Happy Birthday, Ashley!!!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful sister!

I hope your day is amazing!

Also, happy 18 months to my sweet little baby...whom I probably should not call a baby anymore.  I love you!

Happy Belated Birthday...

...and Merry Belated Christmas!!!

Madeleine had a gift arrive today from her Great Aunt & Uncle in California.

She is in LOVE with her first purse.  She's been walking around with it on her arm since she opened it. Bonus that it contains a phone, one of her favorite things.  As well as keys, a credit card, a mirror, a case, and a lipstick.  She's a fan!  They also gave her "Are You My Mother" and "Good Night Moon" which were Ryan's cousins' favorite books growing up.

Thank you so much Mona & Charlie!  She's absolutely loving the gifts and it was so awesome of you guys to think of her!  We can't wait to see you in August!!!

Playhouse!!!

Grandma and Grandpa Winslow got Maddie a playhouse for Christmas...and it's been sitting in their garage since then.

Today everyone was available and the weather cooperated, so we set it up for her.  Getting it from their house to our house, however, proved to be a bit harder than anticipated.  You see, the boxes for the playhouse arrived by semi back in December.  We thought we could open the boxes and cart the stuff over by van load...or if worst came to worst, strap it to the top of the vans and go.

Yeah, turns out, the sides were too big to fit IN the fan or ON the van.  So, Grandpa and I made an unscheduled trip to work to borrow a truck.  Last time I rode shotgun with my dad it was during the "Great Blackout" to bring a generator home.  It was a stick.  It was interesting.  Thankfully, there are no more manual trucks in the DRS fleet anymore :)

We drove home, loaded the playhouse in, dropped it off, took the truck back to work, and the came back to our house.  This is what I saw when I walked into the backyard:

 Apparently the skylight makes for quite a nice chair...

And the roof makes for an awful fun slide, lol.

Maddie had fun helping dad and grandpa put the house together:

 Making sure the doorbell rings...

And that the shutters open properly...

 And of course that the burners work...

And finally that the faucet it properly installed.  

Grandma and Grandpa even got her some chairs to make her house nice and comfy:

Then we moved everything over to the spot in the yard and let her go to town.  She had a blast!

She's also obsessed with these rocks in our backyard.  I get the feeling I'm going to find her house filled with them one day, lol.

Mother's Day 2013

Today was a nice lazy day. 

Here are a few pics and a video of M's "teasing."  She did some better ones earlier in the day where she screamed no when she took something back, but of course no one had the video camera on!

And the tease!!!

I love it!

Happy Mother's Day to me!

I received my gift from Maddie today.  And it is freaking adorable!  I can't wait to plant the seeds and watch the flowers grow!!!

Best Mother's Day gift to date!

March for Babies 2013

Today was March for Babies!!!

We had BEAUTIFUL weather!  It was 62 and sunny when we left the house at 8:45 am.  This was a far cry from the 26 degrees we experienced last year!

We met grandma and Ashley at grandma's house to pick them up to join us and took a quick few pics before we left of Team Maddie:

We got to Hudson Mills just after 9 o'clock and there were already lots of people there!  We hung out at the VIP tent eating doughnuts and drinking coffee while we waited for the opening ceremony to start.

And grandma ran around with Maddie in the field while she picked dandelions for everyone.

Then dad took a turn...

And she ran off some more steam on the tennis courts...yes, this was all BEFORE the walk, hahaha.

And then the walk was ON!!!

Agan, there were a ton of people there, probably about the same amount as last year.  I'd estimate easily over 1,000.

 Dad rocked the sweatband AND pinwheel on his head for most of the walk.

 I didn't take a picture, but the first checkpoint was sponsored by Target and I have to give them a LOT of credit.  They were giving out awesome food and drinks (fruit snacks, granola bars, cereal bars, animal crackers, etc) as well as pinwheels and balloons for the kids!

The second check point was sponsored by Pet Supplies Plus and they were handing out goodie bags for all the puppies on the walk.  Dozer and Bebe scored some awesome bags complete with frisbees, tennis balls and treats!

And, the third checkpoint was sponsored by ProQuest again this year.  It's all for the kids!  Face painting, bounce houses, cup cakes, pop corn, cups full of gold fish crackers, etc.  It's Dr. Seuss Land!

After this check point the people start to thin out as many stay to play for a long time and then just sporadically finish off the end of the walk.

The fourth checkpoint was sponsored by Golden Limousine and they were giving out cotton candy for the kids and had a big trolly there for kids to go into and check out.  We decided to let M try cotton candy.  She was not a fan.

FINISH!!!  Ryan sprinted ahead with Maddie to "win" the race.  LOL.

After we finished walking I ran into something I thought I wouldn't ever hear at a MOD walk...

"She's SO TINY!!!  How old is she?!?!"  I replied that she was 17 months and the woman responded with "OMG, Spencer you are bigger than she is!!!"  Um, yeah.  We're at a walk for premature infants.  Most of them are going to be small.  What?  LOL.  Apparently Ryan later overheard her husband explain to her than "She was probably born premature."  HAHA!

We raised a total of $633 dollars this year, which was $50 more than last year!  YAY!  So, we got a March for Babies t-shirt and and $25 gift card to Kmart or Macy's (which I donated back to MOD).  Here's what this year's shirt looks like:

And, finally, a very special thank you to all of our donors:

Judy & Michael Barron, Stacy & Eurides Cepeda, Diane Tavana, Donna Simari, Stephanie Quarles, Rachael & Jarod Andersen, Megan Bolte, Bonita Kazmir, Kathryn Vasquez, Susie Hammons, Jean Spink, Cassie Schissell Barber, Nate Ramsayer, Amanda Bearce, Ryan & Stephanie Gubbins, Lindsay Willett, Jacki Billings, Nikole DeLuca, Holli Dreischarf, Kelly Gravatt, Laura Marek, Mary Olivio, Tara Rabiola, Autumn Rivera, Ruth Bass, Jackie Cronin, Jill & Aaron Duffy, Jenny & Louis Malic, Tamara Block, Victoria Schilke, Janice & Kevin Winslow, and an anonymous donor...

...without the wonderful support of each and every one of you, our walk would not have been the success that it was!  So thank you thank you thank you from the very bottom of our hearts! 

Tulip Time in Holland!!!

Today we decided to make the trek out to Holland, Michigan for the Tulip Time festival.  Our first stop and the only one that generated photos was at Veldheer.  It was a warm and beautiful day and most of the tulips were open.  We went here first because I *really* wanted to see the tulip fields.  They were as gorgeous as I remembered.

Maddie had a blast running through the fields like a wild woman...which meant that she did NOT want to sit still for any pictures.  Nor would she smile because, well, we were restraining her.  Ha!

A little blurry, but possibly the only one of her smiling, lol.

 For some reason I really like this one!

 This sums up M's thoughts every time I tried to post for a picture, hahaha.

 Too cool for school wearing mom's sunglasses!

Running wild!

 WHERE'S MADDIE?!?!!?

 HA!

 My favorite of the day:

 The tulips were absolutely breathtaking.  I wish I had taken more pictures of the actual flowers, but alas, this is all we have: