Henry 18 Months

Henry is 1 1/2 years old now and walking all over.  This month he has stopped crawling all together, and walks, nearly runs,  all over.  He loves to play with trains, frequently taking our hands and saying "choo-choo" while trying to pull us over to play with him at the train table.  He is also very interested in playing outside and frequently goes to the door or points to outside and asks to go outside (in his own little baby talk).  He is a BIG talker and VERY loud!  He talks all day long in baby talk and has learned a few new real words this month including "car," "shoe," "go," "pepper."  He wants so badly to do and play with everything that Nicholas and Grace do, so we have some challenges with sharing :-)  He visited the ocean for the first time ever this month and loved it, had no fear.  He enjoyed playing in the sand and getting in the water.  He was a great little traveler on the 10 hour car ride there too.  Another great month with our little buddy, for which we are so thankful!

A Wonderful Grandparent Visit!

Last weekend, we were honored to have a visit from both my parents and my grandparents!  It was very special to us that they made the trip to come and see us.  We enjoyed their company tremendously!  We sure wish we lived closer so we could spend much more time together,  because we love them dearly and enjoyed every moment!

Choo-Choo!  

"vaccuming"

Building a Lego police helicopter

Tea Party snack time

Admiring the gardens with Grandma outside of a restaurant 

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa each read a few books to the kids over the weekend.

Enjoying the Frank Sinatra music before dinner

Nicholas always gets SUPER excited to play with Grandma

The girls

Henry DAVID with his namesake, Great Grandpa David Burkemper

The Tellus Museum

Nicholas' birthday fell on a Sunday this year so we decided to spend an extra special family day together and take the kids to the Tellus Museum.  It is a fairly new place and we had never been.  It was originally a mineral museum and now has expanded to include several different galleries, from dinosaurs to transportation, and a planetarium.  We all really enjoyed it, and it was certainly a treat for our little astronaut/construction worker!

This super large dump truck was one of the kids' favorite things they saw.

There was also some other very neat old machines.

Nicholas is always intrigued by cranes.

A few of the different kinds of "rocks" native to GA

The dinosaur formerly known as the Brontosaurus

Our little astronaut

And our big astronaut :-)

Panning for gems

Digging for dinosaur bones and other fossils

Fun with balls and angles

Fun with mirrors

I have no idea what this was but Henry really liked it!

And of course.....the construction equipment

A Space-tacular Birthday Party!

This year, for the first time, Nicholas chose his own location and theme for his party, and invited his friends to join in celebrating his 5th birthday.  He chose an Outer Space theme and wanted to have the party at Monkey Joe's, an indoor bouncy house place.  There were about 15 boys and girls who came and I think they all had a lot of fun jumping, climbing, sliding, etc.  We all enjoyed pizza and cake.  As usual, I made and decorated his cake (although I must give credit to Shawn who made the rocket :-)  What a fun celebration!  We love you buddy!

This cake was a bit of a challenge with the black icing, but was still fun to create.  Nicholas'  expression of joy when he saw it was priceless!

Best buddies

Henry partied with the best of the them!

This slide was one of the favorites by all the kids, especially his friend Joey.

.....And buddy Jimmy too!

MMM....pizza and cake time!

Say cheese....

Here comes the cake!!

Wow 5 candles!!

Happy birthday sweetheart!!

Nicholas' Favorites

Thanks to the great idea from my friend Jami, I decided to "interview" Nicholas at age 5 about his favorites.  Here are his answers.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE..........
Color:  blue
Stuffed animal:  Patch (stuffed dog)
Food: cinnamon toast
Movie: construction videos from the library
Clothes to wear: big digger or dump truck shirt with khaki shorts
Game:  outer space puzzle
Snack:  fruits and vegetables
Animal:  dog
Song:  Lightning McQueen music and story CD
Book:  Biscuit books
Friends:  Grace, Joey, Jimmy, Jacqueline, Andrew and Mercer
Drink:  fresh cold milk
Thing to do outside:  pretend to be farmers to harvest food and make pretend dinner in the playhouse and then have real lemonade whenever mom makes it
Place to go:  PLAY (activity center), Sweet Apple Park, Monkey Joes
Thing to play inside:  building with wooden blocks
Thing to do at the park:  play in sandbox and slide down tunnel slides
Favorite fruit:  berries
Favorite vegetable:  all colors of bell peppers
What do you want to be when you grow up?  construction worker and an astronaut and a daddy

Nicholas is 5 Years Old!!!

