Shoes and DVDs

Just the baby

2012-01-29T16:22:00.003-06:00

Pictures of the Girls

2012-01-15T11:39:00.002-06:00

Christmas Videos

2011-12-31T12:19:00.005-06:00

Here's a few videos from Christmas morning.

Eilee waking up. She is following a trail of Fruit by the Foot to the living room, that is one of her favorite snacks.

Eilee & Aveline opening gifts.

The aftermath.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-26T12:08:00.005-06:00

We had a great Christmas yesterday. Eilee got a million presents and Avie enjoyed chewing on anything she could get her little hands on. Hopefully we will get some video on here soon too.

Snow, Cookies and Sitting Babies

2011-12-22T15:11:00.004-06:00

Eilee and I were able to get out and play when we still had snow on the ground and sun in the sky. I was a much better snowball thrower than she was.

Snow angels!

Making cookies with our brand new cookies cutters (thanks Cathy!)

Avie turned 6 months old on the 19th, and is just starting to sit on her own.

She loves sticking out her tongue, this is a very typical face she makes.

Roller Derby Eilee

2011-12-10T16:26:00.008-06:00

We took Eilee to the roller skating rink a few days ago for our friend's birthday. She was a little hesitant at first but after about an hour she was doing great! She keeps talking about going back so she can practice.

As a treat on my day off I took Eilee to the beauty salon for the first time to get hair tinsel! She picked out pink and purple of course.

Eilee hanging out in the Christmas tree box. Yummm, listeria.

She now eats cereal twice a day, but is always far more interested in putting the bib in her mouth rather than the food. On this occasion she sneezed right after I put a big spoonful of cereal in her mouth. Bad baby!

Princess Dance

2011-12-03T17:45:00.005-06:00

Tonight Eilee and Dave are going to a daddy/daughter dance sponsored by the YMCA. Eilee has been talking about it for weeks. I had a great time doing her hair and getting her all dolled up.

Bowling

2011-11-30T13:39:00.003-06:00

Eilee went bowling for the first time this past weekend for a classmate's birthday party. She loved pushing the ball but was not interested at all in the results. She rolled a 74 and only got the bowl stuck once.

Wardrobe malfunction!

3-D glasses from Puss n Boots movie.

Hanging out in matching chairs at the Toyota dealership.

Avie rolling over, at about 5 months old.

Avie loves sticking her tongue out and spitting, thus why she always has a bib on. She is covered in drool 99% of the time.

Thanksgiving and Rice Cereal

2011-11-24T13:52:00.003-06:00

This Thanksgiving we decided to treat Avie to her first bowl of real food, rice cereal. I'm pretty sure most of it ended up elsewhere than her mouth, but she seemed to enjoy it anyway. Eilee did a great job helping me feed her and wiping her mouth. Happy Thanksgiving!

More Pumpkin pics

2011-11-20T11:39:00.004-06:00

I know these are late, but here are the pictures of Eilee carving her pumpkin. She wanted one face on each side, a happy face and a mad face (although it came out looking just sad).

Wisconsin Dells

2011-11-08T13:43:00.002-06:00

This past weekend we packed up the kiddos and took them to the Wisconsin Dells. Our van looked like we were leaving for a month, but we were only there 2 days. Eilee had a great time but wouldn't try any of the big slides, she said she would when she was older. Aveline even braved a few of the smaller slides on our laps.

Eilee pretty much went down all the slides in this position.

Unrelated to the Dells trip, Eilee sleeps with so much stuff on her bed there is barely room for her. She spends a large amount of time everyday "organizing" her animals, and will bite your head off if you even think about moving anything.

Pumpkins and Cute Kids

2011-10-29T17:09:00.003-05:00

Not sure why she is so angry looking here, though I am sure it is directed at me.

Halloween, Ballet and Preschool

2011-10-16T14:34:00.006-05:00

Eilee started preschool last week. She is doing great and enjoying a more structured day with the older kids. This pic is her first day of preschool, taken with the pumpkins she has painted.
They had a local fire safety rally and Eilee was very intent on putting out the fire.

Last weekend we took the kids trick-or-treating at the local zoo, super windy and cold but we still had fun. Avie reused Eilee's chicken costume and Eilee decided to be supergirl.

Eilee eating a near frozen Tootsie Roll.

Eilee takes a ballet class now at daycare, she practices at home every day.

3 months

2011-10-10T13:29:00.001-05:00

California Trip

2011-09-18T16:25:00.002-05:00

To cap off the end of my maternity leave, we all took a trip out to California to visit Amy's family. We had a great time in the wonderfully warm weather and had some fun times away from the kids thanks to all the grandparents that were willing to babysit.

We took a day trip to Lake Tahoe and had a fabulous lunch on a pier over the lake.

The Three Amigos (cousins) Jen, Kacey, and Me

Max at his 2nd Birthday party

We were skeptical about the balloon lady but she was great!

Eilee's new favorite activity, pushing Aveline around in her doll stroller. Aveline loves it!
Checking out the cows at the fair. She wanted to know why they couldn't be potty trained.

Update for Avery

2011-09-02T18:45:00.006-05:00

Eilee's little friend Avery has requested some new pictures on the blog to look at, so this is for you!

Charm Bracelet

2011-08-14T16:49:00.006-05:00

I decided to start a charm bracelet for Eilee on her first birthday, and I will give her a charm every year. Now I will have to start one for Aveline too.

Pretty Girls

2011-07-25T09:32:00.002-05:00

Ballerina Eilee and the Bunny

2011-07-14T10:14:00.003-05:00

Life with Aveline

2011-07-10T17:57:00.004-05:00

Just a quick blog with some new pictures for those who have requested it. Aveline is 3 weeks old today and doing great.

Eilee June at about 3 weeks old.

Aveline at about 3 weeks old.

We had a good 4th of July celebration with our friends. Eilee only slightly hurt her finger once by not following the "don't touch the sparkler" rule. Aveline slept through all the fireworks.

Baby Aveline

2011-06-26T14:50:00.005-05:00

Aveline Quinn Schlesinger

2011-06-21T12:57:00.000-05:00

Introducing Baby Girl Schlesinger

2011-06-20T09:48:00.000-05:00

Eilee's 3rd Birthday

2011-06-12T14:06:00.004-05:00

Last Sunday we celebrated Eilee's 3rd birthday. It was a great time and we had lots of fun playing outside and BBQing for our friends in the wonderful warm weather. Thanks to all who came, Eilee had a great time playing with all her friends.

Our good friend Jacea made this fantastic Cinderella coach cake. As soon as we brought it home, Eilee proceeded to "test" the frosting. She, of course, said it was an "accident".

Family Pictures

2011-06-04T10:10:00.008-05:00

At the end of May we had some family pictures taken at a local park. Eilee was a little less than cooperative and I think we set a new world record for bribery, but we lucked out with some pretty nice pictures. Thanks to Laura Schmitt for her patience and beautiful work.

Almost 3

2011-05-29T10:58:00.002-05:00

It's hard to believe our little girl is almost 3! We are hoping for nice weather next weekend so we can play outside during her birthday party. So far for her party she has requested jelly beans, balloons, and a Christmas tree. We will see what we can come up with :) Here are some pictures of here cooking with Daddy and playing outside.

Easter 2011

2011-04-26T16:11:00.005-05:00

Eilee had a great Easter this year, she really enjoyed dying Easter eggs and hunting for them around the house.

I had expected her to make all of her eggs pink, and was pleasantly surprised when all colors got equal treatment.

