Gavin's 1st Birthday

Tomorrow my sweetest baby will turn 1 and I'm in disbelief. We celebrated with family and friends this past weekend. Surprisingly, Gavin was not into cake-smashing as his brothers were. He was very dainty and gentle with his cake. Mike smashed his hand into it at one point to give him the idea, after which he proceeded to render that hand useless and just use the clean hand to continue poking at his frosting. He always keeps us guessing :) Happy, happy birthday my sweet little man.

As a side note, I've thought a lot about birthdays in the past couple years, and the fact that they often mean as much (if not more) to mothers than to kids. The actual significance of the day a child was born holds more memory for a woman than for the baby, so I've taken to giving special mentions or gifts to mommies on the days of their children's birthdays as much as the kids themselves. I know for me personally, each birth was transformative to my whole person and I honor and celebrate that each year on their special days for myself. Gavin's birth was especially special to me, so his birthday brings me a lot of warmth and peace. Tomorrow I celebrate Gavin's birthday, and my birth day, for the significance and joy they brought to our family last year.














This mess is all daddy's fault

Fall Family Fun

It's Official

We're moving! After just 3 1/2 weeks on the market, and three showings, we got an offer. Assuming the home inspection and appraisals go well, we'll cease being homeowners in a month. A married couple, currently childless, (and the woman is a school teacher,) will be the next owners of this house. Sniff, sniff. I'm happy for them, and happy for us, but this all happened so darn fast and I'm starting to get really misty-eyed. We close on October 22nd...we won't even be in *our* neighborhood for trick-or-treating! The holidays this year will be spent in a 2 bedroom apartment 10 blocks from here, where we will live, quite literally, on top of each other (as the boys will need bunk beds). The builders have not yet broken ground on the house we want, so we haven't been able to make an offer yet. Once we do we'll hopefully have additional leverage seeing that we no longer need to wait for our own house to sell, and they likely won't finish this house till January, which is a crappy time to put a house on the market. So hopefully they'll be willing to negotiate a good price with us for these reasons. We'll see. In the meantime, we've only got 5 weeks left to savor life in the house that has been our home for 5+ years, where we've had our babies (literally, in Gavin's case) and made many memories. I realize that it's the family that makes the home, not the house, but I'm still pretty attached to this home and this neighborhood. It will be a teary day for me when we drive away without keys to get back in.

the dishwasher fairy strikes again

Fun in the old IC

We took a little weekend away to Iowa City/Amana Colonies over Labor Day and stayed at the Wasserbahn waterpark in Amana. The boys had a tremendous time swimming and enjoying a weekend that was majorly geared toward their amusement. Mike and I had fun with friends and in the water as well, but on the way home decided we were ready for a vacation from the vacation. 5 people in a small hotel room was not sleep-friendly. Poor Gavin is exhausted from the whole 3 day journey. But we enjoyed Sofia and Aster's birthday party (sorry, no photos from that), lunch the next day at their house, visiting Sarah and Orion's new metal home :), seeing Kenda, and visiting some fun IC spots. Here's the photo line-up from that outing:


Uncle Adam came to play in the agua, too



Bunk beds was too much fun for all boys involved




The boys enjoyed the usual visit to the Coral Ridge mall for carousel rides and playtime. Their indoor play area is much more geared toward younger ones like Gavin than is our's at home, so Gav had a magnificent time.



In other news, I convinced Mike that we need to splurge a little on Gavin's birthday gift. He caved and we gave it to him early


The boys think this push toy is more fun when used as a wagon to cart each other around.



Gavin, on the other hand, spends more time climbing in and out of it than actually pushing it. But it's getting lots of use, nonetheless!


Poor Gav has been butt of many head injuries lately, from falling out the front door when Jack opens it as he's standing against it, to pulling the hotel's coffe maker tray down onto his head, to wacking it against his new car push toy. It seems he's bound and determined to show up to his 1 year photos looking like he just left a bar fight (and lost).


He still keeps his sunny disposition, though!