Emily's 2nd Birthday!

Yesterday, Kris and Erica hosted a family party to celebrate their daughter Emily's birthday.  Uncle Teddy and I headed up to their house around 2:00 to get there before the start of the Hawks game.  (Stanley Cup - here we come!)  We spent the day visiting with family and friends and watching Emily be Emily.  :) 

She was too cute and started out the party carrying around her balloon of a giant number 2. 

She had just woken up from her nap and was a little bit cranky, so we had a lot of grumpy faced pictures or pictures of the back of her head.  But it didn't take long for her to warm up to the crowd and show us all her dancing and singing skills.  Her new favorite song is "It's Hip to be a Square" from her favorite show, Sesame Street.  You can't really tell from the pictures, but she was dancing around singing and telling us all to get moving to this song.

Her little brother Carson was wide awake and excited for all the activity.  He was a good little hot potato being passed around from person to person.  He was so good!

Emily then opened all her gifts, and boy did she make out!  She got bubbles, coloring books, clothes, a sprinkler, a tricyle, rollar blades and more!

She also got some crayola pens that you can draw on windows with.  :)  (Not from Teddy and I...we just enjoyed the look on Daddy Kris's face when she opened those! - doesn't he look excited. Tee hee)

After presents we all sang Happy Birthday to Emily, who blew out her candles all on her own.  She is such a big girl!

After cake the fun really began.  Emily got to try out her new sprinkler and new swimsuit in the back yard.  She's so tiny the little swimsuit bottoms kept falling off, so Uncle Teddy tied a knot in them to keep them up and ready for her running.  I think she liked the sprinkler!

It was a great party and fun was had by all, especially Emily! 

Thanks to Kris and Erica, the host and hostess. I'm sure it wasn't easy pulling this all together. Hopefully the kiddos slept good for you last night and you got some rest.

Our Garden - May

Yesterday was the first day in a while that we had no plans and could spend some time working around the house.  Lucky for us it was an amazing day!  We woke up in the morning and headed out to the farmers market and got some great veggies and meat for dinners this week.  Everything was so fresh and it supports our local farmers.  We love the farmers market.
We then went to Home Depot to pick up the remaining flowers, dirt and tools we needed to get our garden and flowerbeds planted this year.  Teddy started by digging out an old rose bush that was on it's last leg and planted the blue hydrangea that mom got us for easter.

While he was doing this, I was refreshing all our pots and hanging baskets from last year with new soil and planting flowers.  Here are our hanging baskets all finished and hung up.

We planted Impaitens in the hanging baskets.  I also planted two other pots with yellow pansies, purple petunias, and some blue moon as the border.  The yellow pansies need some care as they were over watered before they were planted, so I'm hoping they come back for that pop of yellow in the center of the pots.

Similar to last year we planted New Guinea Impatiens in our flowerbox on our deck.

For those of you that have been to our house before, you might notice that our deck doesn't look the dingy gray that it had before.  Teddy and I just finished having the deck powerwashed, sanded and sealed.  It looks like a new deck!  Now we just need some patio furniture for it. 

We decided this year to plant in some new areas this year.  Our shed last year was overrun with day lilies, and we ripped them all out in the fall.  So, we had two new areas to plant.  We decided to make one side our vegetable garden (since it gets sun all day) and the other side a flower bed.  We also made the area our veggie garden was in last year another flower bed.  We're hoping that these all grow in and make our yard a pretty oasis for the summer.  Also, on mother's day weekend, when we took my mom to get her flowers we found these two super cute statues for our yard that we finally put out.

We love those.  Aren't they cute!  Here are some pictures of our flower beds all planted.  We planted impatiens, begonias, and some blue moon to trim it all out.  It was important that we picked shade flowers, since we have a northern exposure in the back and these areas get a lot of shade except for first thing in the morning.

We also planted our herb pots.  Last year we only did 4 herbs, but we loved having the fresh herbs so much we decided to plant 4 more. 

Rosemary, Dill, Thyme, Cylantro (in the back)

chives, basil, greek orageno, flat leaf parsley

I just love growing our own fresh herbs and veggies.  This brings me to the garden.  Using the bed next to the shed we had more room than last year to grow a few more things.  Here's what we planted.

Zucchini

Cherry Tomatoes

Big Boy Tomatoes

Burpless Cucumbers

Green Onions

Green Bell Pepper

So, that's the whole garden.  I'll try to give regular updates with photos of how we're progressing on growth and production.  Hopefully we get a lot of warm days and nights to stimulate a lot of growth.  I can't wait to have my first salad with our own tomatoes and cucumbers.  YUM!!!