During her hunt for eggs around the house, Eilee was HORRIFIED to find a crumb on our kitchen floor.

We are still at the stage where we don't have to make much of an effort hiding eggs.

Wearing her new apron, helping Mom make some cookies.

Dad drew a great dinosaur, and Eilee wanted to color it purple.

Eilee's Camera

2011-04-12T11:21:00.007-05:00

Last Christmas, Eilee received her very own kiddie digital camera. We hadn't looked at the pictures until just the other day when I uploaded them to our computer. Some of them are pretty hilarious and we thought they would make a great slide show. Here's an exclusive debut of Eilee's photo journalistic view on life.

In Memory of Milo

2011-04-05T11:33:00.007-05:00

2001-2011

I don't like pictures!!!!!

2011-03-24T07:25:00.003-05:00

I guess Eilee's not destined to be a movie star.

21 weeks and fingerpainting

2011-02-13T15:25:00.006-06:00

I took out the finger paints one day and set Eilee to work. I squirted some paint on the page and told her to go at it, but all she really wanted to do was scoop up the paint and mush it in her hands.

Here Eilee is sporting her cute outfit to wear to the Valentines Day dance at daycare. She decided to wear her hightops, and some people commented that she looked like Punky Brewster.

Here I am at 21 weeks. Eilee decided to sneak into the picture with her bowl of yogurt raisins. You can tell that my poor belly was not allowed to see the sun while in Florida.

And here are just some cute pictures from today, since she is wearing a cute new shirt and she let me put her hair in pigtails which never happens.

18 weeks and Penguins

2011-01-28T08:39:00.005-06:00

On Monday we had our 18-week ultrasound and found out the sex of the baby. It's a girl! For the past month or so, every time we asked Eilee what kind of baby she wanted, she always voted for a girl so she was happy. We were a little sad that we wouldn't be able to use our boy name (Linus) that we picked out years ago, even before Eilee was born, but I think it will be great seeing the two girls grow up together and hopefully be very close. And there's always the chance for a 3rd......... [this last sentence was added by Dave, not Amy]

Every week at Eilee's daycare, they have a different theme and this week's theme is penguins. For yesterday's art project the teachers made a penguin out of different pieces of paper, then gave those same pieces to the kids and and had them glue them together to make it look like a penguin. This is what it was supposed to look like.

The email said, "Some kids were very creative with their penguins." We think they must have been talking about Eilee. Poor penguin!

Christmas videos!!

2010-12-27T19:11:00.007-06:00

Who knew that socks go in a file folder?

Guess who will be getting a French Horn next Christmas..........Calvin!!!!!!!!!

She loved the Scooby Doo wrapping paper!

Pizza time!!

Christmas photos

2010-12-25T14:42:00.004-06:00

Here's a few of the 200 photos we took this morning of Eilee opening all of her presents. We're hoping to have some video in the next day or so.

Are all these presents really for me?

I want more presents!!!

I love my dinosaur Duplo blocks. Thanks Grandpa Dave!!

Mommy and Daddy are so happy that Auntie Jen and Uncle Bread brought me a drum for Christmas!

I "helped" Mommy and Daddy open their presents.

Don't I look cute in my new hat? Thanks Tata!

I love my new Sing-a-ma-gig. Thanks Grammy and Pop-pop!!

OMG!!! Santa brought me a Dora the Explorer memory game!!!

Oh No!! I'm out of presents!!

All that opening presents has made me sleepy!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Trip To NY

2010-12-04T16:04:00.006-06:00

Here are a few pictures from our recent trip to NY. It had been almost 2 years since Eilee had seen and spent time with most of Dave's family.

Here's Amy and Eilee with Amy's godmother Aunt Dot.

Eilee with her great-grandparents Papa Charlie and Grandma Irene. The cheesy smile was obtained by bribing her with a candy bar, otherwise we would have no pictures.

Eilee and Tata (Amal, Dave's mom) looking at old pictures.

Here's Dave with his best friends from high school and their families. Amy's not in the picture because she was out with migraine :( It was neat because we all have one kid around the same age and all are expecting their second.

Here's the entire third and fourth generation Schlesinger clan.

Someone thought it would be cute to give Eilee a chocolate covered cookie. She skipped out on the cookie and managed to lick off all of the chocolate.

She did the same with this doughnut and picked off all the sprinkles and icing.

Eilee at JFK airport

2010-11-20T12:45:00.004-06:00

Before our trip to NY we got Eilee her own piece of luggage, a Disney Princess suitcase. Here's a short video of her strolling through JFK International Airport with her suitcase and a Dr. Suess backpack.

Carving Pumpkins

2010-11-05T13:31:00.003-05:00

Eilee thoroughly enjoyed helping carve this year's pumpkin. I thought she would love getting her hands and arms slimy by cleaning it out, but she decided to be dainty and use a spoon.

The finished pumpkins. The mummy pumpkin on the right was an idea from a magazine, and I think it turned out pretty cute! I let Eilee help me glue on the gauze, but I had to wait until after she went to bed to finish carving the other pumpkin because she insisted on handling the knife. :)

Happy Birthday Grammy!

2010-10-31T11:33:00.000-05:00

We can't wait to see you in a few weeks!

Princess Eilee

2010-10-23T17:32:00.005-05:00

Last weekend our local zoo (Wildwood Park & Zoo) held its annual trick-or-treating event for kids. At each animal exhibit there was a volunteer giving out treats and telling the kids about the animals. It was a beautiful fall day and probably the last bit of nice weather we will see for quite some time. Eilee had a great time in her new princess costume, collecting all her treats in her pumpkin bucket. And she'll have two more opportunities to wear her costume. On Friday most of the businesses in our "downtown" will open their doors for trick-or-treating. And then, of course, there's Halloween Day.

Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-03T17:19:00.006-05:00

Today we took Eilee to Memory Lane Farm to visit with some farm animals and walk through the pumpkin patch. It was a little brisk but the sun was out and with the trees changing colors, it was very beautiful.

Checking out the horses.

Checking out the lambs. Notice her very cute jumpsuit, Dave bought it in Sweden when he was there over the summer.

Pulling a wagon, we didn't get too far.

She refused to walk in the pumpkin patch, because she didn't want to walk in the dirt.

The Faces of Eilee

2010-09-24T17:37:00.005-05:00

Last weekend we were excited to have our friend Emily come up to visit from Illinois. She was only able to stay for a day and a half, but she happened to come the weekend of Marshfield's annual Maple Fall Fest. We were able to enjoy a nice pancake breakfast (with excellent maple flavored sausage) and visit with a few fluffy alpacas.

Here is Emily and Eilee, it only took about 20 pictures to get Eilee to look at the camera.

Eilee on her first pony ride. She doesn't look thrilled but once we got going she really enjoyed it.

While visiting with the very cute alpacas, Emily caught Eilee making some really funny faces.
Happy:

Scared:

Excited:

And just showing off her tongue in the car.

Trip to the Twin Cities

2010-09-14T22:11:00.008-05:00

Last weekend we took a short getaway to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN) to visit the Mall of America and other sites. Dave had been there before when he was in college (a long time ago), but this was our first venture out there since we moved to Wisconsin. I wasn't that impressed with the Mall. I thought it would be a lot bigger, but we still have a fun time and managed to buy a lot of cool stuff.

We took Eilee to the mall's Build a Bear workshop to build her first bear. She immediately picked out a pink bear, named it "Pinky" and after it was all stuffed and fluffed, she picked out a pink skirt it.

