Bring on the Wedding Season

I love weddings and actually wish more of our friends were getting married or weren't already married (so I could attend their weddings, not that I don't think they should be married :) )

I love seeing the bride's dress and my favorite part is how giddy the bride and groom are. I love seeing two people so completely in love and so happy to be together. Plus, weddings remind me of my wedding day which is still one of my favorite days ever (the other being Kate's birth). It's also fun to have an opportunity to get dressed up and for Jason and me to go on a date.

Here are pictures from Lyndel and Mike's wedding. They definitely had the giddy/most beautiful bride part down! They also had the coolest guest book idea. Instead of people signing a book that you never really look at again, they had a photo booth set up. You took your pictures then put one copy on a scrapbook page and then you got to keep the other copy. How creative is that!

Jason and me with Ty and Dana

The beautiful bride

My BFF who is pregnant! Though you can't even tell she's pregnant here, she's definitely the cutest pregnant lady ever!

Lost & Found

While at the Cheescake Factory for Lyndel’s shower/bachelorette party I had a very scary moment. I came out of the restroom, went back to the table and realized my finger felt funny. I looked down and only had my wedding band on! For those who are married you are probably like me where your band and engagement ring are always together. You never only have one. If I had looked and didn’t have either ring I would have assumed I forgot to put them on and they were at home. I ran back to the restroom to check the sink but their sink only has tiny holes for a drain so I knew it couldn’t have gone down the drain. I checked the stall and didn’t see anything. I’m starting to panic at this moment and run back to the table where I tell Dana and Amy that my ring isn’t on my finger. We start looking all around on the floor but there’s no ring. I run back into the restroom while Dana searches through my purse. As I’m convincing myself that my ring has been flushed down the toilet I remember a story Ty told us about almost losing his ring.

I go through the first trash can - nothing. Then I start looking through the second one. I pull the paper towels out and flatten them looking for my ring. I eventually pick a paper towel up and laying there face up is my ring! When it’s really cold my fingers shrink up and my ring is too loose so when I was wiping my hands with the paper towel the ring just slipped right off. I ran out to tell everyone but was still shaking and couldn’t stop shaking for a few minutes. I should resize my ring but then it would be kind of uncomfortable during the summer when it’s humid and my fingers aren’t shriveled up. Luckily my band is a little bit smaller (since the guy who sized my engagement ring didn’t really believe Jason when he told him my ring size) so I now wear my band on top to prevent my engagement ring from sliding off.

I know it’s just a material possession but the middle stone was Jason’s grandmother’s so it has double sentimental value. It’s the ring Jason picked out and proposed with and the main stone is a family heirloom. There is nothing you could say that would make me feel better if I was to loose it. Such as, it’s just a ring… I want this ring to be something that is passed down in our family and when our child/grandchild looks at the ring they will be reminded of much love those who wore it before had and especially how much Jason and I loved each other.

Barefoot in the Park - Mother's Day

Mother’s Day started with Jason waking Katherine and feeding her breakfast so I could have extra time to get ready for church. While I was putting on my make-up Kate came walking in all by herself holding a card up with both hands and brought it straight to me. It was so incredibly cute! That’s her new thing now (she loves handing things to people). It may sound simple but really it’s adorable and shows how grown up she is now.

Church was nice and involved eating lots of chocolate and ice cream sundaes. After, we went to downtown Duluth with my parents. They were having an arts festival with entertainment. It was Kate’s perfect place because everyone brought their dogs and would let Kate gently pet them. Plus, we got to see little ballerinas dance and then watch Kate dance to a jazz band.

I was also treated with my two favorite meals that day; pancakes for lunch and teriyaki chicken with rice for dinner. All made by Jason and he even cleaned the kitchen!

I was reading a blog where mom's were complaining about Mother’s Day. I can’t imagine why because I love Mother’s Day and really look forward to my special day :) And we're going to celebrate Mother's Day with my Mom next weekend when my sister comes in town.

