cake and ice cream and a penguin themed party...so this snow goes along with that theme I suppose. Ivy got a lot of great gifts including some babies, a puzzle, backpack, cash register and shopping cart. It's fun to watch her play by herself with the babies, feeding and taking care of them. Her new puzzle has been keeping her occupied for longer periods of time than any of her other toys...mental note...buy more puzzles...
Today we decorated a yellow cake that we baked yesterday. Ivy helped spread the chocolate frosting and put some birthday hat candies on top...some of them got smashed into the cake, but that's just a fun surprise for whoever gets that piece.Then we sprinkled some flower confetti candy on top. Overall we had a good day, I was sad for Ivy that we couldn't go "side-a" to play on the swingset or out in the sandbox. The weather was extremely nasty most of the day and night. 
toodles...

We went to Fort Dodge, Iowa this weekend for my cousin Brian's wedding. We had a lot of fun and I wanted to share a funny story. There were a few bees inside the church flying around people in the pews ahead of us. They were all swatting at them like they were flies, and I was nervous that they would come back to our row and take it out on us. Well one of them flew by Eric's head and he chivalrously tried to "catch" the bee in his hand to save us all. Well it didn't end up in his hand so he says to me "where'd it go?"..."probably up my dress!" I responded. Just then I felt a sting on my 9 month pregnant belly. It's very hard to keep quiet in church when you've been stung by a bee.

Well we were in Omaha today for a few reasons...my sister and I planned a surprise 60th birthday brunch for my mom...and then there was my cousin Alecia's baby shower. So the surprise was awesome and everything went off without a hitch, my mom was totally shocked and we all had a good laugh and a good cry, it was great. We ate, drank, and were merry.
Then we left and we going to head over to Alecia's shower when she called and said she thought maybe her water just broke (15 minutes before said shower). Her doctor wanted to meet her at the hospital so she went there and we still went to the shower and had some great food. She ended up having a beautiful baby girl, Lauren Elizabeth, at about 10 pm tonight. You always hear stories about stuff like that happening...and now I get to tell the story...

Ivy is 23 months old today so I thought that was blog-worthy I guess. Here are some of the things she's been doing lately. She corrals her "friends" whenever we go anywhere. Her stuffed penguin, her naked babies, her blankies, her cup of water...basically anything she sees on the way out to the car, she 'wants it'. So inevitably there's a fight when we get out of the car because I don't want to traipse into the store, or the restaurant carrying all of her stuff. Although, it is pretty funny to see daddy carrying a naked baby, or penguin around when she decides she's sick of it.
She's also been saying 'morning' to everyone she knows when she wakes up. "morning mommy, morning daddy, morning kermit, morning grandma, morning grandpa, morning penguin, morning moon...etc...". She'll also say goodbye to everything she sees when we drive away from our house..."bye bye daddy car, bye bye frings (swings), bye bye moon, bye bye flag, bye bye dave car (our neighbor)".
She enjoys "M a M's" now, and we are trying to teach her colors as she eats them (think educational tool...not junk food). She thinks it's pretty fun when she gets the color right, and she won't eat them until she knows what the color is. For some reason she thinks the color brown is funny.
Well, that's about all I can think of for now, this blog was more for my own memory than anything else...

Last night around 3 am Ivy let out some pretty sad cries. She often will cry a little in the night and go right back to sleep, so I wasn't too worried about it. We're very leery about going into her room when she cries a little because she seems to completely wake up when she sees one of us, and stay up the rest of the night. Anyway, these cries last night sounded like she was in pain, so I got up to see what was going on. She was laying in there looking at me and I said "what's wrong?" she said "stuck". I looked at her legs and saw that she had gotten one of her chubby thighs all the way through the crib slats and she couldn't get it back out. I called Eric in to help because I couldn't budge it. He pulled the slats apart a little and I was able to squeeze it through. I held her for a while and when I put her back down in her crib, she went right back to sleep. I thought about how nice that was that she could tell me what was wrong with her. But it also makes me sad that she's becoming such a big girl, and not so much my little baby anymore...