I had heard from some coworkers that the Minneapolis Zoo is a bit big and overwhelming, and since we were only there for a few days we opted for the smaller Como Zoo. Eilee spent most of her time yelling at the animals to "talk", and no amount of explaining made her understand that real animals don't actually talk (as opposed to cartoon animals). Her favorite part of the zoo was going on the carousel, not once but twice.

We also had a great time playing at the Minnesota Children's Museum. Eilee got to go shopping with her own mini cart and mini food products, play in their water station, drive a bus, make paper, and lots of other fun things. But I think the highlight of the visit was playing with the hand dryer they had by the water table, she loved to stand under it while it was on.

The Mall of America has an aquarium on the lower level, which was pretty neat (and expensive!). Eilee got up the courage to touch a starfish and loved seeing the sea horses and jellyfish.

Miscellaneous Eilee

2010-08-21T20:54:00.004-05:00

Enjoying corn on the cob. I think she gets more on the table, chairs, ground and down her shirt than she gets in her mouth.

I had put her sunglasses on the right way, and she took them off, because I had "put them on crooked and she had to fix them".

I had to work the pm shift last week, and Eilee was kind enough to make me a pizza for dinner.

Presents from Tata! Eilee loves Ariel from The Little Mermaid, and got her own mermaid doll and some dishware. Thanks!

Riding in a cute little kiddie train at a fair in Marshfield.

Posing with her BFF at the grocery store, she couldn't get enough of this guy!

Picking blueberries, she did a great job only picking the blue ones.

Eilee enjoying an eclair

2010-07-24T14:33:00.001-05:00

Usually she saying "I DON'T LIKE THIS!", when she's trying something
new. Here's a rare exception.

Shebesta Time!

2010-07-11T12:23:00.007-05:00

Earlier this month Amy's cousin Jen, husband Brad (or according to Eilee, "Uncle Bread", as he will now forever be know), and their super cute kids Cal and Max came out to Marshfield for a visit. We were so excited for them to come out and have the little cousins all play together. They wasted no time getting to know each other and were inseparable the whole week. Here are a few picture of of fun filled week!

It was great to see how Eilee was with baby Max. She was constantly kissing, hugging, patting, and mothering him. She couldn't get enough!

An exciting game of dominoes. Cal was a good sport and would say "good game" even if he lost.

Baby Max looking super cute. Not a hard look for him.

We took a trip to our local zoo, Wildwood Park & Zoo, where the kiddos had fun feeding the ducks, seeing birds of prey, mountain lions, and the resident bear.

One of the kids favorite activities was for Cal to push Eilee around in her doll stoller. Cal would say, "Do you want to go fast or slow?". Eilee said "slow". Cal then proceeded to zoom her through the house as fast as he could.

We were able to spend a rainy 4th of July at a friend's house. We had great food and enjoyed some small fireworks with the kids. Dave and Brad are giving the kids a safety lesson on the sparklers.

Eilee was very good about keeping her hand away from the hot part. We got to stay for the firework show at 10pm (because it gets dark really late in Wisconsin). The kids were impressed and after the show, Eilee kept saying "they were noisy!!".

We had a few nice sunny days and had a great time in the backyard. Everyone is checking out the caterpillar sprinkler.

How many kids can you fit in a very small baby pool? At least 3.

There is a cheese factory about 30 minutes away, in a town called Rudolph. You can watch them make cheese everyday, and they have about hundreds (if not more) different types of cheese to buy. They also have some fantastic ice cream that we all enjoyed. When we asked Eilee what flavor she wanted, her reply was "pink!". So she got strawberry.

We went to a local attraction called Jurustic Park, which features sculptures made by a local artist all made from scrap metal. Cal enjoyed all the sculptures that were playing drums or the guitar.

Our friend Mary owns a dairy farm a bit outside of town. We took the kids over to check out all the animals. Cal is standing in front of the "teenage" age cows.

Jen and Baby Max inside with the milking cows. They have about 100 on the farm

Here's Cal and Eille with about 50 chickens, which were only a few weeks old.

Our happy group on the farm.

Nanny & Tata

2010-06-21T16:16:00.004-05:00

For the week of Eilee's birthday, we were excited to have Nanny (Dave's grandma) and Tata (Dave's mom) come out to visit. Eilee loved spending the week with them, and Dave and I were able to take a short weekend trip down to Chicago with some friends while they were here.

Eilee enjoying her new tent from Tata, complete with princess chair inside.

Eilee and Tata in the tent.

Eilee gives the best hugs and kisses!

Trying on the new necklace from Nanny.

Eilee has a very special collection of piggy banks; one from each grandma, great grandma, and mom. Whenever Nanny comes, she helps Eilee "feed" her piggy.

Eilee June turns 2!

2010-06-13T08:57:00.008-05:00

It's hard to believe that our little Eilee is 2 year old. Last Sunday we were lucky enough to be joined by family and friends to celebrate at her birthday. Eilee was completely aware that it was her birthday, and is still wandering around the house everyday singing, "Happy Birthday dear Eilee". Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate and for spoiling Eilee with wonderful gifts.

I decided not to spend 86 hours making a fancy cake this year. In the weeks leading up to her birthday, every time we asked Eilee what she wanted for her party, her reply was always "muffins!" So we made cupcakes, since I think she would have been a little disappointed if all we got her was muffins.

This is Eilee having a melt down as we all sang Happy Birthday to her. Apparently we are very bad singers.

With a lot of encouragement, Eilee was able to blow out her own candle this year. Actually, Dave blew it out, but Eilee didn't notice.

Eilee on cupcake #1.

Eilee on cupcake #3. She was too good for cake part and just ate the frosting.

Not quite sure what this face is all about.

Eilee received her first official baby doll (much to Dave's dismay) from my godmother Aunt Dot. She promptly named her Ariel. Since she is always asking to push her real stroller around, I got her a mini one for Ariel.

Eilee calls this her bicycle, and loves taking rides in it. Thanks Jen and Brad (Amy's cousins)! Now we just need the weather to cooperate so we can take it outside on a walk.

Eilee has also been on a Lego (Duplo) kick, and loves the farm set she got from Grandpa Dave and Uncle Luke (Dave's dad and brother).

Papa Charlie (Dave's Grandpa) made Eilee this beautiful ceramic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that spins and plays music. We have to keep it on the shelf in her room so she doesn't break it, but she likes to visit it every time we go in there.

Bonus news! Eilee recited the whole alphabet last weekend, completely correct and without help! It was pretty spontaneous and we were completely shocked. Of course she won't when we ask her, so there's little hope of recording it. But we did have two other witnesses who could back up our story!

Eilee singing

2010-06-07T19:58:00.003-05:00

Eilee has few books of nursery rhymes and insists that we read them over and over again. We've read them so many times that she has memorized quite a few. Here's her rendition of "Working on the railroad".

She got a little too carried away here and lightly bumped her head on the table. It didn't bother her much at the time, but later that day when I showed her the video she got really upset when she saw herself hit her head. It took some time to explain to her that everything was OK .

Amy's Parents Visit

2010-06-06T18:25:00.007-05:00

We were lucky enough to have Amy's parents come out for a visit in May. The weather was beautiful we were able to spend a lot of time outside enjoying it. One of our excursions was to Jurustic Park, a private residence that is home to an amazing amount of scrap metal turned into art. Eilee enjoyed looking at all the metal creations.

Getting help from Grandpa for the wishing well.

We also took a trip to the Stevens Point Brewery to tour their 150+ year old brewing facility. It was a fun tour and we all enjoyed the beer (and soda) tasting that followed. They also had a popcorn machine that Eilee took full advantage of.

