Megan's 1st Birthday

Megan's first year has flown by. It seems to have gone faster than Abby's first year but I think we were also busier with all our activities on the weekends, that makes time fly. So we had a couple parties for Megan. We've had more cupcakes and cake in a 48 hour period than most people should. Our festivities started off on Friday night with a party with just our family. Well actually the party started off with cupcakes at daycare Friday afternoon.


Just a small simple cake.

I think she has gotten the hang of eating cake.



Pretty excited about things.

Then we let Abby give Megan her birthday presents that she picked out all by herself. Megan got a water bottle with her name on it, Rowdy the Dump Truck, and...

some yellow duck that is supposed to swim in the bathtub. We'll see if that works out. I think Abby remembered seeing it at the Cowan lake house so Megan had to have it.

Here's our birthday girl on her party day on Saturday. She was all excited and ready to go.

Stripped down and waiting patiently for the cake. I think she is starting to look more like Abby. She had a small growth spurt recently and has changed a lot lately.



The cake, had to keep her hand out of the candle, of course big sister Abby was there to help blow it out.


Here's the cupcake cake that the rest of us ate. It's all actually cupcakes so no cutting, just had to hand out the cupcakes. And of course Princess and the Frog theme (Abby helped pick that out).

The older girls eating their cupcakes, well mostly the frosting. Clockwise from Abby it's Cora, Ashley, and Carmen. As you can tell they were playing some dress up beforehand.

Our birthday girl getting in to the cake.

Purple frosting was everywhere when we finally decided she was done.


Off to the bath tub you go!

Opening presents with Daddy. I didn't get a lot of present opening photos, but believe it or not there are actually toys that we didn't have. Megan got some great toys and clothes. Abby is doing pretty good at remembering they are Megan's and not hers, however there are many reminders to help her with that.

Megan decided she was going to try to carry this one.

After everyone left we still had Grandma & Grandpa Schmidt and Betsy, BJ, & Theo so Abby busted out some games for everyone to play.

Uncle Tim with Theo and Megan. Megan and Theo are 10 months apart.




Here's a short video of Megan eating cake. I didn't get the Happy Birthday video or Abby blowing out the candle so this will have to do.

We survived our first year with Megan, and being parents of 2. We are exhausted.

Big Cedar Weekend

This weekend we took a 3 day weekend trip down to Big Cedar Lodge which is just south of Branson. We had a 1 bedroom suite connected to a studio and Abby thought it was the greatest thing to have her own room, her own fridge, bathroom, kitchen, broom, mop,....you get the deal. Then she had to share it all with Megan, which wasn't that bad either. I think The Little Mermaid played on her DVD all weekend. We managed to do some swimming, shopping, napping, and a little bit of walking around. Tim is still fighting a cold from last weekend so we were limited on our time out. We did have some extra pancakes leftover from breakfast so we went on a mission to see if there were any ducks left on the lake. Usually there are some down by the boat dock/bait shop. We walked all the way down to the last dock to find these 3 lonely and hungry mallards.


Abby enjoyed feeding them.

Tim gave Megan a piece to throw, but she ate it.

We made a trip out to the Outlet mall to use some gift certificates from Christmas. megan enjoyed rearranging and carrying the bags around for the rest of the weekend - I think we might have a little shopper.....

On Sunday we went to find the ducks again since we had a couple pancakes left and couldn't let them go to waste. The ducks were located on one of the properties inner ponds so we got out right on the bank with them. I threw some crumbs up on the grass and they were right at my feet. Abby wasn't too thrilled about that part. Tim actually had them eating out of his hand. They were quite tame. Abby thought they were going to follow us home.

Then of course Megan's first Valentine's Day. Just a little bib to celebrate the day. Couldn't find any My First Valentine's Day onsies in an 18 month. We really didn't do anything special for the day other than the long drive home and some playing when we got back to the house. Tim was pretty tired so they had to deal with just Mom who was also trying to laundry, cook dinner, and clean up a little all at the same time. Abby is pretty excited to go back to the "fancy hotel" and we'll be back down in the end of June for a week so it will be new to us to be there in the summer for once. We'll actually get to swim in an outdoor pool!

We hope everyone had a fun Valentine's Day. This coming weekend is Megan's first birthday. My how the time has flown by.

Soccertots

We decided to enroll Abby in Soccertots for a session to see how she would like it. This is her first "organized" group activity that's not related to daycare. She had a great time. This session is about working on balance, hand eye coordination, some soccer skills, and of course listening skills and follow the leader. She had a really good time and paid attention most of the time. The class is for 50 minutes with a total of 9 kids in it. She had no arguments about going to bed after wards at all. All the photos are from far away so they are pretty blurry. The parents are not supposed to interact or coach at all so we sit on the other side of the gym and give hugs and kisses when needed. She gets to go once a week for 8 weeks. The hard part was keeping Megan off the floor.

Surviving the Sleep Over

This Friday we decided to let Abby have her first friend sleep over. Tim however had to head over to St. Louis for the annual deer sausage making festival so it was just me and 3 girls. I was slightly out numbered. Abby's friend Carmen, our daycare provider's daughter came home with us Friday night and the girls couldn't wait to play Barbies, dress up, kitchen, house, and everything else they could get their hands on. They were actually really good and other than one moment when Abby fell off her bunk bed ladder the night was a success. My job was to cook, continuously clean up, and play with Megan when the girls didn't want to. They were very good to include her, as she was their "baby" with most of the pretend play. We ended Saturday with some play time at McDonald's. Got to love the playland! Megan can't wait to get in there herself.


Carmen and Abby posing as I hadn't taken any pictures at all yet.

This portion of the playland was right over our booth so they came and said hi.

This weekend we are taking a vacation day on Friday and heading down to Big Cedar on Thursday night. A fun filled weekend of swimming and some shopping for me. Hopefully a little relaxing as well. Maybe even a sled ride if there is enough snow.

Look who's walking!

We have a lot of things changing at the Schmidt house lately. Megan is doing new things everyday. Walking is just the first of many, she's "talking" constantly. Abby of course is our translator, and Tim and I are waiting patiently for which of our names will come first.

Here are a couple photos from Tim's phone that he downloaded last week.


Who doesn't love the Waffle House??

Getting ready to do some off roading.

This weekend we headed down to Springfield, MO to attend the wedding reception of Matt & Carrie Sims. We had already attended their wedding in Jamaica and this was the local gathering. They had a great slide show of our time in Jamaica so we got to relive the trip and were "those people" in the photos.

This was just the start to the crazy dancing late night. We won't be going back to Taco Bell at 2AM again. It was a little too scary for even our group despite the safety of the mini van.


And last but not least the video of Megan walking. Of course now that it's been a couple days since we recorded this she is walking much more so I'm sure we'll update another one later.