Movin' on Up!

Well, she didn't want to stand up, she's not interested in walking, and suddenly, Friday, she decided to climb the stairs!

Ha!  She played at the bottom of the stairs for so long that she was extremely proud of herself when she got up onto the first one.  Then she spent some time lunging back down and seeing if I would catch her before she decided to travel on...

...and up she went!  Since then, she's done it twice more and has pulled herself up to standing on a couple other things.  This transition has been accompanied by quite a bit more crankiness than usual.  Oh well, she's growing I guess!  Annalee also recently tried some whole milk in a sippy cup (not too interested, never more than a few sips) and has found great joy in throwing food from her high chair tray onto the ground.....................

Who is this handsome dude????  Ha!  Looking good for church today. :)

Annalee too.  Tried to take their pics after church and before lunch, which neither of them loved.

"Here Mom.  You take this."

"Gotcha!"

Easter Love

Spring finally arrived!  Along with lots of pollen, sneezes, springtime and Easter songs, beautiful "popcorn trees", brightly colored eggs, and fun outside!

As some of our siblings rolled into town for Easter and Annalee's birthday, we indulged in a Christmas present we had been saving...Syracuse pasta!

My family has a tradition of throwing candy all over the yard for a fast-paced hunt!  I filled some eggs for extra fun - a little more traditional hunting.

Annalee's second Easter! She did some hunting with a little help this year. :)

...it involved her favorite thing...putting things into a container (and taking them out.  Ha!  Next year she'll want to leave them in there, I think!).

Though it looks like he is crying, I can assure you that Connor was psyched about loading up his basket and was squinting in the sun/making a cheese face!

Lots of orange and blue hunting for that candy!  Savannah wanted in on the action too.  She didn't get any candy, but I'm pretty sure she had some cupcake later while Annalee was demolishing hers!

Reaching up on the fencepost!

Last one in the crook of the tree.  Thanks for the lift, Lola!

Mmmm, Easter dinner.  Everyone helped with the cooking and it was delicious!  There are Annalee's birthday decorations, by the way. ;)  They didn't make it into her birthday post!

We spent Easter morning at church together.  Here's Con with one of his best buddies...Amburger Burger!

I got to do some special music and share the Easter story with our 2-4 year old classes.  I did this once before during Christmas services, but this time my bro-in-law Jay came and played the guitar, which made it MUCH better!  It's nice to be able to dance around with the kids and do motions without also trying to play piano/guitar!  Thankfully all of the sisters came and held onto our kids and helped me pass out instruments, so everything went very smoothly and I think the kids had a great time (about 70 total!).

Thank you to Christy at Kinder Companie for making our Easter bows.  One for Annalee, one for Connor...and one for Jonathan!!!!  How cute are they?

Look at all this beautiful family!  We are so blessed.  Annalee fell asleep during the service so we let her snooze away.  I want you to know how happy it makes my heart that still, two weeks after Easter, Connor is still singing "Hallelujah" at random times.  We sang a couple of different songs with Hallelujahs or Alleluias - but he remembers!  Our church really teaches kids about Christ and His love for us, we're so thankful for that.  We had a beautiful, moving drama during the Easter service that was unforgettable...though a little scary for Connor as it portrayed the crucifixion, he made it through with his aunts and uncle right there and I am glad that he will know (at a young age) about Christ's sacrifice for us...and that He rose again!!!

After church we had a flurry of lunch (leftovers!), packing the car, and opening baskets that a few bunnies had sent to the kids!  The kids and I then began our drive to FL for vacation, Laura headed back to school for a few days (before she joined us) and everyone else crashed to nap for a few hours.  What a wonderful weekend!

Happy Birthday, Annalee!

My sweet baby girl is one and I'm a little bit in shock!  I think her first year flew by even faster than Connor's.  

We spent most of the day relaxing and playing at home, and then Daddy came home with a balloon and a flower for his girl!  This makes me laugh...Connor and Jonathan both trying to get her attention!

Some awesome friends dropped off a birthday gift at Jonathan's office - sparkly books!  Jonathan said, "Wow.  I have a GIRL."  Ha!

 We pulled out our special plate (which almost met it's demise in the less than a minute it was on Annalee's high chair) and had homemade pizza for dinner.

Then Annalee opened some packages that arrived from her grandparents...we did video chat with each of them over the next couple days so they could watch her open gifts!  She got some pajamas and purple shoes from us...

A rider from her Nana and Grandpa (your dolly is supposed to ride on the back, but Connor wanted in on the action of course)...

...and a Little People house from Marmee and Papa!  Lots of new fun things to play with.

The weekend after her birthday, we had a little bit of family in town so that we could celebrate with them, and also spend Easter together.

We had a little bit of a flower theme going with the dress I made, some 1st birthday cookies, and cupcakes made by Aunt Laura.

Went super easy on lunch (we were making our Easter dinner that night) and had pizza and veggies!  I made my mom's dill dip...which the Cagles decided tastes like a McDonald's hamburger...ha!  Must be the minced onion in it!  However, I would eat that dip plus veggies over McD's any day.

Here are the beautiful cupcakes.  Thanks Laura! I fear that someday I will actually have to make a birthday cake for one of our kids. :)

Enjoying lunch.  Connor and Annalee had one of their normal lunches (turkey) before we went all out on sweets!

The birthday princess, awaiting her cupcake!  Her bib even played "Happy Birthday".

Yeah, she definitely wanted the candle.  I blew it out pretty quickly.

Hmmm....

A little lick of frosting...

Oh!

Wait for it...

YES!  About 1/3 of the cupcake in her mouth, 1/3 down her front, and the rest glued to her hand.  Ha...loved it.

Daddy added a little frosting to his lip while we celebrated with her and tried to get her attention for the camera. :)

She may have been in a bit of a sugar-induced food coma at this point...

"Daddy, what's that on your face?"

 Oh, and with brother, too.  He had been loudly requesting his own cupcake for about 10 minutes. :)

There we go.

Mommy found a "new-to-us" kitchen set, Annalee size!  Think she was surprised??

"This doesn't lok like a cell phone..."

Cooking together...I hope they'll do this when they're "big"!

Aunt Laura got Annalee tiny TOMS for her birthday!  This was a big surprise because I had ordered them during a sale on Zulily (and was talking to Laura while ordering).  I was bummed because I wanted to get pink, but ordered red because they were out of the smaller pink sizes.  The next day, they restocked the sale but I didn't order the pink because the red were already ordered.  A few weeks later, I found out that something had happened to the shipment and we were not going to get the shoes at all (not the end of the world, but a bummer).  Turns out that Laura had ordered the pink ones for her when they restocked, and those ones actually made it!  Hurray!

Aunt Sarahann and Uncle Jay gave Annalee a giraffe guitar, which actually comes apart to be 5 different instruments!  We have quite the little bandies at our house! :)

Matthew and Kelly (&co) couldn't make it down, but we got to facetime with them while Annalee opened her Princess Potato Head - so fun.  Thanks for videoing in, guys!

After all the excitement, the kiddos were both having trouble napping.  Connor eventually slept some but Annalee came down to cheer for her Orange - it was March Madness, after all!

Thanks for celebrating with us, everyone.  Happy Birthday, beautiful girl!