Our final stop was to a local cheese factory, about 30 minutes outside of town in Rudolph, WI. They have about a million different types of cheese, and they make fresh cheese curds daily. We have yet to try their chocolate fudge cheese, but we hear it is not as bad as it sounds. They also have an ice cream parlor with ice cream made in Madison, WI. This was Eilee's first experience with an ice cream cone. The cone was originally mine, but it eventually got hijacked, never to be seen again.

My dad also spent the week building us a fantastic mud room closet near the garage. It looks great, and I will post pictures after we get it stained. Thanks dad, we love it!

Time Out

2010-05-23T12:31:00.001-05:00

This is what time out looks like at our house, I think Eilee has already been in there about 10 times today....

Happy Mothers Day!

2010-05-09T10:01:00.002-05:00

Eilee on TV!!!

2010-04-16T08:44:00.005-05:00

UPDATE: Sorry, the local news station no longer carries this clip on their website. They can't provide me with a digital copy and I wasn't able to capture the video off of their website in time.

One of the local news teams (WAOW TV 9) was at Eilee's daycare center yesterday (Bright Horizons). Only a handful of kids made it on camera. Guess which little ham was one of them?

She's right past the 1 minute mark.

Easter Weekend

2010-04-10T17:38:00.012-05:00

One of our local supermarkets (Pick'n Save) hosted an chocolate Easter Egg hunt the Saturday before Easter. We were worried it was going to be crazy, but Pick'n Save had it all taken care of. First it started at 7:30 AM, which probably weeded out a lot of people. And second, they separated the children by age group and each group was assigned their own isle in the supermarket. It was great, because they purposefully placed all of the eggs in the toddler isle (which is where Eilee was) at the right height. It took her a while to get the purpose of her Easter Basket, she kept wanting to hold each egg as she found it. But after about 5 eggs she realized she couldn't hold them all. And we wanted to get a picture of Eilee with the giant bunny, but she was petrified of it.

For Easter morning Amy and I decided to hide a bunch of plastic eggs and figured Eilee would have fun finding them. Well......it didn't quite work out that way. She wasn't very interested in the eggs and lost her temper a bit when it came to opening her basket, as can be seen here:

And here she is frustrated that she can't have a lollipop before breakfast. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to show her a giant bag of lollipops before she had her breakfast, but we were out of the running for "best parents of the year award" a long time ago.

She finally calmed down later in the day and was interested in finding eggs.

Finally a lollipop!!

Just a cute shot of Eilee in our backyard.

Visit to Champaign

2010-04-05T11:18:00.004-05:00

Last weekend we were lucky enough to get a few days off of work and head down to Champaign to visit somefriends. I wasn't looking forward to the 6 hour drive with Eilee, and she did spend a lot of the time whining, but we survived. She said she was "all done car" after about 30 minutes, and it went downhill from there. We stayed at my good friend Lori's house, and Eilee was glad to have Lori's daughter Avery to play with and steal toys from. Our trip was not just about seeing friends, but dining out as much as possible since Marshfield is severely lacking in the good restaurant department. I think we ate at 7-8 different places during our short weekend there. We even stayed late on Monday morning so we could hit one more place that opened at 11am before we left, but it was so worth it. Taco Loco!!!

On Saturday morning we went out to Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery to hang out with some goats and enjoy a wonderful breakfast, of which all the items contained goat cheese. The goat milk chai latte was fantastic! We even saw two baby goats that had just been born minutes before. Eilee enjoyed watching the goats and chasing the chickens.

We went to the mall (since the mall in Marshfield only has about 10 stores) and Eilee took her first ride on the merry-go-round. She loved it! We went twice and she picked out bunnies to sit on both times. She was not very happy when we had to leave.

Eilee still talks about Baby Avery everyday, and she even told us yesterday that she is in Champaign. Smart girl. We miss you Avery and hope to play with you again soon!

Here are some random other pictures from the last few weeks since we haven't blogged in awhile. Easter pics will be up later this week.

Eilee was looking for her belly button. She found it!

Eilee's Grandma Amal (Tata) sent her an Easter package, and Eilee decided to put on this cute sundress (by herself) over her pajamas. She needs a little work on her fashion sense.

Banana time! Eilee no longer likes her bananas cut up on a plate, she wants to hold them. She manages pretty well and most of it ends up in her mouth.

Good thing I had just cleaned the glass on the table before I took this picture! This is one of the only times Eilee was eating her grilled cheese correctly: as a sandwich. Usually she peals the pieces of bread apart and tries to lick the cheese off.

New Pictures of Eilee

2010-03-12T22:33:00.003-06:00

Eilee after her first haircut.

She likes to read to herself during afternoon naps.

What a hammy grin.

Her first Easter Peep.

Dancing Eilee!

2010-02-28T20:02:00.004-06:00

Eilee saw the video to this song playing on the TVs at Sam's Club a few months ago and it stuck with her. It's now her absolute favorite song and we have to listen to it several times a day (woo-hoo). She only grooves to the chorus and doesn't do much more than run around in a circle, but it's still cute.

Random Pictures

2010-02-20T13:08:00.009-06:00

We realize it has been awhile since we have blogged. Now that I am working, I find that I have little time for blogging and even less time for taking pictures of Eilee. So, here are a few of the pictures we have taken, in no particular order and with no unifying theme:

When I was just 16 weeks pregnant, my Aunt Helene gave me a teddy bear that says "Baby's First Teddy". Eilee sleeps with it every night. His name is "Bear". A few weeks ago Eilee found a smaller bear in her toy box and has adopted it also. His name is "Baby Bear". Every morning she takes them out from her crib, and tries to carry them and drink her milk at the same time. Eventually the milk wins.

Eilee's hair has gotten pretty long, and I finally had to cut it last weekend. I decided to do it in the bathtub, since I thought clean up would be easier. Eilee didn't stand still at all and as a result, her bangs are crooked. But it's her fault.

When Eilee is bad, she goes in her pack n' play (baby jail). She was in there one day, and when we went to go get her out because she had calmed down, this is what we found. All that being bad must have worn her out.

Poor Eilee has been stuck inside since October. One day she decided she was tired of being inside and kept asking to go outside. Dave was brave enough to take her out to her swing set. She was thrilled.

Our friends Jeremy and Rebecca came out from Michigan to visit in January. Eilee took advantage of them and tricked them into taking her outside. Suckers! Eilee is also modeling the new look for the season: socks as gloves.

One day, Eilee asked for beans. She couldn't get enough beans. I gave her a bowl of beans, and this is how I am repaid. Beans all over the floor, and her bowl somehow in the living room.

More pictures of Eilee at daycare

2010-02-03T12:49:00.003-06:00

Eilee at daycare!

2010-02-03T09:14:00.003-06:00

Sorry for the recent lack of new posts. Amy started her new job a few weeks ago (she's an RN at the local hospital) and Eilee started daycare the same day. Needless to say we have a lot less time to take pictures and blog. The hospital and clinic offer an awesome daycare service to their employees through a company called Bright Horizons. Eilee was a bit apprehensive for the first week or so, but she quickly got used to it. In fact today was the first morning where she didn't have to be coaxed to the classroom. As soon as she walked into the classroom she turned to me and said "bye Dadda!" and then ran over to see what they were having for breakfast.

The teachers will occasionally email parents photos of their children, which is really neat. So, here are a few pictures of Eilee at daycare.

Foxes!!

