Caelum's Birthday! The Big 1!

It's hard to believe that I have become one of those people who says "I can't believe how fast time flies!"  Wow!  My littlest baby boy is one year old today.  What a great year we have had with him!  We feel so immensely blessed that the Lord blessed our family with this sweet boy!

As soon as the kids woke up this morning, we immediately had to sing "Happy Birthday" to Caelum, which he laughed at the whole time, thinking we were hilariously funny.  :)  

Aile then pronounced that she wanted to read Caelum a birthday story, which Brenner simply could not miss out on.  So here they are piled into the glider rocker, listening to Aileana read "What Do You Love?"

And now...for the biggie of the day...Caelum (well, really Caelum's family) got a HUGE gift today! We have been searching and praying and waiting and trusting in the Lord's timing about our vehicle situation.  The Land Rover was tired and cramped, and we finally were able to sell it last week.  Since then, we've been hoping to find the perfect minivan for our family needs within our very meager budget--as it turns out that was no small task!  :)  But the Lord provided wondrously, and today we were able to get a new (to us!) Dodge Caravan!  We have all been excited, especially the kids!  And Caelum likes the new van too--but probably he likes even more the fact that he got to turn his car seat around and face forward when we transferred his seat to the new van!  Yeah!  The big boy who has been kicking the back of the seat for months can finally have some leg room!  :)

Yeah!  We love our new van!  :)  We feel so blessed!
After getting the van all smogged and tagged and titled and insured, we decided to meet up with Sean's dad and step-mom, Duane and Debbie, and Sean's brother Sidney, for dinner, where Caelum enjoyed his first french fries and his first chocolate cupcake!  As you will see through the progression of these pictures, he enjoyed the cupcake quite a bit!  :)






For those of you who know our family well, you might note the contrast between Caelum's first chocolate experience and Brenner's!  :)  Ha! (Caelum apparently has no problem getting messy!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAELUM!  WE LOVE YOU SOOOOO MUCH!  :)

The joke's on who?

So Aile and Brenner are supposed to be sleeping.  In fact, they were supposed to be sleeping a long time ago.  For some reason, tonight they are completely wired.  A few minutes ago, amidst uncontrollable giggling, I went in there and took Brenner down from the "sleep over" they were having together in Aile's top bunk (of their own accord, not with permission), and told them to be quiet.  A few minutes later, this is the conversation I overheard:

(All in forced whispers)

Aile:  "Brenner!" 

No response.

Aile: "Brenner!"

Brenner: "What?!"

Aile: "Knock! Knock!"

Brenner: "Who's there?!"

Aile: "Please!"

Brenner: "Please, who?!"

Aile: "Please go to sleep now!"

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Go GREEN!

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig --the Gaelic way of expressing a wish that you have all the blessings of St Patrick's Day and the "luck of the Irish" to go with it!  :)

We tried to celebrate the day with style, but I'm not real sure how much style there truly is in green granola!

Well, I can attest to the fact that the green macaroni and cheese was actually yummy despite its appearance.  I am thankful, however, that the green beans got their color naturally.  I did not try the green water.  I just wish I had taken a picture of the green batter before we baked the zucchini bread!  (The bread didn't look green anymore after it baked.)

Spring has sprung!

Yeah!  We have sunshine!  We were able to go on our first excursion to the zoo this year! Brenner has been itching to get there for weeks (although just about daily he talks about going to "Nonni's zoo," where they have "all the animals in the whole world!"  

While his siblings ran around exploring, Caelum was quite happy to kick back and relax while riding around in the sun.

Auntie MJ's Birthday at Macaroni Grill

We had a fun time celebrating Aunt Mary Jane's birthday with her, Uncle Don, Ashley, and Chris at Macaroni Grill.  It's always good to set aside the pressures of everyday life and spend time laughing and making memories with family!

Aile brought her sunglasses into the restaurant by accident, and thought it was pretty cool that Ashley could wear them too!

Caleum chows down (what else is new) while he hangs out with Uncle Don.

Brenner wanted to be the one to present Aunt Mary Jane with her gift from us, homemade cookies.  
Well, so much for that cute shot I was hoping to catch of me and my boy!  (Good thing MJ got a good one!)  :)
You never knew it took three people to blow out one candle, eh?!




HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUNT MARY JANE!  :)  WE LOVE YOU!

Home Spa

Ever since I got one of those foot spa things for Christmas, Aile has been itching to have a "girls spa night."  She had it all planned out in her mind:  we would drink hot tea, eat biscotti, have a foot soak, and paint our nails together.  As a bonus, Oma was even here with us the night we were able to do it!  

Not sure why the swimming suit was a necessity since it was only a FOOT bath, but hey, whatever floats her boat...    :)

Aile decided it would be allowable to include Brenner even though he's not a girl (thoughty of her).  He was quite taken with the foot bath, which he described as "wiggly."  I'm guessing that meant it tickled.  Oh, and we did draw the line on the nail painting with him, over-riding all pleas otherwise.  

Just Caelum

Caelum has had a few firsts lately, besides just showing his playful personality a lot, so I thought I should record some sweet moments...

This is what I see every time I walk into Caelum's room to get him up.  He just peers at me and then flops over onto his back laughing and waving his arms! (Today he stood up at the rail for the first time though, so I'll have to get a picture of that.  He was a little upset about it today because he hasn't figured out how to get back down now.)  :)

He thinks he's such a big boy now that he can sit up on the ottoman.  Aile put him up there, and he just kicked and laughed and thought it was the grandest thing all day!

For Christmas, Caelum got some teething biscuits.  When I gave him one, he choked on it, so I put them away for a while.  Well, we brought them back out last night, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself!  It's a good thing he went straight to the bathtub after that!

I didn't catch him before he stood up, but he was still willing to throw me a great smile!  

Aile helped Caelum with another first.  She gave him his first ride on the Diego toy, and he thought he was pretty big stuff.  Aile was pretty excited to see him having so much fun too!  :)