What a Trip!

Here are a bunch of pictures from our vacation...Pikes Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Seven Falls!!

These are both on the train up to Pike's Peak! What a beautiful ride it was...it was too bad that the summit was FREEZING, WINDY, and FOGGY! Not much to see up there, but the view on the ride was great!!!

We had such a great time in Colorado with Grandma and Grandpa Reeve! :) We went out there to see Kati get married, and not only got to see her beautiful wedding but Kyle was able to see Rocky Mountain National Park for the very first time!!

Kyle & Dad at the summit of Pike's Peak...they were the only two that braved the weather up on top! We waited inside and had some delicious donuts and hot chocolate!!

It was amazing, and we all wished that we could stay out there longer!!

Once we have more photos uploaded onto the computer I will post again!! There are so many good ones to share with you all!!

My Baby Can Read!

This is what Maddy looked like ALL the way to daycare today!! :)
OOOOO MADDLES!!!!

All Smiles!

Who doesn't love looking at a smile like this!?!? I love how her whole face scrunches up when she is happy!!! She is getting all ready to go out in the cold this morning in her new outfit (Thanks Kristen & Chris) and new hat (Thanks Uncle Kev, Uncle Jason, & Aunt Megan)!!
What a stylish little girl we have!!

NEW TOYS!

Madelynn has been very busy the last day or so with all of her new toys and books!! :) Thank you so much to everyone who was there on Saturday to help us celebrate her VERY important day!!
Maddy's party was so much fun, and I am so glad that the weather held out for a little while so that all who came were able to drive safely to and from the party! As you can see she has been quickly figuring out her new toys and cannot figure out which one to play with first!! We have read all sorts of new books and have figured out the 'take apart' part of the puzzle already...we will get there with the 'put back together' part! :) For now, she just takes all of the pieces out and crawls away...sometimes with a piece in her mouth! LOL

Yesterday was a nice and relaxing day, we only left the house once to start some shopping for Christmas, but then returned home in less than an hour! We have lists started, but it was so blustery out that we decided that we would hold off for a couple of days! (Actually we were so tired, that we went home and all of the girls took a nap! It was wonderful!)

Once we load our birthday pictures onto the computers, we will post some of those up here!! I cannot believe that we leave for Colorado in 3 days...we cannot wait to see Kati get married!! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDY!!

Madelynn is now 1 year old!! :) I cannot believe it...she is so amazing and we do not know what life was like without her!! This smile is just amazing and it is ALWAYS on her face!!!

Thank you all for all of the birthday wishes...she is such a lucky girl to have so many people who love and support her! :)

This is truly a day to celebrate life...as we say HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MADDY, we had to say goodbye last night to her amazing Great Grandma Marie. We are so thankful & blessed to have had the time with her, and know that she is at peace with God now.
Love you Grandma/Great-Grandma!! <3

On a totally random note...last night when the family was over with Grandpa Anderson, they found this old picture of Kyle...WOW, if you thought that Maddy just looked like me, think again...

Let It Snow!

This weekend was the first snowfall of the season...looking out on the snow furries reminded me of December 8, 2009 while we were all waiting for Baby Anderson to come!! I will never forget seeing the snow coming down while I was in the labor/delivery room and Madelynn was taking her time coming to meet us! :)

This weekend was filled with lots of LOVE...it was great to see so much of our family and friends, although so hard to think that we all may have seen Grandma Marie for one of the last times.

Friday night, I went out with Mrs. Reeve & Mrs. Reeve (Mom & Stephanie)! :) The three of us went to see The Nutcracker and have dinner at Millrose. Thank you for such a nice night Mom, and I look forward to our annual Girl's night every year!

Saturday was a busy busy day, we went to a craft fair at Arlington Park...those are so dangerous, but I found a lot of stuff that I LOVED! It was a nice morning with the Parkers and the Reeves.

Then we went over to visit Grandma Marie near Lutheran General. She is in hospice right now; Kyle & Maddy went to see her on Friday night and then we all went over there on Saturday afternoon. It is great to know that she is being taken care of wonderfully over there and hopefully in no pain, but so hard to see. She is such a wonderful grandma & great-grandma, and I am just so happy that Maddy was able to meet her. We have some wonderful pictures and videos of them together, so Maddy will always know her!
We love you lots and are praying for you every second of every day Grandma! This is one of my favorite pictures of Maddy and Great-Grandma.