Yes it so hard to believe but Nicholas has turned 5 years old!  It seems like only yesterday we were so excited to welcome our first born and bring him home from the hospital.  Now he is a big preschool boy!  Our lives have changed dramatically in an incredibly happy way because of you, Nicholas!  You have taught us the meaning of love on a whole new level!  We love you so much and always will!  Here's a little about you at 5 years old:

*  You are 43 inches tall and weigh 37.5 lbs.
*  You mostly wear size 4 but are starting to get into 5's.  You have such a little waist we can only buy pants with adjustable straps that get cinched down on about the 7th notch.
*  You are a great eater.  You eat vegetables very well and love to try new things.
*  You remain very talkative!  You enjoy talking at length to anyone who will listen and have quite a large vocabulary.  You love learning to use new words.
*  Your biggest passion remains BUILDING.  You love to build with anything at your disposal.  Every day you construct elaborate block creations and usually have some very creative story to describe it.
*  You are also very interested in outer space, construction, legos, matchbox cars, trains, arts and crafts, and digging in the dirt or sandbox.    You love to color and draw and are known to draw lots of pictures, especially of cranes and construction equipment.
* Your imagination has really developed lately.  You love to make up stories, and play all sorts of creative games and make believe things with your sister.  You and Grace very often pretend you are "farmer Joe and wife Josey harvesting the crops and cooking them for dinner", or play "magic fairies," or you build forts and tunnels to play inside of together.
*  You and Grace are truly best friends right now.  The joy you have playing with each other is so evident.  You also have a fair number of arguments about sharing, etc.  But you are very close!  Henry tries hard to keep up with the two of you.
*  You know all your letters and sounds and can count to well over a hundred.  You are writing very well for your age and are starting to sound out and try to spell your own words phonetically.  You know about 50 sight words and are starting to read some beginner books on your own.  You are very capable of reading well but sometimes get frustrated and lose focus.
*  You love to have us read to you.  Some of your favorite books right now are "My Big Book of Outer Space," "How Things Work," "Trains," "Biscuit" books, and really any story book.
*  At night you love for Dad to tell you "Mice in the Vents" stories especially the really silly ones.
*  You know your Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and Apostles Creed.  You always pray from the heart and with great thought!  You have a deep interest in God and faith.  You ask lots of questions.  Almost every night when tucking you into bed, you like to ask us to tell you "what was it like when Jesus was alive?"
*  Your memory continues to astound us!  You have an unbelievable memory!!
*  You are starting to play with friends more and meet friends at parks, etc.
*  You are a big giggler...once you get going, its hard to stop you some times!
*   You still love to snuggle, be held, and cuddle.  You are such a sweet boy and we love you!
      Happy Birthday sweetheart!

Captiva Island Vacation

This year we spent a wonderful 9 day family vacation on Captiva Island, FL.  The resort we stayed at (South Seas Island Resort) was very family friendly.  We spent most of our time at the beach or pool, or both, every single day, but we also took time to enjoy doing a kids craft and having play time at Skully's (their children's entertainment building) each day, and visited the Sannibel Shell Museum and the Ding Darling National Wildlife Preserve one day.  We enjoyed lots of delicious food, especially seafood, on and off resort.  The kids' favorite was The Bubbleroom restaurant and Scoops and Slices (a cute pizza parlor/ice cream/candy shop....we all enjoyed some treats there!)  Grace and Nicholas' favorite craft of the week was the tie dye shirts they made and brought home as their souvenir!  

But certainly the highlight of the week was the beach!  All three kids loved it (though Grace will tell you she prefers the pool because "the ocean is too salty.")  They all enjoyed playing in the sand.  Nicholas was a little fish and was swimming all over and never wanted to come out of the water.  Once a manatee came close to shore where he was swimming and Nicholas was face to face with it with his goggles and even touched it!  He was so excited!  On the first day at the beach Grace was really scared of the ocean, even with the mild Gulf surf, but as the week progressed, she warmed up quickly and kept asking us to go swimming in the ocean with her.  Henry, well he's fearless, he'd walk or crawl right into the sea if you let him so we just watched him close and he had a blast.

Overall, Nicholas made huge strides in his swimming this week.  He is now truly swimming on his  own!  He swims the length of the pool and back and keeps doing it over and over.  He loves to swim and seems to spend more time under than above the water!  Henry also made big strides this week, literally!  He went from walking 5% of the time and crawling 95% to walking 100% of the time, in just the course of our week vacation!  Shawn and I both agreed the vacation was as relaxing as it can possibly be with three small children :-) We each had the opportunity to enjoy some one on one time with each of the kids which was very special.  And we all just enjoyed being together as a family!

Most of our photos are posed ones from our little "photo shoots" because it was a full time job watching the kids around the water all week and was hard to find the time to take pictures!

We tried to take advantage of the great scenery to take the kids' yearly photos.  Shawn did a great job as always I think.

Mr. Smiles, NOT smiling for the camera.. unusual for him, but still cute all the same!

Best buddies!

These two are always full of giggles these days!

Getting a picture of all three looking and smiling is nearly impossible lately it seems.  This was the best we could do.  Now that Henry is walking, he is on the go all the time!

Our buddy who is not so little any more!

Love those laughs!

Enjoying the pool

Grace was our pool girl!

Fun splash time with Daddy!

This was the harbor view out of our room window.

More laughs!

Nicholas was so excited to get this manatee hat after he met one while swimming!

On the beach pictures....

Looking for shells

On the move again!

The girls

Pure sweetness

All boy!

There's those two buddies again!

Posing :-)

This is a true Grace smile...love it!

Nicholas' first castle

They all really enjoyed the sand!

This was a lake at the church we went to Mass at on Sunday

Outside a restaurant after dinner

Captiva is a fantastic place for seashells!  These are the ones we just casually picked up at the beach.  We didn't even go at low tide or in the "best" places.  It was so easy to find amazing shells and lots of fun!

We will always remember the great vacation we had together!