2010-01-01T13:39:00.003-06:00

We were getting ready to leave for a movie (sans Eilee) on New Years Eve when our babysitter spotted something out our back window. They were only a 10-20 yards from our backyard. It was so cool!!

Christmas videos

2010-01-01T12:33:00.006-06:00

Here are some videos of Eilee opening her Christmas presents. This first video is Eilee tackling one of Dave's famous chocolate chip cookies. She did pretty good.

"Formal" Christmas Pictures

2009-12-31T09:04:00.003-06:00

I tried to take some nice pictures of Eilee before Christmas, since she has about 10 really cute formal dresses which she will probably never get another chance to wear. This first picture should have been a clue for me to just cut my losses and not continue.

This dress also came with a matching coat with fake fur around the collar and wrists, but she wouldn't let me take pictures of her with it. So you'll just have to take my word that it was a very cute outfit.

Eilee recently became more interested in the cats. She understands what "gentle" means, and is usually pretty good. She's always asking to pet, touch, or hug the cats. Sometimes they let her get close enough to touch them. We think she likes Mo the best, because every time Mo runs away from her, Eilee looks sad and says "sorry". She doesn't do that for the other cats. Here is Eilee with Milo, being nice.

Eilee's 2nd Christmas

2009-12-25T11:29:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas to everyone!! Here are some pictures of Eilee opening presents and playing with all her fun new toys. We'll post more later today. We also took a lot of videos, but we'll post them later this week. Eilee had a great time tearing open her presents. Thanks to all the family and friends that helped make Eilee's 2nd Christmas fun and memorable.

Bad Eilee

2009-12-03T11:52:00.008-06:00

Eilee is 18 months old today, and it seems that everyday she is doing or saying something new. She just learned how to "color", and is always asking for a pen and paper. She hasn't learned to keep the pen on the paper, and is often found with marks on her clothes and person, but hopefully that will be remedied soon. She can also repeat after us the alphabet and numbers 1-10, and sometimes will actually predict the next correct number/letter in the sequence. She just got an early Christmas present of a kiddie table and chair set from my parents and is already enjoying climbing on the chairs instead of sitting on them. Her true personality is starting to shine, and whenever she doesn't get her way she gets this horrible scowl on her face, and stomps around the room with arms raised, looking for something to throw or destroy. It's really quite funny to watch. Eilee has also recently adopted 2 cars (Lightning McQueen and Mater from the Pixar movie Cars) that Dave got her, which she carries around at home and on trips out. She cuddles them in her arms, rocks them like babies and gives them kisses.

I recently decided I should get a mom of the year award, as I made Eilee a super healthy pasta sauce made up of almost all vegetables (serves on whole wheat pasta), that she actually eats and loves). Yeah for me! Makes me feel a little better about all those stupid goldfish crackers she eats.

We had a very quiet and nice Thanksgiving this year, as it was just the three of us. We still made a pretty big dinner (we are still eating leftovers everyday), but Eilee would only partake of Dave's super yummy sweet potato pie. Maybe next year she will be a little more adventurous. As of right now, it also looks like we will be spending a quiet Christmas in Wisconsin this year, as plane tickets are quite outrageous, the weather is uncertain, and we think taking Eilee on a plane at this age will be an absolute disaster.

Enjoy this video of Eilee being her normal, difficult self.

The Funniest Video EVER!

2009-11-29T21:33:00.004-06:00

Why is this video so shaky you ask? Because I can't hold the video camera still while laughing hysterically.

Eilee helps put away the clean silverware:

Dairy Farm Visit and Eilee's New Playhouse

2009-11-13T15:29:00.006-06:00

One of Dave's coworkers (Mary) owns a dairy farm, and we were lucky enough to be invited to visit last weekend. They have about 100 cows, and 2 calves that had just been born earlier that week. Eilee was very excited, as she knows her animals and animal sounds, and kept saying "Cows! Cows! Cows! Hi." But she wasn't as excited when she got up close, I think they might have been too big and scared her a little. We also got to see a few horses, lots of cats, and a dog. We hope to have a get together there next year, when the weather gets better, with all the 'PG' (PreventionGenetics) kids, so they can get to know one another.

Here is one of the calves that had just been born that week, he was so soft and fluffy!

Inside with the big, milking cows. I think Mary said a few of them weigh over a ton!
Outside with the "preschool" age cows, Eilee isn't quite sure what to make of them.

Eilee found a cat, something she is a little more familiar with.

Eilee got an early Christmas present this year from my parents: a playhouse! It is pretty cool and has a bunch of windows to peek through. Eilee has been enjoying it thoroughly. But my mom asked for pictures, and unfortunately these are the best you are going to get for now. Whenever I take out my camera, Eilee immediately wants to play with that instead of what she was already playing with. So in order to take her picture with the house, I had to put her in it and then shut the zipper so she couldn't get out. Hence the first picture, of her crying. Then she got smart and figured a way out without using the zipper, hence the second picture.

Halloween

2009-11-03T10:39:00.005-06:00

I feel like a bad mom this year because we never made it to a pumpkin patch. Between the trip to Hawaii and the weather and the closest pumpkin patch being 4o minutes away, it just didn't happen. So no cute pictures of Eilee surrounded by pumpkins this year. But the city of Marshfield has recently renovated their Mainstreet, and every year the local businesses do their own Trick or Treat thing (this year it was the day before Halloween). Eilee got all dressed up in her chicken costume (yes, the same one as last year) and we headed downtown. Eilee did really well walking around on her own and holding her own pumpkin pail. I thought she would dump out the bucket and try to eat the candy right away, but she was totally into walking into the different stores and watching the other kids. Everyone commented on how cute she was (I can't blame them). It was only at the end that she had a stage 5 meltdown, and we had to leave. She has gotten very good at tantrums, as she goes for my face and tries to break my glasses. It took me 10 minutes to get her in the car seat. We only got 6 trick-or-treaters at our house, so next year we know not to get a lot of candy.

Here we are downtown, still in a good mood.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Who wouldn't want to give this adorable chicken lots of candy?

Enjoying her spoils--she knew exactly what to do with that lollipop when she got her hands on it.

I finally painted her room before we left for Hawaii, it turned out great! Her piggybank collection looks great against the soft green.

Eilee has always enjoyed knocking down other peoples' block towers, but just this past weekend she has learned how to make her own! Her largest feat so far has been 4 blocks high, and very precariously built.

Hawaii

2009-10-29T09:59:00.005-05:00

Dave and I are back from our trip to Hawaii. Dave had a conference (The 59th annual American Society for Human Genetics Meeting, in case you were wondering) there for work, and I was lucky enough to tag a long since we only had to pay for my airfare, and we didn't think we would get another opportunity to go to Hawaii for a long time. Eilee stayed in Wisconsin with Dave's mom and grandmother, and as much as we missed her we know she had a great time with his family. We were able to use Skype to video conference with her almost everyday, and although I don't think she understood at first, after a few days she was high-fiving the computer and would talk to us.

Our hotel, Aston at the Waikiki Banyon, was only 2 blocks from the beach, and had a full kitchen and a very partial view of the ocean. Food there is SOOO expensive (1 gallon of milk was $9!! and that's not even organic!), we bought some groceries and prepared a lot of our meals in the room so we could save money. Dave was busy with the conference most of the time, so I spent my time laying around at the beach or pool and reading. I finished 4 books that week! I did spend one morning hiking up Diamond Head Crater, and Friday night we were lucky enough to have Dave's Uncle Mike and his wife Gail take us out on their sail boat, where we were able to enjoy a wonderful sunset. As much fun as we had in Hawaii, we were glad to get back to Eilee. She was so excited to see us for all of 5 seconds, then went back to playing with her toys.