Afterwards, Kyle & I headed out to the Wildfire in OakBrook to celebrate Pam's Birthday!! :) With the Anderson's, Basford's & Remke's out and about it is always a good time. We had dinner first, and then went bowling at Lucky Strike...where I beat everyone with a 151 game! Thank God for all of those years bowling with the family...I may not have appreciated it enough then, but I love it now! I hope Pam had a good time, because we definitely did! Uncle Kevin had a good time babysitting Maddy, and I know she loved it too!

Sunday was a nice relaxing day...the only time we went out of the house was to get lunch & grocery shop for an hour or so! We got a lot of house stuff done and I started to DECORATE FOR CHRISTMAS!! Pictures will come soon, once the tree is up! :) Juice & The Reeve's (Kev & Steph) came over too! It was nice to see them all...as always!

Here is a video of Maddy dancing...the second she hears music she rocks side to side. If she is sitting up she bobs her head, and here is what she does if she is crawling...check out how she knows to turn the knob to change the music! What a smart little baby!!

Maddles!!

We had such a great time with Maddy at her first Thanksgiving!! I will post up some pictures from Turkey Day once I get them loaded onto the computer, but I had to put this picture on here from last night!
Uncle Juice was over and took this AWESOME picture!! She is such a little flirt with the camera!!

Copy Cat!!

Madelynn is great at being a copy cat...sometimes it is sounds, sometimes smiling, sometimes movements, but no matter what she is copying what we are doing!!

Kyle took a video of Maddy and him playing...watch what she does!! :)

Ready to Go Out, I'll Bring My Purse Along...

Here is a video of Maddy playing with her little purse!! We got this for her a little while ago and it a big hit with her and everyone else! The you cannot get that song out of your head...especially after you hear it every time the purse opens and closes!! LOL

Well Grandma & Grandpa Reeve were watching Maddy for a little while on Saturday afternoon and when we got to their house, Grandpa had memorized the whole song!! :) Maddy had been playing with it all afternoon, !!

I had to put a video with the song on here not only for Grandpa Reeve but to show everyone how lovely it is...EnJoY!! Hopefully that song won't be in your head all day now! :)

Wouldn't you love to be the person who sings on all of the little kid toys?!?!

Walking with DINO!

Madelynn LOVES her toys...she is cruising all over the place (along the furniture) so we decided to get her one of the walking toys. We saw the commercial for the Dino and it was a great purchase...not only does she like to walk around with it, but she loves the music!


See the video below to see the start of Maddy walking...she does great until she runs into something, then we do not know what to do from there...except DANCE to the music!! Also, you can see when she looks up to see Daddy and her face just lights up!! What a daddy's girl!

Happy Baby!

Well...I cannot believe that it is already the middle of November and almost a YEAR since Madelynn came into our lives. I do not know what we used to do without her, but I would not want it any other way now that she is here!!
Her smile fill our house and hearts everyday, and I could just sit and watch her all day!!

We had Jason & Megan's wedding last Friday, and Madelynn was wonderful through most of the service. Mom & Dad were there to help me out, and I would not have been able to do it without them. I was able to help out with pinning on flowers once the guys got there while they watched Maddy (totally against their will...LOL)

Once the ceremony started we thought that we would give her a book to look at that would keep her quiet, but we couldn't have been more wrong! She loves looking at pages in books and talking to them. The second we turned to a new page, she immediately bursted out with "Da-Do" (her favorite thing to say, and the name for EVERYTHING that she points to) I LOVE IT!! But she made it through the ceremony, which was beautiful and then went out to Lindenhurst with Katie, her babysitter for the night. Unfortunately she was so out of her schedule (sleep and eating) that she was a mess for Katie (SO SORRY ABOUT THAT!)

What a Daddy's Girl!!



Maddy loves just sitting around with Daddy on the couch...usually watching Soccer!! We just might have the next Mia Hamm!



Maddy and I had an eventful day on Wednesday this week. I had work, picked up Maddy, and then we were out on the town until about 9pm! First, we went over to deliver Great-Grandpa Reeve's Birthday Card! We were over there for about an hour and a half. Maddy was crawling all over the place, all over the couch, and smiling like crazy! It was so nice to see Grandpa and catch up! :)
Then, we went to Northbrook to the Potluck Dinner for FEA (the club I sponsor...Future Educators of America). My students were so excited to see her and she was the entertainment for the night. They were playing Pass-the-Baby all night!! They were setting time limits for each person holding her!! She was able to try some of the foods there and LOVED THEM!!

