Partying at Chuck E Cheese

We celebrated Nathan's 4th birthday with family and friends at one of Nathan's favorite places, Chuck E Cheese.
Nathan loved playing the racing car game....

and apparently, Andrew likes driving too!

Laura loved riding the carousel....

while Emilia was trying her luck to win as many tickets as possible.We also learned that Chuck E Cheese can entertain all generations... as the Battleship game was a huge hit with the grandparents.

Nathan of course loved all the time he got to spend with his cousins, Carter and Isabelle.

Happy Birthday Nathan! How did you get to be such a big boy so fast?!?!

Teething....

Is there an app for that?
Not yet, so I guess I'll have to numb the pain with an ice cold brew.

Andrew's Antics

I just wanted to share a couple of new fun photos of Andrew, since he doesn't usually get as many photos on the blog. At 9 months, I would say Andrew is a hit or miss eater. Some meals he gobbles down two containers of baby food. Yet other meals, he doesn't want any of it. But any day, Andrew will inhale the baby puffs. He loves to pop them in his mouth all by himself.
When on his belly, Andrew still mostly moves in reverse. The other afternoon, we found him stuck in the duplo bucket.

Okay.... the moving hand in this photo is a little weird, but the face is adorable.

Nathan, My Helper

These days Nathan is exerting his independence and wants to do more things for himself such as get his own snacks and wash his hands without any supervision. Sometimes he also wants to help me around the house.

I think he enjoyed "cleaning" up the cake mix more than cleaning the floor. :)

Princesses

At small group the other night, the 3 big kids played dress up. The make a cute group of princesses, huh?

Happy 4th Birthday, Nathan!

Today was President's Day, but it also was Nathan's birthday. It is so hard to believe it's already been four years since we brought him home from Fairfax Hospital. We celebrated with Cars cupcakes with his friends at Discovery Station.


Nathan also got to open one present from Grammy and PopPop... it was the Cars flashlight that he really wanted. OOooooooo! More birthday blogging to come after his party on Saturday.

Happy Valentine's Day!

So now that Nathan is older, I've been trying harder to get into the spirit of the holidays. For Valentine's Day, I prepared a special breakfast for my boys and broke out the Valentine's "china". The menu included berry smoothies, heart shaped strawberries and french toast stuffed with cream cheese, raspberry preserves and chocolate chips.

However for Nathan, the best part was that his parents broke down and let him have one of his football candies for dessert after breakfast.

Happy Birthday Gramma!

Gramma celebrated a birthday on Friday. So we gathered up the Vaughan clan in Northern Virginia and headed over to Sakura Japanese Steakhouse in Fair Lakes for dinner.

Uncle Chad and Crissi enjoyed their meal, as did everyone else.

Andrew enjoyed playing with the chopsticks and was entertained by the chef preparing our delicious meals!

The Blizzard of 2010

We have survived our second massive snow storm of the season dropping around 30 inches. While Dan shovelled and Andrew napped, Nathan and I took a walk on Sunday morning to explore the neighborhood. In case you can't tell, this is a photo of two park benches.


Here's Dan proudly posing with one of the mountains of snow in our front yard.
Nathan enjoyed some tubing on Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately, as I sit here and type, we are under a Winter Storm Warning calling for another 10 - 20 inches. UGGGHH!! I think our house has had enough snow for the winter and both of our shovels are at their breaking points, literally. Luckily, my parents agreed to loan us a shovel and Dan and Nathan just got back from picking it up.

Andrew at 9 months

It's so hard to believe that our baby boy Andrew is already 9 months old. Each day he seems to be becoming less baby and more boy. Andrew is long and lean.... 29.5 inches (90%) and 18 lbs 11 oz (25%). After 4 and 1/2 long months, Andrew's two front teeth are cutting through to join his two bottom chompers. He has also discovered how to splash and he and Nathan have a blast giggling and splashing in the tub together.


Andrew is also about to hit a major milestone..... He can do a 360 on his belly and with his go-go-gadget arms, he can pretty quickly grab anything interesting left on the floor (usually one of Nathan's toys). Although he hasn't quite figured out how to move in a forward motion, he has mastered moving in reverse, until he runs into something..... like the couch..... or the chair!