Here I am at the top of Diamond Head Crate. The inside of the crater is behind me.

View from Diamond Head, looking down on Waikiki Beach, and I think Honolulu beyond that.

This is the beach we spent most of the time at, I don't think you can see our hotel but it was pretty close.

There were these crazy big trees, I don't know what they were called, but they had all these vines hanging down and weird roots that you could walk around in.

Our last day there we had lunch at Duke's, where I had this fantastic drink called the Lava Flow, so fantastic that I also had a second.

Dave and I on the beach at sunset. Unfortunately we didn't get to see a sunrise because we were on the west side of the island.

On the boat, enjoying some wine and local Hawaiian food ( I can't remember what it was called).

Sunset from the boat.

That's some pancake!!

2009-10-20T19:57:00.001-05:00

So Amy and I met a friend for breakfast at a place that was recommended by the staff at our hotel. We all decided to order pancakes because they sounded good. Amy got pinapple, coconut, macadamia nut pancakes and I got banana, walnut, chocolate. The waitress said that the pancakes were big and that one order would feed all 3 of us. Well I was hungry and wanted to try both flavors. The pictures really don't do justice. There were 3 pancakes per order, they were 14" in diameter and each 1" thick. Lucky the hotel room has a large refrigerator because we'll be eating pancakes all week!!

More Hawaii photos

2009-10-20T14:58:00.001-05:00

We got to the hotel with enough time to take a walk on the beach. Weather was perfect.

Aloha from Hawaii

2009-10-20T14:54:00.002-05:00

Amy and I arrived yesterday afternoon in Honolulu. The flight was 8.5 hours direct from Minneapolis, but it wasn't too bad. We flew Northwest and they fed us 2 meals that were pretty good and every seat had it's own TV with free movies. I watched 3 and Amy watched 2, so that made time go by quickly. I snapped this picture as we took the shuttle to our hotel. In case you were wondering we didn't find the pot of gold.

Eilee chowing down

2009-10-12T20:31:00.006-05:00

Eilee recently learned the word"hot" and possibly what it means. So if she thinks something is hot she will blow on said "hot" object. She knows that things on the stove are hot, but I'm not sure she fully understands the definition. She will blow on hot food, like oatmeal and veggies, but also cold food like grapes. She has even been found to blow on socks and Milo's (our cat) tail.

We have a fabulous dairy nearby that makes their own soft serve, plus cheese and meat. Yumm! We stopped there the other day and this is the first time Eilee has been interested in ice cream. She did a pretty good job imitating Dave licking the ice cream cone, although I think she didn't quite get it at first.

Eilee's New Toys

2009-10-11T22:02:00.009-05:00

Our local YMCA child center had one of these toys and Eilee just loved it. We couldn't find one in town, but we were able to get one from Amazon.com. She just loves it.

We have one slide in our backyard and there are a few at the YMCA child center. Her newest trick is sliding down backwards, but we haven't managed to catch that on video yet.

Pictures of Eilee--what else would it be?

2009-10-02T14:53:00.006-05:00

Last week my parents came out for a visit. We were very grateful to have my dad complete a lot of projects on our house during his visit. In one week he was able install laminate flooring in two bedrooms, re-drywall part of the basement, fix a few electrical issues, run wires for new electric switches and outlets, fix a leaky faucet, and repair a leaking toilet. And I'm sure there were some other things that I'm forgetting. Thanks dad, you are the greatest!!! And my mom watched Eilee while all the work was going on. They picked a great week to come out as the trees were just starting to change colors and the weather was perfect. The day they left it definitely turned into brisk fall weather. Here are some pictures of Eilee, she will be 16 months in a few days, but is definitely advanced for her age, as she has the personality of a 2 year old. :)

We went to the local zoo (which mainly is a home for lots of geese). Eilee favored eating the crackers rather than feeding them to the geese. The geese didn't like that.

I put Eilee in a tutu I had made her when she was 3 months old. She was most interested in taking it off.

Eilee is sporting a dress that was mine when I was little. She is modeling on our new laminate in the upstairs bedrooms.

On the play set in the backyard, being cute.

10 Long Years

2009-09-26T11:43:00.005-05:00

Ten years ago this month, Dave and I went on our first date. We had known each other through a roommate for about a month, but it was our first outing together. It was a group date and there is a much longer, more complicated version of this story, but I will stick to the short version. We went to a Mexican restaurant, got lost in a spooky corn maze, and shared something other than strawberry-rhubarb pie (they were all out) at the local Village Inn. We ended the night by staying up far too late and completely ignoring BYU curfew rules. A good time was had by all. But I'm sure if anyone had told us ten years from that time we would be married with a child, living in a small town in Wisconsin, we would have laughed our heads off. But now it seems like a lifetime ago in that dusty corn maze, and it is hard to remember what it was like before we met. Happy ten-years-of-being-together anniversary honey.

State Fair

2009-09-18T12:09:00.004-05:00

About 2 weeks ago Marshfield hosted the Central Wisconsin State Fair. We went on Labor Day; the day of the demolition derby which we both wanted to go to. Marshfield has a pretty large fairground, which is home to the World's Largest Round Barn. We gorged ourselves on lots of bad food (I had not one, but TWO corndogs!!). One of the highlights of our day was watching the llama obstacle course. That’s where people (mostly kids) tried (“tried” being the key word) to lead their poor llamas through a variety of things that really did not look like they would be challenging to any animal, but apparently we overestimated the abilities of llamas. They had to walk into and out of a plastic kiddie pool, walk over a tarp that had fake flamingos and stuffed animals on it, and get pet on the neck by some guy in a chair. The big drama came at the end of the obstacle where the llama had to approach a giant stuffed teddy bear decked out in holiday garland. You would have thought this poor teddy bear was a Bengal tiger!! These poor llamas were terrified and wouldn't go near it. We also saw goats, pigs, piglets, sheep, horses, and about 1.3 million cows. Seriously, they were everywhere. The demolition derby was fantastic, Dave and I both wanted to enter our cars and start crashing into people, it looked like so much fun. Maybe next year.

Here is Eilee with a calf. She has on her "I haven't had my afternoon nap" face.

Eilee enjoyed a giant sandbox that was filled with dried corn kernels.

Pictures for Parents

2009-09-05T15:52:00.006-05:00

This is why we don't frequently update the blog:

I can't get this girl to sit still for 2 seconds, she is constantly on the go. Eilee is now 15 months old. Her doctor's appointment is in 2 weeks, but I think she is still around 20 lbs. She is still wearing 12 mo clothes. Up until 8 months ago, she was constantly growing out of her clothes, but now it seem like she stopped growing. Maybe we should stop letting her drink coffee in the morning (ha!! just kidding). Eilee is constantly chatting up a storm. Even though a lot of it is still baby gibberish that we don't understand, she can definitely hold up her side of the conversation. We just bought her a baby potty, and yes we know she is not anywhere near ready to be potty trained. She likes to take out the middle part (where she's supposed to do her business), put it on her head and say "hat!". She hasn't really grasped the concept yet. Hopefully she will soon.

Dave is still really enjoying his job, and I am still looking for work. Enjoy some pictures!