This weekend we have NO PLANS, so it will be a nice family weekend!!! :)

I thought this was so cute...
"When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses."
-- Joyce Brothers

Celebrating Great-Grandma's Birthday

All of the Anderson family went over to Grandma & Grandpa's house to celebrate Grandma's birthday on Sunday. It was a great time and it was so fun to see how much all of the babies had changed. Maddy was all over the place...Ryan was eating like crazy (only when Maddy wasn't stealing his Cheerios)...Maddux was having a great time watching what everyone was doing and rolling all over the blankets!

I cannot believe that only last year the family gatherings were so different! What a fun time the little ones are! :)



Maddy was LOVING all of the food that we were eating...her favorite being the Roast Beef that we had for sandwiches and the pasta! Her face was a mess, but she is starting to LOVE all of the table foods and I can tell it will only be a matter of time until she is done with all of the Gerber foods! Wow...does time fly!!



Every second is so amazing and being with the Anderson family is always a lot of fun! We love you all!!

Here is a video of Maddy and Ryan eating all of the Cheerios...Maddy was being such a CHOW HOUND!! You can see how much she wanted them!!!

We Have Another Computer Nerd!

We had so much fun this weekend! :) I thought I would share this picture and video to show you how much Maddy LOVES computers!! She does love the toy one that Grandma Becky bought her, but you can now see how much she likes ours!!
We are definitely going to need to show her how to take care of them...

Monkeyin' Around

We had a great Halloween...started out by visiting Grandma and Grandpa Anderson over at Saddlebrook Farms for their annual Trick-or-Treating event on October 24th! Maddy was holding onto her own basket and grabbing at candy!! :) She loves Milk Duds (because they sound just like a rattle!)



Then on Halloween we went over and visited Ryan (@ Meribeth & Chris's house) to do some real trick-or-treating. We had a good time and got a full banana basket of goodies...see the pictures! She just dove right in and got some of the candy out. Then we went over and surprised Grandma & Grandpa Reeve and got some MORE candy...that mommy and daddy will definitely enjoy!



This little monkey was all over the place this year and had a blast!!

Here is a video of Maddy going after all of her candy at The Cassidy's house! She is so aware of everything right now...it is amazing!!!

Can't Stop Her Now!

Maddy has been crawling for a few months now...started with the army crawl, then regular crawling, and now we are pulling up onto objects and cruising from one place to another. We have not walked yet, but I know that she is so close. There are times where she lets go of something for a couple of seconds...but then BOOM down to the ground. Once she discovered each new skill, she is unstoppable!! It is a lot of fun chasing her down the hall or even just in the living room in her farm play gym! :) I love this sassy pose!!


Here is the Farm that Maddy loves to play in and with! There is so much to do, and both Kyle and I have memorized all of the songs that it plays! LOL It would be pretty interesting if you caught any of the conversation that happens in our place these days...it is either the farm songs or us saying all of the objects that Maddy points to ALL OF THE TIME. She is just one inquisitive little girl and I think we have said mirror, light, scarecrow, and TV like 1 million times! It is so cute!! She is a little smarty pants!




Mommy and Maddy have a great time wherever we go...do you think she looks anything like me?! :)



Can you see what Maddy LOVES? She is crazy about our phones and crawls right for either of them if she sees it. She only likes it when she can see that it is all lit up! The video at the bottom of this post shows a video of her playing with the phone while we were watching Glee!! She is a Gleek just like ME! :)
Watch for the screen to go black and see what she does...

Happy Fall

It is so nice that it is finally fall...this weather is perfect and so nice to be outside with Madelynn! Her first fall has been very eventful and we have been SUPER busy...

We celebrated Mommy's 26th birthday with dinners at LouMalnati's (just the 3 of us) and Chevy's (with family) Both dinners were wonderful, and I had to share a couple of pictures from them...Maddy LOVE LOVE LOVES pizza crust from Lou's just like her Mommy! She definitely made herself comfortable in that highchair! :)

















We went to the Apple Orchard last week and had a great time!! When we got there it was SO busy but then we found a great bunch of apples!! Maddy liked the apples once she figured out that they tasted good, but we saw some pumpkins and she wanted NOTHING to do with them...hopefully she will like them better when we go to the Pumpkin Patch next weekend!!

Here are some fun shots of the day at Apple Holler!! :)

























We went to the Chicago Fire game on Saturday at 3pm and it was Madelynn's first Fire game EVER!! :) She was all decked out in her Fire gear (thanks Uncle Juice for the awesome soccer kit) and loved looking around at all of the people. I also put a video on here of her on the way home...we were convinced that she would crash right when we started leaving, but she was talking up a storm!! ENJOY watching!! :)



We have been having a great time with our baby girl and I know I say it all of the time, but I am SO blessed to have such an amazing family!! I had to put this picture on here, it melts my heart! <3

So many memories to come...

