The Party

Here was the beautiful party set up for Chloe's first birthday party.  Decorating for this little shindig started about a month in advance.  I did however enjoy the wall paper made from wrapping paper in our dining room.  As you can see I went all out and it turned out beautiful.  The Sweet Shoppe theme was so cute and all the kids loved the loads of candy they got. 

 

All the kids shared her smash cake and it was sure delicious.  She didn't seem to mind at all.

Our attempt at a family picture...good luck with that one.

 

 

Presents were total chaos, good thing I had about 10 kids helping me open them.  And hopefully everything got written down correctly.  If not, thanks everyone for the wonderful and amazing gifts.  Our friends and family are so incredibly generous.  

 

 

 

 

 

All partied out!  It was a perfect party!

1 Year Old

How on Earth had this happened?  1, are you kidding me?  I sit and watch our baby girl playing and interacting with her brothers and can't believe my eyes.  I swear just yesterday she was born.  And look how stinkin' cute she is and what a beautiful little girl she had turned into over the year.
This picture below is seriously on of my favorites.  See that little scrunched nose, this is "Chloe" and she does this little nose scrunch all the time.

 I can't get enough of her.  She continues to be her super easy and laid back self.  I can't tell you how many times I have had to wake her up from her naps pretty much every day to go somewhere or she is carted around all day doing 'boy things' and she is still perfectly happy.  I am so blessed to have such an easy going baby.  Chloe is our 'little' baby.  She weighed in at 18 lbs 11 ozs and is 30 inches tall.  She really doesn't have much to say except mama when she is sad or wants something.  She is signing milk and all done.  She loves to eat and try to snatch her brothers' food.  She is a full blown toddler, walking everywhere.  I was really sad to see the bear crawl go, however, walking is super cute and it sure makes going places with 3 much easier.  

For pictures, I painted an antique high chair my mom has had for years and Aaron built a tray for it.  For the birthday party I made tons of tulle pompoms so I decided to incorporate them into the 1 year pictures and boy did they turn out perfect!  

I had to do a smash cake as part of the pictures and I'm sure glad I did.  The delicious cake was made by a friend here is her website.  The super cute bunting came from someone local that I found on Etsy.  I absolutely love doing this kind of over the top stuff.  It's really fun for me.  

 

Thanks to everyone that helped us celebrate our precious baby girl's 1st birthday.
Everything was perfect.
Happy Birthday Chloe, We love you so much! 

All 3

We did it!  Our wonderful photographer Tami Proffitt captured all three of my littles at one time.  This is impossible for me to do.  Someone is always backwards or running away.  I absolutley love these pictures.  What little cuties!

 

Props

I had found a super cute picture of a 1 year old with a smash cake in a bright colored high chair and really wanted to do something similar.  But I really wanted it to be somewhat meaningful.  I was determined to find a really cute antique high chair that I could paint turquoise.  I searched on Craig's list for a while trying to find something cute and just couldn't find anything I was looking for.  I was discussing this vision I had with my super trusty mother that has everything, and she said I could have her antique high chair.  I couldn't believe it, the boys actually used it several times and she was ready to get rid of it.  What timing that was!  I asked over and over if she was sure she was okay with me painting it and of course she was perfectly okay with it.  I really wish I had a true before picture.  She has had it for several years and it doesn't have a tray.  So Aaron had to get out the old saw and create a tray that would work for the smash cake.  So here it was getting a several coats of primer.  Note to self...spray paint in the grass, now a section of our rocks are turquoise.

Here is the final product.  It turned out absolutely perfect and I can't get over how cute the pictures turned out.  Now it is sitting in our dining room and I just can't bare to part with it forever.  Man, now I have 3 high chairs.

Annual Wine Trip

I'm pretty lame,  I guess I only busted out my camera 1 or 2 times.  I guess that means we were having such a great time the camera just got in the way.  We take a big family trip every year and try to hit wine country either in the spring or fall.  This year we headed to Napa.  We always have and amazing time and get to spend some adult time together.  We are lucky enough to have amazing family that are willing love to watch our kids so we have spend time together. 

 

 

 

Here was the whole gang.  We were missing a few regulars but will force them to come next time! 