Life in Marshfield

2009-08-18T08:01:00.009-05:00

I'll do the boring stuff first (updates on Amy and Dave) then get to the good stuff (video of Eilee). Dave started his new job about 2 week ago. He is the new Director of Research Genotyping at PreventionGenetics. So far he loves it. They are keeping him very busy and everyone has been really nice. Dave started his new job at the right time as they will be sending him to a genetics conference in October...in Honolulu, Hawaii!! And since I didn't want him to be lonely I volunteered to go with him. Originally we were going to take Eilee with us, but since we'll be traveling for 15+ hours and I would be spending all my time on the beach trying to stop Eilee from eating sand, we decided to leave her home. Dave's mom and grandma were more than happy to volunteer to come out to take care of her. I am a little nervous about this as I have never left Eilee for more than an 8-hour work shift, never mind overnight. But she will be almost 1.5 yrs in October, and as Dave said I need to "cut the cord".

As for me, I still have not found a job. The hospital and clinic are both on hiring freezes and just about every female in this town is an RN. And add to the fact that I only have 7 months experience....there just isn't much I can do. I went into nursing because I knew I would always be able to find a job, and here I am AGAIN not being able to find one. It's all very frustrating.

So life in Marshfield is pretty quiet. We only have a handful of major stores (Penney's, Walmart, and Target), and our "mall" has 10 stores. There is a town called Wausau about 50 min away that has pretty much everything else we would need. The weather here was cold the first week, but has been beautiful since and stayed in the 70's and 80's. There is a large Mennonite population here and we often see horse and buggies driving around or tied up to posts in the parking lot at Walmart.

Eilee is doing fantastic and is keeping us very busy. She loves running around in our big backyard and swinging on her baby swing. She has become very vocal and says things like: banana, cracker, hi, bye, up, hat, shoes, cat, Elmo (this one shocked us), NO, more, etc. Lots of "dadas" but no "mamas", although she does say something that sounds like "Amy". This past week Eilee had her first cold, I am pretty lucky that her first 14 months were illness free.

Now here are some cute videos of cute Eilee:

Baby Bath Time

2009-08-06T21:18:00.001-05:00

Eilee was dirty so we thought we'd clean her up.

We're Home!

2009-07-31T14:47:00.006-05:00

We arrived in Marshfield late Monday night, after a long day of packing, and an even longer drive up to Wisconsin. Marshfield is a small town and not yet connected to a freeway, so after leaving the interstate we still had to drive about a hour on small country roads, in pitch dark, with tons of fog--while very tired, with crabby cats, and not knowing if we were going the right direction since there are no road signs and the GPS takes us into town a different every time we drive to Marshfield. But, after all that, we finally made it! We closed on our house Tuesday morning and the truck arrived Wednesday to deliver our stuff. We finished unpacking most of the boxes last night, now we just need to find a home for everything. We were not completely impressed with the moving company, as I think Eilee could have packed a lot of these boxes better than the other guys did. At one point I actually saw a guy remove one of our kitchen drawers and just dump it into a box. We're missing a box and they completely disassembled the crib (the took things off the crib that were permanent attachments) and couldn't put it back together, they had to send some special guy out to fix it.

Anyways, it has been sunny and in the 70's here so Eilee and I have been out enjoying our new big backyard.

This is Eilee trying to pull her pigtails out. She doesn't realize how cute she is with them in.

This is the view from from our backyard. There is a farm behind us and then a nature preserve beyond that.

Movin Out

2009-07-27T10:47:00.001-05:00

The moving truck arrived this morning to load up our house and move us
to Marshfield, WI. It has to be the largest truck we've ever seen.

BSG - OMG!!!!

2009-07-24T20:36:00.000-05:00

Admiral William Adama (also known as Edward Jame Olmos from Stand and
Deliver and Blade Runner)!!!!

Autographs were through some autograph company, so they were $55, but
we got to shake his hand for free!!

Bumblebee!!!

2009-07-22T23:41:00.000-05:00

Bumblebee from the Transformers movies.

Comic Con 2009

2009-07-22T17:21:00.000-05:00

These banners are all over downtown San Diego. "Avatar" is a new big
budget sci-fi movie by James Cameron (same guy who did Titanic).

Arrived in San Diego

2009-07-22T11:15:00.000-05:00

My buddies and I arrived in San Diego yesterday evening for Comic Con
2009. We're staying at this really nice hotel. The El Primo Hotel.
It's a small, private hotel in Chula Vista, minutes from downtown San
Diego and had great customer reviews on Hotels.com. The owner is real
nice and puts out an awesome free breakfast every morning. And for
the San Diego area we could beat the price.

Walking & Talking

2009-07-09T17:51:00.007-05:00

Hard to believe Eilee is 13 months old!! She took her first steps in early June (right around her birthday), but in the past 2 weeks has really started taking off. We can't keep her out of anything! She follows us around the house like a little puppy and opens every cabinet, pulls out every drawer, empties every bag--you name it, she destroys it. It's very cute, but also very tiring. We are reconsidering having 10 kids. Also today, she climbed up two steps on the staircase, and made it back down on her own. I think it's the first time she even noticed the staircase.

Eilee has also become quite vocal and is saying all sorts of cute things. She says: cat, dog, nose, more, all done, shoes, toes, NO, just to name a few. They aren't perfect renditions, but they are certainly recognizable. We could use less of "NO", but I don't see that happening in the near future.

And what I am most excited about in recent Eilee achievements......her hair is long enough to put in pigtails!!! And I would love to post a picture, but she pulls them out before I can get the camera out. But you'll just have to trust me that it is super cute. Hopefully I will get a pic soon.

Enjoy the videos below of Eilee walking around.

Test blog

2009-07-08T08:23:00.002-05:00

I'm testing a feature of blogger.com that allows us to make blog posts from your mobile phone or by email.

2009-06-24T07:49:00.004-05:00

Bing.com (Microsoft's new search engine) has a really cool map feature, where you can see a "Bird's Eye" view of various neighborhoods. It's not the same thing as the satellite view from Google maps, but more like a helicopter's view. What's even cooler, is that you can view each house from all 4 sides. Here are a few shots of our house. You can see the rest of our neighborhood here.

1801 W Spencer St, Marshfield WI

2009-06-17T20:21:00.007-05:00

What is this strange address? That would be our newly purchased house in the middle of nowhere. Or more specifically, Marshfield, Wisconsin, population 19000 + 3. The future of the company Dave currently works for is somewhat uncertain, but he got a wonderful job offer at a genetics company in Marshfield. It was such a great opportunity that we had to overlook the fact that it would require us to move somewhere that uses dog sleds as public transportation (OK, just kidding). We have been up there twice and we think we will really like the town, even though we will now be about 3 hours from a major airport, and almost an hour from a freeway. Marshfield does have their own zoo, a dairy that sells super good soft serve ice cream, and a Target. And our new house! We lucked out in selling our current house less than 2 weeks after putting it on the market, and we got the offer just before we went up to WI to look for a house. Our new house is pretty much what we were looking for: full finished basement, a little out of town, quite neighborhood, mothing major to fix, and a nice yard. Below are some pics of the place. We will be moving around July 28th, so don't start sending mail there yet.

Looking from the living room into the kitchen. Cabinets are a bit on the cheap side, but are in excellent shape.

Deck, off of kitchen.

8x12 shed in backyard. Or storage place for Eilee when she is bad.

View from backyard. The playset and sandbox are staying. Our backyard backs up to farmland, and behind that is a wilderness preserve. Our house is on the very North end of town.

Front of house.

Finished basement, side 1. We will probably make this into an office, then eventually a media room.

