Life's Little Blessings

Today Melanie is offically "1" year old.  She talking more and is very good at crawling.  She is gaining more and more confidence with walking.  She walks along the funiture and when holding onto others hands but almost there independently.  My sister took over to our aunt Char's house to celebrate her birthday with them.  Melanie's birthday party is on Sunday. Below are the few pictures that my sister sent of the birthday celebration at Aunt Char's.  

Tonight Jim, his mom, Eva, Maggie and I all went to go see a family friend of ours band.  They are 3 older men that sing oldies.  It was a wonderful time and it was so nice to get out and have a great time and alos have the girls with me too.  Maggie and Eva had so much fun once they warmed up to the music and the crowd.  The band did 2 sets and inbetween the sets their was a lot of food; hotdogs, hamburgers, beans, chips, beans, and etc.  You name it was probably there.  My mother-in-law had a great time as well.  She was drinking beer and a couple times were getting down on the dance floor (driveway).  I am putting only a few of my favorite pictures below but if you would like to see the rest from the night just visit the link below.

I decided to take the girls on a picnic and then let them play at the park for awhile before it was time for nap/rest time.  They both really enjoyed the surprise and the change of scenery.  Here are a few pictures of them having fun. Then on the way home from the park Eva wanted to go through the forest preserve that is right by the park.  It is so beautiful in there and I am so looking forward to all the colors of fall to start showing up in there.  Then both girls decided that they wanted to take pictures in the forest as they call it.  I was able to get some really great shot of them.

Here a few of the many pictures that we got for Melanie's 1 yr Pictures.

I was planning on taking the girls to our Parish Annunal Picnic but ended up just taking Eva because Maggie had just fallen asleep right before I left.  They had a moon jump with a slide, face painting and bingo.  It was really nice to have break from the daily and same old routine.  Eva loved the moon jump and slide.  We played a few rounds of Bingo and she won a prize.  Below are a few pictures of the fun time she had.

Maggie is doing really well with potty training.  We started about 2 weeks ago with really pushing her to go on the potty and it helped too that she was showing more and interest with going.  She is wearing pull-ups and goes on the potty at least 2-3 times a day.  She has gone number #2 once on her potty but hasn't done it since.  She also has started telling me that she has to go potty, her pull-up is ususally dry and she does go.  Even when her pull-up is dirty, she sometimes will still on her potty and goes as well.  My goal is too get her in underwear and potty trainded by April when she turns 3 because next fall she will be in preschool.

I am very pleased at how her individual came out this year.  She looks so grown up.

We pretty much had a very quite and relaxing Labor Day.  Jim had fun wrestling with Eva and Maggie.  We did go to a family friends Labor Day BBQ and that was a lot of fun.  Jim did all the bbqing and Eva had fun playing with some of the older girls that were there.  They were trying to find the cats that were hiding from all the people.  Maggie had fun just simply being herself.  After the bbq we came home and just relaxed and did nothing else, because spending time together as a family.  Below are a few pictures of Jim wrestling with Eva, I love watching them goof around.  The last picture is of Maggie finally passed out after trying to get to take a nap for several hours.

Eva and Maggie really love being outside.  They love just playing, running and having simply just having fun.  Eva loves being outside in any kind of weather, but Maggie didn't like going out in the snow last winter so maybe this year will be different.  Below are a few shots that I was able to get of them playing outside.