Daddy/Daughter Walk

She would smile until the camera came up then she would put on her serious face

Dancing with Grandma

The best part of the whole day

On our way to church

Kate's 1st Crush

Kate has her first crush (besides Jason of course). She is quite smitten with my cousin Taylor (he's technically my cousin's son so I guess that means he's Kate's cousin?). I could understand why she chose him for her first crush; he's only 16 but is the most responsible, smart, friendly, athletic kid I know. I think it was love at first site because the second Kate saw him she instantly changed. She dropped her toys walked straight up to him and stared. She would hold her arms up for him to hold her, which she never does to strangers/new people. She even went so far as to bate her eyelashes at me. I'm not joking she literally did this multiple times and only to Taylor.

At my Aunt's, Kate was busy playing with easter eggs and even had some candy. At one point she happened to spot Taylor sitting far away at the back of the table and she dropped the candy took off and ran straight to him. I was laughing so hard because you have to know her to realize that it must truly be love if he could distract her to the extent of giving up her candy. I don't even know how she could see him from where she was. Kate is a big flirt and knows how to work her extreme cuteness :)

The first pictures are blurry but you can still see how she's showing off for him

Easter in TN

Jason told me he needed a weekend to install a sprinkler system at our house. This was a perfect opportunity for me to go with my parents to TN, especially since we’re not going for Christmas this year. The drive is 5 hours each way and I was fairly impressed with how Kate handled the ride. It’s definitely a long drive but we made it with lots of new toys and snacks. We did barely miss tornadoes driving there, one was right behind us and one was right in front of us. Luckily my Dad was driving and not me! Every year my relatives do lunch then an Easter egg hunt. Everything becomes a lot more fun when you have a child who can participate in the activities. Last Easter Kate was so small but this year she could attempt to hunt for eggs. We had a great time and Jason was able to finish installing the sprinkler system (with some serious help from Ty) He even added fancy little features, so our small garden now has it's very own dripper irrigation system which means we don't have to stand out there forever with the hose. However the cable was cut during the process and I ended up going 5 days without internet!

Our little Chef. My aunt had a play kitchen and tool set that Kate loved playing with

This picture would be perfect if only Jason was in it. We missed him!

All the little kids lined up before the Easter egg hunt and Kate got right in line with them

Everyone who knows me says she looks like my Dad and everyone who knows Jason says she looks like him. No one says she looks like me!

My Mom was too busy helping Kate hunt for a posed picture


Me trying to teach Kate to put the eggs in her basket instead of just shaking and opening them



She got the hang of it, though this was her 3rd egg hunt (1st with church play group then in Columbus)

I absolutely love those cheeks :)

Coming home

Happy Easter

A little late I know! I will post pictures from our trip to TN soon because Kate had a blast and was incredibly cute as always!

Mountain Trip

A couple of weekends ago we decided we needed to get away. There is nothing better than weekend trips and just because we have a baby now doesn’t mean we’re going to stop going on them. We have seriously been to every interesting town that is within driving distance, and some we really should have flown to.

We decided to go back to my parent’s friends cabin because it’s beautiful up there and free :) Our friends, Greg and Lara, came with us which was great because we don’t get to see them often now that they’ve moved. The day before we realized Kate was too big for the baby Bjorn and would give Jason a major backache carrying her on his stomach. I hopped on Craigslist, my absolute favorite, found a cheap baby backpack carrier, emailed them and picked it up all in the same day. Kate loved riding on Jason’s back and I even tried it out for a little bit. This was the perfect weekend for our trip, it wasn’t hot and nobody was there.

Thank you Craigslist

Family Portrait

Kate had a ton of fun walking around and digging up rocks

Our child is quite independent. We wanted to see how far she'd go but I had to call her back since it didn't look like she was going to stop
Have you ever seen a cuter 1 year old :)

Our favorite waterfall. There were 3 connected and this was the bottom one. As we were walking to it we kept passing signs about how people died here and it wasn't parked own and about 3 more signs saying people died here. We're guessing some really smart people tried to jump off this one or tried to canoe down starting from the first one.

Can't wait for our next trip!

(We missed you Ty and Dana!)