Finished basement, side 2. Will probably stay a play area. The door leads to a semi finished space the current owners use as an office, then past that is more storage space and where we will put the washer and dryer.

The movers are coming on July 27th, Dave's company is taking care of the bill (which is nice). So we'll probably be leaving Champaign the same day. We've loved living here these past 7 years, but it's time for us to move on. Marshfield is a great place to raise a family and has an excellent school system (some of the best schools in the coutnry are in Marshfield, go figure).

Eilee's First Birthday

2009-06-15T09:05:00.007-05:00

Eilee turned one on June 5, and we were so happy to be joined by some friends and family to celebrate. We had a good group of kids over also, and they all seemed to have a really good time together. The hit of the party was Eilee's Cozy Coupe, which was a Christmas present from Amy's Aunt Ursula. Eilee is still a little too young for it, but everyone else enjoyed it! Eilee was spoiled with lots of presents and she has enough clothes to last her through college. Here are some pics from her special day.

Eilee found the tissue paper just as exciting as the gifts inside.

Trying to see how dirty she can get her pretty birthday dress by rolling around on the floor.

Not quite walking yet, but she is great at standing!

Candyland! Who doesn't love a rousing game of Candyland?

MINE!

This is the cake I made, you can't really tell but the "1" on top is a separate cut out cake. It really took more time and effort than it should have, but it came out well.

Eilee's "smash" cake. She probably ended up eating about 1/4 of it.

Yummmm.

She did a good job on her cake, it was thoroughly enjoyed.

Here are some videos of Eilee eating her cake, you can hear all of us cracking up in the background.

Eilee walking (almost) and flying!

2009-06-05T22:45:00.007-05:00

Happy first birthday Eilee!! We just finished her party today and will have pictures and video up in the next few days. Dave's mom and grandma have come out to visit for her birthday, and we have enjoyed the free babysitting by going out on the town and going to a few movies. We saw Up, which was very good, but I think I cried through half the movie.....it was so sad. Eilee took her first few steps a few days ago, but of course neither of her parents were around to witness it. So she will be off and walking very very soon. Here are a few pictures and video from the last week:

She'll walk any day now!! In the meantime she loves to walk and push her toys around.

Nanny and Grandma helping Eilee to walk.

Eilee June on her birthday with mom.

Pulling up on the coffee table to chase after the elusive remote control.

Just looking cute.

Daddy throwing Eilee in the air.

Dave is right under her, you just can't see him. Please don't call DCSF. :)

Eilee's first trip to California

2009-05-23T12:45:00.014-05:00

Eilee took her first plane trip to California earlier this month to visit some of Amy's family. She did really well on the plane and only cried a little bit, but slept most of the way. Eilee finally got to meet her big cousin Calvin, and they had a great time playing together the whole week.

It's hard to believe Eilee will soon be one year old (less than 2 weeks!), but it is so much fun watching her change every day and seeing all of the new things she can do. However, it's not as fun trying to keep her from pulling everything off the entertainment center. She pulls up on everything and even lets go to stand by herself for a few seconds. She's also very good at squating to let herself down without falling over, which is appreciated.

We are excited to have Dave's mom and grandma come out to visit next month for Eilee's birthday, and we can't wait to have a birthday party to celebrate her first year. It has truely been the best year of our lives. Here are some pictures from our trip to CA:

Calvin gives Eilee a big hug.

Eilee and Calvin playing in the laundry basket.

Calvin was directed to "give Eilee a kiss".

Side profile of Eilee in her first swimsuit, which I think is the cutest thing in the world.

We took Eilee on her first trip to the kiddie pool, she was not a fan. You can also notice here that Eilee definitely gets her skin color from Dave, as she is much darker than I am.

Eilee and Calvin playing with Cal's train set. We called Eilee "baby godzilla" as she was constantly trampling over Cal's train tracks, destroying them, and eating the tracks and the trains. Sorry Cal.

We rode the little train at the Folsom Zoo with Cousin Jen (and baby #2).

Grammy and Grandpa drove up from AZ to visit with Eilee. I think they might have said hello to me while they were there too.

Tunnel time!

She loved the ball pit. But mostly she loved eating all the balls.

Eilee learns sign language and some cat pictures.

2009-05-01T19:49:00.010-05:00

Eilee's been watching a sign language DVD for babies (Baby Signing Time). She loves watching, but she hasn't been quick to pick up any signs. While eating breakfast a few weeks ago she surprised me the sign for "more".

Since Eilee's debut, we haven't really showed any pictures of the cats. We've been storing Eilee's cloth diapers in a basket in the bedroom. Max and Mo have decided that the diapers make for a good cat bed.

And here's Mo sleeping in Eilee's high chair.

Eilee's finally figured out how to crawl! The cats are doomed!

2009-04-27T10:31:00.006-05:00

Last week Eilee suddenly started to crawl forward. She had been rolling sideways and sliding backwards for a few weeks, but it took her a little while to figure out how to use her knees. She's also very close to standing on her own. She likes to grab onto furniture and stand up on her knees, but doesn't yet have the strength to pull herself all the way up onto her feet, although she's really trying. I'll post a few more videos of her crawling soon. YouTube has been having problems lately and uploading movies is taking a lot longer than it used to.

Easter Dress

2009-04-15T17:26:00.005-05:00

As promised, her are some pictures of Eilee in her Easter dress. Luckily it was nice out this weekend and we could go down to a park to take some pictures in the sunshine. Also, Eilee just learned her first sign, for "more". She has been watching a baby sign language DVD and it seems to have paid off. Dave was feeding Eilee some yogurt puffs for lunch, and she kept asking for more! He took video, I'm sure it will be up on the YouTube site soon.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-11T10:19:00.006-05:00

Here are some new pictures from the last few weeks. I plan on taking Eilee outside in her Easter dress today, since it is sunny, to take some pictures, I will post them soon if she cooperates. Eilee is 10 months old now and is definitely starting to develop her own personality. Her favorite things to do now are to scream as loud as possible just to hear herself, no matter where we are. She can't quite crawl yet, but she manages to scoot or roll herself anywhere she wants to go. She loves the entertainment center and tries to pull as much out of it as possible. She can also go from on her tummy up to a sitting position all by herself. She managed to loose her sock in the store the other day, and I found it later in an isle we hadn't even been down. We just started introducing her to cow's milk, mixing it with her breastmilk, and she hasn't noticed any difference. SO nice to see the end in sight for that horrible pump! It is hard to believe that it is less than 2 months till her first birthday, time has flown by with her. We don't have set plans yet but I'm sure we will have a big birthday bash for her, including a very cute dress that will be covered with cake by the end of the day.

Did anyone know that they made baby cheese doddles? She LOVES them. Except it looks like she is smoking one here.

So I decided to bust out her Halloween costume since it was 6-12 months and see if I could take some Easter pictures. She was not cooperating, she wouldn't sit still for even 2 seconds. And of course, all she wanted to do was eat the eggs.

My mom got Eilee this walker toy, which she loves. She isn't quite ready to use it as a walker, but loves playing with all the toys on it.

This picture shows why the boppy is behind her. She is mid fall and you can see Dave on the right running to catch her.

My mom gave me some of the clothes she still had packed away that I wore when I was Eilee's age. This little blue number is adorable, but of course my mom has no idea where she got it or who knitted it.

Here is me on my first birthday in the same blue dress. Dave pointed out that the cake looks horrible. Mom, I wasn't good enough for frosting? :(

Let me out!

She hasn't learned to do this on her own yet, thankfully, but she is pretty good about standing on her own when you put her there.