I'm just so excited about how much we got done in the yard yesterday.  And we have some flowers left that we can plant out front, which needs some serious work.  Another project for another day! 

Bachelorette Party Weekend!

Well I am a week behind in my posts to talk about my sweet bachelorette party weekend!  Maybe it has taken me this whole week to recover from the festivities.  :)  Just kidding!  It's been a crazy week.  Last weekend my sister, who is my MOH, put together a fantastic getaway for me and my favorite ladies.  I really wanted a weekend to just get away from it all:  wedding planning, work, house work, etc.  And she did an amazing job! 
On Friday morning mom, Sara and I headed up to Lake Geneva, WI to the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa.  This actually used to be the Playboy Club Hotel back in the day, so I thought it was very fitting that we were headed there for some bachelorette party fun.  When we got there what greeted us was a gorgeous hotel with amazing scenery.  They had just finished remodeling the entire hotel including the rooms.  Here are some pictures of the party suite Sara got for us.

After checking in, Sara surprised me with a manicure and pedicure at the spa.  Ahhhhhhh, relaxation at its best.  It was amazing.  We got the full pampered treatment with foot massages, parafin wax, and pretty polish.  I could practically feel the stress melting away.  After our treatments we went back to the room and enjoyed the view for a little while before dinner.   Here's what it looked like out our window.

Don't you just want to sit in these chairs!  It was so beautiful

Sara went and checked them out.

Here I am, all relaxed, on our patio, post mani/pedi.  Ahhhh, what stress?!

After relaxing a while the three of us headed to the Chop House for dinner in the Resort.  It was fabulous.  We started with some drinks that got things going.  Apparently we had empty stomachs because the three of us were smashed before the first course came out!  Sara couldn't barely pour water into our glasses.  So after our giggle fits mom and I of course ordered a second round and the food came.  The food helped us from going over the edge.  Everything we ate was delicious.  We all started with the chop salad.  Mom had the sea bass, Sara had the pork chop and I had lamb chops and we got some green beans with panchetta to share.  It was so delicious.  We shared some key lime pie for dessert which was also yummy. 

As we were eating we noticed that the restaurant had a patio outside with a really nice fire pit and chairs.  So, after dinner we headed outside, snagged some chairs and enjoyed a beautiful night.

On Saturday morning we got up, went to breakfast, and headed out to downtown Lake Geneva to do some shopping.  I found  some cute things for our family room at the Cornerstone Shoppe and a few cute things at the Jones New York store.  By then it was lunch time and we were expecting everyone else to be joining us.  So, we headed back to the resort just in time to meet everyone for lunch.  

After lunch, everyone was doing all different things.  A group of girls went horseback riding (I don't do horses - that's a long story), some went shopping, some went to the spa and others went to the pool.  It was great that there was so much to do.  

Julie, Nilam, Stacy, Erica and Jennifer

Those were the girls that went riding.  At 6:00 everyone met back up at the party suite for some food and fun.  Sara spent some time while I was showering getting a few decorations up and some cold app's she made out before the hot food came.

Then everyone started to arrive, and I got adorned with the typical bachelorette wear.  Andrea read a poem that my mom and aunts wrote about me and Teddy, which was very fun.  Sara then had a game with a list of questions she had Teddy answer that I had to guess what he said.  I started off a little rocky, but once we got going I did much better.  :)  After that we had a lingerie shower and got some beautiful things and fun things. 

 

 

Then the party really began! The hot food arrived and there were two high school age kids deliverying it to the room. One of my favorite lines of the night was from Julie, who when the boys came in announced, "The strippers are here! And there are two of them! And they are hot!" Those poor boys. They didn't know what to do. :) We got a good laugh out of it.

We had a great night, eating, drinking drinks, telling stories.  I think the group enjoyed too much making me do crazy things with our specifically shaped cake.  I know there are pictures out there capturing all this, but I don't have them, and I hope I don't see them on the internet! 

It was a great night. 

The next morning we got up, had some breakfast, packed up, said our good byes and hit the road.  It was a fabulous weekend and I can't thank Sara enough for all the hard work she put into it.  Also, I have to thank all the ladies that spent the weekend with me.  It was an amazing time.  I haven't laughed that much or that hard in a long time.  I love you all!