....well it's been 2 months!!

We are now into October and I guess I failed at this whole blog thing! :) I had put together a blog summary for August and September, so here it is...I am also going to put together a post of the last two weekends! :)

So much has happened since the last time that I wrote on here so I will just give a little sniplet of everything that we have been up to!!

August came and went so fast, but it was filled with amazing things:

Kev & Steph's wedding on the 7th
It was ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL and we all had a great time being a part of their most special day! Kyle and I were busy with all of the preparations for the big day, and Maddy was perfect exactly when she needed to be!!


















We celebrated Maddy's Baptism on the 21st
Thank you everyone for coming to help us celebrate...the day was wonderful and would not have been the same without all of you!







Maddy went to her first Brewer's Game on the 22nd
Little Maddy fell asleep at the top of the 2nd inning, but still loves the Brewers!! :)










Mommy went back to work on the 23rd

September started now and it has been nice and relaxing for the most part. With 6 of the 9 weddings for this year down, we have more days that we can just relax on the weekends:

Brandie & Mike's Wedding on the 5th
It was beautiful and we had so much fun!! :) Danced all night and then walked through the Wendy's drive-thru when we got back to the hotel! A frosty and fries was the perfect end to the night!

SOOOOOO BIG!!!

Well...we are now to the end of July with 5 weddings out of 8 in 2010 complete!! :) They have all been wonderful and with four of them being outdoor ceremonies, there has been BEAUTIFUL weather for ALL of them!! Congrats to everyone who we have had the opportunity to celebrate with...we love you so much!!



She wants everything that we are eating, I feel
bad because she gets to eat, but it definitely cannot be as good as ours!! Her favorites: Green Beans, Peas, and Squash!! Who would have thought she would LOVE those, but it was a struggle for the Sweet Potatoes and the Bananas!! She must not have Mommy's sweet tooth! LOL She wanted that Slurpee, but here is her face when she actually got it...


HA HA!! She wants things so bad until she actually tries it!! LOVE THE FACE!!!







Madelynn is growing like crazy and has started to scoot around our house like CRAZY!!! I love it and we are enjoying every moment that we have with her. She is getting ready to crawl...gets on all fours and then collapses!! She will get it soon!! She even has learned to do "SO BIG" See the video!!! :)
Everything that she does is AMAZING!!

We took a small family "get-away" to Rockton for a couple of days last week and had such a nice time relaxing, walking around Rock Cut State Park, and going to the Macktown Settlement. Thanks so much to Brian and Laura for letting us crash at Sugar Shores for our family vacation! These are a couple of pictures from our walks!

Eva even came with us!!! She was exhausted when we got back because she was so stressed out and did not eat the entire time we were there! The walks were definitely her favorite part though!














Madelynn even had her first play date...Liam (Eileen & Rai's baby boy who is 1 year old) came over to play with us one Friday night! He is pulling himself up and crawling all over the place...it was such a fun night!! :) He is welcome to come over anytime!!

Can you tell she was happy!! :) He just didn't know what on earth that thing was that kept reaching out for him!! LOL

It has been a great month so far, and I know that the rest will be great too!!

We cannot wait for Uncle Kevin & Aunt Stephanie's wedding!! :) Our whole family is so honored to be a part of the celebration!! Thank you so much for including us on your special day!!
***We got Maddy's dress on Saturday...it is AMAZING!!! ***

Happy 4th of July!!

Well...its Madelynn's first 4th of July and she was great yesterday for her first fireworks!! :)




During the day we watched 2 World Cup games, and in between WE WENT TO THE POOL FOR THE FIRST TIME!! :) Maddy did so good in the water, even though she was not so sure at first. She just made some strange noises when we put her toes/butt in at the beginning, but after a few minutes, she was kicking and smiling!! Mommy and Daddy even took her out into the 3ft. section and she was able to kick her feet a little more! When she was done, she even had her very own Disney Princess towel to dry off with!! ;)

We hung out at Jason & Megan's house in the evening, had a delicious BBQ, played bags, and then saw the Wauconda fireworks from their back yard...the location was perfect.
Maddy didn't know what to make of them at first, but after about 2 minutes of the fireworks...she was ASLEEP!! LOL I don't know how she did it, but she was asleep for the entire show and woke up to the Grand Finale!!

We have had such a great weekend already!! :) More fun to come!!!

I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!