Walking

Chloe is now an official toddler.  Seriously, she went from her super cute famous bear crawl to full blown walking.  She really didn't spend much time practicing.  She just did it.  Now look at her, this is just a couple days after she started taking 2 or 3 steps.  This is all happening so fast.  I absolutely love the crawling phase.   I love having a little person crawl up to me and want to be picked up.  I think it is so cute and the phase is so short.  At least for my babies it was.  I guess having 3 walkers makes it a little easier.  I also don't have to worry about her crawling all over the dirty floors everywhere.  I'm also so glad she decided to walk right before we left on our trip.  It would have been really sad to miss this big milestone. 

Karate

Zackary started Karate a couple months ago and is loving it.  I always said I didn't think Karate was active enough for him until we saw a performance at his preschool fall festival.  It would be awesome if someday he was on the performance team.  Those kids were doing quite a show for us.  I also love how it teaches focus, discipline, and is physical at the same time.  I think it is the cutest thing to watch too.  

 

 

Easter

So every year for Easter we head out to Boyce Thompson Arboretum to grill breakfast, do some hiking and hunt some eggs.  We have been doing this with my family and some great friends for about 6 years now.  I can't believe that we were doing this even before we had kids.  I will admit we missed last year, but it was because we were in the hospital having our beautiful baby girl.

Lane and Katelyn holding hands.  These two have become quite the little friends.  They are always off playing together.  

Chloe is really trying to walk.  She is taking about 5 or 6 steps and is doing really well.  This is just way to early for her to walk...

Afterwards we headed out to Aaron's folks house for the Allan Easter celebration.  We had a great dinner and enjoyed playing outside and Easter egg hunting.

The little Allan Girls...

 

 

Chloe managed to raid Zackary's Easter basket and find a sucker.  Boy did she dig that piece of candy.

Ending a great day digging in the dirt is perfect!

7th Anniversary

Aaron and I celebrated our 7th anniversary this year.  And I can say what a fast 7 years it has been.  I can also say it has been quite a whirlwind of adventure for us.  But a great whirlwind, 3 babies later, we are blessed and grateful for everything we have.  So if you have been a long time reader you probably know we always try to give a gift of meaning from the traditional or modern anniversary theme.  This year was copper and wool.  I busted out my glue gun and flower making skills and made a cute little frame with wool flowers and copper leaves.  It turned out really good (at least I think so).  We were also trying not to spend money because the next week we were headed to Napa for some wine tasting and wanted to save our pennies.  So my wonderful and super creative husband came up with this.  I got this letter and a penny to go with it on our way out to dinner.  Here you go...

The Penny

So my gift to you for our 7^th anniversary is a penny.  Before you get mad and think that I’m being a cheapskate, let me explain.  Copper is considered an appropriate gift for the 7^th anniversary.  Pennies are made of copper, considered a semi-precious metal.  You are very precious to me.  The penny has a date of 2005, the same year we got married.  It can serve as a reminder to you in case you ever forget how long we have been married.  It also states “in God we trust”.  I know that we are building a strong marriage with God as our cornerstone.  Some people consider a penny to be good luck.  I consider myself to be the luckiest man to be married to you.  I do think that you make your own luck in life, but a little more never hurt, just in case.  The penny is the building simplest unit of money so therefore it’s the building block of all other monetary units.  You start adding them up and you start to have something of great worth.  I would like to consider thinks like your friendship, trust, honesty, laughter, etc. as pennies of love; our basic currency upon which we have built a wealthy relationship.  Pennies start off as super shiny when they are brand new, just like the beginning of any relationship.  There’s nothing quite like a shiny new penny.  Looking at this penny you can see that is has started to brown and age.  It has a few nicks and scratches.  Just like any relationship it has gone through different seasons and is changing.  Some people get mad about the tarnish on the penny and always want to try and make it shiny and new.  They don’t realize that as the penny ages it will eventually be covered in a beautiful brand new green-blue patina.  It’s still the same penny, it has just matured.  I hope to grow and mature our relationship with you.  The other thing that people don’t realize is that this new patina actually serves as a protective coating.  The bright shiny penny is still below, under the surface; time, wisdom, and maturity have now made it stronger and still just as beautiful.

I love you.  You are my precious penny.

Happy Anniversary,

Me.

Tears?  I had them.  This is so beautiful and I had to share...

Just Playing

I'm aware I've really been a slacker with the blog lately.  But as you know I am quite a busy little one.  Here are just a few pictures of us playing outside enjoying the beautiful spring weather.  I decided to get the camera out and practice some settings.  Look at my beautiful babies.  

 

 

I tell you what these two are little besties.  Zackary is such a good big brother. 

Man I love these babies!