365 days old

This post is a little late (we've been busy!), but still wanted to celebrate officially on our blog our littlest man turning ONE effective February 19!

Oh, how we adore Ethan....his smiles, his curly hair and his sweet sounds of "ma-ma-ma-ma!" Pulls up to stand and will stand briefly on his own, but no desire to walk. He crawls so fast, why would he? Not a fan of any phrase involving "no" and has been known to pitch some minature fits. We just laugh and kiss his chubby cheeks and all is well again in Ethan's world. We have discovered his love and quite frankly SKILL for ball playing. He will throw anything, but with any sort of ball, is quite accurate in his aim. He loves to throw his sparkly ball back and forth and lifts the ball high overhead to achieve more distance. It is quite a hoot...will try and upload some video soon.

Here he is doing one of his favorite things....taking books off his shelf! Part of his nightly routine.


He is always into something...especially if it involves FOOD.

the days are long...

but the years are short!

Happy Birthday (one day later) to our FIVE YEAR OLD!



We celebrated with a myriad of festivities...however, Elias' fever and respiratory symptoms were not part of the original plan! Poor thing had fever into the evening on Sunday!
Somehow, he still found the energy to help put his bike together, go out to lunch as a family with Grandma and eat cupcakes for snack. By the time the Super Bowl came on, he was pretty wiped and was in bed by 8pm.


Our Super Bowl XLV themed cupcakes!

If you get me goin', I will shed tears over my little baby boy being five! Kindergarten is 6 months away!!!!! We turned in our application last week to get into a new magnet school called Sandy Ridge. We should know whether or not he got in by early March.

I finished a Shutterfly photo book for Elias' birthday and just couldn't believe all the memories. It was like pulling teeth to get them all in one 40 page book! I am trying to work on Ethan's now, so that I can be a little more ahead of the game. If only I could get someone to upload all those pictures for me...sounds like a job for a personal assistant. Send me some resumes!
I will close this posting with another pic of Elias' birthday... I chose this one so you can see how much he looks like his Daddy...

Take a ride...

....on the PICTURE TRAIN! I finally uploaded pictures and am sharing some of my favorites here from the last month or so. Click HERE to see our updated Shutterfly site.

This was at my Mimi's house and honestly the best picture we got of Elias the entire Christmas season. And it's super cute of Nana!



At the Christmas Eve Lovefeast service at our church: THREE generations here with Grandma's mom in town...Grandma Brutscher!

New Year's Eve 2010...I love this picture for two reasons.

1. It shows that we survived the worst GI bug ever (thanks to Grandma, who then got it a few days later).

2. It was the 10 year anniversary of our engagement! Or maybe 11? Clearly, I am not very good at math. We got engaged as the new millenium began...1999 to 2000...you figure out the math!

This past weekend we celebrated the infamous Riley man turning ONE! What a milestone and as my sister-in-law said...so grateful that his birth mom chose life one year ago and gave them the gift of R-I-L-E-Y!

When we got home from Winston-Salem, we got out in the lovely 50 degree warm snap and enjoyed some wagon time. I used one of my favorite features on our new camera...it's called "minature effect" and makes one part of the picture in focus while blurring out another.

Hope you all are enjoying your 2011 so far! We are staying busy...making decisions about Elias' school in the Fall (can you believe it is time????!!!) and planning for our boys' birthday trip in February. We are headed to the mountains and will be putting Elias on skis for the first time.